My name is Laura Cathcart Robbins and I am the author of the ‘Quit Lit’ memoir, Stash, My Life In Hiding. When I got sober in 2008 I was full of shame and reluctant to share my struggles with addiction with my friends. Because I’ve always been a voracious reader, I scoured bookstores for stories like mine. It was on these shelves that I found my community, addiction stories to which I could relate and connect. These books were the foundation of my recovery. Now they live on my bookshelves at home and I lend them (with enthusiasm) to anyone who wants to examine their relationship with substances.
After years of hiding her addiction from everyone—from stockpiling pills in her Louboutins to elaborately scheduling withdrawals between PTA meetings, baby showers, and tennis matches—Laura Cathcart Robbins settles into a complicated purgatory. She learns the hard way that privilege doesn’t protect you from pain. Facing divorce, the possibility of a grueling custody battle, and internalized racism, Robbins wonders just how much more she can take.
With courage and candid openness, she reveals how she managed to begin the journey towards sobriety and unexpectedly finding new love. Robbins harrowingly illustrates taking down the wall she built around herself and what it means to be Black in a startingly white world. Stash is the story of how badly the facade she created had to shatter before Laura could reconnect to her true self.
Quit Like A Woman (QLAW) gave a whole new perspective on ‘big alcohol” and the messaging we all receive every day about how alcohol is a panacea for anything that causes us discomfort.
Holly’s description of her own struggles with drinking and her sobriety journey allowed me to see my own recovery through a different lens. I loved how celebrities posted about QLAW on social media, crediting it for their sobriety. And was especially delighted to see it featured in And Just Like That (the Sex and The City series sequel built an entire episode around it).
I recommend this book to literally everyone who wants to examine their relationship with alcohol. But I especially recommend it to women because of how QLAW calls out dating culture for permitting and encouraging alcohol use as a so-called social lubricant.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An unflinching examination of how our drinking culture hurts women and a gorgeous memoir of how one woman healed herself.”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed
“You don’t know how much you need this book, or maybe you do. Either way, it will save your life.”—Melissa Hartwig Urban, Whole30 co-founder and CEO
The founder of the first female-focused recovery program offers a groundbreaking look at alcohol and a radical new path to sobriety.
We live in a world obsessed with drinking. We drink at baby showers and work events, brunch and book…
I read the first chapter of Wild when I was getting sober, and remember actually looking around to see if anyone else was witnessing what felt like a phenomenon.
I was astounded that someone could write that honestly about their life. I didn’t know it was okay to write about drug use and grief so unapologetically. Wild not only changed how I felt about myself, but it changed the way I put my own words on the page.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the…
Besides the fact that Laura and I have so much in common (our first name, our publication date, our genre), I am a huge fan of the way she makes recovery accessible to everyone.
In Push Off From Here, Laura uses her experience to encourage the reader to explore their relationship with substances. Her ‘nine essential truths to get you through sobriety and everything else’ are simple, spot-on, and user-friendly.
From the bestselling author of We Are the Luckiest and founder of the international recovery community The Luckiest Club comes a modern exploration of addiction that offers nine foundational building blocks that anyone at any stage of sobriety can use.
No matter how far astray you’ve gone or how many times you’ve tried and failed before, as long as you’re still sitting here, breathing, and reading these words, freedom and joy are still possible.
When Laura McKowen was two years sober, she received an email from a woman whose sister was struggling with alcohol addiction. McKowen had barely climbed out…
I read this book until my eyes burned when I first got sober.
I resonated deeply with Augusten’s wit, his hilarious resistance to sobriety, and his ultimate surrender. It was the first addiction memoir that made me laugh out loud and boy, did I need a laugh.
When I was two years sober I went to New York and did a little “Dry” recovery tour, popping into many of the recovery spaces he wrote about so beautifully in Dry.
From the New York Times Bestselling author of Running With Scissors comes the story of one man trying to out-drink his memories, outlast his demons, and outrun his past.
“I was addicted to “Bewitched” as a kid. I worshipped Darren Stevens the First. When he’d come home from work and Samantha would say, ‘Darren, would you like me to fix you a drink?’ He’d always rest his briefcase on the table below the mirror in the foyer, wipe his forehead with a monogrammed handkerchief and say, ‘Better make it a double.’” (from Chapter Two)
Even if this memoir weren’t a “Reece’s pick,” I would have devoured it (pun intended).
Christie is a successful attorney who’s been binging and purging since the seventh grade. She invites us in as she carefully counts and eats apples every night for dessert (“I spent more on apples than I spent on cable, gas, and transportation combined”).
Christie takes the reader with her into the recovery rooms and gives us a ring-side seat to her journey. I could (and will) read this book again and again and again.
'Every page of this incredible memoir by Christie Tate had me thinking, "I wish I had read this book when I was 25. It would have helped me so much!"' Reese Witherspoon
'This unrestrained memoir is a transporting experience and one of the most startlingly hopeful books I have ever read. It will make you want to get better, whatever better means for you.' Lisa Taddeo, New York Times bestselling author of Three Women
For fans of Three Women and Everything I Know About Love comes a refreshingly original memoir about self-discovery, loneliness and love.…
Tiny Tales is a collection of 365 bite-sized stories and poems, written each day of 2023 to a one-word prompt created by one of the official #vss365 (very short story, 365 days a year) ambassadors on Twitter ("X").
Tweet-sized (280 characters or fewer) storytelling (aka "Twitterature") inspires experimentation and variety, and that is exactly what you'll find in this collection of compositions ranging from true stories to playful limericks, romantic fiction to war-inspired tales, wistful observations from a long-ago childhood to fantastical imaginings of a distant future.
Whether you want to read a story a day or use the prompts (included in their original order at the end of the book) as a springboard to jumpstart your own writing, Tiny Tales will keep you entertained and inspired throughout the year. It is a perfect gift to yourself or for any aspiring or avid writer in your life.
Tiny Tales is a collection of 365 bite-sized stories and poems, written each day of 2023 to a one-word prompt created by one of the official #vss365 (very short story, 365 days a year) ambassadors on Twitter ("X"). Tweet-sized (280 characters or fewer) storytelling (aka "Twitterature") inspires experimentation and variety, and that is exactly what you'll find in this collection of compositions ranging from true stories to playful limericks, romantic fiction to war-inspired tales, wistful observations from a long-ago childhood to fantastical imaginings of a distant future.
Whether you want to read a story a day or use the prompts…
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