Books by Ayelet Waldman

'Ayelet Waldman is fearless' - Rebecca Solnit'Genuinely brave and human' - The New York Times'Wildly brilliant' - ElleThe true story of how a renowned writer's struggle with mood storms led her to try a remedy as drastic as it is forbidden: microdoses of LSD. Her fascinating journey provides a window into one family and the complex world of a once-infamous drug seen through new eyes.When a small vial arrives in her mailbox from 'Lewis Carroll,' Ayelet Waldman is at a low point. Her mood storms have become intolerably severe; she has tried nearly every medication possible; her husband and children are suffering with her. So she opens the vial, places two drops on her tongue, and joins the ranks of an underground but increasingly vocal group of scientists and civilians successfully using therapeutic microdoses of LSD. As Waldman charts her experience over the course of a month - bursts of productivity, sleepless nights, a newfound sense of equanimity - she also explores the history and mythology of LSD, the cutting-edge research into the drug, and the byzantine policies that control it. Drawing on her experience as a federal public defender, and as the mother of teenagers, and her research into the therapeutic value of psychedelics, Waldman has produced a book that is eye-opening, often hilarious, and utterly enthralling.

'A NOVEL TO LOVE AND TREASURE' PHILIPPA GREGORY'REMARKABLE' MICHAEL ONDAATJE'POIGNANTLY MOVING' JOYCE CAROL OATES Salzburg, 1946. A fugitive train loaded with the plunder of a doomed people. A dazzling, jewel-encrusted, peacock-shaped pendant. And three men - an American lieutenant who fought in WWII, an Israeli-born dealer of Nazi plunder, and a pioneering psychiatrist in fin-de-si cle Budapest - who find their carefully-wrought lives turned upside-down by three fierce women, each locked in a struggle against her own history and the history of their times. Spanning continents and a century marked by war and revolution, Love and Treasure is by turns funny and tragic, thrilling and harrowing, mapping the darkness of a shattered Europe against the heartbreak of a modern New Yorker. Told through the prism of the peacock pendant, the novel charts the ebb and flow of history, fate and fortune from 1914 Budapest to present-day New York. And at the centre of Love and Treasure, nested like a photograph hidden in a locket, a mystery: where does the worth of a people and its treasures truly lie? What is the value of a gift, when giver and recipient have been lost - of a love offering when the beloved is no more?'AN AMBITIOUS, PERCEPTIVE NOVEL' GUARDIAN'A WONDERFULLY IMAGINATIVE WRITER' WASHINGTON POST

In the aftermath of a devastating wedding day, two families, the Tetherlys and the Copakens, find their lives unraveled by unthinkable loss. Over the course of the next four summers in Red Hook, Maine, they struggle to bridge differences of class and background to honor the memory of the couple, Becca and John.As Waldman explores the unique and personal ways in which each character responds to the tragedy--from the budding romance between the two surviving children, Ruthie and Matt, to the struggling marriage between Iris, a high strung professor in New York, and her husband Daniel--she creates a powerful family portrait and a beautiful reminder of the joys of life.Elegantly written and emotionally gripping, RED HOOK ROAD affirms Waldman's place among today's most talented authors.

Is Emilia, the wicked stepmother incarnate? Passionately in love with her husband, Emilia has a secret, guilty loathing for her precocious little stepson, William - a forty-year-old in a five-year-old's body, whom she picks up from nursery every Wednesday afternoon. How can she forgive William for living, when her own cherished child has gone?