After writing three critically acclaimed memoirs and a decade of teaching memoir workshops at every level, Elissa Altman has helped students face the elephant in every writer’s room: how to craft the stories that are most vital to them despite the voices that have told them not to. Permission is a master course, not only on how to craft memoir, but how to begin and keep going when you’ve been told you can’t, and how to how to give yourself permission to transcend the fear that keeps vital stories from being written.

Marion and Huguette Müller’s family was torn apart when the Nazis invaded France in 1940. After their mother was deported to Auschwitz, the sisters fled to the small Alpine ski resort village of Val d'Isère, where they were rescued by a brave young doctor. Through intrepid reporting and meticulous research, Whitehouse traces the story of the Müller sisters, solving decades-old mysteries in her attempt to deliver both closure and justice. With skill and urgency, Whitehouse raises moral questions at the heart of the tragedy of the Shoah.

What does it take to escape the plotlines mapped onto us? Searching for clues in the work of her literary foremothers, Lipson untangles what it means to be a girl, a woman, a lover, a partner, a daughter, and a mother in a world all too ready to reduce us to stock characters.

Florence, South Carolina 1944: Lieutenant Raymond Sellers bids farewell to his brother Jimmie, the weight of what lies ahead hanging heavy in the air. The brothers have always been inseparable—Raymond, the steady protector, Jimmie, the wild-hearted dreamer. But as Raymond embraces his pregnant wife Evelyn one last time, war is about to test the bonds of family in ways they never imagined. As a summer storm shakes the windows, Evelyn brings her baby into a world at war.

It's 1983 and seventeen-year-old Grace Clark has just lost her mother when she begrudgingly accompanies her estranged father to an archeological dig at Olduvai Gorge on the Serengeti plains of Tanzania. Here, seventy-year-old Mary Leakey enlists Grace to sort and pack her fifty years of work and memories. Their interaction reminds Mary how she pursued her ambitions of becoming an archeologist in the 1930s by sneaking into lectures and working on excavations.

A decade ago Special Forces warrior Jason Morgan parachuted into the Central American jungle on an anti-narcotics raid. He'd served with the famous Night Stalkers on countless such missions. This one turned out very different. Months later he regained consciousness in a US military hospital, with no memory of how he'd gotten there. The first words he heard were from his surgeon, telling him he would never walk again. The determined soldier responded, "Sir, yes, I will."

Magnolia "Mack" Bishop is staring down the barrel at single motherhood--thanks to an unsolicited personal picture her husband texted another woman that quickly went viral among every mom group in town. But she's determined to not let it distract her from the professional victory she's inches away from: securing Charleston's prestigious Historic Preservation Design Fellowship, the apple of every local designer's eye.

In the 1930s, Germany was a hotbed of scientific thought. But after the Nazis took power, Jewish and female citizens were forced out of their academic positions. Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer and Hildegard Stücklen were eminent in their fields, but they had no choice but to flee due to their Jewish ancestry or anti-Nazi sentiments. Their harrowing journey out of Germany became a life-and-death situation that required Herculean efforts of friends and other prominent scientists.

Liza Day’s mother isn’t dead, but leave it to Darla Day to throw herself a funeral anyway. It’s the kind of attention grab Liza left behind to build a quiet life for herself and her rebellious teenage daughter, Avery. But between her students discovering her old daytime TV show—putting her teaching job at risk—and her mother’s unexpected funeral invitation, Liza’s life feels truly like a soap opera.

Sabrina Adams thought her luck had finally turned around when she was hired as a librarian for the wealthy Dorsey family. But as soon as she arrives at their elegant estate, she senses something is off. They have cameras everywhere. She’s banned from the third floor, and she spotted someone watching the house from the nearby woods. And why does the housekeeper, Mrs Manning, insist on so many rules?

Far, far away, in the realm of Enchantia, creatures of legend still exist, magic is the norm and fairy tales are real. Except, fairy tales aren’t based on myths and legends of the past - they are prophecies of the future. Raised in the mortal realm, Everly Morrow has no idea she’s a real-life fairy-tale princess - until she manifests an ability to commune with mirrors. Look. See.... What will one peek hurt? Soon, a horrifying truth is revealed. She is fated to be Snow White’s greatest enemy, the Evil Queen.

A modern story of family, I’ll Come to You chronicles intersecting lives over the course of one year—1995—anchored by the anticipation and arrival of a child. With empathy, insight, and humor, Rebecca Kauffman explores overlapping narratives involving a couple whose struggle to become pregnant has both softened and hardened them; a woman whose husband of forty years has left her for reasons he’s unwilling to share and the man who is now attempting to woo her; and a couple in denial about a looming health crisis as well as their son who is fumbling toward middle age and can’t stop lying.

Devon Mayes thought she was done with the small conservative town she once called home. She fled when she was eighteen after her best friend Summer took her own life, leaving Summer’s twin brother, Keaton, lost in his grief. But when tragedy strikes again, Devon has nowhere to turn but back to the place that first broke her heart. Being back in Arkana means struggling with the old guilt that shrouds her bisexuality and her feelings for Keaton. There’s so much she’s still hiding from him—and so much of their shared past that’s now resurfacing.

When Abbi Jacobson announced to friends and acquaintances that she planned to drive across the country alone, she was met with lots of questions and opinions: Why wasn't she going with friends? Wouldn't it be incredibly lonely? The North route is better! Was it safe for a woman? The Southern route is the way to go! You should bring mace! And a common one... why? But Abbi had always found comfort in solitude and needed space to step back and hit the reset button. As she spent time in each city on her way to Los Angeles, she mulled over the big questions: What do I really want?

Seventeen-year-old Margaux doesn’t realize one photo could change the course of her life. But in German-occupied Paris, nothing makes sense anymore. Margaux fears the worst when her lover is arrested. And when her photo appears in Nazi propaganda, her family’s reputation and prospects suffer the consequences. In 2008, Margaux has moved into a retirement home, and her granddaughter Barbara continues to live in the Paris apartment they used to share.