Jackie grew up fatherless, experienced gender confusion, and embraced both masculinity and homosexuality with every fiber of her being. She knew that Christians had a lot to say about all of the above. But was she supposed to change herself? How was she supposed to stop loving women, when homosexuality felt more natural to her than heterosexuality ever could?At age nineteen, Jackie came face-to-face with what it meant to be made new. And not in a church, or through contact with Christians. God broke in and turned her heart toward Him right in her own bedroom in light of His gospel.Read in order to understand. Read in order to hope. Or read in order, like Jackie, to be made new.

    Millions of fans have listened to Rose’s trademark calls over the years, and now, with his patented honesty and humor, he gives a firsthand account of the Amazins’—from the greatness of Tom Seaver to Johan Santana’s recent no-no. In addition to a personalized look at the rich history of the of the team, this work also features Rose’s thoughts and opinions on the current Mets team and roster and his thoughts on the future of the club.

    . . colorful descriptions make this a fun read." -Los Angeles Times "One of the best sports books of the year." -Booklist Ken Baker wanted nothing more than to play ice hockey with the pros-until a brain tumor cut his dreams short while in college. After surgery and several years of rehab, Baker, who in high school was a top prospect for the U.S. Olympic team, put his successful journalism career on hold to attempt the seemingly impossible: a comeback. He moved away from his family to become the third-string goalie for the Bakersfield Condors, an AA-level minor-league team in the dusty oil town of Bakersfield, California. At the age of thirty-one, Baker became the oldest rookie in all of pro-hockey, facing 100-m.p.h. slap shots and long bus rides, hostile fans and cheap motel rooms, body bruises, and battle-worn teammates. From his visit to an NHL training camp to his first nerve-rattled minutes as a pro, Baker joins the rookies who still dream of making it to the Show, the veterans long past their prime, and the obsessive fans who keep them going. When the season is over, Baker's pro-hockey adventure ends up teaching him nearly everything he will ever need to know about life.

    Her larger-than-life personality makes people cry with laughter as she haphazardly navigates through one romantic crisis after another.Gemma tries hard when it comes to finding 'Mr Right' - baking love pies and sexy texting - yet it never seems to work out. But does she care? Of course she doesn't. She always has the upper hand, leaving men quaking in their boots and women looking on in admiration. But finding her confidence has been a long and heartbreaking journey for Gemma.Inside, she opens up about the life events she endured before finding fame and feeling comfortable in her own skin. From breaking up with the love of her life and miscarrying a baby, to a drastic weight gain and depression; life for a real Essex girl is far from just an endless cycle of spray tans and vajazzles. Basically... is the touching yet riotously funny story of how a young girl with a big heart finally found what she'd been looking for. Herself.

    These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered.A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas.Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.

    In fact music hasn't just accompanied his life, it's been an integral part of it.In the bestselling and award-winning tradition of This Boy, In My Life vividly transports us to a world that is no longer with us - a world of Dansettes and jukeboxes, of heartfelt love songs and heart-broken ballads, of smoky coffee shops and dingy dance halls. From Bob Dylan to David Bowie, from Lonnie Donnegan to Bruce Springsteen, all of Alan's favourites are here. As are, of course, his beloved Beatles, whom he has worshipped with undying admiration since 1963.But this isn't just a book about music. In My Life adds a fourth dimension to the story of Alan Johnson the man.

    In “Bhagavad Gita for Beginners: The Song of God in Simplified Prose,” author Edward Viljoen uses contemporary, simplified language to bring this inspiring work to life. That which seems to be forcing people to act in selfish--even evil--ways is really the accumulation of desires coming together in a strong, irresistible appetite for self-satisfaction. These desires are rooted in the senses, and sense information can be misleading. More powerful than the senses, though, is the mind. And more powerful than the mind is the will (or intellect), and that which is above it all,--the Real Self, that part of us not deluded by the information of the sense world. The Bhagavad Gita For Beginners: The Song Of God In Simplified Prose will inspire uninitiated readers of the Bhagavad-Gita to delve into the original text, as well as bring a newly-found clarity and perspective to those already familiar with it.

    Nanny Mary was the wily matriarch, who would do almost anything to survive, including stealing from her seven children. Her nerve, humour and sheer determination were also the glue that held the family together. Roberta was born to a father Roberta’s mother adored, but that she herself would never know.In this memoir, Roberta Taylor travels to the emotional heart of her childhood to reveal the lives led by the men and women who influenced her most in her formative years. Too Many Mothers is a portrait of an embattled family at war with itself and the outside world. From petty crime to pet monkeys, tender romance to emotional blackmail, illegitimacy, adoption and even murder, Roberta Taylor has written a bittersweet and ultimately unforgettable memoir of her early life.

    Born in the North London suburbs, his parents, Harold and Connie, both teachers, first met as teenage Communists in the 1930s Jewish East End. The family home was filled with stories of relatives in London, the United States and France and of those who had disappeared in Europe.Unlike the children around them, Rosen and his brother Brian grew up dreaming of a socialist revolution; Party meetings were held in the front room, summers were for communist camping holidays, till it all changed after a trip to East Germany, when in 1957 his parents decided to leave “the Party.” Michael followed his own journey of radical self-discovery: running away to the Aldermaston March to ban the bomb, writing and performing in experimental political theatre, getting arrested during the 1968 movements.

    “I smoked in my twenties. I preferred red wine to sparkling water. I ate too much milk chocolate. I liked limericks. I know all the wrong I’ve done. But also, more than any of that, I’ve always longed for children.” Yet there she was: successful, social, mostly happy, and not a mother. Knowing that her chances of becoming pregnant naturally were quickly fading, Finn decided to gamble: she—like some 85,000 other women in the U.S. each year—would attempt in vitro fertilization. Almost three years later, she’s still trying, and in the process has become an accidental pioneer (and, at times, a guinea pig) in the ever-evolving science of IVF.“The Baby Chase” is a primer for anyone contemplating or undergoing IVF. More than that, it’s a story of longing, hope—and hormones—that will appeal to all parents, present and future.Finn’s engaging and honest account sheds light on a subject that few people who undergo IFV are willing to talk about: what happens when the science doesn’t work. “Usually, it’s only the people who come out on the other side, beaming, with a baby on one hip, who speak up about IVF,” she writes. “We never hear from those IVF has failed - it’s too crushing to talk about. We don’t hear from men and women in the middle of treatment, either.... People like me.”

    Ron Hubbard—begins in Brooklyn's working-class Bensonhurst neighborhood, where she was introduced to the religion by her mom. More than three decades later, Leah summoned the courage to leave the church—something few celebrities at her level of fame have ever done before and almost none have ever talked about. This People Spotlight Story explores Leah Remini and her escape from Scientology.

    "There is a whole sensible world around me that I should be able to turn to Your praise." Written between 1946 and 1947 while O'Connor was a student far from home at the University of Iowa, A Prayer Journal is a rare portal into the interior life of the great writer. Not only does it map O'Connor's singular relationship with the divine, but it shows how entwined her literary desire was with her yearning for God. "I must write down that I am to be an artist. Not in the sense of aesthetic frippery but in the sense of aesthetic craftsmanship; otherwise I will feel my loneliness continually . . . I do not want to be lonely all my life but people only make us lonelier by reminding us of God. Dear God please help me to be an artist, please let it lead to You."O'Connor could not be more plain about her literary ambition: "Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted," she writes. Yet she struggles with any trace of self-regard: "Don't let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story."As W. A. Sessions, who knew O'Connor, writes in his introduction, it was no coincidence that she began writing the stories that would become her first novel, Wise Blood, during the years when she wrote these singularly imaginative Christian meditations. Including a facsimile of the entire journal in O'Connor's own hand, A Prayer Journal is the record of a brilliant young woman's coming-of-age, a cry from the heart for love, grace, and art.

    It was the first time Rushdie heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being “against Islam, the Prophet, and the Quran.” So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. Rushdie was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and various combinations of their names. Then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov—Joseph Anton. How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, and how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir, Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of the crucial battle for freedom of speech. He shares the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom. Compelling, provocative, and moving, Joseph Anton is a book of exceptional frankness, honesty, and vital importance. Because what happened to Salman Rushdie was the first act of a drama that is still unfolding somewhere in the world every day.

    They were happy times, but money was tight. Paddy slept on a mattress he dragged in from the street, and at 17 he struggled severely with the stress of juggling a college course and two jobs to support his beloved mum.But while cash may have been short, grit and wit were in over-supply, and this is the improbable true story of the lad who went from kipping in abandoned cars in Bolton to racing supercars on Top Gear, via laying concrete floors in prisons, a lively career in a leisure centre, a showbiz intervention by school pal Peter Kay and eye-popping adventures in the world of teledom.There has been mischief and misadventure, joy and sorry, huge success and unexpected challenges. It's a lifey well lived, and an unforgettable personal memoir written from the heart.

    They went to the streets with a single intention: to be as present as possible to everyone we met, offering them sustained and nonjudgmental attention. Such attention is the heart of compassion. This book chronicles their streets experiences. It will thrust you out the door of your comfortable life, straight into the unknown. It will force you to confront what might happen to you, and who you might become, if suddenly you had no home. The meditative narrative is accompanied by pinhole photographs shot by James using cameras he constructed from trash. This is the third edition of the book, lightly edited. Though recounting events that occurred in 1999, The Emptiness of Our Hands remains as relevant today as ever. An "eye-opening" and "life-changing" read! Read this book on its own or in the company of Practicing Presence: Insights from the Streets, which Phyllis wrote on the tenth anniversary of her time on the streets. Take your reading slow, perhaps one chapter per day, so you can absorb and reflect. If you happen to be Christian, you might consider using this book and Practicing Presence as companion resources during Lent and Holy Week, which served as a backdrop for Phyllis and James's experience. But you don’t need to be a Christian to take this stumbling journey into practicing mindfulness on the streets. Just allow these forty-seven days to be for you what they were for Phyllis and James: a deep embrace of core values that human beings around the world have held in common for millennia. These values might best be articulated as questions: How do we treat others as we would have them treat us? How do we love our neighbors, including those who seem “alien” and “other?” How do we extend hospitality to strangers, allowing them an honored place among us? These age-old questions have no simple answers. We must seek to answer them daily with our lives. Get your free sampler of Phyllis's work when you join her mailing list at http://subscribe.phylliscoledai.com/. It includes music, poetry, spiritual nonfiction and historical fiction. You can also join her mailing list at http://www.phylliscoledai.com. CATEGORIES FOR THIS BOOK: --spirituality --memoir --mindfulness --homelessness --Lent & Holy Week --social conscience --engaged Buddhism