With nowhere to turn after she graduated from high school, Christina lived in her car for almost a year, working three jobs to survive.As she prayed in her car every day, Christina had no idea that in just a few years, she would be crowned Ms. California. She had no idea that her suffering would one day help others find healing. But she did know that she was destined for more, and she would not give up hope no matter the circumstance.In CinderGirl, Christina tells her piercing and poignant story of leaving behind homelessness to become Ms. California and the founder of a nonprofit organization that provides advocacy for foster care children. With stunning vulnerability, Christina invites us into her childhood home and the heart of a child longing to be loved. She invites us to dig deeper into our own personal courage, even in the most grim of conditions. She asks us to journey with her across the country and deep into a growing faith. And in return, you'll embrace the inherent worth that is yours in Christ Jesus.

    So what do you do when you're parenting a child who has experienced trauma or has extra challenges? You often feel alone and inadequate. You want so much to help your child, but you are at the end of your own rope. You feel guilty that sometimes you want to just quit.What can you do -- how can you make it through the day -- how can you help your child while also taking care of yourself?Maybe someone you love is parenting a traumatized child. Or perhaps you are a social worker, counselor, or other professional who sees families like these every day. You want to know how to better help them.In Dancing with a Porcupine, Jennie Owens shares with humor and raw honesty the compelling story of her struggle to save her own life while caring for three children she and her husband adopted from foster care. How could she stay loving, giving, and forgiving in the midst of a daily battle with children acting out the rage, resentment, and pain of their own traumatic pasts?When faith, endurance, and creativity are not enough, what's next?

    Life is messy and uncertain and full of surprises. And one of the best things he's ever done is let go of his expectations about how life should be in order to embrace life as it is a moment-by-moment walk with God.Hurt Road is the engaging true story of a man who, as a teen, found in music a refuge from the uncertainties of life. Who set out to discover a better way to live than constantly struggling to make sure life turned out the way he planned it. Who stopped substituting what's next for what's now and learned the truth--that coming or going, God's got us.Poignant, funny, and thoughtful, Hurt Road dares anyone feeling knocked down or run over by their circumstances to give up control to the One who already has the road all mapped out. Includes black and white photos.

    They are about guns, campaign buttons, and a cabin in the Vermont woods that stinks of wood smoke and kerosene -- and about their associations of pleasure, menace, and regret.The resulting volume may be compared to the plays that have made Mamet famous: it is finely crafted and deftly timed, and its precise language carries an enormous weight of feeling.

    . .— explored the squalid world of medical marijuana; — made a mess of himself on the road to Pittsburgh; — got upstaged on live TV by comedy legend Martin Short; — rode a Street Dragon through the laneways of Sochi; — shared a drink with Jay-Z and was then asked to leave;And much, much more!

    You're often treated like a living blow-up doll and a therapist simultaneously. It's a life that many judge easily ... until you know more. Sita Kaylin, a California-based veteran in the sex industry, has lived the pitfalls of being naked in front of strangers and the absurdities that arise when you fake intimacy for a living. She left home when she was sixteen, worked hard at several jobs and eventually started college after dropping out of high school. There, a roommate turned her on to stripping, revealing a way out of the crushing financial pressures she felt and her struggles as a pre-law student with very little time or energy to study. She had no idea how wild her journey would become and what a large part of her life it would be. Sita's stories take shape through an often altered, occasionally sarcastic, sometimes illegal and frequently funny magnifying glass she holds up to not just the sex industry, but also to human needs and desires, modern relationships, mental health, personal independence. Anything But a Wasted Life is the memoir of an unorthodox life about a woman who has rarely said 'no' to life.

    As a falsely accused drug lord, escaped convict, and hunted felon from the Michigan Department of Correction, incarceration was never far from her consciousness. Sent to prison at age 19 on a minor drug offenseâ��a 10-to-20-year sentence after sheâ��d been promised probationâ��Susan Marie LeFevre chose to escape the life sheâ��d been dealt and begin a new one. She married, raised three children, volunteered for charity events and played tennis and bridge with her many friends and neighborsâ��all the while carrying the secret of her past. Not even her husband knew who she really was. The explosive story of her capture played out in the news, usually with the headline starting "Fugitive Mom..." as she became a voiceless pawn shuttling across country on a prison-bound bus back to the confines of Michiganâ��s notoriously cruel penitentiary system. In this riveting new autobiography, Marie Walsh aka Susan LeFevreâ��s story begins in the fractious, idealistic 70s, delves into the world of drugs and touches on church scandal, race relations and a corrupt judicial system. Readers will experience the headiness of that all-consuming first love, the humiliation of squatting naked in a jail cell, the friendshipsâ��and enmitiesâ��forged by necessity among prison women. And finally, readers will understand the price one pays in trying to escape the past and the lessons to be learned by confronting it. Her parallel worlds were forever intertwined as the country witnessed it played out in courtrooms, news media and before public officials who ultimately decided her fate. Two lives â�� one story.

    In the depths of the jungle—alone with the Jaguar Man—compassion was her only defense.Lara’s survival and journey of healing is poignant, compelling, and exceptional—it runs against the grain of what we’re taught and how we speak about crime and victimhood. Bending the limits of reality, she uses myth to process her experience and further explore the power of compassion. What she comes to is authentic, unorthodox, and fresh, and could serve as a groundbreaking path for trauma survivors to find their own peace and healing.

    The author unflinchingly begets a self from the unlikeliest beginnings, and now delivers a sequel illustrating both heaven and hell on her continuing flight for self discovery."An amazing story of a young girl who comes of age with only snippets of guidance from the adults around her. This is a well written book with explicit prose of Marlayna's continued journey looking for love and acceptance. She tells this very personal story vividly. There were moments I had to stop reading to absorb the "life shattering" events Marlayna experienced that would have crushed many and other moments in the book that I laughed out loud." - Eileen Cahill Moalli

    Sitting in the sun, sipping a cappuccino, it occurred to me that sometimes your life falls apart just enough to allow you to put it back together in an entirely different way. So I did the most logical thing. I bought a barge in France. Then my wife and I set out to fulfill a lifetime dream of living in the shadow of Notre Dame on the Seine in Paris. From Here to Paris is the story of how we climbed out of our well-worn corporate trench and, together, set to work creating our dream life, alternating between our cozy Victorian art studio in Sausalito California and our 56 foot, 1925 Dutch barge, Phaedra, cruising the canals and rivers of France, inching toward our ultimate goal, the Seine and Paris. This is a story of facing up to the emotional and ego hooks so deeply embedded in the trappings and symbols that define “success.” Of selling the over sized house, shredding the credit cards and abandoning the mind-numbing commute in favor of a joyful struggle toward a fresh life. One lived in jeans and filled with long, leisurely afternoons floating along glass-still canals, through medieval villages and rolling vineyards in the heart of Burgundy. It’s also the story of realtors, moose horns, a mysterious black boat, catastrophic engine failures and how your life can pass before your eyes when you put those tons of iron into reverse and it keeps going forward. It’s about learning the proper gender of things in French, cheating at Trivial Pursuit, cajoling France’s sexiest boat mechanic and why real men don’t do yoga. It’s about realizing that getting to Paris can take years, so you better enjoy the journey.

    It is a yarn still told in a hundred bars in tucked away ports where seafarers drink and wait out stormy weather. The story takes the reader on a smuggling voyage from the Atlantic down the Red Sea to Kenya, to Thailand and back across the Indian Ocean to Spain then the Netherlands. No notoriety, no articles in magazines, no calling for help when things get bad. Medical emergencies at sea, sharks, pirates, monsoon storms, and the Guardia Civil, notwithstanding… backing off was not an option. After 12 years of sailing and smuggling in the N. Atlantic and the Caribbean, Ranen, an old school pre electronic navigation sailor who smuggles to pay the bills for a lifestyle of dangerous freedom, heads for the Indian Ocean aboard his sleek deep ocean sailing boat, Sara. He left with a solid plan to sail new oceans, and do business in a new arena with different cultures. What happens when he gets there sends him on a path that was nothing he imagined, but such is the world of sailing and smuggling. Although Ranen has written this story in first person, It is also told from the perspective of the courageous young “Kenya Cowgirl” who became his crew and lover, all told through her journal entries from that voyage. In the days when “5/11” Beverly Johnson and Lynn Hill were winning the respect of the “rock star” climbers in Yosemite, Ranen was throwing a young Arianna Bell into the maelstrom of long distance non-stop sailing/smuggling. This is her story as well. Surprising twists of fate, cat and mouse with the law and other bad guys, as well as up close accounts of at life at sea in challenging conditions. Like living in a Dylan song.

    Miraculously, his daughter was unharmed, but his wife faced a series of life-threatening injuries, including the same one that famously left Christopher Reeve paralyzed. Following the accident, Segal began sending regular email updates to their circle of friends and family—a list that continued to grow as others heard of the event and were moved by the many emotional and spiritual issues it raised. Segal's compelling memoir is an intimate and honest chronicle built around these email updates, and is a profound example of how people show up for one another in times of crisis.Alternatingly harrowing, humorous, heartbreaking, and hopeful, this is an uplifting tribute to love, determination, and how the compassion of community holds the power to heal, serving as an inspiring testament to the resilience of the human spirit when faced with pain and adversity.

    They were already used to a simple life, having spent the last three years living on their boat in France for the summer seasons, and returning to the UK and their caravan for the winters. This tiny cabin would now be their new home for the winter months, taking them a step further along the road to self-sufficiency. They had no electricity, no kitchen, no bathroom or bedroom and the loo was a bucket in a shed, but the property came with five acres of field and woodland.From now on their lives would be simple, pared back to the basics, but they found that an off-grid lifestyle was by no means an uncomfortable experience. Responsibilities didn’t disappear but they changed, becoming less onerous. There was more time to think, and to appreciate the natural world around them. Living in such rural isolation, each day brought something new to marvel at: deer browsing in the field at dusk, salamanders on the doorstep, owls calling by night.If their own world felt increasingly magical, the outside world was far from it. They had moved to a foreign country at an historic time, living through a pandemic and adapting to the day-to-day implications of Brexit.A Simple Life doesn’t just follow Mary-Jane and Michael as they settle into their new lives, it also raises questions about what really matters to people. What makes us happy? How does it feel to have few possessions? Will life become unbearable without a flushing toilet?Thought-provoking and amusing, this book opens a window onto a different way of living. Mary-Jane shares a wealth of information and, if you have ever found yourself longing for a simpler life, this might tempt you to take those first tentative steps on the journey.

    Always afraid he was about to die, he climbed into the cockpit anyway ... and lived to tell you about it. How would you feel if you were a new guy in the sky ... attacked by four Messerschmitts? Let me tell you, no matter how much you prepare, no matter how much you read, how much you train, no matter how much you think of yourself as a 'Hot Shot Pilot,' you are never ready for life and death combat! How did it feel to say a 'last goodbye' to your bride believing you would never see her again, as you left to fight WWII? Author's Facebook page at: facebook.com/P38Flyer/ As reviewed by A. L. Hanks, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF (Ret) who said it perfectly: In "Brave and Funny Memories of WWII" Lyndon Shubert, to our great benefit, tells us his story, an engaging tale of his WWII experience as a fighter pilot in WWII. A member of the "greatest generation" he recounts his days (and nights) flying P-38 fighters in the wartime skies of Europe. The tale is told in a relaxed, conversational style, honest and personal. The reader will appreciate the authenticity and the easy humor. He tells us a story that is at once delightfully humorous and deadly serious. He shares that unfettered sense of flying a powerful aircraft free in the vast expanse of the sky. The special sense that pilots have when they "can reach out and touch the face of God". Shubert relates the feelings of men in combat, that gripping apprehension in your gut when you know you're going to die, your senses at full maximum intensity, and then that striking after mission fear when you look back and realize that you cheated death once again. Shubert was indeed a special fellow. We are indebted to him for his service and his book. He captures a special piece of the American character and our history that is essential to pass on to our children and grandchildren. Lt Shubert was exceptional, a USAF officer and a fighter pilot who fought the war and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. The author reminds us once again why fighter pilots are special. Why they are ubiquitously viewed as swaggering "raconteurs", with big egos and big watches who can sometimes be insufferable. But his tale also captures the reality of one-on-one aerial combat, loser goes home.... to God.

    But what seemed a perfect life was shattered when she went into labor four months early, delivering her one-pound, eleven-ounce daughter, Andie.The first time Kasey was wheeled into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), nothing prepared her for what she saw: a tiny, fragile baby in a tangle of tubes and wires. All at once, Kasey was confronted with a new and terrifying reality that would test the limits of love, family, and motherhood.In this riveting, honest, and often humorous memoir, Preemie chronicles the journey of one tiny baby’s tenacious struggle to hold on to life and the mother who ultimately grew with her. From hospital waiting rooms to the offices of alternative practitioners, from ski slopes to Symphony Hall, Kasey tries to make meaning of her daughter’s birth and eventually comes to learn that gifts come in all sizes and all forms, and sometimes... right on time.