Bestselling Author of We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier and Bless Your Heart, Tramp Hang on to your hats! We’re in for some fiercely funny weather and crackling-sharp observations from Celia Rivenbark, of whom USA Today has said, “Think Dave Barry with a female point of view.” With her incomparable style and sassy southern wit, you’ll hear from Celia on:--The joys of remodeling Tara--How Harry Potter bitch-slaps Nancy Drew--Britney’s To-Do list: pick okra, cover that thang up--How rugby-playing lesbians torpedoed beach day--Why French women suck at competitive eating--The truth about nature deficit disorder--The difference between cockroaches and water bugs--The beauty of BedazzlersAnd much, much more! Whether she’s doing her taxes or extolling the virtues of Madonna’s mothering skills, Celia Rivenbark will keep you laughing until the very last page.

    Zen Baggage is an account of that journey. He weaves together historical background, interviews with Zen masters, and translations of the earliest known records of Zen, along with personal vignettes. Porter’s account captures the transformations taking place at religious centers in China but also the abiding legacy they have somehow managed to preserve. Porter brings wisdom and humor to every situation, whether visiting ancient caves containing the most complete collection of Buddhist texts ever uncovered, enduring a six-hour Buddhist ceremony, searching in vain for the ghost in his room, waking up the monk in charge of martial arts at Shaolin Temple, or meeting the abbess of China’s first Zen nunnery. Porter’s previously published Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits has become recommended reading at Zen centers and universities throughout America and even in China (in its Chinese translation), and Zen Baggage is sure to follow suit.

    Decades ago Massachusetts salesman Ellis Hock spent four years in Africa - and the continent has never left him. So when his wife walks out and his business goes belly up, Ellis turns back to the one place in which he briefly found happiness.Yet returning to the village of Malabo shocks him. The school he built is a ruin. The people he remembers are poor, apathetic, hostile. The country labours as if under a great, invisible burden. However, Ellis is determined. This is his escape, a paradise regained.But escape can be a snare, a trap for the unwary . . .The Lower River is a hypnotic, compelling and brilliant return to a terrain no one has ever written better about than Paul Theroux: the tragic stage of modern Africa, AIDS-ravaged and despairing in the face of creeping consumerism, greed and dependence.'Remarkable, admirable, riveting, heartbreaking. A masterly, moving portrait of how Africa ensnares and enchants' Guardian'Terrific writing. Theroux's senses are always on full alert' Evening Standard'Powerful, vivid, shocking' The Times'Theroux invests this very 21st-century journey into the heart of ennui with a caustic bite, like the snakes that pop up throughout' Metro'The sense of menace is masterful. Theroux has never written a better novel' Sunday TelegraphAmerican travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Consul's File, The Family Arsenal, The Mosquito Coast, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.

    Putnam to her consuming quest for avaiation fame.

    So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide. In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt. But he also encountered incredible kindness from strangers. Thousands shared their stories with him, sometimes confiding their prejudices, too. Often he didn't know how to respond. How to find unity in diversity? How to stay connected, even as fear works to tear us apart? He listened for answers to these questions, and to the existential questions every human must face, and began to find that the answer might be in listening itself. Ultimately, it's the stories of others living all along the roads of America that carry this journey and sing out in a hopeful, heartfelt book about how a life is made, and how our nation defines itself on the most human level.

    Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools—especially for girls—that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortenson’s quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, Three Cups of Tea combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit.

    She was forty-four years old, with a devoted husband and three young children, and she had only one year of health remaining.Susan decided to live that year with joy.She quit her job as a journalist and spent time with her family. She built an outdoor meeting space for friends in her backyard. And she took seven trips with the seven most important people in her life. As her health declined, Susan journeyed to the Yukon, Hungary, the Bahamas, and Cyprus. She took her sons to swim with dolphins, and her teenage daughter, Marina, to Kleinfeld's bridal shop in New York City to see her for the first and last time in a wedding dress.She also wrote this book. No longer able to walk or even to lift her arms, she tapped it out letter by letter on her iPhone using only her right thumb, the last finger still working.However, Until I Say Good-Bye is not angry or bitter. It is sad in parts--how could it not be?--but it is filled with Susan's optimism, joie de vivre, and sense of humor. It is a book about life, not death. One that, like Susan, will make everyone smile.From the Burger King parking lot where she cried after her diagnosis to a snowy hot spring near the Arctic Circle, from a hilarious family Christmas disaster to the decrepit monastery in eastern Cyprus where she rediscovered her heritage, Until I Say Good-Bye is not only Susan Spencer-Wendel's unforgettable gift to her loved ones--a heartfelt record of their final experiences together--but an offering to all of us: a reminder that "every day is better when it is lived with joy."

    Times have changed since the late 1940s, but ambitions have not, and millions of Americans have drawn on the no-nonsense techniques described in The Magic of Believing to reach their dreams and achieve success. Obstacles have become a thing of the past, when they were “blasted” with Bristol’s powerful book, T.N.T.: It Rocks the Earth. Adhering to his corner- stone philosophy on the power of believing, T.N.T. offers practical suggestions on how to accurately and scientifically proceed to get what you want in life. In these 2 great books, you will learn: • How to project confidence
• How to impress your subconscious mind
• Why a focused aim leads to achievement.
• What your appearance reveals about you.
• The mental secret to success.
• How to transfer your thoughts to others
• To have a power at your command that astounds Let the wisdom the author imparts, infiltrate both your conscious and uncon- scious mind. It’s time to shift into high gear and forward motion, as you commit to your greatest and highest purpose. The late Claude M. Bristol was a lawyer, lecturer, investment banker, and foreign correspondent. He is the coauthor of the long-time best- seller, TNT: The Power Within. Claude Bristol’s tough-minded, hard-hitting message remains as fresh and focused today as when his books were first published, when the subconscious mind was less understood. Times have changed since the late 1940s, but ambitions have not, and millions of Americans have drawn on the no-nonsense techniques described in The Magic of Believing to reach their dreams and achieve success. Obstacles have become a thing of the past, when they were “blasted” with Bristol’s powerful book, T.N.T.: It Rocks the Earth. Adhering to his corner- stone philosophy on the power of believing, T.N.T. offers practical suggestions on how to accurately and scientifically proceed to get what you want in life. In these 2 great books, you will learn: • How to project confidence
• How to impress your subconscious mind
• Why a focused aim leads to achievement.
• What your appearance reveals about you.
• The mental secret to success.
• How to transfer your thoughts to others
• To have a power at your command that astounds Let the wisdom the author imparts, infiltrate both your conscious and uncon- scious mind. It’s time to shift into high gear and forward motion, as you commit to your greatest and highest purpose. The late Claude M. Bristol was a lawyer, lecturer, investment banker, and foreign correspondent. He is the coauthor of the long-time best- seller, TNT: The Power Within.

    Items on her new to-do list include: 1) Quit going-somewhere copywriting job and get going-to-band-practice job. 2) Break up with Hootie and the Blowfish-lovin' boyfriend. 3) Hang out in skanky bars. Meet musicians. 4) Cash in pension and buy kickass guitar amp. 5) Team up with sex-crazed guitar genius/best friend Lucy Stover Hanover II. After auditioning every musician in the greater Los Angeles area---including the deluded, deranged, and underaged---Jenny finds the perfect lineup, and 60-Foot Queenie is born. But while reveling in free tequila shots, autograph hunters, and other perks of minor stardom, Jenny realizes with a shock that 60-Foot Queenie is poised to become even bigger than she imagined. Suddenly, she's learning the real lessons of Rock and Roll High School, including the danger of trusting a record company executive who ties a ponytail in his goatee, and the ten telltale signs your bass player is living in your practice space. Part diary, part crash course in rock stardom, Don't Sleep with Your Drummer is a hilarious, no-holds-barred guide through the pleasures and pitfalls of the music industry---from the beginning to the bitter end, and back again.

    

    They shine a light on what it really feels like when your world shatters and how they found hope in the deepest despair.Best friends since they met at university, Kerry and Pat had no idea that thirty years later, they’d need every ounce of their friendship to survive. In 2017, their worlds came crashing down when their teenage sons were both diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses within weeks of each other.During the following rollercoaster months, Kerry and Pat regularly snatched time to message each other – often with black humour – providing a momentary refuge from their frightening realities. Together these two ordinary mums found a way to survive their extraordinary challenges and to navigate a new normal in an alien and isolating world. With raw honesty, they share the things they’ve learnt and what they wish they’d known – from how to tame raging mother guilt to restoring their natural optimism in the aftershock of tragedy.In this profoundly moving book, Kerry and Pat take readers on a very personal exploration of the universal experiences of grief and loss, love and friendship that connect us all. Like a wise companion offering comfort, Take My Hand is a lifeline both to those overwhelmed by heartbreak and for friends and family who don’t know how to help. Most of all, it’s a powerful reminder that no matter how difficult life gets, you are not alone.

    Read James Greiner's Wager with the Wind to learn how a hero was born, and also how he made his courageous journey to the unknown skies of dealing with cancer.

    A little girl struggling to survive. And the childless aunt who transforms her own world to help her . . . Danielle Steel’s latest novel is a deeply moving story of resilience and hope.Paige Watts is the ultimate stage mother. The daughter of Hollywood royalty, Paige channels her acting dreams into making her own daughter, Emma, a star. By the age of nine, Emma is playing a central role in a hit TV show. Then everything is shattered by unforeseeable tragedy.Now Emma is living with her aunt Whitney, who had chosen a very different path from her sister’s. Whitney was always the studious older sister, hating the cult of celebrity that enveloped their childhood. Instead, she is a psychiatrist who lives for her work and enjoys a no-strings-attached love affair with a wealthy venture capitalist. But at a moment’s notice, Whitney drops everything to help her niece.Once famous, outgoing, and charismatic, Emma is now a shadow of her former self—without speech, without memory, lost and terrified. But with her aunt Whitney’s help, along with a team of caregivers and doctors, Emma begins to find her way, starting her young life all over again—and changing the lives of everyone around her.

    Learn how to design your own personal Epic Quest of Awesome through advice on health, fitness, travel, and finance.Author Steven Kamb, the founder/creator of NerdFitness.com, leads you on a journey to discover the kind of game you want to play, including how to:* Develop a leveling structure* Create a personal Origin Story (every hero has a great origin story)* Determine what your Level 50 character will look like* Build your own quest lists * Hack your productivity, habits, and willpower to build momentum* Build in rewards and accountability* Add members to your party, expanding your community* Find your own personal Yoda or Morpheus (i.e. mentor) to help you along the way* Restart and earn Extra Lives (how to keep going when you get scared or stuck)

    This detailed travelogue is a rich and loving portrait of the people and culture of Russia, and is filled with the trademark style and keen observations of the author of such classics as Hunger, Mysteries, and Growth of the Soil.In Wonderland is unlike any other book written by Hamsun, and offers not only an intimate glimpse into the mind of the Nobel Prize winning author at his unguarded best, but a rare view into a Russia that would soon vanish in the fire of revolution.