But while juggling the demands of a long-term relationship, fatherhood, mortgage payments, and a nine-to-five banking career, he feels something is missing. A new goal captures his imagination: What would it take to become an Olympian?Guided by a polarizing coach, Brown and his teammates plumb the depths of physical and mental exertion in pursuit of a singular goal. The 4 Year Olympian is a story of courage, perseverance, and overcoming self-doubt, told from the perspective of an unlikely competitor.

    From canoe camping next to unnamed lakes, to kayaking in Alaska’s pristine waters, she describes her many encounters with the bears, moose and other animals that make this wilderness their home. With her partner David she helped to build a cabin on a remote piece of property, off the grid and accessible only by boat. Illustrated with the photos she took along the way, her story is sometimes comic, and sometimes tragic, but throughout its pages she speaks with the voice of one who loves nature and the wilderness.

    My tribe are aqua crew-cut goddesses who smell like samosas. My tribe are neurotic corporate banshees with white knuckles on Goldman Sachs water bottles. My tribe are seven different lineages that all lead to the same destination.’When Alice Williams gets ‘phased out’ of her dream job, all the demons she usually silences with food start to get too loud to ignore. Unemployed and depressed, she makes the ultimate middle-class, white-girl life change: she signs up to become a yoga teacher.Bad Yogi is the ‘healing’ memoir for people who hate healing memoirs, a delightful peek at the life-changing truth that lies behind all the gurus and jargon.

    For Lisa Nugent and her twin sister Shell, however, madness was impossible to avoid—it was home.Growing up in Essex in the seventies and eighties, Lisa learned quickly that her family wasn’t like her classmates’ families—their mothers were friendly, fierce, or demure women. They had their quirks, but they didn’t assault their husbands, and their frenzied screams didn’t chase their children out of the house in the middle of the night. Not like her mother. Now, for the first time, Lisa relives those troubled years, recounting her development from a nervous, shy, and friendless child through to the woman she is today. Madness and Me isn’t just a memoir about surviving an abusive, paranoid parent—it’s about the importance of family, the pain of loss, and learning to love even when it’s the hardest thing in the world to do.A work of tenderness, dignity, and humour, Madness and Me is sure to appeal to lovers of memoir and drama alike.

    

    This heartbreaking, heartwarming, true story following the history of a family in Wales is one of the most important books ever written. The birth of the National Health Service - the UK's greatest asset - coincided with the birth of one little girl in South Wales, Aneira 'Nye' Thomas, the first baby to be delivered by the NHS.Nye's story follows generations of her family who battled to survive before the NHS was launched, through to those who went on to dedicate their lives to working for the NHS - and also, ultimately, to be saved by it.An emotive, extraordinary and yet uplifting reminder of a time not so long ago, when the value of your life came down to how much you had in your pocket. It is a touching and entertaining human drama, but more importantly - a fierce defence of the most important accomplishment this country has ever and will ever achieve.

     On the day of Rebecca Poulson’s 33rd birthday, her father, niece and nephew were murdered. The murderer had been part of her family; her brother-in-law, Neung, the father of the children. Killing Love is Rebecca’s journey through homicide; grief, the police investigations, the media interest, the court cases, the moments of great despair – and the healing. It is a story of individual tragedy and a family’s strength, but it is also a story of a community’s attitude to family violence. As a reluctant warrior for those who cannot speak for themselves, Rebecca talked to the NSW State Premier and politicians, on multiple TV shows and to print journalists in the hope that the mistakes made by the police force, DOCS, the legal system and solicitors will never be made again. Rebecca’s contact with policy makers has been nothing short of history-making, and her story has directly influenced domestic violence laws in the state. Neung left a note for Rebecca’s family; he hoped that he would destroy them. This is the story of how he didn’t.

    

    Her mother, a distant relative of William Faulkner, told neighbors and family that her daughter had died. The two never saw each other again. Nearly twenty-five years later, after building her own family and happy home life, a lawyer called to say her mother was dead. In this story about the fragility of memory and the complexity of family, Beam decides to look back at her own dark history, and for the secret to her mother’s madness.

    Forced to return to her family in South Florida, a place where she never felt she fit in, Victoria moved into her parents' guest room and reluctantly took a job hostessing at The Bubblegum Kittikat, South Florida's "klassiest" gentlemen's club. This hilarious memoir recounts how working in a strip club helped her recover from her breakup while giving her life and herself a much needed makeover. Amateur Night at the Bubblegum Kittikat demonstrates what miracles can happen when you stop judging yourself and others and step far out of your comfort zone (in five inch Lucite heels).

    He chronicles some of the most formative calls of his career in this autobiography that reads like crime fiction. McCarthy demonstrates with detail and clarity that the difficult choice is often the right choice. While not for the faint of heart, each entry in this collection provides poignant insight into the bonds between medics and the people and city they serve.

    But then her son came to her with a real one…Josiah was nineteen with the world at his feet when things changed. Without warning, the new university student’s mental health deteriorated to the point that he planned his own death. His mother, bestselling author Amanda Prowse, found herself grappling for ways to help him, with no clear sense of where that could be found. This is the book they wish had been there for them during those dark times.Josiah’s situation is not unusual: the statistics on student mental health are terrifying. And he was not the only one suffering; his family was also hijacked by his illness, watching him struggle and fearing the day he might succeed in taking his life.In this book, Josiah and Amanda hope to give a voice to those who suffer, and to show them that help can be found. It is Josiah’s raw, at times bleak, sometimes humorous, but always honest account of what it is like to live with depression. It is Amanda’s heart-rending account of her pain at watching him suffer, speaking from the heart about a mother’s love for her child.For anyone with depression and anyone who loves someone with depression, Amanda and Josiah have a clear message—you are not alone, and there is hope.

    No more than eeny, meeny, miney, mo and who we were supposed to catch by the toe.Wish Mooney’s earliest memory in life is finding a corpse in the Waterford River. Jarring stuff for a four-year-old, yet far from the most shocking or bizarre he would witness growing up in west end St. John’s next door to the Waterford Hospital. Or, as it was unabashedly labelled before the advent of political correctness: the Mental.An unfortunate moniker, but one legitimately derived from the original name of the place—the Hospital for Mental and Nervous Diseases—when it opened in 1854. Not until 1972 would it be renamed after the river that runs by it. But in Mooney’s world, which revolved mostly in and around the asylum’s drab, depressing confines in the mid-1970s, it was colloquially the Mental, just as its largely despondent inhabitants were the mental patients.Thus was the oft-surreal environment that unavoidably enveloped Wish and the rest of the Irish Catholic Mooney clan, including the quietly acknowledged other realities of the place—the sad, the tragic, the maniacal. Little did Wish ever consider that any or all of that would come full circle later in life when, as the court reporter for the Daily News, he would be thrust into the middle of his own life story, replete with shocking conclusion.

    A vivid memoir of one young woman's psychiatric treatment in the Sixties which raises questions, that are still relevant today.

    This book will equally deepen the awareness of clinicians and enlighten the lay reader. It is a gift to both.' Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPPIn this highly articulate, down-to-earth, generous book, Dr David Galler tells stories of life and death from his position as Intensive Care specialist at Middlemore Hospital. Written lyrically and warmly, these stories are based on real life events describing the everyday dilemmas and challenges that doctors and patients commonly face.It aims to explain and demystify much of the work doctors do, cast light on the workings of the medical establishment and how medicine operates, in the hope that it will encourage patients to seek to be better informed and play a greater role in the decisions that will affect them and their loved ones.It speaks to the resilience of individuals and families and their extraordinary generosity and dignity under the most extreme pressure. This book is about realistic optimism and is a celebration of life.It is also a very personal story about David Galler's life, his family and about his own slow coming of age as a doctor, from the sadness and helplessness he felt about his father's death to at last feeling that he was of some use to his most important patient, his mother.