Do you have trouble understanding where some people are coming from? Do you find yourself wondering why people do what they do? Nancy Alcorn spent eight years working for the state at a correctional facility for juvenile delinquent girls and investigating child abuse cases, giving her direct encounters with programs that were not producing permanent results of changed lives. Determined to establish a program in which lives would truly be transformed, Nancy started Mercy Ministries of America. In Mission of Mercy Alcorn challenges readers to consider why people behave the way they do, sharing the practical principles that have made Mercy Ministries a success at life transformation. Illustrated by the moving, inspiring testimonies of real women, she demonstrates how we can move from a place of judgment to compassion that leads to action.

The Modern Encyclopedia of Child Care is a comprehensive, ten-volume, illustrated guide to all aspects of infant and child care, including advice on childhood diseases, problems of behavior, child raising, and the maintaining of good health.

---

Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, Adoption (Volume 1, pp. 23-26); see also, Unwed Mother (Volume 10, pp. 855-856).

Sharon Simon’s memoir is the story of one woman’s fierce determination to become a mother. Her journey, full of setbacks and emotionally devastating pitfalls, ultimately led her to true love and pure joy. Mom at Last will inspire women who find themselves on that sometimes difficult journey to motherhood, giving hope that motherhood is possible and encouraging women to never give up on their dreams.

Twenty-one years ago, Kathy Roberson and her husband made what might’ve been the most difficult decision of their lives: they adopted a child with special needs who was, in adoption lingo, “hard to place.” One-year-old Katie came with labels: African American, general development delays, mild cerebral palsy. And thus begins the Robersons’ journey into new territory, both for them as parents and their other two young children as siblings. Kathy Roberson’s collection of poems relates her family’s challenging adventure, beginning with the day they buckled Katie into her car seat for the first time, moving through the following two decades of bringing her into adulthood. Each poem mines the seemingly little things in life to unearth fundamental truths that will resonate for anyone who has encountered the frustrations and joys of caring for a loved one. Meet the Robersons and their beloved Katie, who leave a lasting impression of the things that matter most. As Cathy Smith Bowers, author of five collections of poetry and recent poet laureate of North Carolina puts it, “Roberson teaches us not only how to see these often difficult and painful truths, but also how to turn them into art that comforts, heals, and resurrects us.”

A poignant story of an older couple who adopt a special-needs child as a baby, and of the moments of joy and sadness that accompany the raising of the boy.

All the joys and challenges of having kids are addressed in this TimesFile collection, which features many of the most popular personal stories about parenthood from the Lives page of The New York Times Magazine. These thoughtful, entertaining pieces range in subject from pregnancy, adoption, and surrogacy to coping, helicopter-parenting and college. The moms and dads who share their experiences here include acclaimed writers such as Matt Bai, Firoozeh Dumas, Ben Greenman, Samantha Hunt, John Moe, Laura Munson, Anna Solomon and Danielle Trussoni. Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, “My New Kentucky Baby” by Joshua Gamson, from the May 20, 2011 edition (re: surrogacy and gay adoption); and “The Origin of Jonah” by Melanie Braverman, from the September 6, 2010 edition (re: answering the author’s 5-year-old son’s questions about his birth mother).

From the Back Cover: Veronica Brunner has written a painfully accurate account of the blessing of adoption, as well as the trials of the care of foster children, the bureaucracies that deal with these children, and the compassion needed to make all of these things work for the best interest of children. Veronica has included an area at the end of each chapter outlining her sources of strength and courage which help focus the reader on the real issues and problems she and her husband faced in adopting three children. She has highlighted the many problems our society faces when trying to make several bureaucracies work efficiently together to help solve the multifaceted issues of dysfunctional families that are unable to raise their children. She gives us hope, information, and most of all a look into the lives of a very committed, compassionate couple who have supported and loved three children to adulthood.

—Charlene S. Rinne, R.N., Ph.D., Program Manager, Advocates for Children CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate)

Would that all abused, neglected and troubled kids could be rescued by devoted couples like the Brunners. Here Veronica tells why they were willing to dedicate their caring and love, time and worldly goods to rescue three extraordinarily needy children. More importantly to those who may wish to follow their example, she tells where she found information, the help and the strength she needed to cope day by day and how it all worked out.

—Charline Mann, Past President, NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill)

This story is a beautiful one, and one that should be of great value to anyone who deals with adoption, therapists, social workers, teachers, and particularly parents who adopt or provide care for children who cannot stay in their own homes. Although Mary, Tommy and Chris are central to the story, and much can be learned from their experiences, their tragedies and their triumphs, it is really a story of parents.

—Claire Purcell, Ph.D., Psychology

From the Dust Jacket: It was the summer of 1985; people all across the country were fascinated and disturbed by the July 9th Benson murders: two pipe bombs planted in the family car exploded and killed multi-millionairess Margaret Benson and her adopted son, Scott—an up-and-coming tennis star about to make his debut at the U.S. Open. Margaret’s beautiful Boston socialite daughter, Carol Lynn, was severely burned, but her other son, Steven, who had left the car only seconds before, was unscathed. Little more than a year later, he barely escaped the death penalty and was sentenced to life in prison for trying to murder the other three.

Weekly magazines, grocery store tabloids, local and national news programs, and some of the most prestigious daily newspapers covered the Florida trial in all its seamy and sordid detail. Here was the “heir to the Benson & Hedges fortune” (estimated at $400 million) and here was the story: Steven had caused his mother to fear for her life; he had embezzled more than $2 million from her; upon learning that he was to be disinherited from his portion of the $400 million, he cold-bloodedly plotted the demise of his entire family; and, finally, he simply stood and watched the sole survivor, Carol Lynn, writhe and burn in agony, all the while staring blankly without coming to her rescue, and at one point turning his back on her screams.

Here was a story of greed and folly, obsession and fear. Here were the facts that pointed to clear-cut guilt—facts that spelled out a life sentence at the very least for the spoiled and demented Steven Benson.

The only trouble was, almost none of these “facts” were true...

Michael Mewshaw thought he knew and accepted the story, just as the rest of the country had. Instead, he discovered that the truth of the Benson family murders is far more shocking than anyone has ever realized.

Through his exhaustive interviews and analysis of many never-before-disclosed court documents—affidavits, trial transcripts, depositions—his painstaking comparisons of hundreds of hours of conflicting statements, and his unmatched access to the defense and the judge during the course of the trial, prize-winning investigative writer Mewshaw has unearthed a horrifying tale indeed: but the horror lies in its revelation of a grave abuse of the judicial process that flies in the face of every American’s constitutional rights.

Money to Burn is the first complete and objective report on these murders. It is a story that has waited two years to be told, a towering exposé that is as haunting as it is hard hitting. Money to Burn is a spellbinding true-crime drama.

---

About the Author: Born in Washington, D.C., Michael Mewshaw graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.A. and earned a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Virginia. The author of seven critically acclaimed novels and two prize-winning books of investigative nonfiction, he has received a Fulbright Fellowship, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Mewshaw has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Playboy, the Nation, the New Statesman, and other publications in the United States and Europe. He lives in Rome with his wife and two sons.

---

By the Same Author: Life For Death: A True Story of Crime and Punishment (1980, Doubleday); True Crime (1991, Poseidon Press); and If You Could See Me Now (2006, Unbridled Books).

---

Compiler’s Note: The paperback edition promotes the fact that it contains “astonishing new information not published in the original hardcover edition.”

Once in a lifetime, you may be fortunate enough to meet a child who will change your view of the world forever. Josiah was that kind of a child. Born with severe cerebral palsy and numerous health challenges, he was blessed with an infectious joy and the gift of encouraging others. His faith in God and his passion to serve far surpassed his limited abilities. To know him was to be inspired. His life was cut short by his frailty, but his legacy remains. About the Author: Renee Peacock has an extensive background in facing challenges as a medical assistant, a developmental disabilities technician, a clinical research coordinator for pharmaceutical trials, a foster/adopt mom, and a navy wife. In addition to raising their two adult children, she and her husband of thirty years have adopted four children (two of whom have special needs). The Peacock family have lived all over the world and currently reside in Grand Junction, Colorado. In addition to writing, weightlifting, and yoga, Renee enjoys dancing hula, playing in the dirt, and singing on the worship team at Fellowship Church.

The Moratorium of Anya explores the struggle for redemption faced by an adoptive family following forced separation from their 11-year-old daughter in Ukraine. When a young American couple embarks on an intercountry adoption, fate unfolds in the discovery of Anastasia and Katerina, and engulfs the new family in a gripping journey. Under the collapsed Soviet Union, Anastasia’s Russian birth forces new legal precedence to establish her citizenship. Meanwhile, the orphanage reveals buried secrets into Anya and Katia’s past. The girls grapple with the illegal sale of their baby siblings to Israel; and, under quarantine, their own lives become endangered, as a deadly outbreak of measles takes lives and threatens the orphanage. Finally, in an effort to spare the girls, an adoption decree is issued. Unable to secure the needed Russian birth certificate for Anya, the family is forced to return to America without her. In the care of the Schadowsky’s Ukrainian advocate, Natasha, Anya battles with emotions of abandonment after the loss of her birth family, and now her only remaining sister, Katia, has gone to the United States with their new mother and father. A determined mother returns to Ukraine after six months of political tyranny between the three governments. In a harrowing and true saga of sacrifice and redemption, Shelley Schadowsky resists arrest, and ultimately secures Anya’s citizenship as guns are leveled.

From the Back Cover: Why do adopted teenagers feel the way they do? How much of this is due to their being adopted or to the changes that puberty brings? How can parents help their children to confront and deal with the turbulence of their teenage years, their identity crises and their adoption-related problems? This in-depth practical guide, written by an adoptive parent for adoptive parents, explores the problems that adopted teenagers (up to 18 years old) are likely to confront and provides suggestions for helpful solutions and achievable communication methods. Although the guide focuses primarily on children adopted from abroad, the practical advice offered can be helpful in relationships with any adopted young person. More Adoption Conversations considers:

• The complex feelings that adopted teenagers can have

• Adoption-related problems that surface during puberty

• Why adopted teenagers feel and behave the way they do

• Talking about painful events and acknowledging difference

• How to help an adopted young person deal with their grief and anger

• Establishing meaningful dialogues and using communication techniques effectively

This invaluable guide, brimming with advice and ideas, will help parents discuss the known—or unknown—aspects of their adopted teenager’s history and be well-equipped to communicate difficult issues. Examples of dialogue and suggested questions and answers about a range of subjects surrounding adoption add to the usefulness of More Adoption Conversations. Quotations from young people about their thoughts, feelings and frustrations help bring the text to life.

---

About the Author: Renée Wolfs is a mother of three children adopted from China. She received her Master’s degree in Communication in 1987 and works as a freelance journalist and author. She is also an experienced coach in communication skills and works for a Dutch child helpline. She has written several articles and columns in Dutch adoption magazines.

Her personal involvement in adoption, coupled with her communication expertise and a knowledge of developmental psychology, led Renée to question what exactly children should be told about their adoption story, and at what age. Two books resulted. They were first published in the Netherlands in 2004 and 2008, titled World Child: Talking to your adopted child and The Adoption Dialogue: Conversation techniques for adoptive families with teenagers, respectively.

The English language edition of World Child, titled Adoption Conversations, was published in the UK by BAAF in 2008. This in-depth practical guide explores the questions adopted children are likely to ask, up to age 12, with suggestions for helpful explanations and answers.

---

By the Same Author: Adoption Conversations: How, When and What to Tell (2008) and Healing for Adults Who Grew Up in Adoption or Foster Care: Positive Strategies for Overcoming Emotional Challenges (2015, Jessica Kingsley Publishers).

From the Dust Jacket: Already the biological parents of a seven-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter, Claude Knobler and his wife decided to adopt Nati, a five-year-old Ethiopian boy. It didn’t take long for Claude to learn that raising his new, exuberant, loud, and silly son was going to be a challenge, and not just because he and Nati didn’t speak more than a few words of the same language. Yet after five years spent trying to turn his joyful and free-spirited African son into the quiet, neurotic, Jewish kid he himself had once been, Knobler learned a lesson that made him a better father, not just to Nati, but to all three of his kids.

In this wonderfully written memoir, Knobler weaves together moving stories about meeting his son’s mother in Ethiopia with laugh-out-loud tales of Nati’s adjustment to his new home and family, to reveal that sometimes the apple can fall far from the tree—and that’s more than okay. Knobler explains how his experiences raising Nati led him to learn something that applied equally well to parenting his biological children: It’s essential to spend the time we are given with our children to love them and enjoy them, rather than push and mold them into who we think they should be.

---

About the Author: Claude Knobler has written essays for Parenting and for NPR’s This I Believe, as well as one of the radio programs literary anthologies, This I Believe: On Fatherhood, and for Worldwide Orphans Foundation founder Dr. Jane Aronson’s Carried in Our Hearts: The Gift of Adoption: Inspiring Stories of Families Created Across Continents.

More Than “I” Can Handle poignantly tells the inspiring story of the Mestas family, Eileen and Jerry, and their three biological and five adopted children. Living an adoption journey filled with God’s miracles and His mighty power, Eileen and her family have stepped out in faith, trusting God through the impossible. A public speaker, homeschool mom, and passionate Adoption and Orphan Care advocate, Eileen writes with an honest and conversational tone. You will laugh and cry as this amazing family follows the whispers of the Lord, faithfully obeying in joy and sorrow, and giving Him the glory. Filled with anecdotes and Scripture, this book assures us that when life seems more than we can handle on our own, our heavenly Father arms us with strength in the Holy Spirit to accomplish His will. The author speaks truth straight from the Word of God, and challenges the world to accept the command found in James 1:27. Eileen Mestas is blessed with her precious family and friends, and prays her story will awaken all who read it to the orphan crisis and the call of the Lord upon their lives.

The Fileccias did not consider themselves special; just an ordinary family. Yet in 2003, God chose them to begin an extraordinary life journey. Trusting in their faith, Rusty and Nancy packed up their three children and traveled to China to adopt Xing Dan Nang (Candace), an eight-year-old blind girl. Little did they know this trip would lead them through the deepest valleys a family could ever experience. The challenge of teaching a blind child paled to insignificance when their precious daughter was diagnosed with Battens, a fatal disease, in 2006. The next three years became a roller coaster ride of deep despair, desperate hope, and searching for answers. Based on Nancy’s heartfelt journal entries of their journey, the story of Candace Kate unfolds, shining a light on God’s purpose to give this little girl a “forever family” and showing how she lived a full life in only thirteen years. Life is short; no one is guaranteed eighty years. But during our time on earth we can inspire, love, and show God’s undying love for us, before He calls us home.

Love is not always enough to prevent a failed adoption of Attachment Disorder children. More Than Love is a candid account of the many difficulties experienced by the adoptive parents of three Attachment Disorder adopted boys. It provides explicit accounts of the boys’ dangerous and deviant behaviors. It also describes the adoptive parents’ frustration at the system for not providing the help that was promised prior to the adoption. Author Sherril Stone spares no emotion or detail regarding the years of heartache and the endurance required in parenting the boys. Even a strong marriage and close family ties were stretched to the breaking point as they and other family members tried to undo the damage caused by the birth parents prior to the adoption. Even the strong love the adoptive parents felt for the boys and their determination to overcome the abusive background was not enough to save the family. Tragically, the adoptive parents finally had no choice but to let go of the boys in order to protect their family, friends, and society. More Than Love takes the reader through the depths and highs of emotion. The turmoil experienced by both of the adoptive parents as they searched for answers from therapists, psychologists, social workers, clergy, teachers, friends, and family is detailed. While outsiders only witnessed charming, sweet, and “good” boys, those close to them knew the extent of their manipulative behaviors. Unfortunately, Attachment Disorder children are experts at manipulation and often dupe others, even those professionals trained to detect such deceitfulness. The author closes with helpful information about Attachment Disorder, guidance on therapeutic services for Attachment Disorder children and their families, signs and symptoms of Attachment Disorder, and suggestions for handling numerous deviant and dangerous behaviors exhibited by children with attachment problems.

From the Inside Cover: When she was just 13 and helping her mother on the local hospital wards, Alex Bell encountered Billy, a young man with Down’s syndrome who changed the course of her life. Alex grew up vowing to dedicate herself to caring for Down’s syndrome babies—the children whom some parts of society might prefer to forget.

At 28, and unmarried, Alex battled with social services to adopt her first Down’s child, Matthew. She had succeeded in becoming one of the first single women in the UK to adopt. But Alex didn’t stop there. She then single-handedly took on eight more children who, despite serious disabilities, are flourishing under Alex’s fierce and devoted love.

Like happy-go-lucky Matthew, who fulfilled his dream of working for Manchester United. And Adrian, the amazing numbers wiz, born as if with a calculator inside his brain. Or the cute—but demanding—nine-year-old Emily, who coped with her traumatic cancer treatment by being downright bolshy and learning to be her own boss.

This is the story of an extraordinary mother and her unusual family—a story of courage, perseverance and, above all, love.

---

About the Author: Bernard Clark began his career as an investigative TV journalist, newsreader and director for the BBC. He went on to direct several acclaimed documentaries and originated Watchdog, the BBC’s long-running investigative series, as well as the series Timewatch and Bookmark. He then set up Clark Television, one of the first major independent production companies in the UK, producing worldwide current affairs and documentary programmes. He continues to make television series, combining this with writing. He lives in London and North Carolina.

Alex Bell is currently the adoptive mother of seven children, the foster mother of an eighth child and the guardian of a ninth. Seven of the children have Down’s syndrome, one has a life-limiting condition and another is autistic, and she cares for all of them at her home in Salford, near Manchester. In 1984, at the age of 28, Alex Bell became one of the first women in the UK to adopt as a single mother. She has since created a flourishing, happy family of nine children with disabilities. Bernard Clark has spent several years with Alex and her family to turn her unique, groundbreaking story into a book.

The bond between mother and child begins before birth and extends beyond death. This connection, which has captured the imagination of scientists and poets for centuries, is physical, mental and emotional. In Cassandra Eason’s fascinating compendium, it turns out to be extra-sensory as well. A leading authority on spiritual experiences, she examines the sixth-sense connections between mothers and their children and documents them in a series of compelling stories of maternal telepathy and intuition. In the course of her research, she has collected psychic accounts from around the world—real-life experiences of ordinary women and their families. Eason has documented women whose psychic connection saved their child’s life, whose children are themselves telepathic, and some whose bond with their child exists even after one of them has died.

This book is about being a woman, trying to be a mother, having a family, trying to make a family work, failing and succeeding. Essays run from family estrangement to reconciliation, adoption struggles and recognizing the other mothers of adopted children, strengthening family ties by fighting the rats in the basement together, and realizing that, fundamentally, we all have it in us to be mothers if that is what we want for ourselves. The book is short, just 15 essays, each chosen because it represents an important event or point of view. The stories are not all happy ones. Raising children is a long tale that, if honestly told, has many regrettable chapters. Those chapters have great value if for no other reason than they make the happy times truly remarkable instead of common. About the Author: Janice Wilberg is a blogger and essayist. She writes from forty years’ experience as a mother of four including three adopted as children with special needs from Nicaragua. She remembers well the first days of knowing her children including walking across the courtyard of a Nicaraguan orphanage to meet her six-year-old daughter for the first time. Much of adoption literature is about the extraordinary joy new adoptive parents feel when they are matched with the child of their dreams. Wilberg goes beyond the honeymoon phase to reflect on the days when love is so desperately needed but the hardest to find. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, Precipice Literary Anthology, and Salon.com. Her writing has been described as simple, honest, and compelling with no pretense and no protection. Since 2011, Janice has published a blog called Red’s Wrap at www.redswrap.wordpress.com. Janice works as a community planning consultant focusing on issues related to homelessness, mental health, and child welfare. She lives with her husband, Howard, in Milwaukee, WI.

From the Back Cover: Sound advice, useful information and a guide to the emotional ups and downs of adoption.

In this warm, humorous and enlightening new book, Darlene Ryan takes the reader with her on the adoption journey. Each stage is introduced with factual and anecdotal information, which the author has collected from parents who have adopted. Following are Darlene’s journal accounts of her own experience from the time of making the decision to adopt right through to the period when she finally became a mother. She provides insights on domestic versus international adoptions, laws and procedures here and abroad, and details about dealing with various agencies and bureaucracies. Just as importantly, she lists questions to consider, warns of potential hazards and outlines the dos and don’ts.

A must-read for anyone embarking on this journey.

---

About the Author: Darlene Ryan is a radio journalist. She lives in New Brunswick with her husband and adopted child.

---

By the Same Author: Saving Grace (2006, Orca Book Publishers).

From the Back Cover: This inspiring and insightful book shares personal stories, research, and interviews that will teach you how to seek out the Holy Ghost. Learn to keep the Spirit in your home so you can have help with whatever parenting problem comes your way.

• Harness the power of a mother’s prayer.

• Take refuge in the Comforter and stories of divine intervention.

• Strengthen your ability to hear the Holy Ghost.

• Heed the voice of warning when it comes.

• Rely on faith, trust, and patience when the heavens seem silent.

Whether your children are tiny, teenaged, or grown, this book will keep you connected to the best gift you could have as a mother and the best one you can pass on to your children—a legacy of listening to the Spirit’s still, small voice.

---

About the Author: Heidi Poelman graduated in communications from Brigham Young University (BA) and Wake Forest University (MA). She loves writing about ways to strengthen families and introducing young readers to amazing people in history. Heidi’s books included A is for Abinadi, A is for Adam, I Can Love Like Jesus, A Mother’s Greatest Gift, The Two-Minute Secret to Staying in Love, the Little Heroes series, and Jesus Worked Miracles (fall 2018). She lives in Utah with her husband Scott and their four bright-eyed children.

This fast-paced, powerful memoir is a USA Book News Award winner for Christian Inspiration. Janet Alston Jackson had it all, living a life of luxury, traveling the country promoting A-List celebrities and TV shows for ABC Television Network. Married to Walter, her soul mate, they were happy raising their four-year-old son, and decided to expand their family by adopting a small boy. It wasn’t long before the couple discovered that something was mysteriously wrong with their new son who was turning the family’s world upside down. The relentless turmoil and frustration of trying to raise this troubled child, sent Janet on a beautiful journey to find inner peace, and hope to help her special-needs son.

This true story chronicles a series of events that by themselves seem relatively harmless. Six years after a horrific break up, the pieces fall into place. While trying to figure out why his family life went to hell, a father discovers an awful truth. He thought destroying the relationship with his daughter was the mother’s motive for years of harassment and courtroom drama. In truth she was covering up a failed plot to murder him.

From the Dust Jacket: On March 3, 1987, Tiffany Callo, a nineteen-year-old California woman with cerebral palsy, gave birth to a nondisabled baby boy she named David. The birth was significant in that both Tiffany and her husband were physically disabled and used wheelchairs.

Their family celebration turned to tragedy three weeks later, when county officials took David away from his parents and placed him in permanent foster care, while Tiffany wept in agony.

A Mother’s Touch tells the story of Tiffany’s determined efforts to recover David and to keep her second child, Jesse. Like forty-three million other Americans with disabilities, Tiffany discovered that discrimination is often more of a handicap than even the loss of sight, hearing, or mobility. At first largely alone, Tiffany fought hard against the bureaucracy that had decided she was unfit to be a mother. Gradually she attracted the support of a host of disabled attorneys, engineers, political activists, and a caring psychologist, Megan Kirshbaum—one of the few national experts on parents with disabilities—who understood that Tiffany’s battle embraced the rights of all disabled people.

A Mother’s Touch is both a compelling portrait of a complex individual and an incisive look at the larger social issues that concern all of us. Tiffany Callo has had to fight for the right to live life to its fullest. In her humanity, dignity, and perseverance, she has much to teach us about a mother’s love.

---

About the Author: Jay Mathews is the author of Escalante: The Best Teacher in America. With his wife, Linda, he coauthored One Billion, an account of their experiences as journalists in China. Until recently the Los Angeles Bureau Chief of the Washington Post, he is now a correspondent for Newsweek in New York City.

From the Back Cover: THE ASTONISHING TRUE STORY OF A MOTHER CHARGED WITH THE DEATH OF HER DAUGHTER—BUT WAS SHE GUILTY? YOU DECIDE:

FACT—Priscilla and Steve Phillips adopt a Korean baby. Shortly afterward little Tia begins developing strange symptoms. In and out of the hospital for months, she finally succumbs. Cause of death: unknown.

FACT—The Phillipses adopt a second Korean infant named Mindy. Once again the same symptoms develop. Near death, the child is taken to intensive care, away from any interaction with her mother. The child recovers.

FACT—Mindy is removed from the Phillipses’ home. Months later she is adopted by a new couple. After a few weeks in her new home, she falls ill once again.

As far as anyone knew, Priscilla Phillips was the perfect mother. A pillar of her church, a social worker, a devoted wife, and a loving mother of two sons of her own, Priscilla lavished endless love and attention on little Tia ... and later on her sister, Mindy. To this day she claims total innocence of wrongdoing. Yet she was arrested and tried for murder. Was she a mother who literally loved her children to death? A woman so desperate to be needed that she’d take any risk, pay any price? Here is her incredible true story.

---

About the Author: Nancy Wright, a native of New York, was graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and subsequently taught high-school English in Richmond, California for ten years. A Mother’s Trial is her first book. With her husband and two children, she recently moved to southern California where she is now working on a screenplay.

As the working mother of three children, ReShonda Tate Billingsley knows motherhood isn’t a perfect science. She openly shares stories with her thousands of followers on social media about her children: thirteen-year-old Mya, the diva whose Instagram post—and subsequent punishment—went viral; to ten-year-old Morgan, who has a serious case of middle-child syndrome and a knack for giving her teachers a few of her mother’s favorite things; and finally, Myles, a witty and precocious five-year-old who, as his grandmother says, “has been here before.” It was while chronicling her journey that she discovered she wasn’t the only mother who longed for the days when she could use the restroom in peace, who sometimes sat in the driveway because she didn’t want to go in the house, and who sometimes wondered, Is this what I signed up for? Hence, The Motherhood Diaries was born. Through humorous and enlightening dialogue and narrative, ReShonda chronicles her own journey, as well as reveals candid imperfections of a mother trying to balance it all. With humorous and heartwarming stories from other mothers also trying to “get it right,” The Motherhood Diaries shares candid and honest conversations about the good, the bad and the downright disastrous path of mothering in the New Millennium. Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, “Diary of the Adoptive Mom” by C. Mikki (pp. 117-124).

This book details one woman’s bumpy road to motherhood. But when she reaches this destination is when the real adventure begins. Enjoy this light-hearted, heart-felt, humorous tale about becoming a mother ... from adoption, to pregnancy, to raising children while juggling a career.

From the Back Cover: Recognizing the need to nurture and support women during their adjustment to motherhood, Mothering the New Mother draws from three years of research and the personal experience of the author. Each chapter is filled with the practical suggestions and hands-on solutions of doctors, caregivers, policymakers; and, most importantly, over one hundred new mothers. Checklists and planning sheets let you create your own individualized postpartum plan and chapter-by-chapter annotated listings of newsletters, books, hotlines, videocassettes, support groups, and services reveal where to go for help and information. Most importantly, the candid experiences of other new mothers—married and single, birth and adoptive, older and younger—will reassure you that you’re not alone. Mothering the New Mother is an indispensable companion for anyone embarking on the journey of motherhood.

---

About the Author: Sally Placksin has written, produced, and narrated many national radio programs, including the documentary Mothering the New Mother for National Public Radio’s Horizons series. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council for the Arts. She is also the author of American Women in Jazz and winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. She lives with her husband and two children in New York City.

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.

---

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.

---

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).

From the Publisher: Scott Martin should have died in a hospital bed at age 35. Instead, he managed to fight off almost certain death and to survive “the flesh-eating disease.” After four amputations and intensive rehabilitation, he thought all he wanted was to get back to the life he’d had as a successful collegiate soccer coach. In this seemingly insurmountable quest to regain what he had lost, unexpected events would take Martin down a fateful road that would make his life infinitely more fulfilling than the one that was savagely taken from him. This is a truly captivating and uplifting story which reminds us about the positive aspects of being human by showing how in one man’s quest to be rebuilt, he became an inspiration for all those around him. Moving Forward In Reverse goes deeper than similar inspirational books such as Soul Surfer and Between a Rock and a Hard Place because it tells about the life that followed and the rebuilding process that moved Scott Martin forward.

---

About the Author: Scott Martin lives in Las Vegas with his wife, Ellen, and their five children, Nadia, Danny, Andy, Lauren, and Kalista. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh and went on to teach in West Bend, Wisconsin before coaching soccer at the collegiate level. Martin holds an advanced national coaching diploma, and has spent over 20 years coaching and directing various soccer programs at the select youth, high school, and college levels. He has worked with prominent national coaches both here and abroad. He captained four teams at UW-Oshkosh and played 15 seasons at the First Division level. Coryanne Hicks is a freelancer with a passion for creative writing. Her love of literature began during her childhood in Northern California where she indulged in books whenever she wasn’t riding horses or writing her own stories. An animal lover at heart with an adventurous spirit, Hicks has followed her dreams to over ten countries including South Africa where she spent three blissful weeks caring for lions, small and large. She resides in San Diego where she graduated from the University of California at San Diego.