Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop

The insightful, witty and often laugh-out-loud stories in Samantha Schoech's My Mother's Boyfriends: Stories are populated by angels, earthquakes, sibling complexity, love affairs gone bad and children left to figure it out on their own. Woven throughout is an abididing sympathy for the mess-ups, bad choices and missteps humans make despite their best intentions.

How far are you prepared to go to save the life of someone you love? In If You'd Only Listen: A Medical Memoir of Gaslighting, Grit & Grace, Rosie Sorenson prevails over a medical system that seemed bent on defeating her and her husband.

Little girls absolutely love their cats. But when it comes to their brothers, they have two reactions: Either they adore them — or want to trade them for a more refined sibling, one who’s less embarrassing, more sympatico and well, more "cat-like."