Bruce Feiler was a young father when he was diagnosed with cancer in 2008. He instantly worried what his death might mean for his daughters. “Would they wonder who I was? Would they wonder what I thought? Would they lack for my approval, my discipline, my voice?”

Three days later he came up with a stirring idea of how he might give them that voice. He would reach out to six men, from all the passages in his life, and asked them to be present through the passages in his daughters’ lives. And he would call this group of men, “The Council of Dads.”

“I believe my daughters will have plenty of opportunities in their lives,” he wrote to these men. “They’ll have loving families. They’ll have welcoming homes. They’ll have each other. But they may not have me. They may not have their dad. Will you help be their dad?”

The Council of Dads is the inspiring story of what happened next. Mixing the harrowing tale of his treatment with the uplifting lessons of these men–“Approach the Cow,” “Pack Your Flip-Flops,” “Live the Questions,” “Harvest Miracles”–Feiler’s account is touching, funny, and ultimately a deeply moving account of parenthood, loss, and love.

Along the way he paints vivid portraits of his father, his two grandfathers, and various father figures in his life to explore the changing role of fatherhood in America. He mixes these with an intimate, highly personal chronicle of his “Lost Year” battling cancer and reconstructing his leg– an ordeal, like Jacob wrestling with an angel in the Book of Genesis, leaves him marked and transformed by the most profound questions of the human spirit.

The Council of Dads is the work of a master storyteller confronting the most difficult experience of his life and emerging with a book of wisdom, comfort, and hope that will change the way parents relate to their children, their friends, and their own lives.

To download and read an excerpt of The Council of Dads, click HERE.

Bruce Feiler (born October 25, 1964) is a writer on social issues and, particularly more recently, on religion. He is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including Walking the Bible, Abraham, and Where God Was Born. He tends to write in an accessible, conversational style, blending travelogue, interviews, autobiography, and personal musings with history and archaeology. He writes on religion from a progressive point of view. Some of his back catalog of books was republished in paperback after the commercial success of his Walking the Bible (2001). He hosted a television version with the same name, shown on PBS. He is credited with formulating the Feiler Faster Thesis: the increasing pace of society and journalists' ability to report it is matched by the public's desire for more information. Feiler is a native of Savannah, Georgia, and now lives in New York City with his wife. Linda Rottenberg, and their twin daughters. His wife sometimes appears as a traveling companion in his books.

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As the endearing and witty star of the beloved John Hughes “brat pack” classics Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink, Molly Ringwald defined teenage angst, love, and heartbreak. Now a wife and mother of three, and a star on the current hit television drama The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Molly is facing a new angst-inducing time in her life—her fortieth birthday! Encouraging every woman to become “the sexiest, funniest, smartest, well dressed, and most confident woman that you can be,” Molly shares a lifetime of experience in a vibrant, fun, stylish, and sexy collection of intimate stories and candid advice: Getting the Pretty Back, a fully illustrated “girlfriend’s guide” to life.

 

To her millions of fans, Molly Ringwald will forever be sixteen. As the endearing and witty star of the beloved John Hughes classics Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink, Molly defined teenage angst, love, and heartbreak. While remembered eternally as the enviable high school princess Claire, or the shy, vulnerable Samantha, Molly has just celebrated her fortieth birthday. Facing a completely new, angst-inducing time in her life, she is embracing being a woman, wife, mother of three, actress, and best friend with her trademark style, candor, and humor. 

In Getting the Pretty Back, Molly encourages every woman to become "the sexiest, funniest, smartest, best-dressed, and most confident woman that you can be." She shares personal anecdotes and entertaining insights about the struggle to get through the murky milestones and identity issues that crop up long after the prom ends. Whether she's discussing sex and beauty, personal style, travel and entertaining, motherhood, or friendship, Molly embodies the spirit of being fabulous at every age, and reminds us all that prettiness is a state of mind: it's "the part of you that knows what you really want, that takes risks." 

Lavishly illustrated by Ruben Toledo, Getting the Pretty Back is sure to charm women of all ages with Molly's unforgettably personal, refreshingly outspoken take on life, love, and, of course, finding that perfect red lipstick. . . . 

To listen to an audio excerpt, click HERE.

Molly Kathleen Ringwald (born February 18, 1968) is an American actress, singer and dancer. She became popular with teenage audiences in the 1980s, as a result of her starring roles in the John Hughes movies Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), and Pretty in Pink (1986). She returned to the public eye with her role as Anne Juergens in the ABC Family show The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Her pregnancy was written into the storyline of The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Getting the Pretty Back is her first book.

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The first part of an unforgettable epic family saga about the sacrifices every mother makes for her daughter and the very nature of unconditional love. On the eve of the First World War, fiery Marta Schneider leaves Switzerland and her difficult childhood behind, determined to find a new life on her own terms. Barely out of her teens, Marta is haunted by a devastating loss that fuels her ambition to one day own a hotel. From the cramped quarters of a French housekeeping school to the portrait-lined halls of a stately English manor, Marta becomes a hard working domestic who has little time to dwell on what might have been.  Instead, she draws her strength from what could be. Then, Marta meets Niclas Waltert, a man just as determined as she to forge a better life in a new place. Niclas captures her heart and together they endure the harshness of life as tenant farmers on the vast prairies of Winnipeg, Canada, before following the promise of the American dream and migrating to the agriculturally rich Central Valley of California.  Marriage and motherhood bring both joy and heartbreak, as Marta must surrender her long-held ambitions for the sake of her husband and children, including her daughter, Hildemara, upon whose shoulders her own hopes now squarely rest. Only the strong survive and Marta is determined to raise a daughter as strong as she.  But as Hildie reaches young womanhood and another war is fast approaching, those hopes become too heavy a burden for Hildie to bear. Born with a heart to serve others, Hildie pursues her calling as a nurse, something Marta can’t understand. Marta’s years of hardnosed parenting have left Hildie still hungry for her mother’s love…and now for her mother’s respect. Amid the drama of WWII, Hildie falls in love and begins a family of her own. She wants her daughter, Carolyn, never to doubt her love—but the challenges of life conspire against her vow and the only person who can come to her aid is the person she remains so desperate to please: Marta, her mother. With hallmark touches of brilliant prose and gripping characterizations, Her Mother’s Hope is a rich, moving epic about faith and dreams, heartache and disappointment, and ultimately the resilience and tenacity of love.

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Francine Sandra Rivers (born 1947) is an American author of fiction with Christian themes, including inspirational romance novels. Prior to becoming a born-again Christian in 1986, Rivers wrote historical romance novels. She is best known for her inspirational novel Redeeming Love, while another novel, The Last Sin Eater has become a feature film. Rivers has been honored with many awards, including the Christy Award, the ECPA Gold Medallion, and the Holt Medallion. Rivers is also a member of the Romance Writers of America's Hall of Fame. She has won four RWA RITA Awards, the highest award given in romantic fiction. Her first RITA was for Best Historical Romance in 1986 for Not So Wild a Dream. Her subsequent ones, in 1995, 1996, and 1997, have been for Best Inspirational Romance. Francine Rivers is married to Rick Rivers and they live together in northern California (where the action in many of her contemporary novels is set). They have three children: Trevor, Shannon, and Travis; and five grandchildren.

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Lexie Sinclair cannot stay. Enclosed within her parents’ genteel country lawn, she yearns for more. She makes her way to the city, and meets a magazine editor, Innes, a man unlike any she has ever imagined. He introduces her to the thrilling world of bohemian postwar London, and she learns to be a reporter, to know art and artists, to live her life fully and with a deep love at the center of it. She creates many lives—all of them unconventional. And when she finds herself pregnant by a man wholly unsuitable for marriage or fatherhood, she doesn’t hesitate for a minute to have the baby on her own.

Later, in present-day London, a young painter named Elina dizzily navigates the first weeks of motherhood. Her boyfriend, Ted, traumatized by nearly losing her in labor, begins to recover lost memories. He cannot place them. But as they become more disconcerting and return more frequently, we discover that something connects these two stories—these two women—something that becomes all the more heartbreaking and beautiful as they all hurtle toward its revelation.

A stunning portrait of motherhood and the artist’s life in all their terror and glory, Maggie O’Farrell’s newest novel is a gorgeous inquiry into the ways we make and unmake our lives, who we know ourselves to be, and how even our most accidental legacies connect us. 

To listen to an audio excerpt, click HERE.

Maggie O'Farrell (born 1972, Coleraine Northern Ireland) is a British author of contemporary fiction, who features in Waterstones' 25 Authors for the Future It is possible to identify several common themes in her novels - the relationship between sisters is one, another is loss and the psychological impact of those losses on the lives of her characters.  She is the author of four previous novels, including the acclaimed The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox and After You'd Gone. Maggie was born in Northern Ireland and grew up in Wales and Scotland. At the age of eight she missed a year of school due to a viral infection, an event that is echoed in The Distance Between Us. Maggie worked as a journalist, both in Hong Kong and as the Deputy Literary Editor of The Independent on Sunday. She has also taught creative writing. She is married to the novelist William Sutcliffe, whom she met at Cambridge. They live in Edinburgh.

It was the spring of 1985.  Dr. Buzz Legare went on a fishing trip in the Charleston, South Carolina harbor, taking the family dog with him. They found the dog later, floating alone in the small aluminum boat, but Buzz was never seen again.

Fast forward two decades: his daughter Hannah is thirty-five with a successful business and a dedicated husband, Jon, in San Francisco.  She’s left Charleston far behind, but not the conviction that her father is alive somewhere-not dead, just missing. Her obsession begins to play out in self-sabotage, culminating one night when, having royally screwed things up with Jon, she finds herself drunkenly climbing up her own fire escape—with disastrous results.

Kristin van Ogtrop knows she's lucky—fulfilling career, great husband, three healthy kids, and, depending on the hamster count, an impressive roster of pets. She also knows she is tired. Always.

Using stories and insights from her own life, she provides a lexicon for the half-insane working mom. Anyone who has left a meeting to race to the Halloween parade immediately understands van Ogtrop's definition of "Kill the messenger" as The action you must take in order to forget about the office for a time—that is, to remove your Blackberry/Treo/iPhone/whatever from your person and store it as far away as your neurotic self will allow." 

Filled with essays, lists, and resonant observations, JUST LET ME LIE DOWN establishes van Ogtrop as the Erma Bombeck of the new millennium.

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Kristin van Ogtrop is the editor of Real Simple magazine and has held positions at Glamour,Vogue, Travel & Leisure, and Premiere. She lives outside New York City with her family.

Laura Bennett is not a soccer mom or a PTA mom or a helicopter mom—and she's certainly not mother of the year. Another breed of mother entirely, Laura is surely more Auntie Mame than June Cleaver. As a busy mother of six, Laura is on an impossible mission: raising a brood of fast-moving, messy, wild sons in the jungles of Manhattan. So what other choice does she have than to sit back, grab a martini, and let the boys be, er, boys?

In Didn't I Feed You Yesterday?, Laura gives her irreverent take on modern motherhood and proves that a strong sense of humor and an even stronger sense of self are the mother's milk of sanity. In a series of refreshingly candid and hilarious anecdotes, she unapologetically breaks every rule in the Brady Bunch playbook: She gives her kids junk food, plays favorites, and openly admits to having "a genetic predisposition to laissez-faire parenting." Children, she observes, don't need constant supervision from neurotic, perfectionist parents. Allow kids to make mistakes and entertain themselves and they'll turn out just fine—even if you do sometimes forget to pick them up from school. 

Beyond the mayhem of a life among males, Laura celebrates the glories of womanhood with a generous helping of wit and style. She gives thanks to the fashion gods for the essentials—red lipstick, Manolo Blahniks, and Lycra shapewear—but reminds us that true style comes from an inner compass that points directly at oneself. In every aspect of life, Laura gives one simple, powerful piece of advice: "Dress like you want it or stay home." 

Laura Bennett wowed viewers of Project Runway’s Season Three with her own politically incorrect brand of humor and sophisticated designs. Now a regular contributor on the Today show, she also writes a column on The Daily Beast and is working on a television adaptation of her book for FOX. Born and raised in New Orleans, Bennett received her undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Houston and attended the graduate program in the same field at Columbia University. Laura lives in New York City with her husband and six children, fittingly in the Fashion District.