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Blood offers empowering, period-positive, no-nonsense facts about the science, medicine and myths surrounding menstruation. Dr. Jen answers period-related questions, including: What exactly happens during menstruation? How heavy is too heavy? How much should periods hurt? and provides essential information about topics such as: * Why do we menstruate? * The endometrium’s (the uterine lining’s) fascinating connection to the immune system * The impact of stress, vaccines, and health on the menstrual cycle * Menstrual migraines, PMS, and period diarrhea (yes, it’s a thing, unfortunately) * Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) *Fibroids and other causes of heavy bleeding * Endometriosis and the latest treatments *Legitimate menstrual products, and the facts behind toxic shock syndrome.

In 1936 Kentucky, Cussy Mary Carter works for the Pack Horse Library Project, delivering books to the needy in the backcountry of Kentucky. Born with a genetic condition that gives her blue skin, Cussy is viewed with suspicion by most of her customers. However, nothing will stop her from delivering the joy of books to those living in the back hollers.

An Oprah's Buzziest Books Pick for May | Indie Next Pick | LibraryReads Pick | Southern Independent Book Alliance (SIBA) Spring OKRA PICK

This is Gabe Montesanti's memoir of growing up queer in a conservative Midwestern town and feeling uncomfortable in her own skin until she finds community and a sense of belonging joining Arch Rival, one of the top-ranked roller derby leagues in the world. Gabe instantly falls in love with the sport’s roughness, intensity, and open embrace of people who are literally and figuratively scarred. But when Gabe suffers a catastrophic injury, she can no longer ignore the parallels between the physicality of roller derby and the unresolved trauma of her upbringing. Rendered inactive, forced to be still, Gabe realizes she needs to heal her emotional wounds as much as her physical ones; she must confront her fear and self-diminishment in order to feel truly alive.

One of the Best Books of the Year: Book Riot

Botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer's best-selling book Braiding Sweetgrass is adapted for a young adult audience by children's author Monique Gray Smith, bringing Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the lessons of plant life to a new generation.

It is 1919 and Elizabeth Hughes, the eleven-year-old daughter of America's most-distinguished jurist and politician, Charles Evans Hughes, has been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. It is essentially a death sentence. The only accepted form of treatment – starvation – whittles her down to forty-five pounds skin and bones. Miles away, Canadian researchers Frederick Banting and Charles Best manage to identify and purify insulin from animal pancreases – a miracle soon marred by scientific jealousy, intense business competition and fistfights. In a race against time and a ravaging disease, Elizabeth becomes one of the first diabetics to receive insulin injections – all while its discoverers and a little known pharmaceutical company struggle to make it available to the rest of the world. Written with authentic detail and suspense, Breakthrough relives the heartwarming true story of the discovery of insulin.

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Breastfeeding Doesn’t Need to Suck is an evidence-based guide full of practical advice to enhance your physical and psychological well-being so that you and your baby can thrive. The book aims to help expectant and new mothers reach their breastfeeding goals and care for their babies with confidence. While new motherhood is challenging, there are ways to make it easier. A mother’s mental and physical health are essential, and that is the focus of this book. The scientific literature tells us that breastfeeding creates a powerful physiological response in the mother, which protects her mental health. When breastfeeding is going well, it prompts a powerful physiological mechanism that can help minimize the stress and inflammatory responses that underlie depression, anxiety, and PTSD.

Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head.

A New York Times Bestseller | A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2020 | Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR

Intelligent, popular, handsome, and wealthy, sixteen-year-old Nick Andreas is pretty much perfect—on the outside, at least. What no one knows—not even his best friend—is the terror and anger that Nick faces every time he is alone with his father. Then he and Caitlin fall in love, and Nick thinks his problems are over. Caitlin is the one person he can confide in, the only person who understands him. But when Nick’s anger and jealousy overtake him, things begin to spiral out of control and Nick realizes that he’s more his father’s son than he wants to be. Now Nick must confront his inner demons to stop the history of violence from repeating itself.

Winner of the Black-Eyed Susan Award | An ALA Top 10 Best Book for Young Adults | An International Reading Association Young Adult Choices List Pick | A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age Pick

Inspired by the real case of a convicted con woman and serial killer—the “Konkatsu Killer”—Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance, and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan. Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in the Tokyo Detention House convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, whom she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination, but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew, and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies - an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades - the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care.