Adult Nonfiction

By: Zoe Bossiere (Author), 2024, Hardback

A striking literary memoir of genderfluidity, class, masculinity, and the American Southwest that captures the author’s experience coming of age in a Tucson, Arizona, trailer park.

Newly arrived in the Sonoran Desert, eleven-year-old Zoë’s world is one of giant beetles, thundering javelinas, and gnarled paloverde trees. With the family’s move to Cactus Country RV Park, Zoë has been given a fresh start and a new, shorter haircut.

Although Zoë doesn’t have the words to express it, he experiences life as a trans boy—and in Cactus Country, others begin to see him as a boy, too. Here, Zoë spends hot days chasing shade and freight trains with an ever-rotating pack of sunburned desert kids, and nights fending off his own questions about the body underneath his baggy clothes.

As Zoë enters adolescence, he must reckon with the sexism, racism, substance abuse, and violence endemic to the working class Cactus Country men he’s grown close to, whose hard masculinity seems as embedded in the desert landscape as the cacti sprouting from parched earth. In response, Zoë adopts an androgynous style and new pronouns, but still cannot escape what it means to live in a gendered body, particularly when a fraught first love destabilizes their sense of self.

But beauty flowers in this desert, too. Zoë persists in searching for answers that can’t be found in Cactus Country, dreaming of a day they might leave the park behind to embrace whatever awaits beyond.

Equal parts harsh and tender, Cactus Country is an invitation for readers to consider how we find our place in a world that insists on stark binaries, and a precisely rendered journey of self-determination that will resonate with anyone who’s ever had to fight to be themself.

The story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman's most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants.

Publishers Weekly Starred Review
Library Journal Starred Review
Booklist Top Ten History Books of 2024

Most Americans know of Harriet Tubman's legendary life: escaping enslavement in 1849, she led more than 60 others out of bondage via the Underground Railroad, gave instructions on getting to freedom to scores more, and went on to live a lifetime fighting for change. Yet the many biographies, children's books, and films about Tubman omit a crucial chapter: during the Civil War, hired by the Union Army, she ventured into the heart of slave territory--Beaufort, South Carolina--to live, work, and gather intelligence for a daring raid up the Combahee River to attack the major plantations of Rice Country, the breadbasket of the Confederacy.

Edda L. Fields-Black--herself a descendent of one of the participants in the raid--shows how Tubman commanded a ring of spies, scouts, and pilots and participated in military expeditions behind Confederate lines. On June 2, 1863, Tubman and her crew piloted two regiments of Black US Army soldiers, the Second South Carolina Volunteers, and their white commanders up coastal South Carolina's Combahee River in three gunboats. In a matter of hours, they torched eight rice plantations and liberated 730 people, people whose Lowcountry Creole language and culture Tubman could not even understand. Black men who had liberated themselves from bondage on South Carolina's Sea Island cotton plantations after the Battle of Port Royal in November 1861 enlisted in the Second South Carolina Volunteers and risked their lives in the effort.

Using previous unexamined documents, including Tubman's US Civil War Pension File, bills of sale, wills, marriage settlements, and estate papers from planters' families, Fields-Black brings to life intergenerational, extended enslaved families, neighbors, praise-house members, and sweethearts forced to work in South Carolina's deadly tidal rice swamps, sold, and separated during the antebellum period. When Tubman and the gunboats arrived and blew their steam whistles, many of those people clambered aboard, sailed to freedom, and were eventually reunited with their families. The able-bodied Black men freed in the Combahee River Raid enlisted in the Second South Carolina Volunteers and fought behind Confederate lines for the freedom of others still enslaved not just in South Carolina but Georgia and Florida.

After the war, many returned to the same rice plantations from which they had escaped, purchased land, married, and buried each other. These formerly enslaved peoples on the Sea Island indigo and cotton plantations, together with those in the semi-urban port cities of Charleston, Beaufort, and Savannah, and on rice plantations in the coastal plains, created the distinctly American Gullah Geechee dialect, culture, and identity--perhaps the most significant legacy of Harriet Tubman's Combahee River Raid.

By: Emily Nagasaki Ph.D. (Author), Paperback, 2021

A revised and updated edition of Emily Nagoski’s game-changing New York Times bestseller Come As You Are, featuring new information and research on mindfulness, desire, and pleasure that will radically transform your sex life.

For much of the 20th and 21st centuries, women’s sexuality was an uncharted territory in science, studied far less frequently—and far less seriously—than its male counterpart.

That is, until Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are, which used groundbreaking science and research to prove that the most important factor in creating and sustaining a sex life filled with confidence and joy is not what the parts are or how they’re organized but how you feel about them. In the years since the book’s initial publication, countless women have learned through Nagoski’s accessible and informative guide that things like stress, mood, trust, and body image are not peripheral factors in a woman’s sexual wellbeing; they are central to it—and that even if you don’t always feel like it, you are already sexually whole by just being yourself. This revised and updated edition continues that mission with new information and advanced research, demystifying and decoding the science of sex so that everyone can create a better sex life and discover more pleasure than you ever thought possible.

By: Emily Nagoski PhD, 2024, Paperback

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Come as You Are and co-author of Burnoutcomes an illuminating exploration of how to maintain a happy sex life in a long-term relationship.

“Emily Nagoski is a national treasure—helping us all understand how to finally build true, joyful, confident sex lives.”—Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed

In Come as You Are, Emily Nagoski, PhD, revolutionized the way we think about women’s sexuality. Now, in Come Together, Nagoski takes on a fundamentally misunderstood subject: sex in long-term relationships. 

Most of us struggle at some point to maintain a sexual connection with our partner/s or spouse. And many of us are given not-very-good advice on what to do about it. In this book, Nagoski dispels the myths we’ve been taught about sex—for instance, the belief that sexual satisfaction and desire are highest at the beginning of a relationship and that they inevitably decline the longer that relationship lasts. Nagoski assures us that’s not true.

So, what is true? Come Together isn’t about how much we want sex, or how often we’re having it; it’s about whether we like the sex we’re having. Nagoski breaks down the obstacles that impede us from enjoying sex—from stress and body image to relationship difficulties and gendered beliefs about how sex “should” be—and presents the best ways to overcome them. You’ll learn:

• that “spontaneous desire” is not the kind of desire to strive for if you want to have great sex for decades
• vocabulary for talking with partners about ways to get in “the mood” and how to not take it personally when “the mood” is nowhere to be found
• how to understand your own and your partner’s “emotional floorplan,” so that you have a blueprint for how to get to a sexy state of mind

Written with scientific rigor, humor, and compassion, Nagoski shows us what great sex can look like, how to create it in our own lives, and what to do when struggles arise.

Does communicating about needs and boundaries with multiple partners seem like a labyrinth of emotional landmines?

Discover a comprehensive yet easy to understand method for communicating that will have partners compassionately making room for the needs of multiple relationships, and ethically defining and respecting each person's boundaries.

Are you tired of feeling like metas are competing for scarce resources, or that your needs come last? How can you meet the needs of all partners when some of their needs seem to conflict?

Sander T. Jones is a licensed psychotherapist with well over a decade of experience living polyamory and helping clients in non-monogamous relationships.

And now Sander is sharing this unique system for repairing relationships and nurturing harmony.

Drawing from polyvagal and attachment theories, Cultivating Connection is written with practical application in mind and exercises to help you and your partners practice new skills together.

Within Cultivating Connection, you'll discover:

* How to communicate compassionately with partners, and come together as a team to solve problems in a way that meets each person's needs.
* How personal boundaries need to adhere to specific principles to be ethical rather than coercive.
* How to overcome our individual obstacles to creating and enforcing the boundaries we need to live authentically within our relationships.
* Four simple questions to tell when we are overstepping a partner's rights and need to focus on our own growth and change.
* How to know when relationship agreements are healthy and support the needs of all the people impacted in our multiple relationships.

Cultivating Connection is your comprehensive guide for bringing harmony and joy to your multiple relationships while taking responsibility for the impact we have on others, living authentically, and continuing to grow as individuals. It's also solidly affirming of LGBTQ+, BIPOC readers, and readers engaged in relationships that are unequal by design.

If you liked Polysecure, Power Circuits, and Unf*ck Your Boundaries, you'll love Sander T. Jones' invaluable roadmap to collaborative, clear, loving communication. Buy Cultivating Connection, today!

By: Naomi Watts (Author), 2025, Hardcover

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A frank, funny and informative guide to menopause and aging by beloved actress Naomi Watts, one of the leading voices in menopause awareness—with a foreword by Mary Claire Haver, MD, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The New Menopause

At thirty-six, Naomi Watts had just completed filming King Kong and was trying to start a family when she was told that she was on the brink of menopause. It is estimated that seventy-five million women in the United States are currently dealing with menopause symptoms (dry itchy skin, raging hormones, night sweats), and yet the very word “menopause” continues to be associated with stigma and confusion. With so little information, many women feel unprepared, ashamed, and deeply alone when the time comes.

This is the book Naomi Watts wishes she had when she first started experiencing symptoms. Like sitting down over coffee and having an intimate chat with your girlfriend, Dare I Say It blends funny and poignant stories from Naomi and her friends with advice from doctors, hormone experts, and nutritionists to take the secrecy and shame out of menopause and aging. Answering questions such as: What’s hormone therapy and should I be on it? Will I ever sleep again? Will I get myself back? What happened to my libido? Do I need eighteen serums for my aging skin? Whose body is this anyway? Who am I now? Naomi Watts shares the most up-to-date research on how to manage menopause symptoms and tackle the physical and emotional challenges we encounter as we age.

Irreverent, bold, and reassuring, Dare I Say It is the companion every woman needs to embrace the best version of herself as she moves into what can be the most powerful and satisfying period of her life.

By: Brene Brown (Author), 2015, Paperback

The #1 New York Times bestseller. More than 2 million copies sold!

Look for Brené Brown’s new podcast, Dare to Lead, as well as her ongoing podcast Unlocking Us!

From thought leader Brené Brown, a transformative new vision for the way we lead, love, work, parent, and educate that teaches us the power of vulnerability.
 
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”—Theodore Roosevelt

Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable or to dare greatly. Based on twelve years of pioneering research, Brené Brown PhD, MSW, dispels the cultural myth that vulnerability is weakness and argues that it is, in truth, our most accurate measure of courage.

Brown explains how vulnerability is both the core of difficult emotions like fear, grief, and disappointment, and the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, empathy, innovation, and creativity. She writes: “When we shut ourselves off from vulnerability, we distance ourselves from the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives.”

Daring Greatly is not about winning or losing. It’s about courage. In a world where “never enough” dominates and feeling afraid has become second nature, vulnerability is subversive. Uncomfortable. It’s even a little dangerous at times. And, without question, putting ourselves out there means there’s a far greater risk of getting criticized or feeling hurt. But when we step back and examine our lives, we will find that nothing is as uncomfortable, dangerous, and hurtful as standing on the outside of our lives looking in and wondering what it would be like if we had the courage to step into the arena—whether it’s a new relationship, an important meeting, the creative process, or a difficult family conversation. Daring Greatly is a practice and a powerful new vision for letting ourselves be seen.

A much-needed guide for disabled and chronically ill people to dating - from apps to hooking up, sex, and more - from disabled essayist and author Jessica Slice and bioethicist Caroline Cupp.

Disabled people date, have casual sex, marry, and parent. Yet our romantic lives are conspicuously absent from the media and cultural conversation. Sexual education does not typically address the specific information needed by disabled students. Mainstream dating apps fail to include disability as an aspect of one’s identity alongside race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation. The few underutilized disability-focused apps are paternalistic and unappealing. Bestselling dating books do not address disability, and the few relationship books marketed to disabled people focus on the mechanics of sex rather than the complex interactions that create the conditions for it.

In Dateable, disabled authors Jessica Slice Caroline Cupp team up to address the serious gap in the dating space. Dateable is the first book on disabled dating and relationships; it’s a dating guide made especially for disabled and chronically ill people, that also calls in nondisabled readers. Jessica and Caroline take on everything from rom-com representation and dating apps to sex and breakups with a strong narrative underpinning and down-to-earth advice. The book is as much a practical tool as it is an empowering guide.

By: David Bowie (Author), 2016, Paperback

A revealing collection of interviews with the shape-shifting, genre-bending, wildly influential musician and song writer
 
David Bowie was an icon, not only his stunning musical output, but also his fascinating refusal to stay the same—the same as other trending artists, or even the same as himself.
 
In this remarkable collection, Bowie reveals the fierce intellectualism, artistry, and humor behind it all. From his very first interview—as a teenager on the BBC, before he was even a musician—to his last, Bowie takes on the most probing questions, candidly discussing his sexuality, his drug use, his sense of fashion, his method of composition, and more.
 
For fans still mourning his passing, as well as for those who know little about him, it’s a revealing, interesting, and inspiring look at one of the most influential artists of the last fifty years.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE CO-DIRECTOR OF DEAF PRESIDENT NOW!

A heartfelt and inspiring memoir and celebration of Deaf culture by Nyle DiMarco. Actor, producer, two-time reality show winner, and now co-director of the acclaimed film Deaf President Now!, DiMarco both shares his own story and shines a light on the international Deaf community.

Before becoming the actor, producer, advocate, and model that people know today, Nyle DiMarco was half of a pair of Deaf twins born to a multi-generational Deaf family in Queens, New York. At the hospital one day after he was born, Nyle “failed” his first test—a hearing test—to the joy and excitement of his parents.

In this engrossing memoir, Nyle shares stories, both heartbreaking and humorous, of what it means to navigate a world built for hearing people. From growing up in a rough-and-tumble childhood in Queens with his big and loving Italian-American family to where he is now, Nyle has always been driven to explore beyond the boundaries given him. A college math major and athlete at Gallaudet—the famed university for the Deaf in Washington, DC—Nyle was drawn as a young man to acting, and dove headfirst into the reality show competitions America’s Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars—ultimately winning both competitions.

Deaf Utopia is more than a memoir, it is a cultural anthem—a proud and defiant song of Deaf culture and a love letter to American Sign Language, Nyle’s primary language. Through his stories and those of his Deaf brothers, parents, and grandparents, Nyle opens many windows into the Deaf experience.

Deaf Utopia is intimate, suspenseful, hilarious, eye-opening, and smart—both a memoir and a celebration of what makes Deaf culture unique and beautiful.

By: J.R. Yussuf (Author), Da'Shaun L. Harrison (Foreword), 2024, Paperback

An unapologetic guide for readers who are Black, masc, and bi—unlearning biphobia, coming out, combatting erasure, and embodying your whole self

Through cutting social analysis, personal stories, and need-to-know advice, Dear Bi Men reclaims bi+ visibility in a culture of erasure—and unapologetically centers Blackness in a practical and deeply researched guide to navigating life, work, and relationships as a Black bi+ man.

Popular representation of bi and pansexual men is growing, but we’re not there yet: It’s mostly white. It collapses bisexual identity into tired, hypersexualized tropes. And it fails to interrogate the deeply entrenched stereotypes that insist: You’re confused. You just don’t know you’re gay. You’re greedy. You must be great in bed.

Author, peer counselor, and creator of #bisexualmenspeak J.R. Yussuf pushes back against these stigmas and misconceptions, exploring how white supremacy reinforces biphobia and dictates what society thinks it means to “be a man.” He contextualizes discourse around queerness and bisexuality within a larger framework that honors readers’ intersecting identities. And he offers deeply practical advice, sharing how to:

• Unlearn internalized biphobia and homophobia
• Navigate an increasingly hostile digital landscape
• Think about coming out: who to tell, why to tell them, and how to do it
• Fight back against erasure and stigma
• Navigate sex, dating, partnerships, marriage, friendship, and work
• Understand your bi+ sexuality through a political lens
• Process Black bi+ representation

Rich with personal narratives, insightful analysis, and practical advice, this book is a powerful resource for Black bi+ men to reclaim their identity, counter biphobia, and get empowered—and an offering to all readers looking to fight back against the erasure and dehumanization wrought by patriarchy.

By: Sophie Lucido Johnson (Author), 2022, Paperback

What would you say to your teenage self if you could? 

Inspired by the journals she kept growing up, Sophie Lucido Johnson began an interactive conversation between her younger self and her current self. When she began the exercise, Sophie envisioned sharing important lessons on what it means to love your body, navigate relationships, and discover what fulfills you, no matter where life takes you. But as these “exchanges” deepened, adult Sophie discovered she had much to learn about life from young Sophie as well. 

Fully illustrated with handwritten text, Dear Sophie, Love Sophie deftly explores topics like queer identity, body image, inherited trauma, belonging, privilege, heartbreak, first love, and much more in a unique and captivating way. Charming, witty, and poignant,  it reminds us that wisdom is not limited by age.

A call to action for therapists to politicize their practice through an emotional decolonial lens.

An essential work that centers colonial and historical trauma in a framework for healing, Decolonizing Therapy illuminates that all therapy is―and always has been― inherently political. To better understand the mental health oppression and institutional violence that exists today, we must become familiar with the root of disembodiment from our histories, homelands, and healing practices. Only then will readers see how colonial, historical, and intergenerational legacies have always played a role in the treatment of mental health.

This book is the emotional companion and guide to decolonization. It is an invitation for Eurocentrically trained clinicians to acknowledge privileged and oppressed parts while relearning what we thought we knew. Ignoring collective global trauma makes delivering effective therapy impossible; not knowing how to interrogate privilege (as a therapist, client, or both) makes healing elusive; and shying away from understanding how we as professionals may be participating in oppression is irresponsible.

15 black-and-white figures; 2 tables