The Covenant of Water

Abraham Verghese



Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Imbued with humor, deep emotion, and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

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The Berry Pickers

Amanda Peters

A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years. July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret. For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.

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45% of Girls Stop Playing Sport By Age 14 Due to Low Body Confidence - What Can We Do?

Did you know that 45% of girls stop playing sports by age 14 due to low body confidence? That is a shocking and devastating statistic. This was shown to an audience of 123.4 million last Sunday when Dove, in partnership with Nike, aired a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl as part of “The Self-Esteem Project.” In a world where what girls see on social media, influencers on YouTube on their favorite shows, and in advertising powerfully shape perceptions and behaviors, Dove's Super Bowl ad presents a critical conversation starter about the intersection of self-esteem, body image, and performance in societal contexts. 

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The Power of Self-Compassion: A Strategy for Smoother Parenting



Some months ago, I got back into therapy, and I remember the first day back, the therapist asked me, “Do you do a self-compassion practice?” I remember the moment because I had one of those little head-scratching kind of moments. I answered something like, “Gosh, I do not, and I don’t think it would really work for me, but I am not sure why I think this.”  

I have been doing a mindfulness practice for years now, including loving-kindness, but I have not been doing self-compassion work. 



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