At sixteen, Regina began cutting back on meals to the point where her hair started to fall out. Later, she began to binge at night while her family slept. For a long time, she was able to keep her eating disorder a secret, though hiding her problem didn't stop it from harming her emotional and physical well-being. The pressures of wanting to succeed as an artist led her to a nervous breakdown and, finally, a strong desire to start from scratch. In Fat, Austrian-born author and artist Regina Hofer documents her battle with anorexia and bulimia. This powerful and imaginative graphic novel follows Regina from her childhood home in Upper Austria, where food and family mealtimes were often associated with feelings of personal failure, to art school at the Mozarteum University Salzburg and a violent reckoning with her dysfunctional family. Vivid and courageous, this memoir will resonate with anyone living through or seeking to understand what it is like to live with an eating disorder.

The last thing Piedro remembers is diving into the lake on his day off from work. Now he lies in a hospital bed with a wheelchair at his side. Casting a shadow from the doorway, his caretaker remarks on "how quickly one gets used to this kind of thing," as she goes on to empty his catheter bag and to help him into his wheelchair. Piedro must now deal with a growing mix of fear and powerlessness that surges within him as he realizes that he will be paralyzed forever; it bursts forth like a twister, "over and over again," until he resigns himself to it. In time, Piedro's feelings of hopelessness are offset by the realization that he can find both love and a degree of independence. With the support of his family and friends, he makes his way through rehab and finally gets back to the business of living. Based on his own experiences, Roland Burkart's Twister is a realistic and uplifting narrative that will resonate with anyone who has ever experienced or borne witness to a life upended by calamity.