At seventeen, in the dark of night, he left the religious settlement, but it was only nine years later that he finally left the church for good. His favorite Bible verse is from Psalm 34: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." In this new memoir, he tells what it was like growing up Old World Amish and what it felt like leaving it for a strange new world. Far more than picturesque; Growing Up Amish conveys one man's heartfelt experience.

    Have you ever lit a Marlboro from the ignited gas of a bloated dead man's belly? Joseph Scott Morgan has. Have you ever wept over a dead dog while not giving a shit about the dead owner laying next him? Morgan did. Were you named after a murder victim? Joseph Scott Morgan was.This isn't Hollywood fantasy—it's the true story of a boy born into the deprivations of a white trash trailer park who as an adult gets further involved in the desperate backdoor sagas of the "new South." No hot blondes here, just maggots, grief, and the truth about forensics and death investigation.Joseph Scott Morgan became a death investigator with the Jefferson Parish Coroner's Office in suburban New Orleans in 1987, the youngest medicolegal death investigator in the country. During the day, Morgan worked in the morgue, and at night investigated for the coroner. In 1992 Morgan became senior investigator with the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office in Atlanta. Morgan is now a college professor at North Georgia College and State University, where he teaches a death investigation course based on the national standards which he helped develop. He and his family reside in the Blue Ridge Mountains of north Georgia.

    In the framework of a revised Marxism, this book shows how a more cooperative and democratic economy is already emerging, and how we can build on its successes. Society may be on the cusp of the greatest revolutionary movement in history.

    Diligently researching how to restore his quality of life, she discovered Vet-Stem, a service that provides cutting-edge regeneration therapy for pets, using stem cells harvested from animals' own tissue. Just hours after receiving IV and intra-joint injections, Sam began aging backward--which left Julia wondering why this simple, effective treatment was not available for humans.            Julia suffered from chronic inflammatory bowel disease, and after witnessing Sam's astonishing recovery, she set out on a curious quest: to be treated like a dog by a doctor as competent as her vet! After a four-year wait, Julia became the first American to be successfully cured of a perirectal fistula with stem cells derived from her own fat. With this amazing true story of how a pack of shelter dogs she rescued from death row came to save her life, Julia hopes to inspire and inform readers about exciting healthcare options available to them and their cherished animal companions.

    It is the story of a wounded soul named Josh, but chances are there is a Josh living next door to you or even sitting near you in the pew at church.”—Jim Daly, president, Focus on the FamilyHis whole life has been a story of hurt and rejection. Is one family’s love enough to turn it all around?Josh lost his parents in a drunk-driving accident and lost track of his two brothers after a tragic fire. By age eighteen, he is an angry young man who only wants a job, an apartment, and to be left alone. Instead, he meets Mike and Anna, an unusual son-and-mother team who draw him into their lives. For the first time, Josh receives unconditional love and something every human being craves, the gift of “the blessing.” But tragedy strikes again, and a shocking secret is revealed. Can Josh hang on to what he’s learned about blessings, curses, and family?The life-changing message of the relational classic, The Blessing—now in compelling story form. Complete with a reader’s guide to help you identify and apply the five elements of the biblical blessing to your own life and relationships.Visit www.TheBlessing.com for more information and an opportunity to join The Blessing Challenge, one million people choosing to change the life of one child—their child!

    Tell your mom there's no more pain." Allison shared his comforting words with her mother and thus began a lifetime of creating connections between loved ones and those they have lost. The purpose of her gifts became clearer when Allison worked as an intern in the homicide bureau of the district attorney's office and found that she visualized the crime as she handled the evidence. Allison now works as a profiler on criminal investigations.In this stunning book, Allison shares fascinating stories of her encounters with people who have passed and her adventures as a profiler for various law enforcement organizations. With wit and compassion, Allison shows us what it is like to live with these special gifts and talents and also tells about her struggle to live a normal life as a devoted wife and mother. She shows how learning to accept her own gifts has helped her accept the unique gifts of others and how her compelling desire to relieve the pain of others has helped define her own life, a life committed to the search for ultimate truth.If you have ever questioned whether there is an afterlife, this book will help you see that there is a living energy beyond death.

    How to separate what belongs to your history and what belongs in your present life is some of the rich, practical advice you will take away from  Not Like My Mother.  In the early distribution of Not Like My Mother readers reported they couldn’t put the book down. It reads like a compelling novel with a human and spiritual insight that makes you feel a part of the conversation.  YOU WILL WANT THIS BOOK FOR ALL YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS!!!!!"

    His first major collection--Traveling Through the Dark--won the National Book Award. He published more than sixty-five volumes of poetry and prose and was Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress-a position now known as the Poet Laureate. Before his death in 1993, he gave his son Kim the greatest gift and challenge: to be his literary executor.In Early Morning, Kim creates an intimate portrait of a father and son who shared many passions: archery, photography, carpentry, and finally, writing itself. But Kim also confronts the great paradox at the center of William Stafford's life. The public man, the poet who was always communicating with warmth and feeling-even with strangers-was capable of profound, and often painful, silence within the family. By piecing together a collage of his personal and family memories, and sifting through thousands of pages of his father's daily writing and poems, Kim illuminates a fascinating and richly lived life.

    You are now in Hanuman's hands." These are the words author Cheeni Rao hears his Indian immigrant mother sob as he stands locked outside his family home. A brilliant, promising young man who is the product of a devout Hindu family from a long line of Brahmin priests, Rao has been reduced to the life of a homeless drug addict and petty criminal on the back streets of Chicago's Southside.The freedoms and temptations of life on an elite American college campus send Rao spiraling down into a hedonistic nightmare of drugs, sex, and crime. Desperate and alone, he is visited by Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god his mother evoked, and comes to realize that this unlikely guide may be his last resort. On his long journey to recovery, Rao is guided by visions of this clever, divine monkey, best known from the Indian epic poem, the Ramayana.In Hanuman's Hands is a gritty, hauntingly beautiful memoir. Bringing India whole-heartedly into America, Rao weaves his own story of Western culture clash with mythic tales of his Hindu ancestors who served in the ancestral temples of Kali. With Hanuman as his loyal companion, the author finds his way back to recovery at a halfway house run by a mug named Tats and shared by an unforgettable gang of streetwise characters. In Hanuman's Hands is a striking debut from a new literary voice.

    In 2015, he suffered the devastating loss of his beloved big brother, Beau, who died of brain cancer at the age of forty-six. These hardships were compounded by the collapse of his marriage and a years-long battle with drug and alcohol addiction.In Beautiful Things, Hunter recounts his descent into substance abuse and his tortuous path to sobriety. The story ends with where Hunter is today—a sober married man with a new baby, finally able to appreciate the beautiful things in life.

    Brainiac traces his rise from anonymous computer programmer to nerd folk icon. But along the way, it also explores his newly conquered kingdom: the world of trivia itself.Jennings had always been minutiae-mad, poring over almanacs and TV Guide listings at an age when most kids are still watching Elmo and putting beans up their nose. But trivia, he has found, is centuries older than his childhood obsession with it. Whisking us from the coffeehouses of seventeenth-century London to the Internet age, Jennings chronicles the ups and downs of the trivia fad: the quiz book explosion of the Jazz Age; the rise, fall, and rise again of TV quiz shows; the nostalgic campus trivia of the 1960s; and the 1980s, when Trivial Pursuit® again made it fashionable to be a know-it-all.Jennings also investigates the shadowy demimonde of today’s trivia subculture, guiding us on a tour of trivia hotspots across America. He goes head-to-head with the blowhards and diehards of the college quiz-bowl circuit, the slightly soused faithful of the Boston pub trivia scene, and the raucous participants in the annual Q&A marathon in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, “The World’s Largest Trivia Contest.” And, of course, he takes us behind the scenes of his improbable 75-game run on Jeopardy!But above all, Brainiac is a love letter to the useless fact. What marsupial has fingerprints that are indistinguishable from human ones?* What planet has a crater on it named after Laura Ingalls Wilder?** What comedian had the misfortune to be born with the name “Albert Einstein”?*** Jennings also ponders questions that are a little more philosophical: What separates trivia from meaningless facts? Is being good at trivia a mark of intelligence? And is trivia just a waste of time, or does it serve some not-so-trivial purpose after all?Uproarious, silly, engaging, and erudite, this book is an irresistible celebration of nostalgia, curiosity, and nerdy obsession–in a word, trivia.* The koala** Venus*** Albert BrooksFrom the Hardcover edition.

    To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Ashkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next thirty-five years in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Based on extensive research, and springing from his enormously resonant documentary that aired on NPR’s Fresh Air in 1998, Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, suggesting that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and reconciliation.

    They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, secreted Jews to safety, transported weapons, and conveyed clandestine messages. The youngest was a schoolgirl of fifteen who scrawled "V" for victory on the walls of her lycée; the eldest, a farmer's wife in her sixties who harbored escaped Allied airmen. Strangers to each other, hailing from villages and cities from across France, these brave women were united in hatred and defiance of their Nazi occupiers.Eventually, the Gestapo hunted down 230 of these women and imprisoned them in a fort outside Paris. Separated from home and loved ones, these disparate individuals turned to one another, their common experience conquering divisions of age, education, profession, and class, as they found solace and strength in their deep affection and camaraderie.In January 1943, they were sent to their final destination: Auschwitz. Only forty-nine would return to France.A Train in Winter draws on interviews with these women and their families; German, French, and Polish archives; and documents held by World War II resistance organizations to uncover a dark chapter of history that offers an inspiring portrait of ordinary people, of bravery and survival—and of the remarkable, enduring power of female friendship.

    Caroline Knapp describes how the distorted world of her well-to-do parents pushed her toward anorexia and alcoholism. Fittingly, it was literature that saved her: she found inspiration in Pete Hamill's 'A Drinking Life' and sobered up. Her tale is spiced up with the characters she has known along the way. A journalist describes her twenty years as a functioning alcoholic, explaining how she used alcohol to escape personal relationships and the realities of life until a series of personal crises forced her to confront her problem.

    Nine minutes later he returned to life. What he experienced would change him forever.