Bittersweet

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Sadness is a superpower. In her new masterpiece, the author of the bestselling phenomenon Quiet reveals the power of a bittersweet outlook on life, and why we’ve been so blind to its value. “Bittersweet grabs you by the heart and doesn’t let go.”—BRENÉ BROWN, author of Atlas of the Heart “Susan Cain has described and validated my existence once again!”—GLENNON DOYLE, author of Untamed “A sparkling ode to the beauty of the human condition.”—ADAM GRANT, author of Think Again ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022—Oprah Daily, BookPage Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of long­ing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute aware­ness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired. If you’ve ever wondered why you like sad music . . . If you find comfort or inspiration in a rainy day . . . If you react intensely to music, art, nature, and beauty . . . Then you probably identify with the bitter­sweet state of mind. With Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an un­tapped power hidden in plain sight. Now she em­ploys the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and how embracing the bittersweetness at the heart of life is the true path to creativity, con­nection, and transcendence. Cain shows how a bittersweet state of mind is the quiet force that helps us transcend our personal and collective pain. If we don’t acknowledge our own heartache, she says, we can end up inflicting it on others via abuse, domination, or neglect. But if we realize that all humans know—or will know—loss and suffering, we can turn toward one another. At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, Bittersweet brings us together in deep and unexpected ways.

THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER -- FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER QUIET: THE POWER OF INTROVERTS IN A WORLD THAT CAN'T STOP TALKING In her inspiring new masterpiece, the author of the bestselling phenomenon Quiet describes her powerful quest to understand how love, loss and sorrow make us whole - revealing the power of a bittersweet outlook on life. Bittersweetness is a tendency towards states of longing, poignancy and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death - bitter and sweet - are forever paired. If you seek out beauty in your everyday life . . . If you find comfort or inspiration in a rainy day . . . If you react intensely to music, art and nature . . . Then you probably identify with the bittersweet state of mind. With Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an untapped power hidden in plain sight. Now she employs the same mix of research, storytelling and memoir to explore how embracing the bittersweetness at the heart of life is the true path to creativity and connection. Cain shows movingly how a bittersweet state of mind - though we've been blind to its value - is the quiet force that helps us transcend our personal and collective pain. It can change the way we live, the way we work and the way we love. If we realize that all humans know - or will know - loss and suffering, we can turn towards one another. At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, Bittersweet brings us together in deep and unexpected ways.

Hudson Avery gave up a promising competetive ice skating career after her parents divorced when she was fourteen years old and now spends her time baking cupcakes and helping out in her mother's upstate New York diner, but when she gets a chance at a scholarship and starts coaching the boys' hockey team, she realizes that she is not through with ice skating after all.

Winning a scholarship to a prestigious college where she befriends a beautiful girl of privilege, unassuming Mabel joins her friend during a lakeside summer surrounded by wealthy vacationers only to discover morally ambiguous truths about her friend's family fortune.

When Sam is diagnosed with diabetes, her whole world changes -- can she learn to handle it? Sam is a normal 12-year-old. She loves ice cream, sleepovers, Christmas, and her soccer team (future team captain). What doesn't she love? Her super-annoying teenage brother, how her little sisters mess up the house and talk incessantly, and especially, how completely weird she is feeling. Lately, Sam has been crazy hungry and thirsty. She's tired all the time, and, most humiliating of all, she's started wetting the bed like a baby. One day, after a collapse at a soccer game, she wakes up in the hospital to find out she's got Type 1 diabetes. Suddenly everything is different: not just her diet and the injections, but her relationships with her family and her friends. Will she learn to handle it? This poignant story of a young girl coming to terms with a serious diagnosis, is a hopeful tale about overcoming life's hurdles.

A personal memoir explores the intertwined natures of happiness and sadness, discussing how bitter experiences balance out the sweetness in life and how change can be an opportunity for growth and a function of God's graciousness.

Love is the last thing on Zoe's mind. Widowed at only twenty-six, she's just trying to get through one lonely day at a time as she grieves her late husband, and finds the energy to take care of her infant son. As Zoe bravely tries to hold herself together, her husband's cousin and business partner, Adam, offers his support and friendship. Shattered by her loss, Zoe is distant and resentful at first, but Adam gently persists, and Zoe's reserve soon begins to crumble... Adam knows that Zoe needs time to heal but finds himself more and more attracted to her. He knows he must not act on these forbidden feelings, but they just won't go away... Noelle Adams's Bittersweet is a poignant, fearless exploration of friendship, loss, new beginnings, and the healing power of love.

Bittersweet is a collage representing both the motherland and Scarborough, Ontario. It considers memory using photographs, maps, language, and folklore as well as collective memory. Bringing together definitions, recipes, cartography, photo albums, and oral stories, it meditates on themes of obscured history, theft, time, and liminality. The poems journey from Toronto to Guyana to India, and Scarborough remains omnipresent, a place much like Guyana, with a mix of races and a strong, active, and boisterous youthful presence.

Laney McCain has unabashedly had her sights set on Galen O'Sullivan for years. And though Galen has treated her as nothing more than his best friend's pesky tag-along sister, Laney dares hope that now is the time he will open his eyes and truly recognize the woman she's become. But the arrival of Ishmael and Ivy Grubb, squatters on the O'Sullivans' land, diverts Galen's attention. Though the Grubbs are crass and uneducated, Galen shows mercy and allows them to stay in exchange for help around the farm. But it becomes a decision he lives to regret.... Sometimes the Journey to Love Is Truly Bittersweet

“Southern fiction at its finest . . . a mix of heart and adventure” from the author of The Education of Dixie Dupree (Historical Novel Society). Set in the Carolinas in the 1940s, The Road to Bittersweet is a beautifully written, evocative account of a young woman reckoning not just with the unforgiving landscape, but with the rocky emotional terrain that leads from innocence to wisdom. For fourteen-year-old Wallis Ann Stamper and her family, life in the Appalachian Mountains is simple and satisfying, though not for the tenderhearted. While her older sister, Laci—a mute, musically gifted savant—is constantly watched over and protected, Wallis Ann is as practical and sturdy as her name. When the Tuckasegee River bursts its banks, forcing them to flee in the middle of the night, those qualities save her life. But though her family is eventually reunited, the tragedy opens Wallis Ann’s eyes to a world beyond the creek that’s borne their name for generations. Carrying what’s left of their possessions, the Stampers begin another perilous journey from their ruined home to the hill country of South Carolina. Wallis Ann’s blossoming friendship with Clayton, a high diving performer for a traveling show, sparks a new opportunity, and the family joins as a singing group. But Clayton’s attention to Laci drives a wedge between the two sisters. As jealousy and betrayal threaten to accomplish what hardship never could—divide the family for good—Wallis Ann makes a decision that will transform them all in unforeseeable ways . . . “You will fall in love with Wallis Ann Stamper.” —Sandra Dallas, New York Times bestselling author

One of medicine's most remarkable therapeutic triumphs was the discovery of insulin in 1921. The drug produced astonishing results, rescuing children and adults from the deadly grip of diabetes. But as Chris Feudtner demonstrates, the subsequent transformation of the disease from a fatal condition into a chronic illness is a story of success tinged with irony, a revealing saga that illuminates the complex human consequences of medical intervention. Bittersweet chronicles this history of diabetes through the compelling perspectives of people who lived with this disease. Drawing on a remarkable body of letters exchanged between patients or their parents and Dr. Elliot P. Joslin and the staff of physicians at his famed Boston clinic, Feudtner examines the experience of living with diabetes across the twentieth century, highlighting changes in treatment and their profound effects on patients' lives. Although focused on juvenile-onset, or Type 1, diabetes, the themes explored in Bittersweet have implications for our understanding of adult-onset, or Type 2, diabetes, as well as a host of other diseases that, thanks to drugs or medical advances, are being transformed from acute to chronic conditions. Indeed, the tale of diabetes in the post-insulin era provides an ideal opportunity for exploring the larger questions of how medicine changes our lives.

In Bittersweet, Danielle Steel has written a novel for our times, a story of choices and new beginnings. India Taylor lived in a world of manicured lawns and neatly maintained calendars: a merry-go-round of Little League, piano lessons, and Cape Cod summer vacations. With four wonderful children, India believed in commitment and sacrifice, just as she believed in Doug, the man she married 17 years before. For India, this was the promise she made, the life she had chosen--not the award-winning career as a photojournalist she once had. It was a choice she had never truly regretted. Until she begins to regret it with all her heart. India couldn't pinpoint the exact moment. Perhaps it was the last time her agent called, begging her to take an assignment Doug insisted she turn down. Or perhaps it was when Doug told her he thought of her as a companion and someone to take care of their kids, and not much more. At that moment, the price of the sacrifices she'd made began to seem high. And then, she met Paul Ward. A Wall Street tycoon married to a bestselling author, Paul lived life on his own terms, traveling the world on his own yacht. India hadn't planned to become Paul's friend. Anything more was unthinkable. Yet talking to Paul was so easy. India could share her dreams with him, and offer comfort when Paul suffers a heartbreak of his own. And while Paul urges India to reclaim her career, Doug is adamantly against it, determined to keep her tied to the home. But with Paul's encouragement, India slowly, painfully, begins to break free, and find herself again. Rediscovering her creativity and her courage, India uses Paul like a beacon on the horizon, sharing intimate phone conversations with a man half a world away, a man who never stops reminding her of all that is possible for her. India is changing, and nothing in her life will ever be the same again. Not her marriage. Not her friendship with Paul. And when India is presented with an irresistible opportunity, she makes a heart-wrenching decision, leaving a safe, familiar place-and the people she loves there-to move into the terror of the unknown. Bittersweet is her story, a story of freedom, of having dreams and making choices to find them. With unerring insight, Danielle Steel has created a moving portrait of a woman who dares to embark on a new adventure and the man who helps her get there. Her painful, exhilarating journey inspires us all.

It's the worst summer on record for nearly-twelve-year-old Callie Boone. Not only has she been ditched by her best friend for someone more "awesome", but she may never live down her recent humiliation at the community pool. Her ex-drillsargeant mom is on her case, and her uncle Danny has moved in--along with cages of ferrets that he hopes to make his fortune breeding as pets, and which Callie's cranky grandma despises. The only things keeping her afloat are dive practices with her dad and a secret Olympic dream. That is, until a boy named Hoot moves in next door.But just when everything finally seems to be going her way, disaster strikes--one day she comes home to an ambulance in the driveway... only it's not her crotchety old grandma who's being taken away, it's her beloved dad. Now it's up to Callie to grow up fast and hold on tight to what matters most: her friendship with Hoot, the love of her family and a newfound belief in herself.This is a story that will make readers laugh and cry. There are no magic spells or paranormal characters, and the only fantasy is Callie's athletic dream. It's real, honest, crazy everyday life with all the joy and the agony that come with the territory.

In telling the story of her own struggle to learn how to care for her aging and ailing mother, a journalist offers helpful insights and advice to other caregivers who feel overwhelmed. Reprint.