In this book, Bill McKibben offers some suggestions on how to rethink Christmastime, so that our current obsession with present buying becomes less important than the dozens of other possible traditions and celebrations. Working through their local churches, McKibben and his colleagues found that people were hungry for a more joyful Christmas season. For many, trying to limit the amount of money they spent at Christmas to about a hundred dollars per family was a real spur to their creativity--and a real anchor against the relentless onslaught of commercials and catalogs that try to say Christmas is only Christmas if it comes from a store. McKibben shows how the store-bought Christmas developed and how out of tune it is with our current lives, when we're really eager for family fellowship, for community involvement, for contact with the natural world, and also for the blessed silence and peace that the season should offer. McKibben shows us how to return to a simpler and more enjoyable holiday.Christmas is too wonderful a celebration to give up on, too precious a time simply to repeat the same empty gestures from year to year. This book will serve as a road map to a Christmas far more joyful than the ones you've known in the past.

    At first, Isabella isn't sure which horse to pick. The fastest? The biggest? She decides on Penny, the smartest horse in the stable.Together, Isabella and Penny set out on a journey to find twelve jewels. On the way, Isabella learns that the keys to being a good queen are inside her--kindness, courage, and wisdom!

     See how they each conquered and held the rich, fertile kingdoms of the Stormlands, Dorne, and the Reach, and just why it is that the families of Game of Thrones are eager to avenge themselves on one another. Here is the story of how Orys Baratheon founded House Baratheon through fury and the fire of dragons and how that house eventually produced the Kings Robert and Stannis of the beloved series. Why is it that House Martell hates the Lannisters and all of the other Houses fear dealing with them? How did House Tyrell come to command the richest and greatest armies of all Westeros from their lowly origins as stewards? Game of Thrones: A Family History Volume II has all of these answers and more!

    Completely indifferent, he leaves his mother to invite all the most suitable candidates to a house party at Winsdale Park, promising to choose one of them as his duchess. Returning home after several days of pre-nuptial carousing, Eli falls from his horse and badly injures his head. His life is saved by a mysterious woman who fascinates and enthrals Eli.Athena Defoe and her young twin sisters are hiding from their past in a tumbledown cottage on Eli’s estate. Athena refuses to place her trust in Eli, but he is equally determined to repay her by protecting her. To do so he must first discover what or whom she is so afraid of. With attention focused on her by the duke’s interest, Athena’s whereabouts becomes known and danger visits her quiet corner of Hampshire.Caught up in the whirl of his mother’s entertainments, Eli must race against time to save the woman he’s fallen in love with, even if she isn’t duchess material…

    After being kicked out of a Catholic orphanage when it is discovered that he is of Jewish descent, a confused and deeply distraught Frankie turns to a life of crime, the only life he knows, and he’s good at it. Frankie quickly makes a name for himself and becomes one of New York’s most dangerous men, ruling the city with an iron fist and indulging in his passion for sex, power and the best things life has to offer—regardless of whether they’re for sale.In Stiletto, Cesare Cardinale is an amoral, aristocratic Italian playboy—an entrepreneur and race car driver who wants for nothing—whether it’s fast cars, beautiful women, or orgies of debauchery. Cesare, however, has two dirty secrets: First, he has a penchant for violence that borders on the sadistic and sociopathic; second, he owes his extravagant life to a Sicilian Mafia don, creating a seemingly perfect relationship—as he leads a double life as a Mafia assassin.“Robbins’s books are packed with action, sustained by strong narrative drive, and are given vitality by his own colorful life.” —The Wall Street JournalThe Harold Robbins Organized Crime Double includes: Never Love A Stranger and Stiletto.

    Brandy is a gold digger with a capital G! She doesn’t care whose man she sleeps with or goes after. Money was good and business was great until she decides to plot and scheme to set up the wrong person. Tip becomes pregnant, but by who? Her long time boyfriend or the Jamaican man who used to pimp her? Tracy is a good girl gone bad. She is head over heels in love with her first love. She doesn't know about his other life until its too late. Diamond is in love with her high school sweetheart and their relationship is great until she falls for someone else. When Brandy’s diary is found what will happen to their friendship? Will there friendship be able to stand through all the trials and tribulations life throws at them?

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    It is instructive, and fun. Not just for children."--Robert D. Hale, Boston Entertaining Arts. Full-color illustrations.

    Her stories portray a young Irish girl's view of obsessive love and its often wrenching pain, while tales of contemporary life show women who open themselves to sexuality, to disappointment, to madness. Throughout, there is always O'Brien's voice—wondrous, despairing, moving—examining passionate subjects that lay bare the desire and needs that can be hidden in a woman's heart.

    Hunt's Lyndon Johnson's War reinterprets the values, choices, misconceptions, and miscalculations that shaped the long process of American intervention in Southeast Asia, and renders more comprehensible--if no less troubling--the tangled origins of the war.

    The story “Knock Knock” is about a boy who grows up with his dad always telling these horrible jokes.

    Some poems read as conversations, some as internal monologues, others as observations, but they all work together to tell one couple's love story.

    it is the facade that many of us peruse our lives carrying, often neglecting our pain, our mental health, and most importantly, the way we are more prone to hurting others when we lack this self-awareness. (w)holehearted seeks to encompass as many stories as possible, touching on several topics, namely, spirituality, feminism, colorism, domestic violence, intersectionality, mental health and more. it aims to depict that anyone with the darkest past and pitfalls can still save themselves from drowning in the difficulties that not only plague our world, but also plague our hearts.