An in-depth look at pregnancy through a scientific and feminist lens challenges popular assumptions, offers help for navigating contradictions, and provides facts to aid with making informed decisions.

"It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans. Their reunion sets her own life down a startling path. Vivid, tender, darkly funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the...

Ilesa, Nigeria. Ever since they first met and fell in love at University, Yejide and Akin have agreed: polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage - after consulting fertility doctors and healers and trying strange teas and unlikely cures - Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she has time - until her in-laws arrive on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin's second wife. Furious, shocked, and livid with jealousy,...

"Nantucket was their paradise--until reality came barging in. Mae Benson was happy--a beloved wife, beloved mother, beloved neighbor. But even she wasn't ready for the tragedy looming around the corner. The accident that claims her husband's life rocks the whole family. And it's not the only thing stirring up trouble. Mae's oldest, Eliza, is facing an unexpected pregnancy with a fiance she no longer wants to be with. Her daughter Holly is caught in...

"A heartrending story about a young mother's fight to keep her daughter and the winds of fortune that tear them apart, by the New York Times bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things and The Last Year of the War. California, 1938--When she loses her parents in an accident, sixteen-year-old Rosanne is taken in by the owners of the vineyard where she has lived her whole life as the vinedresser's daughter. She moves into Celine and Truman Calvert's...

"A dazzling debut novel from an exciting new voice, The Mothers is a surprising story about young love, a big secret in a small community--and the things that ultimately haunt us most. Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett's mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret. "All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we'd...

Pregnancy--unquestionably one of the most profound, meaningful experiences of adulthood--can reduce otherwise intelligent women to, well, babies. Pregnant women are told to avoid cold cuts, sushi, alcohol, and coffee without ever being told why these are forbidden. Rules for prenatal testing are similarly unexplained. Moms-to-be desperately want a resource that empowers them to make their own right choices. When award-winning economist Emily Oster...

Hannah Matthews prides herself on being able to handle any crisis. But with her grandmother balking at going into a retirement home, her daughter unexpectedly pregnant and an old flame suddenly underfoot, Hannah is facing a few crises of her own. And being back home on Seaview Key is most definitely adding to the stress.

As children, Lexie and Annie were incredibly close. Bonded by the death of their beloved father, they weathered the storms of life together. When Lexie leaves home to follow her dream, Annie is forced to turn to her leather-bound journal as the only place she can confide her deepest secrets and fears. As adults, sisters Lexie and Annie could not be more different. Lexie is a successful doctor and happily engaged. Annie is an addict-- a thief, a liar...

From the author of the Oprah Book Club Selection An American Marriage, here is an emotionally powerful novel that "succeeds mightily...truly a wonderful story" (Boston Globe).
Aria is no stranger to tragedy — as a young girl, she and her older sister and mother survived a car crash that took the lives of their father and beloved baby sister. And although relations with her remaining family are strained, she's done her best to...