From the Dust Jacket: Soon after his birth mother contacted him for the first time at the age of thirty-nine, adoptee Gary L. Stewart decided to search for his biological father. His quest would lead him to a horrifying truth and force him to reconsider everything he thought he knew about himself and his world.

Written with award-winning author and journalist Susan Mustafa, The Most Dangerous Animal of All tells the story of Stewart’s decade-long hunt. While combing through government records and news reports and tracking down relatives and friends, Stewart turns up a host of clues—including forensic evidence—that conclusively identify his father as the Zodiac Killer, one of the most notorious and elusive serial murderers in history.

For decades, the Zodiac Killer has captivated America’s imagination. His ability to evade capture while taunting authorities made him infamous. The vicious specificity of his crimes terrified Californians before the Manson murders and after, and shocked a culture enamored with the ideals of the dawning Age of Aquarius. To this day, his ciphers have baffled detectives and amateur sleuths, and his identity remains one of the twentieth century’s great unsolved mysteries.

The Most Dangerous Animal of All reveals the name of the Zodiac for the very first time. Mustafa and Stewart construct a chilling psychological profile of Stewart’s father: as a boy with disturbing fixations, a frustrated intellectual with pretensions to high culture, and an inappropriate suitor and then jilted lover unable to process his rage. At last, all the questions that have surrounded the case for almost fifty years are answered in this riveting narrative. The result is a singular work of true crime at its finest—a compelling, unbelievable true story told with the pacing of a page-turning novel—as well as a sensational and powerful memoir.

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About the Author: Gary L. Stewart earned his bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Louisiana State University and is vice president of Delta Tech Service of Louisiana. Ten years ago, Gary began writing a journal, chronicling every detail of his search for his father and his own identity. That journal served as the basis for The Most Dangerous Animal of All. Gary resides in Louisiana with his wife, Kristy, and son, Zach.

Susan Mustafa is an award-winning author and journalist, She is the coauthor of Dismembered, written with Sue Israel, which chronicles the story of serial killer Sean Vincent Gillis; and Blood Bath, about the Life end crimes of serial killer Derrick Todd Lee, written with Special Prosecutor Tony Clayton and Sue Israel. Susan lives if Louisiana with her husband, Scott.

From the Publisher: This is a hugely moving and affecting literary memoir of adoption, a family mystery, and the need to belong. When Jeremy Harding was a child, his mother Maureen told him he was adopted. She described his natural parents as a Scandinavian sailor and a “little Irish girl” who worked at Woolworth’s. It was only later, as Harding set out to look for traces of his birth mother, that he began to understand who his adoptive mother really was—and the benign make-believe world she’d built for herself and her little boy. Mother Country evokes a magical childhood spent in transit between Notting Hill Gate and a decrepit houseboat on the banks of the Thames. It is a detective quest, as Harding searches through the public record for a clue about his natural mother, and a rich social history of a lost London from the 1950s. Mother Country is a powerful true story, full of thrilling revelations, comic confusion, and tender memories, about a man looking for the mother he’d never known, and finding out how little he’d understood about the one he’d grown up with.

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About the Author: Jeremy Harding is a contributing editor at the London Review of Books. He lives in France, an hour from Bordeaux in a house by the river Dronne, with his wife and three sons (aged 12, 10 and 6).

This is a true story of abuse, torture, and abandonment—as bad as it can get—suffered by Richard Louis Boikoff as a child and throughout his teenage years. Richard went through hell, but grew to be a good man despite the brutality of his biological father. He thought his father was trying to kill him and free himself from the responsibility of having a son, using up the nine lives he told Richard he possessed. No matter what was done to him, Richard survived. It’s all true, because you cannot make these things up. Richard did not break. Richard’s story will be continued, as he searches for his birth mother, exploring all the leads and coming up against impenetrable road blocks. Richard is still looking and hopes one day to get a break, to find his mother, or at least, discover who she is. Richard Louis Boikoff survived torture and abuse from the man who was supposed to love and protect him. Richard is now sixty years old and happily married for thirty-two years with one son. He lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and works in the hospitality industry. Despite his father, Richard is doing just fine.

From the Back Cover: As the adopted daughter of well-meaning and loving parents, Zara H. Phillips always feels out of place; she grows up feeling insecure and alone, consumed by a void she finds impossible to fill. Her sense of isolation leads to rebellion and a downward spiral to a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle fuelled by addictions to drugs, alcohol and destructive relationships. Then come reunion and recovery, as a move to California, marriage and, above all, the birth of her three children help her to reach an understanding of her past and a final sense of compassion for both her adoptive and birth families.

This is an intensely personal and compelling memoir in which Zara describes her feelings and explores her relationships with her adoptive and birth mothers, and invites the reader to join her in her own journey to becoming a mother—“It seems that birthing my children was also a birth for my whole self.”

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About the Author: Zara Phillips is a singer/songwriter who spent much of the 1980s touring as a backing vocalist with popular singers and bands such as Bob Geldof, Matt Bianco, Nick Kamen and Perfect Day (supporting Bananarama). She is also a public speaker, leading workshops based on her experience of adoption, reunion, relationships and motherhood. Zara is married with three children and lives in New York, USA.

What happens to children who are robbed of family? Myrtle’s first three children grew up without any knowledge of their mother after Myrtle was forced to give them up when they were still toddlers. Not only were the children deprived of contact with their mother, they also grew up devoid of any knowledge of each other after being placed in separate facilities. In this sequel to Whisper My Secret, JB Rowley explores what happened to the three half-siblings she never knew. As one of the children of Myrtle’s second family, JB also offers a personal view of a mother making a new life without her first family. Although the devastating loss of her first three children remained with her, Myrtle became a caring and committed mother of seven more children living in near isolation in the Australian bush. This mother’s strength of character is matched in her first three children who survived and thrived despite being cheated of the nurturing that should have been their birthright. Their stories are sad, sometimes heartbreaking but ultimately courageous and inspiring.

The author’s inspirational memoir is a no holds barred, vivid account, depicting the victim’s experience of abuse and cruelty at the hands of a mother possessed. Nicky Fowler, adopted at birth is the family scapegoat until one day he is forced to stand up to his abuser, but he pays a heavy price. Later in life with the memory of Dolly cast aside for ever, Nicky suddenly becomes seriously ill. Misdiagnosis by RAF Doctors, cast him into a psychiatric ward to be treated for his repressed anger toward his estranged mother. Mind-changing drugs and brainwashing therapy fail to erase his determination to survive. When close to death a brain tumor is found, but whilst in hospital and semi-conscious Dolly visits him out of the blue, and Nicky confronted by his past believes he is about to die again. This moving and compelling story shows that it is possible to survive the system, and eventually find a happy life.

From the Dust Jacket: All her life, Betty Allen, who was adopted, had wondered who her birth mother was. But it was not until her adoptive parents had died, and she was already middle-aged, that she had the opportunity to be reunited with her. As a result of a chance remark, Betty learned, to her astonishment, that her birth mother, Almeda, had been living for fifty years in a state institution just a few miles away. She was a deaf mute.

At their first meeting, Betty did not want to shock her mother, who was elderly and frail, by revealing their relationship until she had assessed her mother’s condition and possible reaction. At the end of their visit, they held hands and communicated by notes and some rudimentary sign language.

During the next few meetings they became close friends, and embraces replaced their shy hand-holding. Finally, on her birthday, Betty tried to find the right words to tell her mother who she was. But she discovered that her mother had known her identity from the first visit.

The time Betty and her mother shared together was very short, for Almeda died soon after discovering the daughter that was taken away from her when she was a young woman. But they were able to communicate their joy in finding each other and in giving each other a new love. Their time together changed both their lives.

At Almeda’s funeral, in the town in which Almeda was born, Betty met her mother’s childhood friends and her family. They welcomed her warmly and treated her as kin who had come home at last. Finally, Betty Allen had found her roots and her true identity.

Mother, Can You Hear Me? is an unforgettable true story of self-discovery, tenderness, and devotion. It will touch the hearts of everyone who has found or is still looking for their birth parents.

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About the Author: Elizabeth Cooper Allen is a school psychologist in New Jersey. She lives in Paramus, and this is her first book.

From the Dust Jacket: There was something wrong—he sensed it even as a child. His parents seldom touched him, could not seem to look at him directly. There were no birthday presents, no new clothes. He felt invisible, unloved....

Nine years ago, when he was a prize-winning journalist for the Los Angeles Times, James Stingley received a letter from a Beverly Hills woman who insisted she had something important to tell him. She proved to be a handsome, expensively dressed redhead in her forties. “Jim,” she said, “I gave birth to you.” Then she added, “You have always been in my will.”

Her revelations thrust Stingley into a new life of wealth and glamour and pain—and toward the astounding secret of his birth. It involved two remarkable women. One was the cold, distant person he had always believed was his mother. a barren woman who wanted a child for her husband. The other was a beautiful, redheaded Carolina swamp girl who, unwittingly, was recruited for a desperate scheme; she survived the cruelty and rose to riches, but never forgot the baby she thought she had lost forever.

Ripped apart by the disclosure, Stingley set out to decipher the gothic drama that had shaped him—to confront and, if possible, to understand his two mothers. His immensely moving book is the story of a man’s quest for emotional survival.

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About the Author: James Stingley, as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, covered major national stories such as the prison riots at Attica and San Quentin, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He was also a contributing editor for True Magazine. He and his wife and son now live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

The intimate and moving account of the search for origins and identity by respected author, broadcaster, essayist and translator Robert Dessaix. Adopted as a baby towards the end of World War II, Robert Dessaix grew up haunted by “a shaft of silence” surrounding the question of his natural mother’s identity, and of his identity and sexuality. In this touching memoir, he recounts the story of a most unusual childhood on Sydney’s North Shore; of his fascination with Russia and his years spent studying in Cold War Moscow; and of his restless wanderings around the world. A Mother’s Disgrace was short-listed for the Association for the Study of Australian Literature Gold Medal, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, and highly commended for the FAW Christina Stead Award, The Age book of the Year and the National Book Council CUB Banjo Award. In 1999 it was translated into French and published by Editions du Reflet in France.

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About the Author: Robert Dessaix (aka Robert Jones) was born in Sydney and adopted at an early age. He was educated at North Sydney Boys High School and the Australian National University. He studied at Moscow State University during the early 1970s, and taught Russian Studies at the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales from 1972 to 1984. During this time he translated a number of Russian books into English in collaboration with Michael Ulman, including The Sheepskin Coat and An Absolutely Happy Village by Boris Vakhtin. From 1985 to 1995 he presented the ABC program Books and Writing.

His first book was his autobiography, A Mother’s Disgrace, which concerns his journey to an alternative sexuality after twelve years of marriage and his meeting with his birth mother, Yvonne. His first fictional work, the epistolary novel Night Letters, was published in 1996. His second novel was Corfu, published in 2001. Dessaix’s latest long work, Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev (2004), defies genre characterisation, interweaving a personal travelogue with a biography of Ivan Turgenev. It takes inspiration from his doctoral thesis on Turgenev and the Soviet Union, as well as Alain de Botton’s works on travel, art and philosophy.

In March 2010 it was revealed that Dessaix had been refused a visa to attend the Shanghai International Literary Festival. He had declared his HIV-positive status on his application, and although the guidelines stated that HIV status would have no prejudicial effect, it was felt that it must have been the reason for the refusal because Dessaix had had no political involvement in matters concerning China.

A Mother’s Love is a true story emphasizing God’s enduring love to an adopted young girl, Angela, who grew to know Him intimately after a troubled childhood. The book deals with the spiritual challenges of rejection, disappointment and lack of purpose, as well as God’s path to restoration. A Mother’s Love is an inspirational love story—a true story. This story could be the story of so many children who have gone through similar situations.

A Mother’s Love Continues is a true story emphasizing God’s enduring love to an adopted young girl, Angela, who grew to know Him intimately after a troubled childhood. The book deals with the spiritual challenges of rejection, disappointment, and lack of purpose, as well as God’s path to restoration. Picking up where A Mothers Love left off, A Mothers Love Continues follows Angela through more heartache and, amazingly, a strengthening of character that will inspire all.

From the Dust Jacket: Terry Copeman, a successful Leicester businessman, was 24 when he accidentally discovered he had been adopted. From that moment he determined to find his natural mother. It was a search which lasted 26 years and lead from the castle home of a Scottish Clan Chief to a hushed-up scandal and a “safe house” birth in Plymouth.

The trail led to America, involved an Irish policeman with an uncanny gift for tracing missing people with a divining rod. It crossed and re-crossed the border, following leads in Glasgow and Camden Town, Inverness and deepest Cornwall. The search moved one professional investigator to say it was the greatest single-handed investigation he had ever known.

Building up his business by day, combing telephone directories and electoral rolls by night, pounding pavements and ringing doorbells at weekends and on holidays, Terry Copeman became an expert on the intricacies of bureaucracy and the unyielding confidentiality of the adoption laws that protected his mother’s identity.

But month by month, year after year, little pieces of the jigsaw fell into place. He found a cousin. He discovered a family. And one day, at the age of 51, he discovered what his mother looked like. The photograph was to prove a vital clue in this extraordinary tale of one man’s personal odyssey to discover his own true identity.

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About the Author: Terry Copeman was twenty-four, happily married with a bright future, when he overheard a conversation in a Stamford pub that was to change the course of his life. He discovered he was adopted.

This revelation resulted in a search that was to dominate the next twenty-six years of his life, a search that concluded with an emotional reunion with his natural mother.

Mother’s Son is the story of that search. It is a touching, personal account and essential reading for anyone who has wondered what it must be like to discover they are adopted and know that they will not rest until they know the truth of their parentage.

From the Back Cover: Mother-love is vital to every human being. We need it, we thrive on it, and sometimes we resist it. It is the bond at the foundation of every attachment we will ever have. But what happens when our mother connection goes askew or completely disappears? What takes its place? Motherghost: A Journey to the Mother looks directly at the powerful complexity of mother-love through the perspective of a woman who lost her mother as a child.

After an astonishing secret about her past is revealed, Robin sets out on a journey of myth and fantasy to find the answers to her identity. As she begins to explore her life and the people in it, she discovers that our mothers live on inside us, and can empower or cripple us in our adult lives-even when they are absent. We laugh and cry with her as she searches for the facts about her early beginnings—facts that only her mother, who abandoned her as a three-year-old, would know. There is one problem: her mother has died; and yet, to heal herself, she must find a way to reconnect with her mother, even if she is only a ghost.

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About the Author: Eclipse Neilson is a visionary artist and political activist for both human and animal rights. She has led workshops on eco-feminist spirituality for over three decades and is the director of WomenCircles at Rowe Camp & Conference Center. She is the founder of the Magaian Way, a program that teaches visionary practices and offers lectures nationally. She has received numerous grants for her programs and work with children and adults within educational communities. Her programs, under the auspices of Project A.W.A.R.E. (Awareness With Art Related Education), bring hope and new perspectives to communities about the powerful beauty of our earth. She has recently designed C.O.P.E. (Circles of Peace Education), a cutting-edge program that addresses bullying in schools by inspiring peace within the hearts of our children. The future is now! She teaches youth to learn how to empower themselves so that they will grow up to become leaders and citizens of the world.

From the Dust Jacket: Carol D. O’Dell’s Mothering Mother is the frank, unflinching true story of a daughter coping with role reversal when her sick, aging, mother moves in. Carol holds back nothing, offering up hilarious moments alongside the poignant and the tragic.

More than a memoir, Mothering Mother will inspire, entertain and hearten anyone facing the challenge of caring for a failing elderly loved one. Carol bares her soul recounting her struggle to balance the ever-increasing demands of her mother with those of her own three daughters and husband. Through it all she must find the time to escape and nurture her own body and soul.

Written with wit and sensitivity, Mothering Mother will help others manage—and survive—the difficult life changes brought on by providing home-care for the elderly. Carol reveals all, offering both inspiration and strong doses of reality. If you are considering home care for an infirm or elderly dependent, Mothering Mother is a not-to-be-missed memoir and helpful “how-to.”

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About the Author: Carol D. O’Dell teaches creative writing and is published in Chicken Soup Celebrates Sisters, Atlanta Magazine, Storyteller Magazine, and numerous other prestigious publications.

Carol brought her eighty-nine year old adoptive mother, suffering from Parkinson’s and heart disease, into her home with two children and husband. She opens her entire life with brutal honesty in Mothering Mother.

Carol lives with her family in Jacksonville, Florida. She is a member of AWP, National Women’s Writers and serves on the board of the First Coast Writer’s Festival.

From the Dust Jacket: When Carol Saline and Sharon J. Wohlmuth created Sisters in 1994, they took America by storm, captivating countless readers with their poignant exploration of sisterhood. In this beautiful new volume they turn their empathy and perception to a territory perhaps even more intimate—the intense connections shared by mothers and daughters.

The profoundly personal experiences of the women portrayed in these original essays and photographs illuminate a relationship that is awe-inspiring in its power and depth. Some of these women are well known. Cindy Crawford, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Margaret Atwood, and Jamie Lee Curtis all speak of their own relationships in these pages. There is also wisdom to be found in the words of a ninety-six-year-old great grandmother with her nine daughters, a mother and daughter who have fled the war in Bosnia for an uncertain future in New York, and a woman who received a kidney transplant as a last gift from her dying mother. Whether the speakers are famous or not, their stories and portraits express universal feelings of tenderness, pride, and a love so fierce that it is sometimes painful. Mothers and Daughters is a stunning and evocative tribute to this unbreakable bond.

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About the Author: Carol Saline is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and public speaker. Among her writing and community honors are two Clarion Awards from National Women in Communications, and the National Magazine Award. Her previous books include Straight Talk, Dr. Snow, and Sisters. A senior writer at Philadelphia Magazine and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Syracuse University, she lives in Philadelphia.

Sharon J. Wohlmuth is a prizewinning photojournalist and lecturer who for twenty years has covered national and international assignments for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her photographs have won many awards, and she shares the Inquirer Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. Her work has appeared in Life, Newsweek, and People magazines. Sisters was her first book. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband Lawrence Teacher.

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Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, “Ann Guisewite and her daughter, Cathy Guisewite” (“...[Cathy] paid her mother the ultimate compliment and adopted a daughter.”) (pp. 10-13); and “Dolly Earl and Barbara Nelson, and their daughter, Lea Jayne Ferrer” (Lea Ferrer, the biological child of Barbara Nelson, was adopted by Dolly Earl and her husband) (pp. 106-108).

Susan Ito is a struggling college student, a young adult on the cusp of parental independence, when she meets her birth mother for the first time. Instead of launching into adulthood, she finds herself entangled in longing for this new kind of mother love where she sees her own self, mirrored in mysterious and tantalizing ways. At the same time that she explores the genetic threads that bind her to this stranger, she works as the “mouse girl,” caring for hundreds of experimental mice in a medical research laboratory. The relationship with her birth mother is as tormented as any partially requited love story: waiting by the phone, haunting the mailbox, and pacing the floor wondering about a promised visit that may or may not happen. Meanwhile, she tracks the intricate family trees of the hordes of squeaky rodents in her care. Memoirist, fiction writer, and solo performer Susan Ito explores themes of family, identity, DNA, and love in this unique and poignant story. Susan Ito co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption (1999, North Atlantic Books). She is a columnist and creative nonfiction editor at the online literary journal Literary Mama. Her work has appeared in Growing Up Asian American, Choice, the Bellevue Literary Review, Making More Waves, and elsewhere. She has studied with the San Francisco Solo Performance Workshop and performed her solo show, The Ice Cream Gene, around the United States. She writes and teaches at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto.

What happens when you receive a piece of information that changes your life? Mum’s the Word is not just one way to react, but also a 40,000-word memoir that takes you through how the author handled such news. Suspense builds as a story of family secrets, unknown adoption, and an amazing search to find answers, the real truth, unfolds. This journey reveals the complexities of love, relationships, and coming to terms with unexpected life events.

From the Dust Jacket: Light spilled from the windows of White House Farm and inside a dog whimpered as Essex Police approached on 7 August 1985. When they entered they found the bodies of Nevill and June Bamber, their daughter Sheila and her two young sons. It looked as if Sheila had shot them all before turning the gun on herself.

As the media destroyed Sheila’s reputation, horrified relatives became suspicious of her brother Jeremy’s behaviour. Had he committed the murders in order to inherit from his wealthy parents? Dramatic new evidence suggested he had, and he was convicted the following year. He has always protested his innocence.

Drawing on extensive new research, including correspondence with Jeremy Bamber. Carol Ann Lee describes the years of rising tension in the family that culminated in the murders, and takes us through the twists and turns of the investigation and trial. Scrupulously fair, The Murders at White House Farm is an absorbing portrait of a family, a time and a place, and a gripping account of one of Britain’s most notorious crimes.

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About the Author: Carol Ann Lee is the highly acclaimed author of ten books, including One of Your Own: The Life and Death of Myra Hindley, Witness: The Story of David Smith and A Fine Day for a Hanging: The Real Ruth Ellis Story. Witness and A Fine Day for a Hanging were both shortlisted for CWA Non-Fiction Dagger Awards.

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Compiler’s Note: See also, Blood Relations: Jeremy Bamber and the White House Farm Murders by Roger Wilkes (1994, Robinson Publishing).

My Adoption, My Search and My Right to Know is a non-fictional story about one man’s search for his natural parents. This story was aired twice on a local television news channel, KABC, in Los Angeles, CA, in 1976 and was in the Los Angeles Times, at the time that the search took place. This story, with all of its emotion and unusual twists and turns, will captivate readers as they read each chapter. It is a heartwarming story for anyone who has adopted a child, or is about to adopt. Packed with emotion, sadness, love and heartache, it will take you on one man’s journey and his determination to find his natural parents, while maintaining the love and devotion that he holds for his adoptive parents. While on this journey he will show detailed descriptions of how he went about searching with all its successes and failures. It will also outline some of the many adoption laws which vary from state to state that are in place to protect both of the families and how he was able to overcome his fears and follow his dreams. The author has had many requests from individuals who expressed their interest in reading this novel. One of the most frequently asked question has always been where they could purchase a copy of his novel. His response to all of them has been that he is currently awaiting its publication. I hope that you the reader will give this novel the recognition it deserves and the opportunity for it to be published. It is inspirational, emotional and a powerful journey which I invite you to take. — Rick L. Weiner

Living with a volatile, abusive adoptive mother and trying to fend off sexual abuse alone without any adult help, Jan grew up feeling scared, confused, insecure and unloved. The affection and support of siblings, a kind teacher, the reunification with her maternal grandmother, and her faith in God helped her gain confidence and overcome substantial odds. About the Author: J.D. Anderson was born in Los Angeles, CA, and is an American autobiographer, poet, and playwright. Her first book, My Bouquet of Kisses, was released in 2006 as a self-published book and later picked up by Third Eye Publishing. She is also the author the ten-minute short play, The Winner Is, and numerous pieces of poetry. She has served in the United States Marine Corps and is the mother of two. She graduated from Georgia State University with a B.A. in journalism and a minor in English.

A story of discovery for a fostered child in search of meaning for his life; resulting in a faith and revelation greater than the mind can imagine.

MAMA’S CONFESSIONS: Below the beautiful mountains lies an anointing of beauty; diamonds waiting to be carved out and transformed. At first glance, you might miss this incredible beauty; it could be rough and dirty. It could appear to be broken or invaluable, but if you thought that, you would be wrong.
DAUGHTER’S CONFESSIONS: To be burned alive into the ashes of who you thought you were and to rise up against all odds is only possible through Christ. I’ve seen what evil looks like and I’ve experienced the darkest parts of this world all before the age of six. Yet in spite of the shadows, God has given me a light and a chance at a new beginning. I hope my story can help others that feel trapped in the shadows of life, unable to see God’s light, shining through.

From the Dust Jacket: Aaron is his parents’ only biological child. His four internationally adopted siblings arrived with severe health problems and psychological wounds: Meredith suffered from birth defects and was never expected to walk, Jamie had cerebral palsy, Jordan had his first heart catheter when he was five, and Michelle had endured serious trauma as a child back in India.

All five shared a close bond as children. However, by the time Aaron reached early adulthood, he felt distanced from his sisters and brother. In search of a way to reconnect with his family, Aaron traveled to 23 cities across the globe to trace his siblings’ origins. He visited the orphanages where they had lived, met the people who had taken care of them, and immersed himself in the world of orphans around the globe, visiting slums in India, a village on the North Korean border, and a tribal settlement in an Ethiopian rainforest.

My Family, A Symphony is Aaron’s story. Poignant and engaging, it recounts the exploration that gave him new perspective on his family members and the exceptional circumstances that brought them together.

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About the Author: Aaron Eske works for a communications firm that specializes in non-profits. He was Communications Director for Angelina Jolie’s orphan advocacy organization, Global Action for Children. He has a master’s degree in Global Politics and Development from the London School of Economics. He lives in Washington, D.C.

The book is about my search for my birth father and the impact not knowing him had on my life before and after finding him. My Father’s Eyes was written not only for the adult adoptee and discarded child, but also for the adoptive, alternative and birth parents. My hope for the book is through the reading of these pages, the parties involved will gain insight and understanding into how this situation truly feels to their adult child. With all they have, there is still something missing—that yearning like all of us, to know from who and where we came. About the Author: Cheryle Timbrook Jennings is a real estate agent in the Phoenix, AZ, area. She is also a Certified Hypnotherapist. Her qualifications in writing this book was in the living of the subject.

I always knew I was adopted. My earliest memory is of being told that by my father and throughout my life that has made a world of difference. About the Author: David Jones was adopted when he was 10 days old and has always regarded Alan and Carol Jones as his parents. He taught American History at North Carolina Wesleyan College for twenty-seven years. He and his wife Nancy have three children and two grandchildren.

From the Dust Jacket: What do you wear to meet your father for the first time?

In 2004, Hannah Pool knew more about next season’s lipstick colors than she did about Africa: a beauty editor for The Guardian newspaper, she juggled lattes and cocktails, handbags and hangouts through her twenties just like any other beautiful, independent Londoner. Her white, English adoptive relatives were beloved to her and were all the family she needed.

Okay, if I treat it as a first date, then I’m on home turf. What image do l want to put across? ... Classic, rather than trendy, and if my G-string doesn’t pop out, I should be able to carry the whole thing off.

Contacted by relatives she didn’t know she had, she decided to visit Eritrea, the war-torn African country of her birth, and answer for herself the daunting questions every adopted child asks.

Imagine what it’s like to never have seen another woman or man from your own family. To spend your life looking for clues in the faces of strangers ... We all need to know why we were given up.

What Hannah Pool learned on her journey forms a narrative of insight, wisdom, wit, and warmth beyond all expectations.

When I stepped off the plane in Asmara, I had no idea what lay ahead, or how those events would change me, and if I’d thought about it too hard I probably wouldn’t have gotten farther than the baggage claim.

A story that will “send shivers down [your] spine,” (The Bookseller), My Fathers’ Daughter follows Hannah Pool’s brave and heartbreaking return to Africa to meet the family she lost—and the father she thought was dead.

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About the Author: Best known for her column “The New Black,” Hannah Pool is a feature writer at The Guardian newspaper and lives in London. This is her first book.

Life can be so hard. It will push us to the breaking point. What we do in that moment defines us. Every person has a story. Every Life a lesson. This is an insight into the world of Adoption when your old enough to know what is really happening.

My God Box is Margaret’s memoir about her abusive childhood. She lived in a receiving home for battered children called Juvenile Hall, a carousel of foster care families, a mental health facility and on the streets of California—all before the Holy Ghost impregnated her heart with a love of God, planting in her mind an iron clad faith in the Divine Creator. Labeled an incorrigible child, Margaret was pulled from school and her friends, and banished from the family home. But God had other plans for her. Miserable, with no one to turn to, Margaret says, I received a special gift the Holy Ghost enlightened me to the love and goodness of the Lord. It was empowering. It was a life altering event but more importantly I received a calling to help others. This book is for anyone suffering from a past trauma who wants to learn how to move on with their life. My God Box is the revelation of how Margaret shattered the victim mind-set; a self-defamatory attitude that actually made her more of a victim than the devastating circumstances of her life. With the help of God, she affirms, I was able to interrupt the harmful sequence of negativity and concentrate on utilizing my faith to rid me of the fears and insecurities that locked me in an impasse. My God Box is about the power of faith in God. It’s about opening your mind and heart to the message of God. It’s about awareness of the evils that surround us, and about having the courage to right the wrongs that bring pain and misery to other children. About the Author: Margaret Iuculano is a wife, mother, successful entrepreneur and child rights activist. She grew up in San Diego and worked for 15 years in the software consulting industry before purchasing her own software training and consulting company. Margaret served as CEO for 6 years before selling the company. She has been involved in several other entrepreneurial adventures, including designing and opening a wine bar and redeveloping a historic building. Margaret’s first book, My God Box, was two years in the making, She is working on a new book now, due out in 2008. Margaret lives in Tampa, Florida, where she is actively involved in creating awareness about the issues facing foster children in the U.S. She hopes to build a group home that provides a safe, secure environment for the aging out of foster care children, so that they can become successful adults.

On March 21, 1932, a tornado hit the central part of Alabama, causing death and destruction. This one was designated as the deadliest to have hit Alabama in history. There were two that hit that week, the second being March 27. The death toll from the first one was reported as being 214. The second one brought the total deaths to over 400. The first one that hit about 6:30 p.m. took my father, mother, and five siblings, leaving the four youngest of ten children orphaned. Witnesses who saw our house when it hit said the house was taken up in the air about fifty feet, then exploded. The family was gathered in the room used as a family gathering place, and my Father uttered the last words anyone heard him speak before he was killed: “My God!! It’s a cyclone.” At that time tornadoes were called cyclones. When the house exploded, the family was scattered and the youngest girl, Velma, was blown back in the direction from which the tornado came. She was found about two lengths of a football field, and across a creek. The only garment she had on was the cuff of a sleeve from the dress she had been wearing. My Father was found some distance from where the house had stood, and the rest closer together. Only three boys and one girl, the youngest, survived. The four of us were placed in an ambulance at one time and taken to the hospital. After leaving the Vaughn Memorial Hospital, we were supposed to have been adopted by a family in Selma, Alabama. They had only wanted the youngest boy and girl, but were told they had to take all four or none. It was agreed, but later, the oldest boy was sent away, and about a year later I was sent away as well. About the Author: I have no previous experience in writing. I was urged to write this account of the tornado that took most of my immediate family by my granddaughters. I can only write of the actual events in a first person format, and the descriptions and words used are as those spoken during that period of time. Most of the events in this work were things I actually experienced, revealed to me by relative, persons who were living in the area when the tornado occurred, newspaper clippings, and court records. I had but a 6th grade education until the year 2000. At this time I received my GED, and in 2002, entered Central Alabama College at Childersburg, Alabama. Due to several periods of illness, I had to drop out twice during the two years I was enrolled. I attended under an Alabama Law that allowed persons sixty years or older to attend a State-operated college for two years, paying only for books and lab fees. While it would not have been possible to receive a diploma, it was possible to receive a certificate. As I had to drop out prior to completing the required two years, I did not receive one. Prior to my becoming ill, my GPA had been 3.78. It might very surprise some or cause concern regarding the way foster homes were operated during the time after my parents were killed. There was no close supervision by Welfare Case workers of the treatment of the children placed in these homes, and most were used for slave labor. There was not, for the most part, any feelings of concern for the children and the treatment was brutal at times. Most kept children for the money they received from the state, as well as the free labor the children provided. The case workers did not make many inspections to know what was occurring. Most visited a foster home possibly once each year, and the time for the visit was related to the foster parents in advance, so everything appeared normal. If nothing more comes from this book than the need to better supervise the foster homes, it will all have been worth it.