Mental Fiction

Love makes life a little wilder in this romantic comedy by debut author Katie Shepard. After a panic attack puts him in the hospital, charity executive Teagan Van Zijl is dragged by his sister to a wilderness therapy retreat in Montana. Lost in the woods while absconding from midafternoon...

This SUMOREADS Summary & Analysis offers supplementary material to The Gifts of Imperfection to help you distill the key takeaways, review the book's content, and further understand the writing style and overall themes from an editorial perspective.

Things are more complicated than they seam as the suspense builds in this wry and enjoyable police procedural. When Santa Fe police chief Kevin Kerney finds the dead body of hotel magnate Clifford Spalding at a mountain ranch, he has a pretty good idea about who to talk to; the list of suspects isn't long. Spalding had a devious wife who was cheating on him with a known thug, and an embittered ex-wife with mental problems.

As the New York Times has said, “Few writers can manipulate a plot with [Chris] Bohjalian’s grace and power.” Now he is back with an ambitious new novel that travels between Jay Gatsby’s Long Island and rural New England, between the Roaring Twenties and the twenty-first century. When...

From the acclaimed author of A Heart in a Body in the World comes the gripping story of a girl living a lie in order to find the truth about her family and herself. Eleanor, like so many others, is used to watching her famous father from afar. To the world, Hugo Harrison is the brilliant and...

The experiment continues in the dark and disturbingly thrilling conclusion to the HappyHead duology where Seb will find the secret to escaping is more heart-wrenching than he ever imagined. Seb was sure surviving the experimental health center of HappyHead would be enough to send him home...

Puberty is one of the first signs that you’re growing up - and that’s something to be celebrated. If you’re looking for body-positive puberty books for girls but aren’t sure where to start - Celebrate Your Body 2 provides the support needed to navigate this whole puberty thing with confidence. From bras and braces to budding romantic feelings, this guide stands out among puberty books for girls as you become an expert on everything from pimples to peer pressure.

“This is not your grandma’s fairy tale… Brilliant.” —The Washington Post “The Force of Such Beauty grips with the strength of an Olympian and holds it with the endurance of a marathoner … [to] an ending that actually caught my breath, not once, but twice in quick succession...

Anna Chiu has her hands full. When she's not looking after her brother and sister or helping out at her father's restaurant, she's taking care of her mother, whose debilitating mental illness keeps her in bed most days. Her father's new delivery boy, Rory, is a welcome distraction and even though she knows that things aren't right at home, she's starting to feel like she could be a normal teen. But when her mother finally gets out of bed, things go from bad to worse.

Nor once dreamed of seeing the wondrous wealth and beauty of Ilara, the kingdom that's ruled her village for as long as anyone can remember. But when a childhood accident left her with a permanent scar, it became clear that her identical twin sister, Zadie, would likely be chosen to marry the Crown Prince - while Nor remained behind, unable to ever set foot on land. Then Zadie is gravely injured, and Nor is sent to Ilara in her place. To Nor's dismay, her future husband, Prince Ceren, is as forbidding and cold as his home - a castle carved into a mountain and devoid of sunlight.

When high school senior Jonas moves to Seattle, he is glad to meet Levi, a nice, soft-spoken guy and fellow basketball player. Suspense builds like a slow drumbeat as listeners start to smell a rat in Ryan Hartwell, a charismatic basketball coach and sexual predator. When Levi reluctantly tells Jonas that Hartwell abused him, Jonas has to decide whether he should risk his future career to report the coach.

Ansel Largent is a respected Chicago attorney; ferocious in the courtroom but a winner with the jury. Happy at home with wife Libby, a stroke victim. Happy at the office with Melinda, a married woman with a special interest in him. When everything unravels in one night, Ansel’s life is put under the microscope, and his plastic character brings his sanity into question. Thaddeus Murfee is hired to defend his most complicated trial yet, but when all the chips are down, even he is struck speechless at the outcome.

A bold, arresting new work of fiction from the acclaimed author of Everything Matters! and the forthcoming novel The One-Eyed Man (March 2017) In this tour de force of imagination, Ron Currie asks why literal veracity means more to us than deeper truths, creating yet again a genre-bending novel...

Boston blueblood Charlotte Vale has led an unhappy, sheltered life. Lonely, dowdy, repressed, and pushing 40, Charlotte finds salvation at a sanitarium, where she undergoes an emotional and physical transformation. After her extreme makeover, the new Charlotte tests her mettle by embarking on a cruise and finds herself in a torrid love affair with a married man which ends at the conclusion of the voyage. But only then can the real journey begin, as Charlotte is forced to navigate a new life for herself.

A stirring, inspiring book with the power to change the way we understand and communicate with our dogs. Few people are more qualified to speak about the abilities and potential of dogs than Jennifer Arnold, who for the past twenty years has trained service dogs for people with physical...

Harnessing the power of fandom--from Game of Thrones to The Legend of Zelda--to conquer anxiety, heal from depression, and reclaim balance in mental and emotional health. Modern mythologies are everywhere--from the Avengers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to The Wicked + The Divine. Where once...

My father pays heaps of money for doctors at the Norfolk Psychiatric Center to fix me. I've spent six months of my prime teenage years at this residential facility - a place for teenagers who've gone mental. Just when I begin to feel myself fade away, a boy with a wolfish smile and mischievous eyes reels me in. Julian is broken, too, but he believes in me enough for the both of us. Through him I begin to experience this thing called hope. Doctors can't fix me, my parents can't either, but maybe it's not me who needs fixing.

Worldwide, more people die by suicide than by murder, and many more are left behind to grieve. Despite distressing statistics that show suicide rates rising, the subject, long a taboo, is infrequently talked about. In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history, poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht channels her grief for two friends lost to suicide into a search for history’s most persuasive arguments against the irretrievable act, arguments she hopes to bring back into public consciousness.

Sebastian is, for all intents and purposes, a happily married man. He is a successful businessman, and on one of his business trips, he meets Violet, a woman so unlike his wife, and he cannot resist her. They start an intense relationship, purely sexual, but the power dynamic has shifted so completely that Sebastian is a little confused. Violet even asks that Sebastian come to her with his wife, such is the grip that she has on him, and when he disagrees, she insults him and humiliates him. Such is the nature of their relationship!

Alongside their personal stories, the writers -decorated novelists, poets, and essayists - address the history of the C-section as well as its risks, social inequities, impact on the body, and psychological aftermath. My Caesarean is a heartfelt meditation, offering much-needed comfort through shared experience.