From the Back Cover: Welcoming a new child into the home through adoption is a life-altering experience for the child, the parents, and everyone else in the family.

Expectations and realities often differ dramatically, and adjusting to the change can be difficult and emotionally fraught, Since the majority of children available for adoption today are in the system as the result of abuse and neglect, parents must acknowledge that these children will carry their trauma with them into their new homes. This book inspires a willingness to address these not-so-easy, didn’t-see-that-coming aspects of adoption, which is the first step toward building a strong family. The inclusion of real stories from real people adds heart and encouragement, offering hope for the future of the entire family.

A valuable resource for parents and professionals, this book provides useful strategies for tackling the challenges commonly faced by adoptive families.

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About the Author: Gregory C. Keck, Ph.D., was the founder and director of the Attachment and Bonding Center of Ohio, which specializes in the treatment of children and adolescents who have experienced developmental interruptions due to their early traumatic history. He was certified as a Diplomate and Fellow by the American Board of Medical Psychotherapy and was a Diplomate in Professional Psychotherapy. He was the co-author of Adopting the Hurt Child and Parenting the Hurt Child, and author of Parenting Adopted Adolescents.

L. (Elle) Gianforte is an award-winning writer, collaborative author, ghostwriter, and developmental editor. Her extensive experience in the adoption arena includes serving on the board of directors of ATTACh, the Association for Treatment and Training in the Attachment of Children, for two years. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Kean University in New Jersey and attended the School of Visual Arts in New York. She is the adoptive mother of two sons.

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By the Same Authors: Adopting the Hurt Child: Hope for Families With Special-Needs Kids: A Guide for Parents and Professionals (with Regina Kupecky; 1995, Piñon Press); Parenting the Hurt Child: Helping Adoptive Families Heal and Grow (with Regina Kupecky; 2002, NavPress); and Parenting Adopted Adolescents: Understanding and Appreciating Their Journeys (2009, NavPress), among others.

From the Publisher: This book will show you new options in adopting a child, tell you how to work with adoption agencies and agents, describe confidential, open, and semi-open adoptions, discuss adopting different types of children, and more. It also explains the rights of birthparents, the legal and ethical aspects of adoption, and the safeguards for a successful adoption.

The author gives advice on making the decision to adopt a child, new options for prospective parents, and much more. Practical details are explained, including getting started on your adoption plan, preparing for your child’s arrival, bonding between parent and child, and adjusting to the differences that adoption brings.

Here’s help for parents who must cope with the details of raising children in the often-demanding contemporary environment. Bringing up children today is different—and in many ways more difficult—than it was in past generations. Barron’s Parenting Keys speak to today’s parents, with answers to today’s problems.

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About the Author: Kathy Lancaster is a freelance journalist, educator, and adoptive parent.

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By the Same Author: Keys to Parenting an Adopted Child (1996), among others.

From the Publisher: Practical, expert advice is offered on the rewards and challenges connected with raising an adopted child. The author presents techniques for raising happy, well-adjusted children; blending adopted children into the family; answering children’s questions about adoption; and much more.

Here’s help for parents who must cope with the details of raising children in the often-demanding contemporary environment. Bringing up children today is different—and in many ways more difficult—than it was in past generations. Barron’s Parenting Keys speak to today’s parents, with answers to today’s problems.

If you have just adopted a child, you need special advice—the kind that will help you raise a happy child. In an encouraging tone, this book offers that advice as it guides parents through the practical methods of raising an adopted child. The author discusses special considerations such as transracial adoptions, adopting older children, and adopting children with physical and emotional disadvantages. A special question-and-answer section, a glossary and informative appendices complete this valuable reference.

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About the Author: Kathy Lancaster is a freelance journalist, educator, and adoptive parent.

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By the Same Author: Keys to Adopting a Child (1994), among others.

From the Dust Jacket: From Dan Savage, the writer whose sex-advice column, “Savage Love,” enrages and excites four million people every week, comes the compelling and unexpected story of his journey into parenthood.

Dan and his boyfriend, Terry, want a baby. So they do what millions of other couples do: They decide to adopt.

Their odyssey begins at a two-day seminar in Portland, with six other couples—all straight—who can’t conceive, either. After rejecting the idea of making a “bio-kid” with a lesbian couple, a lesbian single, and even their straight next-door neighbor, Dan and Terry decide on an “open adoption,” in which the birth mother selects the adoptive parents for her child. Their gay friends think they’re sellouts. The far right think they’re sinners. And the odds of a mother selecting a gay couple for her baby (most seem to be looking for “Christian homes”) must be a million to one.

When Dan and Terry are selected by the birth mother, they announce, “We’re pregnant!” But there are issues: The mother —a street kid—drank and used drugs during the pregnancy, so there’s the risk of fetal alcohol syndrome, and despite the doctor’s order to get bed rest, she’s still living on the streets. As Dan and Terry tag along on her prenatal visits and the due date rapidly approaches, the fears common to expectant parents mount: What if the baby isn’t healthy? What if we aren’t parent material? And what if the birth mother changes her mind and decides to keep the baby? Meanwhile, giddy, prospective grandmothers are violating Dan and Terry’s “no gifts before birth” decree by buying things they just couldn’t resist, like two I Love Daddy bibs from Dan’s mother.

In The Kid, Dan Savage shares his views on what it means to be gay and raising a child in America today. In the process, he takes his usual scathingly funny, on-target potshots at everything from growing up gay to committing to a younger man, from the gay left to the religious right, homophobia ... love ... getting fat ... getting married ... getting old ... and the very human desire to have a family.

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About the Author: Dan Savage’s nationally syndicated column, “Savage Love,” runs in twenty-eight newspapers in the United States and Canada. He is also the author of “Dear Dan,” an on-line advice column for ABCNEWS.com and a regular contributor to This American Life on public radio. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Travel & Leisure, Out Magazine, and Poz magazine. Savage Love, a collection of his advice columns, is available in a Plume edition. He lives in Seattle.

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By the Same Author: The Commitment (2005), among others.

From the Back Cover: When John and Kerri Evans discover their son, Kameron, has a biological sister who is an orphan in Cambodia, they seek and receive permission from the US Government to adopt her and bring her home to the USA.

For the next six years, the Evans family is held hostage in Cambodia by the US Embassy, USCIS, and US Departments of State and Homeland Security. The Embassy staff instructs them to pay bribes and commit multiple crimes. They refuse to do so and are rewarded with harassment from the IRS.

Eventually, the family is set free and allowed to bring their children home. But, their marriage is destroyed and they are ruined financially.

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About the Author: John T. Evans was born in North Little Rock Arkansas. He has worked in the financial services industry for many years and published papers on Finance, Poverty, and International Aid for United Nations Conferences. John has travelled the world and lived in four countries for extended periods of time. John became an author reluctantly; his family had a story that had to be told and so he wrote Kidnapped: A True Story of an American Family Held Hostage by the US Embassy. John is currently working on an exposé of the banking industry which will be titled, The Bank Robbers.

Kim was three years old in 1950, when the North Koreans invaded her native village. After an exploding bomb took her sight and facing starvation, her desperate father threw Kim and her sister into a river. Only her mother’s screams forced him to attempt a rescue. He saved Kim but her sister drowned. After being placed in a Missionary Orphanage for the blind, Kim was noticed by a missionary who recommended her to an American Adoption Agency. Kim was adopted by the Wickes family of Indiana.

From the Dust Jacket: I was all at once aware that something special was about to happen. It came in the form of a chill, a slight body tremor, a kind of film that passed swiftly across my eyes. Then it was gone—and there was only the girl standing alone near the wall with chipped plaster. About two years old, unsmiling, with short black hair, she stared at me, as unblinking as a statue, with the widest eyes I have ever seen. Her eyes fixed on mine, she began tottering slowly toward me.

Right up to me she came until her face was only inches from my leg. There, her hands by her sides, her head tilted way back, she peered up at my great height. Unsmiling still, she did not speak, did not change her grave expression, did not reach out to touch, only studied my face with those incredibly wide eyes.

In this deeply moving book, Frank Chinnock tells of his search for a little girl in a land of lost children—and of the discovery of “Kim,” which in Vietnamese means “gold.” He tells of the mountain of red tape he had to wade through during nineteen frustrating months following his discovery of Kim before he could bring her home with him to his waiting wife and three sons in Katonah, New York.

Then the ordeal began. Could a totally alien little girl adjust—not just smoothly, but ever—to a totally different environment? After weeks of Kim’s tantrums, sleeplessness, terror, and symptoms from an alarming array of medical and dental disorders, the Chinnock family began to despair. It was months after he brought her home, and nearly two years since the day he first spotted her in the Vietnamese orphanage, before Kim falteringly put her arms around Frank Chinnock’s neck and hugged him.

With at times painful and often amusing clarity, Frank Chinnock describes Kim’s first year in her new American home. He tells of her hesitant steps forward (and slipping backward) as she slowly learned to love her new parents and brothers, began haltingly to speak English and to succeed at school, and truly became a part of the Chinnock household.

In Kim, Frank Chinnock has written the rarest of books: a Vietnamese love story. Kim is the story of one child plucked from the debris of war—of one family’s simple but meaningful contribution amidst the agony of Vietnam.

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About the Author: Frank W. Chinnock was born in New York in 1927 and did his undergraduate and graduate work in Princeton, Boston, Cincinnati, and Bloomington, Indiana. After a stint of free-lance writing, he put in a three-year hitch in the army (intelligence work) in Germany. After the service, he returned to writing until he joined the staff of the Reader’s Digest, where he was an editor for twelve years.

Mr. Chinnock is the author of Nagasaki: The Forgotten Bomb which was published in 1969.

From the Back Cover: For more than sixty years, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans personified the romantic, mythic West that America cherished well into the modern age. Blazing a trail through every branch of the entertainment industry—radio, film, recordings, television, and even comic books—the couple capitalized on their attractive personas and appealed to the nation’s belief in family values, independent spirit, and community.

King of the Cowboys, Queen of the West presents these two celebrities in the most comprehensive and inclusive account to date. Part narrative, part reference, this impeccably researched, highly accessible survey spans the entire scope of Rogers’s and Evans’s careers, illuminating and celebrating their place in twentieth-century American popular culture. Following the pair through each stage of their professional and personal trajectories, author Raymond E. White explores the unique alchemy of the singing cowboy and his free-spirited partner. In a dual biography, he shows how Rogers and Evans carefully husbanded their public image and—of particular note—incorporated their Christian faith into their performances. And in a series of exhaustive appendixes, he documents their contributions to each medium they worked in. Testifying to both the breadth and the longevity of their careers, the book includes radio logs, discographies, filmographies, and comicographies that will delight historians and collectors alike. With its engaging tone and meticulous research, King of the Cowboys, Queen of the West is bound to become the definitive source on the lives of these two great American icons.

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About the Author: Raymond E. White is professor emeritus of history at Ball State University.

When Tandela travels to Uganda after university, she has no idea what kind of adventure lies ahead. While spending long days at an orphanage, her heart breaks for the sickest baby of them all. In what she describes as a “silent stirring in my soul,” Tandela experiences the unmistakable call of God to pursue adoption of this baby boy—one who has been abandoned at birth and given only one month to live. She is told that her hope to adopt baby Mark will most likely be futile, if he even survives. Spurred on by a deep parental love that can only be described as God-given, Tandela nonetheless courageously embarks on what becomes a nerve-racking quest that will serve to test her faith like never before. In the beautiful country of Uganda, whose northern region is being ravaged by war, Tandela faces one obstacle after another on this journey fraught with loneliness, doubts, and fears, but pierced with moments of pure joy.

What would cause an eighteen-year-old senior class president and homecoming queen from Nashville, Tennessee, to disappoint her parents by foregoing college, break her little brother’s heart, lose all but a handful of her friends (because the rest of them think she has gone off the deep end), and break up with the love of her life, all so she could move to Uganda, where she knew only one person but didn’t know any of the language? A passion to make a difference. Katie Davis left over Christmas break her senior year for a short mission trip to Uganda and her life was turned completely inside out. She found herself so moved by the people and children of Uganda that she knew her calling was to return and care for them. She has given up a relatively comfortable life—at a young age—to care for the less fortunate of this world. She was so moved by the need she witnessed, she’s centered her life around meeting that need. Katie, a charismatic and articulate young woman, is in the process of adopting thirteen children in Uganda, and she completely trusts God for daily provision for her and her family.

From the Dust Jacket: This extraordinary collection of personal correspondence displays all the hallmarks of Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction. Written over a sixty-year period, these letters, the vast majority of them never before published, are funny, moving, and full of the same uncanny wisdom that has endeared this author to readers worldwide.

Included in this comprehensive volume: the letter a twenty-two-year-old Vonnegut wrote home immediately upon being freed from a German POW camp, recounting the ghastly firebombing of Dresden that would be the subject of his masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five; wry dispatches from Vonnegut’s years as a struggling writer slowly finding an audience and then dealing with sudden international fame in middle age; righteously angry letters of protest to local school boards that tried to ban his work; intimate remembrances penned to high school classmates, fellow veterans, friends, and family; and letters of commiseration and encouragement to such contemporaries as Gail Godwin, Günter Grass, and Bernard Malamud.

Vonnegut’s unmediated observations on science, art, and commerce prove to be just as inventive as any found in his novels—from a crackpot scheme for manufacturing “atomic” bow ties to a tongue-in-cheek proposal that publishers be allowed to trade authors like baseball players. (“Knopf, for example, might give John Updike’s contract to Simon and Schuster, and receive Joan Didion’s contract in return.”) Taken together, these letters add considerable depth to our understanding of this one-of-a-kind literary icon, in both his public and private lives. Each letter brims with the mordant humor and open-hearted humanism upon which he built his legend. And virtually every page contains a quotable nugget that will make its way into the permanent Vonnegut lexicon.

ON A JOB HE HAD AS A YOUNG MAN:
“Hell is running an elevator throughout eternity in a building with only six floors.”

TO A RELATIVE WHO CALLS HIM A “GREAT LITERARY FIGURE”:
“I am an American fad—of a slightly higher order than the hula hoop.”

ON BORIS, HIS CHESS-PLAYING ROBOT:
“Really—he is one smart, mean son of a bitch.”

TO NORMAN MAILER:
“I am cuter than you are.”

Sometimes biting and ironical, sometimes achingly sweet, and always alive with the unique point of view that made him the true cultural heir to Mark Twain, these letters comprise the autobiography Kurt Vonnegut never wrote.

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About the Author: Dan Wakefield first befriended Kurt Vonnegut in 1963. Like Vonnegut, he was born and raised in Indianapolis. He is a novelist and screenwriter whose books include the bestselling Going All the Way and the memoirs New York in the Fifties and Returning: A Spiritual Journey.

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Compiler’s Note: Of Vonnegut’s four adopted children, three were his nephews: James, Steven, and Kurt Adams, of whom Vonnegut and his first wife, Jane, took custody (but never formally adopted) when both their mother, Alice (Vonnegut’s older sister), and father, James Carmalt Adams, died within a 48-hour period in September 1958 (James in a tragic commuter rail accident in New Jersey and Alice from cancer); the fourth, Lily, was adopted as an infant in 1982 by Vonnegut and his second wife, Jill Krementz, a photographer and author of the book How It Feels to Be Adopted (1982, Knopf). (The fourth and youngest of the Adamses’ sons, Peter Nice, went to live with a first cousin of their father’s in Birmingham, Alabama, as an infant.) Lily is a singer, actress, and the producer of the YouTube series “The Most Popular Girls in School.”

See also, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life (2011, Henry Holt).

From the Publisher: Adoptive parents often experience the double trial of emotional responses to infertility and to the process of adoption itself, called “excruciating labor with no end in sight,” by one adoptive mother. Would-be adoptive parents cycle through grief, anger, fear, anxiety, frustration, and guilt—and back again. All of these emotions cloud decision-making, at exactly the time that adoptive parents are making life-altering, irrevocable decisions: whether to adopt at all, to adopt an older child or an infant, or to parent a child with developmental delays, as well as other pressing questions. New empirical research by Kathleen Whitten, Ph.D., a developmental psychologist and adoptive mother, and other experts in the field contradicts many of the outdated myths presented to parents and written about in widely used adoption guides. Whitten separates fact from fiction and leads parents by the hand through the many emotional impacts the process involves. Written in a reassuring, conversational tone, the author tells parents when they should listen to their heart—and when practical considerations are too important to ignore. Each chapter features workbook section with constructive exercises and stimulating questions.

Adoptive parents do not need yet another book promising a “fast track” to a child or explaining how to collect documents. Instead, they need Labor of the Heart to help them through the difficult emotions and decisions about adoption.

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About the Author: Kathleen L. Whitten, Ph.D., is a developmental psychologist and widely published journalist. She works in psychiatric medicine at the University of Virginia where her clients are primarily foster and adoptive families. She and her husband were one of the first two American couples to adopt a child from Vinh Long, Vietnam, in 1997. She lives in Virginia.

From the Back Cover: Adoption is not for the faint of heart. Labours of Love chronicles the journeys of Canadians who have overcome heartbreaking obstacles to become parents. Their stories are as diverse as our country, and span the borders of our world. While each account is unique in its own way, the stories are connected by the overwhelming commonality of the power of human connection.

Labours of Love unearths an issue that is still stigmatized in some areas of the country. Through conversations with adoptive parents, adoptees, and birthparents who reveal their inmost feelings, the reader will gain a new understanding of the complexities of adoption. What shines through this societal veil, however, is the undeniable element of celebration—of the children we love—whose origin, while important, has little to do with their precious place in our hearts.

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About the Author: Deborah Brennan is among women whose career interfered with having a family. The challenges she faced as a design director for a major retailer did little to prepare her for the rigours of her daughter’s adoption. She lives in Oakville, Ontario.

From the Back Cover: Whether you’re in the process of adopting a child from China, have brought your child home, work in the field of adoption, or have an adoption connection, you’ll find the support, laughter, tears, hope, and joy from others who have already walked a mile in your shoes.

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About the Author: With nearly two decades in the field of adoption, Kat LaMons brings an extensive knowledge of adoption processes and post-adoption issues. In addition to her direct work with adoptive families, Kat shepherded a cultural school for adoptees for many years and created an adoption-focused distance-learning curriculum used throughout the United States and seven foreign countries. She’s also a former columnist for Adoption Today magazine, and has written on adoption and adoption-related subjects throughout her career.

Trish Diggins brings a wealth of communications experience in the corporate, television, web, film, and non-profit worlds creating award-winning design, branding, and writing projects for national and international companies. In addition to being an adoptive mother, Trish is an adopted person herself. She is currently on the board of her local Chinese adoption support group and has been published in Adoption Today magazine.

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By the Same Author: The New Crunch-Time Guide to Parenting Language for Chinese Adoption (2014).

From the Inside Front Cover: At fourteen, Emma is just a child—and one who’s never been properly mothered. She has been in and out of foster care several times already. When she discovered she was pregnant, and refused to have an abortion, her mother threw her out.

Casey and her family instantly form a strong bond with Emma’s baby, Roman, but dealing with Emma’s behaviour and constant lack of responsibility is a far tougher challenge. And before long, as Casey becomes more and more involved with Emma, she finds herself doing something she never thought she would - covering u|p for Emma’s shortcomings.

But the more Casey gets to know Emma the more she’s convinced that with the right help and guidance she is capable of breaking the cycle of abandonment and becoming a good mother to her gorgeous little boy. Which makes it even harder when Casey and her family have to make a stark choice: hold on to Emma or look after Roman; help a teenage girl desperate to turn her life around, or offer an innocent baby a safe home and a much-needed good start in life.

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About the Author: Casey Watson who writes under a pseudonym, is a specialist foster carer. She and her husband, Mike, look after children who are particularly troubled or damaged by their past. While in their care, they guide them through a specially designed behavioural programme, enabling them to be moved on, either back to their parents or into mainstream foster care.

Before becoming a foster carer, Casey was a behaviour manager for her local comprehensive school. It was through working with these “difficult” children—removed from mainstream classes for various reasons—that the idea for her future career was born.

Casey is married with two children and three grandchildren. This is her seventh book.

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By the Same Author: The Boy No One Loved (2011); Crying for Help (2012); Little Prisoners (2012); Too Hurt to Stay (2012); Mummy’s Little Helper (2013); Breaking the Silence (2013); The Girl Without a Voice (2014); Nowhere to Go (2014); A Stolen Childhood (2015); Skin Deep (2015); Mummy’s Little Soldier (2016); Runaway Girl (2016); Groomed (2017); and The Silent Witness (2017), among others.

From the Dust Jacket: The Last Run is the mesmerizing story of Kay Wolff, an American woman who went to Colombia seeking adventure and became a player in the dangerous, high-stakes cocaine trade. It was the early 1970s, and Kay’s most ambitious plans were to see the country and make a little money smuggling cocaine back to the States. Before long, however, Kay found herself the exotic American girl-friend of the son of one of Colombia’s most powerful cocaine padrones.

Scrappy, self-reliant, of Okie stock, Kay was an expert seamstress and artist, skills that soon landed her a job as a master “concealer” for the Alvarez family’s cocaine-export business. She was responsible for concealing the drugs in ever more original places—from the seams of expensive French luggage to the cushions of exquisitely upholstered chairs. Through her we gain an exceedingly rare view inside a mafia family—and witness meetings where everything from business to betrayal to murder is on the agenda.

Increasingly strung out on cocaine herself, increasingly frightened by la violencia, which is raging out of control throughout Colombia, Kay vows to escape. And, to affirm her dedication to a “new life,” she impulsively adopts two street children, gamines, as her daughters, they become her last contraband cargo on her “last run” back to the united States, to freedom.

This thrilling story of adventure and redemption reads like fast-paced fiction, but it is astonishing fact. Combining an incredibly vivid portrait of Colombia with details of how the drug business really works, The Last Run is a never-before-revealed account of an absolutely riveting adventure. You’ll never forget Kay Wolff or her dramatic life inside one of the most dangerous businesses on earth.

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About the Author: Kay Wolff is the pseudonym of a reformed drug runner; she lives with her two adopted Colombian daughters in California.

Sybil Taylor is a writer who lives in New York City.

From the Publisher: This is the real life story of an ordinary woman raised in extraordinary times. Born in WWI, Dorothea v.S. Lawson witnessed it all—the rise and fall of Hitler and his Nazi Party, WWII and the Berlin Wall. While she had a relatively care-free youth, life went downhill quickly.

Her first-hand account includes the air raids and intense bombing of Berlin, the food rationing and ever-present hunger with 8-hour long food hunting trips to farmers in the countryside. Her description of the Soviet invasion in Berlin will be an eye-opener for many. And then came the American occupation where she worked as a cook at her confiscated in-law’s house, which was turned into an officers’ mess. Except she didn’t know how to cook, and what on earth was an egg sunny side up?

Her life is full of historical facts, but brings out the ordinary citizen perspective not found in history books, including many jokes about the Third Reich that were once punishable by imprisonment or death. And along the way she gives the reader a dose of German culture. Her stories demonstrate that war unites as much as it divides and that history is embedded in the lives of individuals, not in textbooks. And throughout, the human spirit prevails—since laughter wasn’t rationed.

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About the Author: It took over 10 years for Dorothea v.S. Lawson to write her memoir, which was originally intended for family only, but the project grew at the request of friends and German-course students she taught at the university level, the military, and seniors. Her book has been used by several universities in their World History/Modern Germany courses. As she said, “Many people only know about German history what they read in history books or newspaper accounts, but that doesn’t give you a true picture of what life was really like for those of us who were actually there.” She especially thought the American public might enjoy her stories, and that’s why she wrote the book in English, not her native tongue German.

Born during WWI in Gleiwitz, Germany (now Poland), she moved to Berlin in 1935. That’s where she survived WWII and the intense bombing of Berlin, the Soviet invasion, American occupation and never-ending hunger. After this hardship, she never wasted any food!

When the Berlin Wall went up, she immigrated to the U.S. with her two daughters in 1962.

Dorothea has a master’s degree in German from Georgetown University in Washington, DC. While living in the DC area, she was also a speaker at The Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress, where her speech was recorded for their Veterans History Project.

After living in the Washington, DC, area for over 40 years, she moved to Medford, OR, in 2003 to be near family. It is there that she passed away in February 2014, a month shy of her 98th birthday.

Many Germans did not want to talk about this era, and her generation is dying out. But she left behind a legacy, her memoir.

From the Dust Jacket: Whether you’re a prospective parent still anticipating your baby’s arrival or you’re already parenting a baby under a year old, if you’re adopting, Launching a Baby’s Adoption is for you. Among all those pregnancy and infant care guides for expectant moms and dads filling bookstore shelves to other looks at parenting not by birth, but by adoption. Here is your guide to getting ready... to the psychological pregnancy that will help you prepare a place in your heart, in your home, in your relationship, your family, in your life for a child who will be all yours.

Coping with the insensitivity of others... that’s here. Deciding whether to breast or bottle feed... it’s here. Figuring out what’s different about adopting as opposed to giving birth and identifying when something is “an adoption thing” rather than another normal parenting issue... you’ll find it here. Practical strategies for promoting attachment when baby comes not from the hospital, but by way of an orphanage or foster home—yes, that’s here too. Getting what you need from professionals... adjusting your relationship with your parenting partner... coping with a change of heart... All here in Launching a Baby’s Adoption. Oh, and if you are a prospective birthparent considering adoption or a professional working with adoption-touched families—a counselor, social worker, medical practitioner, attorney—please read Launching a Baby’s Adoption.

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About the Author: Patricia Irwin Johnston, M.S., is an internationally known infertility and adoption educator and the author of several books, including Understanding Infertility: Insights for Family and Friends, Taking Charge of Infertility, Adopting after Infertility, and Perspectives on a Grafted Tree: Thoughts or Those Touched by Adoption. Pat’s work has received several awards. She has traveled extensively throughout the United States and Canada to provide workshops for both consumers and professionals.

After personal experiences with infertility, the Johnston family has extended itself in several directions through the adoption of two generations of children, so that five generations of Johnstons have so far been directly touched by adoption. Pat and her husband Dave are the parents of three: a young adult, a teenager, and a middle school student.

A founding member of the National Advisory Committee and continuing National Board member of Adoptive Families of America, Pat’s voluntarism includes work at the local, state, national and international level. At the end of Pat’s fourteen years of volunteer work with RESOLVE (beginning as a chapter founder and ending as chair of the National Board of Directors) RESOLVE named its annual volunteer-of-the-year award in her honor.

The Johnstons are based in Indianapolis.

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By the Same Author: Perspectives on a Grafted Tree: Thoughts for Those Touched by Adoption (Ed.; 1983); An Adoptor’s Advocate (1984); Adopting After Infertility (1992); Taking Charge of Infertility (1994); Understanding Infertility: Insights For Family and Friends (1996); Adoption is a Family Affair!: What Relatives and Friends Must Know (2001); and Adopting: Sound Choices, Strong Families (2008), among others.

From the Dust Jacket: Spanning some eight decades, here is the remarkable and remarkably candid autobiography of an extraordinary woman, born with—and very much a part of—the twentieth century.

Laura Z. (for Zametkin) Hobson ... from her childhood as the daughter of the first editor of the Jewish Daily Forward to a stint of reporting on the New York Post; from marriage to and divorce from book publisher Thayer Hobson to director of promotion of Time and a position as perhaps the leading magazine promotion writer in the country; from the extraordinary adoption of one son and the birth of another—both as a single parent—to sudden international fame following publication of the classic novel about antisemitism—Gentleman’s Agreement; and along the way very personal memories of such as Henry R. Luce, Clare Boothe Luce, Sinclair Lewis, Dorothy Thompson, PM newspaper founder Ralph Ingersoll, Simon & Schuster co-founder Richard Simon and many more ... here indeed is a life.

Laura Z evokes the cultural and political drama of an America in turmoil and transition—and reveals a woman whose life placed her sometimes at odds with, and surely generations ahead of, her time.

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About the Author: Laura Z. Hobson’s novels include The Trespassers, Gentleman’s Agreement, The Other Father, The Celebrity, First Papers, The Tenth Month, Consenting Adult, Over and Above and Untold Millions. She has also written two books for children. She makes her home in New York City.

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By the Same Author: Laura Z: A Life: Years of Fulfillment (1986, Donald I. Fine), among others.

From the Dust Jacket: Laura Z. Hobson, author of the landmark Gentleman’s Agreement, never did anything by half. Here, now, is a relentlessly honest chronicle of this fascinating and talented woman, born with the century, deeply involved with the social, cultural and political issues of her day and, more often than not, far ahead of her time.

Years of Fulfillment captures us in the whirlwind of her tremendous success with Gentleman’s Agreement—the book and the academy-award winning movie. With both modesty and a still-fresh sense of joy, she evokes the unique aura around a world-wide sensation. Here follow lively anecdotes of the famous and the infamous, including among others Bennett Cerf, Oscar Hammerstein, James Thurber, Clare Boothe Luce and Hubert Humphrey.

Here, too, are the personal crises, the irony and the humor that parallel professional triumph, her deeply-felt political convictions including anti-communist liberalism and support of Israel. And the pride and challenge of being a single mother of an adopted son and a natural son who was a homosexual.

Laura Z. Hobson was a woman fueled by a tireless energy and uncompromising intelligence. A woman of and beyond her time, she was a true original, as is her no-holds-barred portrait of herself and her times.

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About the Author: Laura Z. Hobson’s novels include Untold Millions, The Tenth Month, Consenting Adult and Gentleman’s Agreement, among others. She died February 28, 1986 at the age of eighty-five.

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By the Same Author: Laura Z: A Life (1983, Arbor House), among others.

Jill Norton’s life was not how she envisioned it. Instead of a calm, peaceful life of control, God called Jill and her husband to open their hearts and home to ten foster children. Over the course of six years, Tom and Jill gave eight of those children a forever family through the miracle of adoption. In A Leap of Faith, Jill reveals a true look at the difficulties and rewards in allowing God to write the story of her life. By sharing her heart warming and sometimes funny, personal stories of each child, she encourages potential and current, foster and adoptive parents in their own journeys with special needs children. In this book, Jill looks at how the system works; how to manage birth family connections, and why those connections are vital; critical tips to make foster and adoptive parents’ journeys easier; and how she and her husband discipline. Jill also offers an intimate look at what this call on their life has cost them, and she answers the question, “Would they do it all over again?” No matter where you find yourself in your own life story, you will appreciate the way Jill shares the ups, downs, and crazy life of a family that has chosen to step out of their comfort zone, and make a difference in the lives of eight precious children.

The desire to create a family can easily stretch across an ocean. When a child from another country, another culture, joins a family in the United States, it is often the culmination of years of dogged determination. It is the signing of a paper, the blink of an eye. It is the end of the red tape roller coaster and the beginning of another. Everyone must grow, learn and love in ways they never thought possible. This non-fiction work describes that awe-inspiring first year everyone in these families was learning to love a stranger.

From the Back Cover: The heartrending true story of a child destined to end upin care, and the carer determined to forge a bond with her, against the odds.

The child of a suicidal alcoholic mother, India was originally with a previous foster carer for five months. She arrived with Mia at the age of three after India’s mother, Amy, made her previous carer’s life very difficult. With dedication and persistenoe, Mia finally becomes close enough to Amy to understand the root of her destructive behaviour: she was one of seven siblings, all of whom were abused and ended up in care.

With India finally settled in Mia’s happy household, Mia embarks on an amazing Journey to help mother and daughter break away from their unhappy pasts.

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About the Author: Mia Marconi has an Italian father and an Irish mother. She grew up in London and has been a foster carer here for over 20 years. During that time she has welcomed more than 250 children into her home. To protect the identities of people she is writing under a pseudonym.

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By the Same Author: A Child Called Hope (2014); If Only He’d Told Me (2014); and Little Girl Lost (2015).

Matthew Timion’s Leaving Salt Lake City is the story of a personal train wreck. The story starts when he moves to Salt Lake City to live an idyllic life with the woman of his dreams and the child they later adopt. Suddenly, his perfect life turns into a nightmare filled with spies, lies, betrayal, and enduring poverty. Matthew must forge a new life for his son and for himself by becoming the leader of his own life while facing the painful reality of truly meeting the woman he married for the first time.

From the Back Cover: What if the birth father can’t be located?

What laws apply if I locate a baby in another state?

Can I pay for the birth mother’s medical expenses?

Finally, a book that answers all of your legal questions about independent adoptions. The Legal Adoption Guide helps you protect your new family by walking you through every aspect of an independent adoption—from locating a qualified attorney to interviewing potential birth mothers. This one-of-a-kind handbook prepares you for possible problems before they arise, ensuring that your adoption situation is as safe as the law allows. Here are just a few of the topics adoption expert Colleen Alexander-Roberts covers:

• the differences between open, semi-open, and confidential adoptions

• the kinds of advertising available to locate a birth mother and what is legal

• the rights of a birth father

• evaluating a possible adoption situation

• how long a birth mother has to withdraw her consent to the adoption

The kinds of cases often dramatized by the media—the kind where a toddler is taken from the only parents she has ever known only to be handed over to her birth parents who are virtual strangers—are every adopting parent’s worst nightmare. Luckily, they are also extremely rare and avoidable. With the help of a state-by-state checklist of adoption laws and real-life case studies, The Legal Adoption Guide is your comprehensive guide to completing a safe, permanent adoption.

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About the Author: Colleen Alexander-Roberts is the adoptive mother of two sons. An author specializing in parenting issues with five books to her credit, including The Essential Adoption Handbook, she lives in Holland, Ohio.

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By the Same Author: The Essential Adoption Handbook (1993).

From the Back Cover: The Legal Answer Book for Families covers hundreds of everyday legal questions that nearly everyone encounters eventually. Written by family law experts, it will be your family’s first legal resource.

Key areas covered include:

Couples: Marriage requirements, prenuptial agreements, green cards for fiancés, rights of same-sex partners, obligations for a spouse’s debt, divorce, changing your name after marriage or divorce and more.

Children: Rights of birth and adoptive parents and adopted children, foster care, guardianships, child support, custody and visitation, bullying, teenage run-ins with the law and juvenile court, and kids’ rights when it comes to work, driving and special education.

Seniors: Government programs for health insurance and residential care, and essential estate planning documents such as a healthcare power of attorney.

Plus, for these topics and more, find detailed legal information and resources for all U.S. states, including the best websites and organizations.

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About the Author: Emily Doskow is a practicing attorney who has worked with families in the Bay Area for more than 20 years. She is the author of Nolo’s Essential Guide to Divorce and a coauthor of The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community (with Janelle Orsi) and Making It Legal: A Guide to Same-Sex Marriage, Domestic Partnerships & Civil Unions (with Frederick Hertz). Emily specializes in family law, including adoption, parentage issues, domestic partnership formation and dissolution, and divorce. She is a graduate of the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley.

Marcia Stewart writes and edits books on landlord-tenant law, real estate, and other consumer issues. She is the co-author of First-Time Landlord, Nolo’s Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home, Every Landlord’s Legal Guide, Every Tenant’s Legal Guide, Leases and Rental Agreements, and Renters’ Rights.

From the Publisher: It takes courage to decide to foster or adopt a child, knowing that your life will now be an open book. In addition, if you are a lesbian or gay man, you face the additional hurdles of prejudice and legal obstacles. Lesbian and Gay Fostering and Adoption presents a collection of personal accounts given by singles and couples in Great Britain who have fostered or adopted children. The book also includes an editorial essay which examines the many issues involved when lesbians or gay men choose this method of building a family.

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About the Author: Stephen Hicks is a lecturer in Social Work in the Department of Applied Community Studies at the Manchester Mentropolitan University. He has been researching lesbian and gay fostering since 1992, and is a founder member of the Northern section of LAGFAPN (Lesbian and Gay Foster and Adoptive Parents Network). He has been a social worker for children under eleven years old at a voluntary organization in Manchester and has also worked in community mental health services.

Janet McDermott is also a member of LAGFAPN Northern group, She works part-time as Co-Ordinator of an Asian Women’s Training Project in Sheffield, and is also a writer and freelance trainer. Previously, she worked as a secondary school teacher and as a refuge worker. She and her partner have adopted a ten-year-old girl.

From the Back Cover: Drawing on in-depth interviews with families and experts and her own personal and professional experience, April Martin walks the reader through the many issues involved in forming and nurturing a lesbian or gay family, including:

• the decision to parent—or not to parent

• different options for creating a family, from artificial insemination to adoption to surrogacy

• the many legal considerations, including a sample parental agreement

• relationships and communications within the family and with extended family members, friends, and one’s community

• the special circumstances of relationship break-ups and other crises

• the needs of children over time

• where to turn for additional information and support, including a detailed resource section with listings of organizations and parenting groups

With just the right mix of personal wisdom and seasoned advice, The Lesbian and Gay Parenting Handbook shows lesbians and gay men how to build the kind of support network that all parents need. And through the voices of lesbian and gay parents and their children talking about their experiences, April Martin celebrates the love, courage, and joy of these pioneering families.

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About the Author: April Martin, Ph.D., is a psychologist in private practice working with individuals, couples, and families, and is an adjunct clinical supervisor at Yeshiva University’s Doctoral Program in Psychology. She lives in New York City with her life partner and their two children.

From the Back Cover: What would you do when the beautiful baby you’ve adopted turns out to have serious disabilities? When the doctors tell you to “give her back”? When you’re also struggling to build a business, finish school and hold your marriage together? Lessons from Katherine is a spiritual memoir about loving and parenting our disabled child amidst grief, financial difficulty, and marital discord. It’s the struggle of every young marriage and family: to hold on, to form a family, to carve out a place in the world—but amplified.

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About the Author: Glenda Prins is an ordained United Church of Christ pastor; she lives in Rochester, New York, with her husband.

In this day and age our lives tend to be all planned out. We spend years dreaming and striving toward our goals; believing that we know exactly what we need to be happy and fulfilled. But what happens when our lives don’t go as we planned? What happens when the possibility of acquiring your deepest desire is stripped away and leaves you empty, lost and asking the same question over and over, “Why God?” Bob and Lisa Perron asked that question more than once in their quest to become parents. The large family they yearned for was not the family God had intended for them. Lessons Learned from a God-Sized Family in a “Me-Sized” World is a collection of stories telling about what God has taught them through their journey to become parents and the many things they have learned through raising their children.