Delana H. Stewart, author of Nine-Year Pregnancy, presents My Paper Pregnancy Journal, with prompts, quotes, inspiration, and lined pages all in one place to write about your adoption journey. This journal utilizes parallels to stages of pregnancy, such as: conception, heartbeat, labor, and delivery, to guide you through each trimester of the paper pregnancy. When your journey brings you to your child, you will have a much treasured resource documenting your thoughts, feelings, and insights you glean along the way. Recommended reading offers you an opportunity to go deeper as you learn and prepare your heart and home for your coming child. This book will assist and guide any parent(s) adopting a child of any age, through a domestic or international adoption. It also makes a beautiful gift for anyone at any stage of the adoption journey. The 7 x 10 size provides 172 larger-than-average pages of inspiration and prompts with plenty of space to write.

This book is a collection of stories of struggle. It begins with a child’s adoption at age five but goes on to tell of the many struggles in school, with peers, on the streets, in rehab programs, and beyond. This could be the very real experience of any child or struggling adolescent and their family in today’s world. The second half of this book offers a resource guide that could be useful to parents as well as counselors, teachers, and outreach workers.

This is my story of my sons fight for life. I am working to raise money to fulfill TJ’s dream of having his own home. Writing this amazing story was as hard as the first year of his life. Thank you for reading and helping to support our cause. I am working on part two, and hoping to release it the end of January 2013. All proceeds will fund Adult special needs housing.

• A soulful and heart-filled story that doesn’t shy away from the often harsh, heartbreaking realities of adoption; a must for potential parents in preparation for the adoption process. — Karen H., LSW former adoption counselor and hospice counselor
• It is an absolutely amazing weave of many facets of the adoption journey—raw, honest, and deeply touching. You truly have reached the “soul” of the adoption triad. I feel so privileged to be a part of your amazing story! — Lori Teeter, BSW, Adoption Counselor
• This book offers real feelings and thoughts from an adoptee perspective, but it also offers serious feelings, challenges, questions, and the emotional ups and downs that anyone who is thinking about adopting goes through. — Sharon Bumbarger, parent and fellow adopter
About the Author: Meri Richardson is a student of life with a zest and love for children that go unmatched. Meri has spent her 25 year career assisting others in their personal and spiritual growth and has now focused her attention on what life has taught her about adoption. Meri has lived her life by the belief that you honor all relationships with honesty. Now her life, beliefs and book have merged to brought her full circle. My Soul Desire is the first in a series of books that are yet to come and a work that comes directly from the “Soul.”

From the Publisher: I was a contented, elderly man, not looking to be immersed in any emotional cauldrons ... and then, unexpectedly, Bhima came along, skewing all my calculations.

On a hot June evening, Tim Murari returns home from a game of tennis to find a thin baby lying on his bed and watching him through large, bewildered eyes. “He’ll be here a few days,” his wife, Maureen, tells him. “When he’s well, he’ll go back to the orphanage.”

Having played host to other orphaned house guests before they moved on to adoptive parents abroad, Tim assumes that once the wound from his recent surgery has healed, Bhima will do the same. But Bhima brings much more to their lives than Tim and Maureen have bargained for. With the unquestioning faith that can only be a child’s, he surrenders himself to their care, and with his quiet resilience in the face of excruciating physical pain, his mischievous pranks and unusual intelligence, he takes complete possession of their hearts.

Before long, Tim, who has never been comfortable with children, finds himself busy learning to be a father and loving every moment. Their joy is short-lived, however, for Bhima’s destiny lies elsewhere. His adoptive parents are about to arrive in India to meet him, and Tim and Maureen have to confront reality and agonizing doubts about their decision for Bhima’s future.

An intensely moving account of the eleven months that changed Tim Murari’s life, My Temporary Son offers us an intimate glimpse into the convoluted corridors of the adoption process in India and the emotional turmoil that accompanies every case of adoption. It is, equally, an inspiring tribute to the countless people, in our country and abroad, who have it in their hearts to love and nurture children who have been abandoned by those closest to them.

John Sonego and his partner, Michael, had always wanted to start a family. Little did they know they would become the fathers of not one, not two, but three precious boys. My Three Sons shares the heartwarming true story of this incredible family. Born to a drug-addicted mother and taken from her after a string of arrests, the three biological brothers come to their new home to begin a new life. With John and Michael’s unconditional love and acceptance, the five became an instant family, learning to lean on each other for the support and devotion only a family can give. Poignant and funny, heartbreaking and inspiring, My Three Sons recounts one family’s life and reaffirms the transformative power of love in children’s lives. About the Author: John Sonego is an author, adjunct professor, and consultant serving internationally respected health, education, and advocacy organizations. He writes about social, spiritual and family issues as a Midwesterner, progressive Christian, national gay advocate, adoptive parent, and active citizen of the broader community. Sonego received a B.A. from the University of Michigan and an M.A. from the University of Santa Monica. He and his family live in Hollywood, CA.

From the Back Cover: When Mary Anne Fitzgerald undertook the care of Peter Lekerian, a young Masai, she believed him to be an orphan and he believed himself to be a warrior. Their relationship, fraught with inappropriate demands, difficult love and misunderstanding, stretched across two continents, for Mary Anne was expelled from Kenya and chose to live in London. The story she tells of cross-cultural adoption is illuminating, moving and often hilarious.

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About the Author: Mary Anne Fitzgerald was the Kenyan correspondent for The Financial Times. As a freelance journalist, she has written for numerous U.K. and U.S. magazines and newspapers.

Currently living in New York, working as a consultant to UNICEF, she will be back in Africa in 1998.

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By the Same Author: Nomad: One Woman’s Journey Into the Heart of Africa (1993, Viking).

Namaste Baby is the heartwarming tale behind Susan Clare’s journey through recurrent miscarriage and the complexities of Indian surrogacy Susan had always believed that getting married and having children was not for her. That all changed when she met Chris and fell head over heels in love for the first time. After a whirlwind romance and a marriage proposal, they were overjoyed when a pregnancy test returned a positive result. During the honeymoon, Susan lost the baby. Even with the support of a specialist, and a daily cocktail of drugs, Susan miscarried twice more. Susan and Chris explored other ways to have a child. Surrogacy in India soon became the preferred route. The couple flew to a clinic in Gujarat. Five fertilized eggs were implanted into Vimla and Susan and Chris returned to London to await the outcome. The news was positive—Vimla was expecting twins. All further reports were good. Susan and Chris were therefore shocked when they returned to India seven weeks early to hear that the babies had already been born. For the following month an endless series of health scares threatened to destroy their dream. The babies battled though, and finally the day came when they could leave the hospital. What followed was a battle with bureaucracy so that they could finally return to England as a family. This book is an honest account of Susan’s heartache after miscarriage and her desperate yearning to be a mother. It explores the moral and ethical arguments surrounding surrogacy and, finally, embraces her joy of holding her children in her arms. Susan’s surrogacy story has been featured in The Daily Mail, The Sun and The Evening Standard.

From the Publisher: Love finds a way. After eight years of marriage and six years of infertility treatments, Carmelo and Patricia Tartivita sign on to adopt a child internationally. The mystery and romance of the Orient entices them to choose China. A child from China sounds romantic. The romance of adopting a child is replaced with the reality of paperwork. Adoption is forms, bureaucracies and waiting. Two years later, the day of departure arrives. They’re off to China emotionally unprepared, intellectually incapacitated and woefully short of baby supplies. They’re dizzy with excitement to meet their child. The baby adventure begins. Seen through the eyes of a new father, The Nanchang Diary is an unexpected adventure in the raw beauty of China and in the joys and fears of parenthood. Like all new parents, Carmelo and Patricia have to come to terms with a wonderful, new reality—life with a child.

From the Back Cover: Michael Nicholson’s nightly reports from Bosnia alerted Britain to the horrors of the war in former Yugoslavia. But when the ITN war correspondent found 200 orphan children living unprotected on the outskirts of Sarajevo, in the path of the approaching Serbs, he could no longer watch and do nothing. Fired by anger and despair, he broke the rule of journalistic detachment.

He forged the name of one of the children on his own passport and smuggled her back to Britain to live with his family. For nine-year-old Natasha it was the start of an exciting, sometimes bewildering new life, a thousand miles away from the suffering and destruction of her homeland. Now, a year later, Michael Nicholson tells the full story of her ordeal.

Natasha’s Story is both a moving account of the violence and futility of the Bosnian war and a tribute to the courage and resilience of one young girl who survived it all with her spirit intact.

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About the Author: Michael Nicholson is one of the world’s most decorated foreign correspondents. He has been reporting for ITN for over twenty-five years and in that time has covered more wars and conflicts than any other British newsman, from Vietnam through to Yugoslavia, fifteen in all. He has won numerous British and international awards, including the British Academy of Film and Television Arts’ “Richard Dimbleby” award for his reporting of the Falklands War, and three times the Royal Television Society’s “Journalist of the Year,” the last time in 1992 for his reports from Croatia and Bosnia. He holds the Falklands and Gulf Campaign medals and in 1991 was honoured with the OBE.

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Compiler’s Note: The book was adapted for a major motion picture called Welcome to Sarajevo in 1997 by Miramax, which included a promotional reissue of the book with the same title. Additionally, the script of the film, written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, was also published in 1997 by Faber & Faber. Finally, the book was condensed and published in Reader’s Digest’s Today’s Best Nonfiction (1994, Reader’s Digest).

This is a heartwarming adoption story of a middle-aged Anglophile, a New York City teacher of the blind who travels literally around the world to adopt a two-and-a-half-year-old boy in the far reaches of Siberia. Mother and son’s trials and tribulations parallel events in the lives of the Royal Family and its circle as the little, newly formed family forges a deep, abiding bond.

A Nest for Our Russian Doll is a heartwarming book about a couple’s struggle with infertility and the eventual adoption of their daughter. This journey leads them halfway across the world to a village north of Moscow where they meet a small two-and-a-half-year-old child who had only known the orphanage as home. It takes you through her transition to America with her new family. This is a story that would bring hope to any couple trying to realize their dream of starting a family.

From the Dust Jacket: Beneath the thick cloak of secrecy that has surrounded adoption in America for years there has always existed a complicated maze. This maze not only maintained the rules of silence, but also left prospective adopters totally at the mercy of bureaucrats and agency workers. The system wrote the rules; the adopter had to play by them or go childless.

This book, by veteran journalist Fred Powledge, explains what the maze is and, most important for prospective adoptive parents, how to get through it with a minimum of frustration and wasted time.

Today there is a new adoption, one that evolved out of the inequities of the old methods and that reflects the increasing difficulty adopters have had in finding the so-called blue ribbon baby.

Powledge seeks out the agencies and the professionals for information and also goes to the best experts in the field—parents who have successfully adopted—for advice on how to find and adopt a child. These parents have horror stories to tell, as well as encouraging tales of painless adoption, but always the purpose is to make the journey easier for the newcomer.

Comprehensive sections of the book explain the mechanics, frustrations, and joys of adopting children with special needs, adopting internationally, private or independent adoption, the working of adoption agencies, single-parent adoption, and disruption—the adoptions that don’t work out. Agency caseworkers explain what they like and don’t like to see in prospective parents.

The book devotes special attention to the adoptees themselves. These are the people about whom the whole process revolves, but who often are neglected and lost in the complex twists and turns of the maze. And it discusses adoption’s newest trend. Openness, whether it means a simple exchange of unidentifying letters or photographs between biological parents and adoptive family or a heretofore unthinkable face-to-face meeting, is going to play an increasingly important part in adoption’s future, reports Powledge.

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About the Author: Fred Powledge has written 11 books to date, including So You’re Adopted for children (Scribner’s) and, most recently Water (1982, Farrar Straus Giroux) and Fat of the Land (1984, Simon and Schuster). His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Life, The Nation, Audubon, Esquire, and New York Magazine. For many years he was a reporter for The New York Times. He lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife, Tabitha, who is also a writer.

From the Dust Jacket: Peter Likins has, by most accounts, a successful life. But his personal accomplishments are only the backdrop for the real story—the story of his family, whose trials and triumphs hold lessons for many American families in the 21st century.

This poignant but ultimately empowering memoir tells the story of Peter Likins, his wife Patricia, and the six children they adopted in the 1960s, building a family beset by challenges that ultimately strengthened all bonds. With issues such as interracial adoption, mental illness, drug addiction, unwed pregnancy, and homosexuality entwined in their lives, the Likins[es’] tale isn’t just a family memoir—it’s a story of the American experience, a memoir with a message. With circumstances of race, age, and health making all of their children virtually unadoptable by 1960s standards, Pat and Pete never strayed from the belief that loyalty and love could build a strong family.

Both Pete and Pat have served as teachers, and Pete’s long academic career—holding positions as a professor, dean, provost, and then president—illuminates more than just his personal success. Pete’s professional attainments produce a context for his family story, wherein high achievements in educational, athletic, and financial terms coexist with the joys and sorrows of this exceptional family.

A frank, open account of the difficulties his family faced, this is a brave story, told with unflinching honesty and remarkable compassion. A New American Family is a wonderful narrative of the genesis of a family and a journey to the deepest parts of a father’s heart.

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About the Author: With degrees from Stanford and MIT, Peter Likins served as an engineering professor at UCLA, a dean and then provost at Columbia University, president of Lehigh University, and then president of the University of Arizona. Retired now, he lives with his wife in Tucson.

From the Back Cover: The Carter Family is expecting, but not exactly in the traditional way. Alisa Maria Carter’s family is adopting.

As the family prepares for the arrival of nine-year-old, Lillie Rose, Alisa makes it her mission to learn all she possibly can about Lillie.

Before you know it, Alisa becomes a mini expert on Indonesia, the country where Lillie is coming from.

Come and read this story about how a family welcomes an Indonesian orphan. Experience how the power of their love warms their hearts and unites their souls.

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About the Author: Dr. Kerlynn Christophe is an educator and author, whose goal is to capture readers by promoting learning through reading. Dr. Christophe believes that whether reading takes you on an adventure or teaches you a skill; whether you are reading for pleasure or for learning; or whether you are reading a children’s book, a novel, a magazine, a newspaper, or even a cookbook, JUST READ! In her spare time, Dr. Christophe enjoys reading, writing, going to the movies, spending time with loved ones, and starting new projects. This is Dr. Christophe’s second children’s book with Alisa Maria Carter. Her first is titled, My Inspiration. Dr. Christophe has also written A Mystical Dream Ride. Additionally, Dr. Christophe is currently finalizing her first novel. Stay tuned and keep reading.

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Compiler’s Note: See, also, A New Arrival—Lillie Rose: Workbook.

New Life Within is a series of forty inspiring stories from women of all different walks of life. Every woman’s experience with motherhood is unique and life-altering. What bonds these women together is the belief that every life is precious. Whether you have welcomed motherhood with open arms or found yourself unexpectedly with child, we want to welcome you to the greatest job you will ever hold. It is our hope that these stories will serve as a source of inspiration and hope to all who read them. A portion of the book proceeds goes to support pro-life organizations serving women in crisis pregnancies and empowering them to choose life.

From the Foreword: The sequel [to First Steps in Parenting the Child Who Hurts: Tiddlers and Toddlers], Next Steps in Parenting the Child Who Hurts: Tykes and Teens is a natural follow-on. It contains all the insights and experience that the first book offers but moves the action on. Adoption UK and Caroline Archer have managed to pull together a wide range of firsthand personal experience and research to produce an excellent guide for parents looking after older children with histories of disruption and disturbance. The book succeeds on two levels. First, it paints very familiar and recognisable pictures of children who pose great challenges to parents. Adopters and foster carers find this recognition of their child very reassuring and supportive. Second, it offers a vast range of practical advice given by people who have lived and worked with children who have been hurt. Next Steps in Parenting the Child Who Hurts: Tykes and Teens promises to be every bit as valuable to parents as First Steps....

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About the Author: Caroline Archer is an adoptive parent and member of Adoption UK, a registered charity which aims to provide information, support and advice for prospective and existing adoptive parents and long-term foster carers.

From the Back and Inside Front Covers: “Do You believe in heaven?” Michael asked, turning to look at me. “My mummy is there. And when it’s my daddy’s turn the angels will come from heaven and take him to be with her.”

Eight-year-old Michael and his father Patrick have always been a close-knit family of two but now Patrick is seriously ill and looking for someone to take care of his son when he is no longer able to.

Cathy, an experienced foster carer, and her children rise to the challenge, and the two families become closer than Cathy thought possible. But is she prepared for the impact Michael’s stay might have on her family?

Children usually come into foster care as a result of abuse or severe neglect, but very occasionally, and sadly, they come as a result of one or both parents becoming terminally ill. This is the situation with little Michael—his mother has already passed away and his father, now very ill, needs someone to look after Michael if the worst happens.

When Cathy is first asked to foster Michael she is not sure if she has what it takes. But when she meets Michael and his father, she’s instantly won over by their courage, faith and positive attitude to life. She knows she has to help in any way she can.

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About the Author: Bestselling author Cathy Glass, who writes under a pseudonym, has been a foster carer for more than twenty-five years. She has three children.

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By the Same Author: Damaged: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Forgotten Child (2006); Hidden: Betrayed, Exploited and Forgotten: How One Boy Overcame the Odds (2007); Cut: The True Story of an Abandoned, Abused Little Girl Who Was Desperate to be Part of a Family (2008); I Miss Mummy: The True Story of a Frightened Young Girl Who is Desperate to Go Home (2009); Saddest Girl in the World: The True Story of a Neglected and Isolated Little Girl Who Just Wanted to Be Loved (2009); A Baby’s Cry (2012); Another Forgotten Child (2012); Please Don’t Take My Baby (2013); Will You Love Me?: The Story of My Adopted Daughter Lucy (2013); Daddy’s Little Princess (2014); and Saving Danny (2015), among many others.

After a long bout with infertility, Pete and Fran Amerson decide to take their chances with adoption. What seemed like such an easy solution quickly turned into a rigorous quest filled with endless paperwork, background checks, and interviews, as well as high expenses and heart-wrenching rejections. Despite the seemingly insurmountable odds, this young couple persevered and learned a lot about themselves, each other, and God’s perfect plan.

In her narrative, Nine-Year Pregnancy, Delana H. Stewart reveals a journey of having a dream, experiencing the death of that vision, and seeing God fulfill it in His time. If you are waiting on God to answer a prayer or feel like God will never answer your prayer—for a child, for a mate, for some other need or desire or dream—then this book will show you how one family trusted God to walk with them through the dark, scary, unknown valleys as they waited on Him. If you are anywhere in the adoption process—from thinking about it to preparing to go pick up your child to dealing with attachment disorder—then this book will offer you insights, faith, and peace for the journey. If you are trying to get pregnant or have experienced a miscarriage, then this book may give you hope and encourage you to hang on. “For the vision is yet for the appointed time; It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; For it will certainly come, it will not delay” (Habakkuk 2:3 NASB). About the Author: Delana H. Stewart graduated from Liberty University and is the administrator of the blog The Education Cafe. She enjoys writing, hiking, and running. She has never lived in one house for more than about four years, in four states and six countries. When her family is not living overseas doing Christian humanitarian development they live in Houston, TX. Visit her at: http://9yrpregnancy.com.

From the Dust Jacket: The DeBolts are the parents of an extraordinary family in Piedmont, California. In addition to their six “biological” children, there are thirteen others—Korean, Vietnamese, and American-born—who are theirs by adoption or legal guardianship. Many have such severe physical handicaps that they were considered unadoptable—until the DeBolts turned up and took them into their hearts and their home.

In this busy and remarkably normal household, miracles happen every day—

• Two teenage paraplegics take on a paper route none of their unhandicapped peers will bother with—it includes a five-story walk-up delivery.

• A little girl gains surprisingly delicate dexterity with the hooks that serve as her hands.

• A blind and paralyzed boy gets out of his wheelchair at last and climbs the nineteen steps of the family staircase, his personal “Mount Everest.”

The results of love? Yes. But in the DeBolt family, love is not only tenderness; it’s toughness too. Through discipline and hard work, these bright, appealing handicapped children learn how to live in a nonhandicapped world as competently and confidently as the healthy DeBolt children are taught to do. Pity and despair have no place here. Instead there are humor and gaiety and guts in abundance. And what the children achieve, guided by their parents and with the all-important help of their brothers and sisters, is almost incredible. Altogether, 19 Steps Up the Mountain is a joyful and moving story with a profound message for all parents.

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About the Author: Joseph P. Blank, a Roving Editor for Reader’s Digest, is a regular contributor to that magazine. His articles have appeared in such publications as Redbook, Harper’s, and McCall’s, and in more than a dozen anthologies and textbooks. Mr. Blank lives in Yorktown Heights, New York.

These are the things you wish you knew before choosing to adopt a child. Adoption is a moral commitment. How can you act in the best interest of the birthparents and the adopted child at the same time? How can you do your best to give the birthparents what they need without stretching yourself too thin? How can you learn to embrace your role as an adoptive parent? There are thousands of things you should and shouldn’t do during the adoption process. This book boils those things down to the most important ones to help you know what to do, and what mistakes to avoid. This book is part of a four-book series, which can be purchased as a complete ebook set.

Megan Silianoff, 28, is the girl next door assuming you live in downtown Chicago. Megan is a recruiter at a staffing firm and recently married to, Danny, who was technically a client. Oops. She shops at Urban Outfitters, gets together with college friends for book club, and watches a lot of Rachel on TV. (Rachel Zoe, Rachel Bilson, Rachel Green.) In fall of 2010 Megan goes into routine surgery for a cyst on her ovary and wakes up to learn she has ovarian cancer—possibly breast cancer too. Horrified by the way friends and family fell apart upon hearing the news; Megan innately realizes she has to keep it together for their benefit. She starts a blog about her ongoing prognosis but writes in a very irreverent, flippant, casual, and hilarious manner. Upon beating her first round of cancer, Megan and her husband move to Houston, Texas, where they began pursuing domestic adoption. Though they are considered a family in waiting for almost two years, the adoption itself goes full circle in five days from meeting the birth mother, to witnessing the baby being born, to naming her after Megan’s favorite rapper, Jay Z. 99 Problems but a Baby Ain’t One is a fun and entertaining memoir despite traditionally somber subjects like cancer and adoption. You’ll probably cry when you read it but only because you’re laughing so hard.

From the Back Cover: 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before... Choosing Adoption is your comprehensive guide to help you through your adoption journey. If you have ever been interested in adoption—as a prospective adoptive family, a birth parent, or even as an adoption practitioner—this book is for you! It addresses the mysteries and myths that surround and permeate the adoption process, simplifying them for the non-lawyer and keeping the reader entertained all the while. Fear not the adoption process! The Kaskys, with their 60+ years of combined experience, efficiently answer all of your questions in a straightforward no-nonsense manner.

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About the Author: Robert A. Kasky, Esq. is the co-founder and President of One World Adoption Services, Inc. Robert began his legal career in 1966 as an attorney for the SEC in Washington D.C. He is a Florida Supreme Court Certified Circuit Civil Mediator, completed his first adoption in 1973 and has since handled or worked on thousands of adoption cases.

Jeffrey A. Kasky, Esq. is the co-founder and Vice President of One World Adoption Services, Inc. Jeff is currently a Florida-certified law enforcement officer, a Florida Supreme Court Certified Mediator in Circuit, County and Family Courts, and has been practicing law for the adoption agency since it opened in 1995. Jeff has also acted in numerous cases as a volunteer guardian ad litem for abused and/or neglected children in the Broward County Dependency Court.

This is a true account of one woman’s twelve years as a foster mother to ninety seven foster children. It chronicles the experiences of an emergency foster home, the different foster children and the reasons they came into care. Some of the accounts are tragic, some are uplifting and some are funny, but all of them are heartwarming and memorable. Some children spent only one night, some remained for months and some never left.

From the Dust Jacket: When the two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene confided to friends that she and her husband planned to adopt a four-year-old boy from Bulgaria to add to their four children at home, the news threatened to place her, she writes, “among the greats: the Kennedys, the McCaughey septuplets, the von Trapp family singers, and perhaps even Mrs. Feodor Vassilyev, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, gave birth to sixty-nine children in eighteenth-century Russia.”

Greene is best known for her books on the civil rights movement and the African HIV/AIDS pandemic. She’s been praised for her “historian’s urge for accuracy,” her “sociologist’s sense of social nuance,” and her “writerly passion for the beauty of language.”

But Melissa and her husband have also pursued a more private vocation: parenthood. “We so loved raising our four children by birth, we didn’t want to stop. When the clock started to run down on the home team, we brought in ringers.”

When the number of children hit nine, Greene took a break from reporting. She trained her journalist’s eye upon events at home. Fisseha was riding a bike down the basement stairs; out on the porch, a squirrel was sitting on Jesse’s head; vulgar posters had erupted on bedroom walls; the insult niftam (the Amharic word for “snot”) had led to fistfights; and four non-native-English-speaking teenage boys were researching, on Mom’s computer, the subject of “saxing.”

“At first I thought one of our trombone players was considering a change of instrument,” writes Greene. “Then I remembered: they can’t spell.”

Using the tools of her trade, she uncovered the true subject of the “saxing” investigation, inspiring the chapter “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but Couldn’t Spell.”

A celebration of parenthood; an ingathering of children, through birth and out of loss and bereavement; a relishing of moments hilarious and enlightening—No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is a loving portrait of a unique twenty first-century family as it wobbles between disaster and joy.

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About the Author: Melissa Fay Greene is the author of Praying for Sheetrock, The Temple Bombing, Last Man Out, and There Is No Me Without You. New York University’s journalism department named Praying for Sheetrock one of the top 200 works of journalism in the twentieth century. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Good Housekeeping, and The Atlantic, among other publications. She and her husband, Don Samuel, live in Atlanta and (obviously) are the parents of three daughters and six sons.

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By the Same Author: There Is No Me Without You: One Woman’s Odyssey to Rescue Africa’s Children (2006, Bloomsbury), among others.

From the Back Cover: Where is your heart?

Nationwide, tens of thousands of children languish in the foster system, orphans with no hope, no family. Each year, thousands of orphans graduate the system into a life of struggle—poverty, addiction, incarceration ... as the Church stands idly by. God’s word speaks clearly and decisively on the matter leading to one exacting question—where exactly is your heart?

From the pages of Scripture, Bradford Smith issues a surprising call, challenging God’s people to take action, to open their eyes to the affliction, to hear the cry of the orphan and to respond.

No Higher Call will absolutely destroy any preconceived notions you may have. Shocking, in your face, gut-wrenching—this book will pierce your heart. Absolutely DO NOT read it unless you are prepared for the bitterest of truths, the sweetest of graces, and the reminder that ... there is No Higher Call.

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About the Author: Bradford Smith has been married to his best friend Ami since 2001 and they stay busy raising their nine children together. A graduate of West Point, Brad has served on active duty since 1995 including multiple combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2007, Brad surrendered to the call to preach and in 2011 he joined the staff of The Way, A Baptist Church in Clarksville, as the Missions Pastor where he continues to serve bi-vocationally.

In 2010, Brad and Ami opened the Clarksville Covenant House for teenagers who age out of the foster system and in 2013, Brad graduated from Liberty Theological Seminary with a Masters of Divinity.

Once the Army releases him from duty, he plans to plant a new Baptist church and run the Covenant House full time alongside his wife.

From the Back Cover: No Matter What tells the uplifting true story of an ordinary couple who build an extraordinary family—describing Sally and Rob Donovan’s journey from a diagnosis of infertility to their decision to adopt two children who suffered abuse in their early lives. Writing with incisive wit and honesty, Sally Donovan movingly describes the difficulties of living with infertility and the emotional process of arriving at a decision to adopt. She recounts the bewildering logistics of adoption and, after finally Sally and Rob are joyfully matched with siblings Jaymee and Harlee, how their joy is followed by shock as they discover disturbing details of their children’s past. Determined to heal their children, Sally and Rob realise they will need to go “beyond parenting” to give them the help they need. By turns heart-rending, inspiring and hilarious, Sally and Rob’s story offers a rare insight into the world of adoptive parents and just what it takes to bring love to the lives of traumatised children.

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About the Author: Sally Donovan grew up in a small town in England and studied English at Exeter University. After ten years working in commercial management, she retrained for a new career in horticulture, working for several years in historic gardens. In 2004, Sally and her husband Rob adopted two children from local authority care. Like many children adopted today, Sally and Rob’s children had suffered neglect and abuse in their early lives. Together they have journeyed through the many challenges of building a family with children so profoundly affected by their early trauma.

From the Publisher: No More Here and There is a down-to-earth account of an older child growing into a family, as reflected in the diary kept by his adoptive mother, who subsequently developed this personal journal into a manuscript which the publisher hopes will be of real value to all those interested in the adoptive placement of children with special needs.