From the Back and Inside Front Covers: “How did you get all these bruises?” I asked Aimee, carefully pointing to the ones I could see on her arms and chest.

“I fell,” Aimee replied. “I keep tripping over things.”

Eight-year-old Aimee was on the child protection register at birth. Her school repeatedly reported concerns about her bruises, and her five older half-siblings had been taken into care many years before, so no one can understand why she was left at home to suffer for so long.

The social services need a very experienced foster carer to look after Aimee because of her challenging behaviour. Despite initial reservations, Cathy agrees to take her on. There is something endearing about Aimee but also something very worrying—she reminds Cathy and her family of Jodie, the child whose story Cathy told in Damaged.

When Aimee arrives she is angry, and she has every right to be. She has spent the first eight years of her life living with her drug-dependent mother in a flat that the social worker described as “not fit for human habitation.” On her first night at Cathy’s Aimee is so grateful to have a bed of her own that it brings Cathy to tears.

The more Cathy learns about Aimee’s life before she came into care, the more horrified she becomes. It’s clear that Aimee should have been rescued much sooner, and Cathy promises to stand by her no matter what.

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

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By the Same Author: Damaged: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Forgotten Child (2006); Hidden: Betrayed, Exploited and Forgotten: How One Boy Overcame the Odds (2007); Cut: The True Story of an Abandoned, Abused Little Girl Who Was Desperate to be Part of a Family (2008); I Miss Mummy: The True Story of a Frightened Young Girl Who is Desperate to Go Home (2009); Saddest Girl in the World: The True Story of a Neglected and Isolated Little Girl Who Just Wanted to Be Loved (2009); The Night the Angels Came (2011); A Baby’s Cry (2012); Please Don’t Take My Baby (2013); Will You Love Me?: The Story of My Adopted Daughter Lucy (2013); Daddy’s Little Princess (2014); and Saving Danny (2015), among many others.

From the Back Cover: One night after midnight, social workers brought a baby girl to the author’s home, and her life as a foster mother began. A social worker herself, Sarah Gerstenzang discovered that raising Cecilia, despite all the personal joys, would be a complex and frustrating process of “co-parenting” with the foster care system in New York City.

Foster parents are in great demand, but they are not necessarily treated well. We follow the author through the home visits, the Early Intervention evaluation, the WIC program that (with much bureaucratic hassle) provides free formula and cereal, and the mandatory parenting training sessions.

Central to Another Mother is the issue of transracial placement. Gerstenzang remembers, “That first day the contrast between my pale skin and Cecilia’s brown skin seemed glaring. Not only did I feel that I had someone else’s child, I felt that I had a child from another culture. Would I owe someone an explanation?” Her account is full of anecdotes and reflections about race: acceptance and prejudice from others; the feelings of her two children about having a sibling of a different race; and efforts to maintain links to the culture of the child’s origin.

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About the Author: Sarah Gerstenzang is an Assistant Project Director of the Adoption Exchange Association, an organization dedicated to finding adoptive families for the 119,000 children who wait in foster care. She was formerly a Senior Policy Analyst at Children’s Rights and holds a Masters in Social Work from Columbia University. She and her husband live with their three children in Brooklyn.

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By the Same Author: A Critical Assessment of Concurrent Planning: What Is Its Role in Permanency Planning? (with Madelyn Freundlich; 2006, CWLA).

From the Dust Jacket: Teaching a Head Start program for at-risk four-year-olds, Kathy Harrison became increasingly concerned about one student, Angie, who had been abandoned by a mother who would never be able to care for her. “Could we take her in?” Harrison and her husband asked themselves a question that quickly changed to “How could we not?” After Angie came Madeleine, and Gabrielle, and Tyrone, all with horrifying pasts and needs as small and as large as a hot bath, clean sheets, and unconditional love.

For the next six years, Harrison opened her arms and her home to other people’s children. And then Sara arrived at her door.

Tough as nails, intense and magnetic, tortured by every adult in her life, at age six Sara already has a police record for breaking and entering. Under Harrison’s roof, she is the spark that ignites an already volatile mix of damaged personalities: Lucy, a sweet eight-year-old desperate for a scrap of attention from her birth mother; Karen, a precocious but troubled baby; and Danny, at age seven a budding pedophile taught as a toddler to hurt people before he can be hurt by them. Sara nearly destroys the haven she’s been offered, as her abusive past manifests in a series of nightmarish events that reveal how the smallest mistake can forever change the lives of everyone involved.

A riveting, unsparingly honest storyteller, Kathy Harrison takes us on a deeply hopeful journey into the hearts and minds of children who have experienced anguish beyond most of our imaginations. Much has been written about the state of our child welfare system and, in particular, about the ills of foster care. This is the page-turning story of life in an extraordinary American family that shatters every stereotype.

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About the Author: Kathy Harrison has been a foster parent for more than thirteen years, hosting almost a hundred children. In 1996, she and her husband, Bruce, were named Massachusetts Foster Parents of the Year, and in 2002 they received the prestigious Goldie Foster Award for foster parents. A frequent public speaker, Harrison lives in western Massachusetts with her family—three biological sons, three adopted daughters, and a constantly changing cast of foster children.

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By the Same Author: One Small Boat: The Story of a Little Girl, Lost Then Found (2006).

Answers in Abundance will target primarily Christian women between the ages of 25 and 50 who have either been through a similar experience, know somebody who has or is currently involved in the painful process; or who simply enjoy human-interest stories that can be referred to friends and family. Answers in Abundance transcends the spiritual ingredients, however, and could be read by a larger audience than just evangelical Christians. There are, conservatively estimating, over two million infertile couples in the United States. Infertile Christian married couples in America often keep their plight a secret for years. If and when they finally begin to talk openly with their close friends, it’s nearly always the woman who bears the responsibility for investigating various options. It is also usually the female who carries the guilt through this entire process.

Her story begins not with her children but with her own childhood spent traveling the country in the backseat of her parents’ car (her perpetually restless dad had post-traumatic stress disorder from WWII), often with very little money and few provisions. Where someone else might have seen deprivation and isolation, Petersen viewed her unusual childhood with a sense of wonder and gratitude. After marrying young and giving birth to a son who was legally blind (and who went on to earn a PhD on full scholarship), Petersen and her husband adopted four more special needs children and fostered many others. Each child has their own special story about overcoming tremendous physical and emotional difficulties in order to be able to succeed and enjoy life. Her honesty, wit, and terrific storytelling make this a book you want to read rather than one you feel you should read.

The voices of men—adoptive and birth fathers—are rarely heard in adoption debates. This timely and thought provoking book is the first in the UK to combine the experiences and perspectives of adoptive fathers with a guide to the adoption process, from the man’s point of view. Paul May looks at the feelings involved in preparing for a new kind of family life and dealing with the challenges along the way. He explores how men fit into the adoption scene today and looks at adoptive fatherhood as a topic in its own right—speaking as someone who has been there. Against a context in which our understanding of fathers, their roles and their purpose, is vague at the best of times, this readable and challenging exploration of adoptive fatherhood as a topic in its own right, is a welcome addition to the literature. While fathers have been largely silent and unstudied figures, they can be key in their children’s lives and play a crucial role in the success or failure of adoptive placement. While this book will help anyone thinking about adoption as well as those more familiar with it, it is more than a “how to” guide. Paul May’s exploration of masculine thoughts and feelings at each stage of the process gives an added dimension to the roller-coaster journey towards adoptive parenthood. His book fleshes out the adoptive father’s somewhat sketchy place in the contemporary map of adoption and places him firmly in the web of adoptive relationships.

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About the Author: Paul May is a freelance writer, business consultant and adoptive father of two girls. He has consulted in business strategy with many leading companies and written several books on management issues. His children are slowly training him in fatherhood.

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By the Same Author: Add Dad: Men Who Become Adoptive Fathers (2005, Jessica Kingsley).

From the Dust Jacket: The question “Are those kids yours?” has a familiar ring to parents who have adopted children from South Korea, India, Colombia, the Philippines, and other countries. As natural and normal as it feels to them to be together, such families are often asked to explain their obvious difference. In rich personal stories drawn from her own experience as the mother of two Korean born daughters and from interviews with other parents and with adopted children from six to thirty, Cheri Register both affirms the normality of internationally adoptive families and highlights the special challenges they do indeed face.

The book addresses many central questions about international adoption: why children are in need of adoption outside the country of their birth, why parents choose to adopt from other countries, how parents and children of very different origins become a “real” family, how parents explain the cultural circumstances of their children’s births and how the children perceive this, how families foster ethnic identity, how they deal with racism, and how living as a multicultural family affects their view of the world.

While answering “Are those kids yours?” with a firm “yes,” the book also probes the deeper implications of the question. International adoption is a controversial matter in countries from which children are coming to the United States, but adoptive families have had little voice as yet in the debate. With honest, thoughtful analysis honed by personal experience, Register addresses the ethical issues inevitably raised by adoption across lines of culture, race, and social class: Are parents in the wealthier nations entitled to raise children left homeless in other parts of the world by poverty or social stigma? Is placement in another country an appropriate solution for children whose parents cannot raise them? Do adoptive parents have a responsibility to their children’s birth countries or to other disadvantaged children and their families? Viewing international adoption in the context of child welfare and the “stewardship of children,” Register encourages readers to give these questions serious consideration and to approach them with knowledge, compassion, and cultural sensitivity.

Insightful, comprehensive, and eloquent, “Are Those Kids Yours?” is a unique resource for parents raising internationally adopted children and for those who are contemplating intercountry adoption as well as for the children as they grow up, their extended families and friends, and adoption and mental health professionals.

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About the Author: Cheri Register, Ph.D., lives in Minneapolis with her two Korean-born daughters Grace and Maria. A writer, lecturer, and educational consultant, she is the author of Living with Chronic Illness: Days of Patience and Passion (1987, Free Press).

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By the Same Author: Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects on Raising Internationally Adopted Children (2005, Yeong & Yeong Book Co.), among others.

From the Back Cover: Come along with Hector and Sue Badeau on their ultimate road trip—a4dopting and raising 22 children, from diverse backgrounds with many special needs. Like any road trip, their story has twists and turns, detours and surprises. You’ll be inspired, laugh out loud, and shed tears as you share their experiences in foster care and adoption, coping with teenage pregnancies, addictions, unimaginable accomplishments and raw moments of grief after the untimely deaths of three beloved sons.

Are We There Yet is an entertaining story which also imparts nuggets of parenting wisdom for any parent or grandparent. It is packed with spiritual truths and life lessons for teachers, social workers, pastors, and others.

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About the Author: Sue Badeau is a nationally known speaker on child and family topics, Hector Badeau works with homeless adults. They live in Philadelphia and are active in Summit Presbyterian Church. In addition to their “forever family” of 22 children, the Badeaus have served as foster parents and as a refugee host family.

From the Publisher: Linda Cannon Burgess, a compassionate and successful adoption agency director—who has been responsible for more than 900 adoptions—explores all aspects of adoption:

the “birth” mother and father ... the adoptive parents ... the adoption agency ... foster mother ... friends’ and neighbors’ reactions ... schools and the media reactions ... adolescence ... rejection ... genetic heritage ... and eventually the search for identity.

Mrs. Burgess reviews her case histories (with the names changed, of course) to help us understand what adoption has actually meant to all those involved—and ultimately, to society itself.

An instructive and understanding book for all parents who seek to know their children better.

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About the Author: A single parent, Linda Cannon Burgess has had twenty years of adoption experience as executive director of the Barker Foundation and the Pierce-Warwick Adoption Agency, both in Washington, D.C.

She bears the responsibility for approximately 900 adoptive placements, and is the author of several magazine articles on the subject.

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By the Same Author: Adoption: How It Works (1989, Burgess Books), among others.

From the Back Cover: The first time I visited my new home...I knew that this was the home for me...When she showed me the room that was to be mine, I kept saying, “It’s just as if I was a real boy!” It was as if I was a real boy who had a home and a family of his own. This was all new to me...

That moment, as Gordon says, “opened the key to Jeannie’s heart”—she was sure she had made the right decision when she planned to adopt him. But their new family would not be without its problems. Gordon was ten years old, and had been living in a psychiatric hospital for three years, with undiagnosed mental health issues. Jeannie was adopting as a single parent, with all the challenges this can bring. But together, they built a loving family. In this moving account, mother and son look back at the way in which adoption changed two lives for the better.

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About the Author: Gordon Mackenzie was born in Scotland and adopted in 1983 at the age of ten. He now lives in a small town in the Canadian prairies, where he works as a beekeeper in a commercial apiary. He has two children, three cats and plays a number of stringed instruments, including the mandolin. He plays guitar in the worship group in his local church and upholds his Scottish heritage by giving the Address to the Haggis at the annual Burns Supper.

Jeannie Mackenzie was born in Scotland and has no intention of leaving it. She has been a teacher and worked at a senior level in one of Scotland’s leading education authorities. She has also researched and published in the field of education and is the author of Family Learning: Engaging with parents. She now teaches mindfulness approaches to help with stress and chronic pain. Much more importantly, she is Gordon’s mum. Originally a single parent, she is now married with a blended family of three children and five grandchildren.

From the Publisher: A young woman thought of a time in 1895 when she had stood in a rural backwoods area at a stream. Her auburn hair had blown in a windward direction and brown eyes flickered in a fiery. She felt fleetingly crazy and questioned why so many things had drastically changed at that time. Today, Lucille will retrace what brought her to that desperate point in this riveting saga.

A solitary figure stands stoop-shouldered at the entrance to a closed China Air terminal at JFK, and he feels a creeping vulnerability that is foreign to him at age fifty-three. Peering through the rain and fog at the ghostly glow of streetlights on deserted airport roads, he wonders what in heaven’s name he is doing there ... alone ... in the middle of the night ... six thousand dollars strapped to his leg ... and agonizingly unsure he’ll be able to get to Cambodia in time. At First A Dream chronicles the frustrating, emotional roller coaster that led Jan and Jim Pacenka to pursue an adoption, all the way to Phnom Penh. The book highlights key events leading to their life-altering decision, and captures the drama of Jim’s five-day intercontinental steeplechase to Cambodia, a Murphy’s Law scramble to beat an adoption moratorium stopwatch triggered by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. At First A Dream is a story about a journey, both figurative and literal—a journey embraced by a man and a woman wanting to share their lives with a child of the universe. It is a story of love, courage, and above all else, perseverance. About the Author: Vic Goguen is a lifelong friend of Jim and Jan Pacenka. He holds a B.S.Ed. degree in Social Studies, an M.A.Ed. in Counseling and Psychology, and a C.A.G.S in Rehabilitation Counseling. At First A Dream is his first nonfiction book. He and his wife Carol make their home in Leominster, MA.

At Home in Love is a love letter to Gracie about how her parents who desired to have children but could not, adopted her from China. More importantly it is also the story about how God adopted us. Like Gracie’s parents desired to have a child, so God the Father wants us to be His children. He promised us that He would not leave us as orphans but He sent His Son Jesus to us to show us how to be adopted into God’s family. This is also a love letter instructing us how to grow in our relationship with God the Father; to not let unbelief, fear, or orphan thinking allow us to be robbed of God’s love for us but instead believe that God the Father loves us and cares about us so that we will be At Home in Love, His love.

From Kirkus Reviews: With three older children, and one six-year-old boy, the Pedersens adopted via a Southern placement bureau (and before that an orphanage and a foster home) twin girls, Fanny and Annie. They could hardly remember their “rill” mother but they didn’t too easily forget some of the things that happened in Wanapa County along with their ain’ts and their habits of staring too long at strangers. This then is the account of their first year at home and at school; Fanny, usually the more sulky and defiant, agreed to be Laurie long before Annie, gentler and more affectionate, became Julie, and finally both of them became Pedersens on a triumphant adoption day. Mrs. Pedersen records it all in a tone of bustling domestication and understanding; if it’s a little cuddly in spots you’ll forgive her.

After serving six years with the police force, Barney Butler and his teacher wife Eileen felt they had something to offer children, and thus decided in the late 1950s on a career change to become house-parents at Barnardo’s children’s home in Barkingside, Essex. Now, in this fascinating read, the author revisits the past to recall how he and his wife implemented changes in the homes they worked in to the benefit of the children in their care, and how they helped bridge the gap for those children who left Barnardo’s to become adults outside the home.

When Italian citizen Roberto G. Ferrari embarked on a journey to adopt a young Chinese boy, the twenty-five days the adoptive father spent there offered him a rare insider’s vantage of the famously closed country during an intensely intimate time for his family. To process the experience, the adoptive father chronicled those days in China, exploring the country through the deeply personal lens of his son’s connection to his homeland. Ferrari also took in China from the perspective of a Westerner attempting to make sense of this burgeoning global power. Both reflective and informative, Ferrari’s detailed account of the adoption process takes in modern China as it increasingly opens its doors to the Western world. In doing so, Away from China offers invaluable practical guidance on the international adoption process, as well as the author’s insight on key locales in the country from the point of view of a seasoned traveler. From the monuments of Taiyuan to Tienanmen Square, Away from China considers this fascinating, rapidly changing nation for an adoptive father and his Chinese son. About the Author: Roberto G. Ferrari is an economist who has worked for multinational companies for approximately twenty years. He has a master’s degree in economics, and also studied arts and history, with a focus on modern history, at the University of London. Previously, he was a lecturer on economics at an Italian university. He has traveled extensively for business, and has a particular interest in non-Western cultures. The author lives with his wife, his daughter, and his son in Milan, Italy.

Do you want to adopt a baby but don’t know where to start? Worried about the cost and the time it will take? Nandini too went through the same doubts, fear, and confusion before her daughter Kiki came into her life nearly three years ago and turned her life upside down. And out of her experiences was born Babies from the Heart, a comprehensive resource for couples who want to adopt a child in India. Written in her unique personal style, it takes you through:

• Each step in the adoption process, from choosing an agency to bringing a child home

• Getting the family on board;

• Medical, emotional, and legal issues;

• The process of telling the baby s/he’s adopted;

• Discipline issues with teenager adoptive kids;

Warm, reliable, and honest and with practical advice and tips from a cross-section of adoptive parents, Babies from the Heart tells you all you need to know to adopt a child.

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About the Author: Nandini Sengupta is an adoptive parent based in Pondicherry. She is a journalist by profession and has worked with The Economic Times, first in Kolkata and then in Delhi, for fifteen years and is currently working with The Times of India. She and her husband adopted little Kiki in Delhi and moved to Pondicherry in 2010 in search of an alternative milieu for themselves and their child. Babies from the Heart is her first book.

From the Dust Jacket: I’d wanted a baby since I was eight years old. Sometimes it was tiny whispers behind my ears and sometimes it was a longing like a wound.

On our first date, my husband asked in his charming Dutch accent, “Do you want to get children?”

“Get children?” At first I did not understand, but quickly realized he meant “have a baby.” I was then thirty-six years old and had never wed. I could feel the arsenal of eggs I’d been born with beginning to fray.

And so begins the poignant chronicle of Patty Dann’s journey to adopt an infant from Eastern Europe, a moving memoir that recounts with wry humor the hurdles she and her husband encountered at every step of their odyssey—from the tedious preparation of paperwork and the seemingly endless waiting, through the heartbreaking loss of the infant girl who might have been their adoptive daughter, to their giddily joyous flight home to New York City from Lithuania with their pink-cheeked son in their arms.

Reminiscent of Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions, The Baby Boat combines an eloquent style with equal parts humor and emotion in an absorbing narrative that reads like a novel.

More than just a tale of one couple’s struggle to adopt a child, The Baby Boat is an affecting, poignant love story that will speak to every parent—and would-be parent.

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About the Author: The author of the acclaimed Mermaids (which The New York Times hailed as a “radiant debut”), Patty Dann teaches fiction workshops and memoir classes ay Sarah Lawrence College and Manhattan’s West Side Y. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two-year-old son, who is now a citizen of the United States.

From the Dust Jacket: “I want to tell you,” Tony Kornheiser writes, “what it feels like to slow dance on the coals of blind faith and utter despair. To light candles. To pray. To cry yourselves to sleep. To grieve, not for the actual child you lost, but for the potential child you’ll never have. The broken promise; the shattered dream. To see yourselves growing old and useless, alone together, afraid that some monstrous judgment has been made on you for reasons you cannot even guess, and that the sentence is to be forced to exchange blame and pity for eternity. To think that no matter what else you accomplish in life, it is nothing, and thus, to be ready and willing to do anything to set it right and have a baby. Anything.”

The Baby Chase is a powerful, searing true story—the story of a childless marriage, and a baby for sale. Tony and Karril Kornheiser tried for years to have children, consulted countless fertility specialists, watched with growing pain as their friends became parents, and, eventually, decided to adopt a child. They then learned what millions of childless couples had learned before them: there are precious few healthy white babies available for adoption. Even getting on an agency’s waiting list can take years.

So they leapt at the chance when they heard about a baby that might be adopted privately. Then they heard the price—$15,000, an illegal, blackmarket adoption—and they faced the most difficult choice of their lives. Can you pass up this chance to have a child, when a child is what you have, for a decade, wanted more than anything in the world?

The Baby Chase is a book that is heart-stopping in its intensity, a fierce and unforgettable love story.

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About the Author: Tony Kornheiser has been a staff reporter for Newsday, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. He lives in Washington, D.C. The Baby Chase is his first book.

From the Back Cover: This is a story about a baby abandoned on the streets of Nanchang, China, and God’s faithfulness in seeing her adopted by an American family. There were many trials and tribulations before this came to pass. Chinese/American relations were tenuous at the time, and China was instituting a new adoption law. The baby—Mei Mei—remained a nonentity until we were forced to put her in an orphanage in Nanchang, where an estimated 90 percent of the babies died.

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About the Author: LeRoy and Jane Ramsey grew up in Texas, never imagining they would some day be walking on the Great Wall of China with their three children. But God had a plan. In His loving kindness, He gradually led them into a deeper walk with Him, which resulted in their moving to the People’s Republic of China in 1985. They were in their late 30s when they began this exciting adventure. It continues.

From the Back Cover: Are you thinking about adoption? Perhaps, you have already decided to adopt. Congratulations! This unique devotional was written to inspire, encourage, and strengthen woman dealing with infertility, couples contemplating adoption or currently in the process, and families adopting in response to a child’s need for a forever home. Read stories and excerpts penned years ago in the author’s adoption journal. Discover how God’s Word brought healing, opened her heart, and changed her life. No matter where you are in your walk with God, you can develop a deeper, more intimate relationship with Him. The author invites you to journal your adoption experiences in the interactive resource. Take time to reflect and respond to the Personal Reflection Questions on the pages of the interactive journal and spend time in prayer.

Learn how to overcome discouraging obstacles of infertility and inferiority and find freedom. Discover spiritual truths that will equip you to stand and believe, in spite of your fears and doubts, that you were called to adoption. Be encouraged as you endure medical nightmares, paperwork trails, social agency requirements, unexpected news, and delays that result in months—even years—of waiting. The challenges can be numerous and varied when you choose to provide love and a home for an orphan, but never doubt the mighty hand of God. Stretch yourself and your faith to believe that God has a great plan for you and it includes parenthood through adoption. Yes, even if you’re single! It just takes Baby Steps of Faith to discover God cares about you and the orphans. He has a plan for all of us—to bring hope and a future.

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About the Author: Brenda Martin Kohlbrecher is a former school teacher with a desire to demonstrate and communicate this lesson: Faith + Adoption = Family. She is passionate about all three parts of the adoption equation and is also an avid speaker, worship leader, and dramatist. In 1998, Brenda, her husband Kurt, and biological son, Kyle, unanimously voted to adopt Makala from South Korea. Today, the Kohlbrecher family resides in Trenton, Illinois and their hearts remain steadfast towards adoption.

From the Publisher: Publish your memories in baby’s very own keepsake book. This kit makes it easy to turn your memories into a personalized, archival quality book you’ll treasure for a lifetime. Just layout your pictures and write the photo captions or story you want typeset on the pages provided. You can even personalize the pages with the infant-related Mrs. Grossman’s stickers provided, or get creative with your own. Mail in your pages and in just weeks you’ll receive back an archival quality, 7-by-9-inch, laser reproduced 15-page hardback book. Numerous options allow you to create almost any type of book up to 50 pages in length. The kit makes a great shower gift and additional (optional) book copies make terrific gifts for family and friends. You are the author. We merely publish your creation.

From the Dust Jacket: In this warm, funny, and wise new book, NPR’s award-winning and beloved Scott Simon tells the story of how he and his wife found true love with two tiny strangers from the other side of the world. It’s a book of unforgettable moments: when Scott and Caroline get their first thumb-size pictures of their daughters, when the small girls are placed in their arms, and all the laughs and tumbles along the road as they become a real family.

Woven into the tale of Scott, Caroline, and the two little girls who changed their lives are the stories of other adoptive families. Some are famous and some are not, but each family’s saga captures facets of the miracle of adoption.

Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other is a love story that doesn’t gloss over the rough spots. There are anxieties and tears along with hugs and smiles and the unparalleled joy of this blessed and special way of making a family. Here is a book that families who have adopted—or are considering adoption—will want to read for inspiration. But everyone can enjoy this story because, as Scott Simon writes, adoption can also help us understand what really makes families, and how and why we fall in love.

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About the Author: Scott Simon is the host of NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon. He has reported stories from all fifty states and every continent, and has won every major award in broadcasting. He also hosts shows for PBS and appears on BBC TV. He is the author of the novels Pretty Birds and Windy City, the memoir Home and Away, and the history Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball.

From the Back and Inside Front Covers: My heart melted as I joined the nurse beside the crib and looked down at the baby Harrison. He was swaddled in a white blanket with just his little face visible from beneath his hat. How many mothers could leave him I didn’t now.

Children can come into foster care at any age and it is always sad, but most heart-breaking of all is when a newborn baby, sometimes only a few hours old, is taken from their mother and brought into care.

When Cathy is first asked to foster one-day-old Harrison her main concern is if she will remember how to took after such a young baby. But on collecting him from the hospital, she quickly realises she has a lot more to. worry about than she first thought. With a background shrouded if secrecy, hushed responses to Cathy’s queries and very few people even aware of Harrison’s existence, it becomes clear that this very sad situation has more to it than initially meets the eye.

Cathy and her children quickly bond with Harrison—a beautiful and alert baby—but when a woman they don’t know starts appearing in the street outside their house, acting suspiciously, Cathy begins to fear for the safety of all of her family.

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About the Author: Cathy Glass, who writes under a pseudonym, has been a foster carer for more than twenty-five years. She has three children. This is her thirteenth book.

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By the Same Author: Damaged: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Forgotten Child (2006); Hidden: Betrayed, Exploited and Forgotten: How One Boy Overcame the Odds (2007); Cut: The True Story of an Abandoned, Abused Little Girl Who Was Desperate to be Part of a Family (2008); I Miss Mummy: The True Story of a Frightened Young Girl Who is Desperate to Go Home (2009); Saddest Girl in the World: The True Story of a Neglected and Isolated Little Girl Who Just Wanted to Be Loved (2009); The Night the Angels Came (2011); Another Forgotten Child (2012); Please Don’t Take My Baby (2013); Will You Love Me?: The Story of My Adopted Daughter Lucy (2013); Daddy’s Little Princess (2014); and Saving Danny (2015), among many others.

Moms-to-be often get tons of advice about what to eat, which stroller to buy, and how to get their bodies back after baby arrives. What’s missing is clear and comprehensive advice on how to keep their jobs during pregnancy and beyond. In Babygate, three legal experts share practical tips, real-life stories from moms and dads, and key legal information to spotlight the protections expecting and new parents have (and don’t have) in the workplace. This step-by-step guide covers everything from morning sickness to maternity leave to confronting discrimination on the job. With a clear, often witty, interpretation of the law and various employment policies, the authors explain how workers can advocate for themselves and protect their jobs and paychecks while welcoming their little bundles of joy. Babygate arms readers with valuable tools, including a Zagat™-like guide on parents’ rights in each state. The authors also highlight how far the U.S. lags behind the rest of the world when it comes to work-life policies and invite readers to join them in making America a more family-friendly nation. No baby shower is complete without it!

This is a true story. Rebecca Wright and her partner, John, adopted a young child. It wasn’t until later that they discovered just how needy he was and how their love and commitment to him would change his life. The strength they show in going through the complex process of helping Sam, who has attachment disorder, to grow into a rounded human being, will be an inspiration to anyone caring for children with problems, behavioural or emotional. Their story is funny, sad, angry, grateful and relieved in turns—the emotional roller coaster experienced by anyone dealing with child psychiatrists, educational psychologists, the state school system and social work departments. Rebecca understates the difficulties of a life totally focused on a very demanding child, bringing out instead the many positive rewards of life with Sam. The Back to Front Boy will inspire, challenge and comfort many about to adopt, considering adoption, or already parenting a difficult child. You are not alone. In their search for help and understanding, Rebecca, John and Sam have forged a family unit of incredible strength through the practice and discipline of love—the real thing.

A visiting American professor in Taiwan finds a newborn abandoned in a railway station. He and his wife, who are childless, adopt the baby. This act of human kindness sparks a providential chain of events that leads the couple to the discovery of their own Jewish heritage.

From the Dust Jacket: With about 70,000 domestic and international adoptions each year in the United States and Canada, adoption is a major means of building families in both countries. Its continued success can be inferred not only from the yearly statistics, but from a report issued in 2003 by the U.S. Census Bureau. To the surprise of many, the report announced the existence in the United States of 1.6 million adopted children under the age of eighteen.

Despite the statistics, adoption can be a frustrating and intimidating undertaking for the unprepared. This guide, written by a former social worker who has placed hundreds of children in foster and adoptive homes and a clinical psychologist who has counseled adopted children and parents, offers a comprehensive look at the adoption process by merging the best of social work with the best of psychology. It provides prospective adoptive parents with the insider information they need to navigate the process, and it provides students with the sort of expert opinion they need to grasp the academic theory they hear in the classroom.

Highlights include:

• An insider’s look at the home study process

• Advice on single-parent adoptions

• Advice on gay parent adoptions

• Advice on parenting adopted children

• A look at adoption procedures in both the United States and Canada

• Information about international adoptions

• A directory of adoption agencies in the United States and Canada

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About the Author: James L. Dickerson is a professional writer. He is a former social worker who was in charge of foster care and adoptions.

Mardi Allen is a psychologist. She was the 2002-2003 president of the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB), an alliance of state, provincial, and territorial agencies responsible for the licensure and discipline of all psychologists throughout the United States and Canada.

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By the Same Author: Adoptive and Foster Parent Screening: A Professional Guide for Professionals (2006, Brunner-Routledge) and How to Screen Adoptive and Foster Parents: A Workbook for Professionals and Students (with Daniel Pollack; 2011, NASW Press).

From the Dust Jacket: “A family is a family, no matter how it comes to us,” reassures one adoptive father in this luminous and groundbreaking portrait of today’s adoptive families.

Be My Baby is infused with the conviction of adoptive parents that they and their children were meant to be. In their own words, parents consider and speak about how their families came together, and how they’re coming along.

In a section devoted to the thoughts of adopted children from nine to nineteen, kids tell what’s on their minds, and how it feels to be adopted. Whether it’s the many children who say, “I feel really special being adopted,” or the one who observes, “Being adopted teaches you how to handle things, including being adopted,” their wisdom, good sense, and honesty are deeply affecting and empowering to all adoptive children.

In another part of the book, adult children look back on their lives, speaking of different life passages and speculating on how much or how little adoption has affected them. “In the end,” says one woman, “being adopted is part of the recipe of who you are, but it’s not the main ingredient.”

Finally, birth mothers come out of the shadows to speak of their love and concern for the children they chose not raise themselves, and their gratification, nonetheless, at finding them the right homes. Children, too, speak of the importance of knowing about birth parents in order to better know themselves.

Along with these truthful, comforting, and ebullient life stories, vibrant photographs illuminate the faces of adoptive families—be they domestic, interracial, international, open or closed adoptions—making Be My Baby an immediate and beautiful testimony to the dream—and reality—of creating a family of one’s own.

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About the Author: Gail Kinn is a writer and an editor who has ghostwritten many well-known books on family and personal growth. Be My Baby was inspired by her close relationship with her ten-year-old adopted niece, Sarah.

Ken Shung’s photography has appeared in many national magazines, including Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, Mirabella, More, Rolling Stone, and New York. He lives in New York City with his wife and daughter.