In Jenny Allen's debut essay collection, the longtime humorist and performer declares no subject too sacred, no boundary impassable. One moment she’s flirting shamelessly --- and unsuccessfully --- with a younger man at a wedding; the next she’s stumbling upon X-rated images on her daughter’s computer. She ponders the connection between her ex-husband’s questions about the location of their silverware, and the divorce that came a year later. While undergoing chemotherapy, she experiments with being a “wig person.” And she considers those perplexing questions that we never pause to ask: Why do people say “It is what it is”? What’s the point of fat-free half-and-half ? And haven’t we heard enough about memes?

When Joan Juliet Buck became the first and only American woman ever to fill Paris Vogue's coveted position of Editor in Chief, she had the means to recreate for her aging father --- now a widower --- the life he’d enjoyed during his high-flying years, a splendid illusion of glamorous excess that could not be sustained indefinitely. Joan’s memoir tells the story of a life lived in the best places at the most interesting times: London and New York in the swinging 1960s, Rome and Milan in the dangerous 1970s, Paris in the heady 1980s and 1990s. But when her fantasy life at Vogue came to an end, she had to find out who she was after all those years of make-believe.

Daphne Merkin has been hospitalized three times: first, in grade school, for childhood depression; years later, after her daughter was born, for severe postpartum depression; and later still, after her mother died, for obsessive suicidal thinking. Recounting this series of hospitalizations, as well as her visits to myriad therapists and psychopharmacologists, Merkin fearlessly offers what the child psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz calls “the inside view of navigating a chronic psychiatric illness to a realistic outcome.” In this dark yet vital memoir, Merkin describes not only the harrowing sorrow that she has known all her life, but also her early, redemptive love of reading and gradual emergence as a writer.

From acclaimed biographer Patricia Bosworth comes a series of vivid confessions about her remarkable journey into womanhood. Married and divorced from an abusive husband before she’s 20, she joins the famed Actors Studio. She takes classes with Lee Strasberg alongside Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman and others; she works on Broadway opposite Paul Muni, Helen Hayes and Elaine Stritch; Gore Vidal and Elia Kazan become her mentors. Her anecdotes of theatre’s Golden Age have never been told before. At the zenith of her career, about to film The Nun’s Story with Audrey Hepburn, Patricia faces a decision that changes her forever.

Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” continues to thrill and unsettle readers nearly seven decades after it was first published. This graphic adaptation by Jackson’s grandson, Miles Hyman, allows readers to experience “The Lottery” as never before, or to discover it anew. He has crafted an eerie vision of the hamlet where the tale unfolds and the unforgettable ritual its inhabitants set into motion. Hyman’s full-color, meticulously detailed panels create a noirish atmosphere that adds a new dimension of dread to the original story.

Growing older can be unsettling and surprising. (How on earth did this happen? Where did the years go?) So what better way to deal with this new stage of life than to laugh about your new reality? DIE LAUGHING includes more than enough jokes (not to mention cartoons!) to let that laughter burst out. Whether it’s dealing with doctors, dating in one’s 70s, or unexpected bodily changes (not to mention funny noises), some things are easier to face with a smile of recognition. That’s why DIE LAUGHING is the perfect gift for your parents, anyone celebrating a significant birthday, or any boomer with a sense of humor whose age begins with a six or higher.

Tracy Peacock Tynan grew up in London in the 1950s and '60s, privy to her parents’ glamorous parties and famous friends. When Tracy started writing about her life, she found that clothing was the focus of many of her stories. She recalls her father’s dandy attire and her mother’s Pucci dresses, as well as her parents’ rancorous marriage and divorce, her father’s prodigious talents and celebrity lifestyle, and her mother’s lifelong struggle with addiction. Relationships, marriage, children, stepchildren, blended families, her parent’s decline and deaths, and her work as a costume designer are all recounted with the special joy that can only come from finding the perfect outfit.

Emilia Brown has spent a frugal, useful and wholly restrained life in Ashville, a small town in Rhode Island. She makes a modest living cleaning and running errands at the local beauty parlor. When the grand dame of Ashville passes away, Mrs. Brown is called upon to inventory her estate and comes across a dress that changes everything. It’s a simple yet exquisitely tailored Oscar de la Renta sheath and jacket --- a suit that Mrs. Brown realizes, with startling clarity, will say everything she has ever wished to convey. She must have it. And so she begins her odyssey to purchase it.

In 2008, Isabelle appears to have it all: an Upper West Side apartment, three healthy children, a handsome husband and a high-powered job. But her reality is something else. Her work environment resembles a 1980s frat party, her husband feels that employment is beneath him, and the bulk of childcare and homecare still falls to Belle. As she deals with her former college fiancé, Henry, becoming her biggest client and a group of sexually harrassed women beginning to organize, Belle can sense the financial markets heading toward their soon-to-be historic crash and that something has to give.

Paul Lisicky creates a compelling collage of scenes and images drawn from two long-term relationships --- one with a female novelist and the other with his ex-husband, a poet. The contours of these relationships shift constantly. Denise and Paul, stretched by the demands of their writing lives, drift apart, and Paul's romance begins to falter. And the world around them is frail: environmental catastrophes like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, natural disasters like the earthquake in Haiti and local disturbances make an unsettling backdrop to the pressing concerns of Denise's cancer diagnosis and Paul's impending breakup.