THREE WISE WOMEN de Gina Sorell

A witty and wildly enjoyable novel about the two adult daughters of an advice columnist and their meddling mother. Gina Sorell has created a captivating cast of characters and employs page-turning plotting and deep insight into family and relationship dynamics. Fans of Meg Wolitzer, Emma Straub, Claire Lombardo, Elinor Lipman, and Lian Dolan will love the Wise family.

THREE WISE WOMEN
by Gina Sorell
HarperCollins, January 2022

Famed advice columnist Wendy Wise has been teaching women how to live their best lives for four decades, so why are her own two daughters such a mess? Clementine, who followed her mother’s advice to the letter, has just discovered that her husband secretly funneled their home fund into his fledgling business, while Barb, who always did the opposite of Wendy’s advice, is juggling too many projects and has moved back in with her cheating girlfriend. When Wendy swoops into town to save the day, the girls discover that their mother has problems of her own to address, and the three Wise women must confront the disappointments and heartaches that have accumulated between them over the years. Together, they learn that life and love don’t always look the way we think they should, and that what you want isn’t always what you need. At once witty and wise, humorous and heartbreaking, THREE WISE WOMEN is a novel about aging and change, the struggle to move forward into uncharted territory, and the courage and power of love to embrace a future that looks different than the one we expected.

Gina Sorell’s debut novel, Mothers and Other Strangers, was published by Prospect Park Books in May, 2017, quickly went into three printings, made the best-seller lists at several bookstores, and continues to find new readers. The novel has received wonderful press in the United States and Canada, including Good Housekeeping (Riveting!), The Toronto Star (One Mother of a Story), The Globe and Mail (An author to watch!), San Francisco Book Review (4/5 Stars) and made the Best Of lists at Refinery 29 and Self Magazine. It was also chosen as a Great Group Reads of 2017, Foreword Reviews Favorite, Best for Bookclubs by Chapters Indigo Bookstores, and Library Journal called it A Felicitous Find.

TOMORROWMIND de Gabriella Rosen Kellerman & Martin Seligman

How to adapt and thrive in the workplace in an uncertain future filled with change and automation? TOMORROWMIND offers readers—workers, managers, and executives alike—explicit, evidence-based guidance on positive psychology practices to offer a hopeful road map of how to tackle these challenges head on.

TOMORROWMIND:
Flourishing in the Future of Work
by Gabriella Rosen Kellerman & Martin Seligman
Atria, Fall 2022/Spring 2023

In recent years a vast literature, from reports from all the major global political and economic bodies to popular books like Martin Ford’s The Rise of the Robots and Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee’s The Second Machine Age, has emerged to document and foretell the unprecedented scale of change facing the global workforce as the Age of Automation dawns. The evidence is overwhelming—and, at first glance, frightening. Forty-two percent of the job skills we use today will be obsolete by 2022. Eighty percent of US workers will have their jobs replaced, or their wages reduced, by automation in the new decade. We can expect, within the next ten years, that we won’t be choosing our careers once in a lifetime, but continually, across a wide range of industries. Our average job tenure will be under two years. Our job skills will expire every 18 months. More and more of our work will be done remotely, alone, or with rotating teams. The scale of the shift dwarfs that of all other eras, including the Industrial Revolution, and it poses a unique set of challenges to human wellbeing. In TOMORROWMIND, Gabriella Kellerman and Martin Seligman ask the question other thinkers on the subject have so far avoided: if, today, we sit on the cusp of the most turbulent changes to work society has ever faced, how will that change us? How will we survive? And more importantly, how can most of us thrive?
Surviving in this new world of work means, first, understanding these challenges, and second, intentionally developing skills to overcome them. TOMORROWMIND will offer readers—workers, managers, and executives alike—explicit, evidence-based guidance on navigating through the worst of what the future holds. Calling on the tenets of positive psychology and prospective psychology, disciplines pioneered by Seligman, and supported by the vast data emerging from BetterUp Labs—the basic science arm of the global virtual coaching company BetterUp, where their collaborators include Adam Grant, Roy Baumeister, Sonja Lyubomirsky, and Rebecca Goldstein—they argue that automation and constant change don’t have to be cause for alarm or despair. On the contrary: the coming disruption presents remarkable opportunities for each of us to push the boundaries of our cognitive and emotional skills. TOMORROWMIND will paint a picture of human thriving, not despite these challenges, but because of them.

Prince Harry has agreed to be the « Chief Impact Officer » for BetterUp, which is intricately connected to TOMORROWMIND. It’s too early to say whether/how Prince Harry will be involved in the promotion but the news of his hiring has greatly increased the profile of BetterUp. Read more about this here.

Gabriella Rosen Kellerman, MD is the Chief Innovation Officer for the $700M behavior change company BetterUp, and the head of BetterUp Labs, where she leads strategic efforts to develop the next generation of offerings in behavior change technology.
Martin Seligman, PhD is the Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, director of the Positive Psychology Center, former president of the American Psychological Association, and a scientific advisory board member of BetterUp Labs. Called the “founder of Positive Psychology,” he is the author of over 30 books for both scholarly and trade audiences, including FLOURISH, AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS, and LEARNED OPTIMISM. His books have been translated into fifty languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide.

THE MUTUAL FRIEND de Carter Bays

From the creator of the global hit TV show How I Met Your Mother comes a saga of modern life and love. Set in NYC, and with a cast of characters with noses pressed firmly up against their iPhone as they date, mate, and search for happiness, this sprawling romantic comedy is for the people who love the film Love Actually and are looking for a lighter escape from our day-to-day word.

THE MUTUAL FRIEND
by Carter Bays
Dutton, Summer/Fall 2022

THE MUTUAL FRIEND is an observational romantic comedy in the vein of Jane Austen, about how technology has changed the way we relate to the world and each other, and how we relate to that technology. It takes place over the summer of 2015, in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Our hero, Alice Quick, is a 26-year-old former classical pianist child prodigy, now floating through life as a nanny. Alice has a dream: She wants to be a doctor. Once upon a time, in an impassioned Facebook post, Alice announced to all her friends that she’s finally gonna get her act together, take the MCAT, apply to medical school, and make something of her life. That post got hundreds of likes. But now it’s been three years and she still hasn’t done any of it. This summer, that’s all going to change. One day in June, when Alice moves in with her wild new roommate Roxy, and then goes on an unplanned blind date with a somewhat-mysterious 40-year-old bachelor named Bob, the wheels are set in motion for Alice to sign up for the MCAT, and spend the next 81 days studying like crazy, so she can pass the test and finally get into Medical School. But it’s not going to be easy. To complete her journey, Alice must do battle with a dragon, and the name of this dragon is distraction…
THE MUTUAL FRIEND is an immersive and richly-detailed exploration of life in two different worlds – the world outside our phones, and the world inside our phones – and how hard it has become to say for sure which one is real.

Carter Bays is the creator of the show How I Met Your Mother, which ran on CBS for nine years. The show received thirty Emmy nominations and won ten, including one for best song, which was written by Bays. The show now streams on Hulu and has a cult following. Carter lives in LA with his wife and three children.

MEREDITH, ALONE de Claire Alexander

An utterly charming debut reading group novel by Scottish journalist Claire Alexander, MEREDITH, ALONE follows a perfectly ordinary woman with one extraordinary thing about herself – she hasn’t left her home in three years. A warm and uplifting novel that also deals with dark themes around mental illness.

MEREDITH, ALONE
by Claire Alexander
Michael Joseph UK / Grand Central US, 2022

My name is Meredith Maggs, and I haven’t left my home for 1,215 days.” Meredith Maggs is an independent woman living in Glasgow, with no responsibilities apart from her cat. She has a successful job, likes to cook, and has regular visits from her best friend Sadie and Sadie’s children. But Meredith is not your average 39 year old. Following a traumatic event and the breakdown of family relationships, she hasn’t left home for more than three years. Meredith would rather not think about how her old life used to be – boyfriends, a close relationship with her sister, and a bustling social life. But when two new people enter her life, asking a lot of unwanted questions about her past, Meredith is forced to confront it at last. And, slowly, she realises that her journey towards happiness and self-acceptance involves much more than walking out of her front door.

Claire Alexander lives on the west coast of Scotland with her husband and children. During her career as a freelance writer, she has written for The Washington Post, The Independent, The Huffington Post and Glamour. In 2019, one of her essays was published in the award-winning literary anthology We Got This: Solo Mom Stories of Grit, Heart, and Humor. When she’s not writing or parenting, she’s on her paddle board, thinking about her next book.

THE GIRLS WHO STEPPED OUT OF LINE de Mari K. Eder

For fans of Radium Girls and history and WWII buffs, THE GIRLS WHO STEPPED OUT OF LINE takes you inside the lives and experiences of 15 unknown women heroes from the Greatest Generation, the women who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen during WWII―in and out of uniform, for theirs is a legacy destined to embolden generations of women to come.

THE GIRLS WHO STEPPED OUT OF LINE:
Untold Stories of the Women Who Changed the Course of World War II
by Mari K. Eder
Sourcebooks, August 2021

The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line are the heroes of the Greatest Generation that you hardly ever hear about. These women who did extraordinary things didn’t expect thanks and shied away from medals and recognition. Despite their amazing accomplishments, they’ve gone mostly unheralded and unrewarded. No longer. These are the women of World War II who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen―in and out of uniform. Liane B. Russell fled Austria with nothing and later became a renowned U.S. scientist whose research on the effects of radiation on embryos made a difference to thousands of lives. Gena Turgel was a prisoner who worked in the hospital at Bergen-Belsen and cared for the young Anne Frank, who was dying of typhus. Gena survived and went on to write a memoir and spent her life educating children about the Holocaust. Ida and Louise Cook were British sisters who repeatedly smuggled out jewelry and furs and served as sponsors for refugees, and they also established temporary housing for immigrant families in London. Retired U.S. Army Major General Mari K. Eder wrote this book because she knew their stories needed to be told―and the sooner the better. For theirs is a legacy destined to embolden generations of women to come.

Mari K. Eder is a retired U.S. Army Major General, a renowned speaker and author, and a thought leader on strategic communication and leadership. General Eder is the former Commanding General of the U.S. Army Reserve Joint and Special Troops Support Command, former Deputy Chief of the Army Reserve and former Deputy Chief of Public Affairs for the U.S. Army. General Eder is the author of Leading the Narrative: The Case for Strategic Communication, published by the Naval Institute Press.