He was afraid of losing his artistic abilities and had big problems with the higher power concept. In spite of his hesitations, he stuck with the program and it rewarded him greatly. In Get Up, he shares the knowledge he gained on his journey, from being afraid of AA philosophies to embracing them, motivating others to join him in their own efforts to get clean. Sinister, a spoken word artist, poet, and performer, wellknown on the West Coast for his grabbing, truthful, funny performances, puts out his own story, no frills, no excuses, and no holds barred. He offers a toughlove approach to recovery for all those, like him, who are turned off by traditional "recovery" books. Sinister got sober in AA and has stayed sober in AA, and now he leads the very group he joined on his path to recovery. In Get Up, he shares the stories and the steps that come from the "selfidenti?ed scum bags who just might save your life." He talks straight to readers about how to make it work if they can't buy into the program right away. For example, "Higher Power" can be a whole lot of things -- Thor and metaphor among them. He helps readers to accept the group in spite of their differences, rather than walking away. Get Up is the book that Sinister would have bought for himself, with the advice he wanted to hear when he ?rst ventured into recovery.

    Memphis Black From bedroom performances to center stage, Memphis Black’s dreams have come true. Together with his band mates—Finn, River, and Billy B—he takes some time for fun in the sun in Miami while gathering inspiration to finish their first full-length album. Some down time before hitting the road to tour the country, spreading their kind of rock like an STD. Tallia Priest, a preacher’s daughter grew up next door to Madison Black, her polar opposite and very best friend. Tallia has harbored a crush on Madison’s older brother Memphis for a lifetime. After a tough freshman year of college, Madison invites Tallia to join her in Miami for a much needed break. Madison fails to mention they will be staying with ‘Steel Total Destruction.’ When Tallia arrives, there is no way for a stunned Memphis to miss the transformation of the once awkward, innocent girl next door. Forbidden desires must be hidden, lines cannot be blurred, and no one can ever know. Will the heat in Miami tempt them even further? Will buried secrets destroy lives? It’s all fun and games until someone gets rocked. Finn Beckett Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The release, the buzz, the electric guitar's rage against all that was f'ed up in the world. It took me away and made me feel something when I was a soulless nothing … until the high wore off. Music also brought me back. I woke to a Zeppelin song, face down in my own vomit, next to a pile of coke and with three naked women at my feet. Disgusted with myself, disgusted with them, I walked, and I walked alone. One chance meeting, a golden opportunity, a chance of a lifetime changed it all. The sins of the past are behind me now. The day has finally come when I will walk onstage, not as an opening act, but as the act. Hours before my dream comes to fruition, though, I run into a girl, one f'ing girl, and I am back on the path of destruction. River James When he fell in love, he fell hard. When he lost her, he lost his will. Drugs, sex, and rock and roll—in that order—became his life. River James, the drummer for Steel Total Destruction, loved the brotherhood he formed with his unlikely best friend, the band mates from Steel Total Destruction, and the family he found in his label, Forever Four. Then one tragic accident takes it all away in the blink of an eye. Twisted metal, shattered bones, crushed dreams, and torn wreckage causes deep, dark secrets to be revealed. Facing harsh realities, which have never been one of River’s strengths, he turns to the sure things in life: drugs and women who oh so willingly give themselves to a tall, dark, and tattooed rocker like him. Will he find himself in the wreckage of twisted metal and crushed dreams? Or will he lose his way in the smoke and debris? Keanna, has the career and man of her dreams … or so she thought until she finds out he is cheating on her. Ending the relationship, she begins rebuilding her shattered self-esteem. Then a chance run-in with a tall, dark, and handsome, silver-tongued drummer tests her strength and ability will Keanna throw caution to the wind, and finds herself getting rocked the only way a badass like River can? Billy Jeffers Billy Jeffers, pianist, never dreamed of being in a rock band, yet he reluctantly agreed to help a friend start one: Steel Total Destruction. Then, at a Miami club one night, the front man was injured and unable to play lead guitar. Therefore, Billy quickly learned and was then thrust into a spotlight he never wanted.

    This new edition has been updated by his friend and former Rolling Stone comrade Mitch Glazer and includes an epilogue about the memorial concerts for Timothy that James Taylor helped organize.

    I don't hate my job. I'm not annoyed with capitalism, and I'm indifferent to materialism. I'm not escaping emptiness, nor am I searching for meaning. I have great friends, a wonderful family, and fun roommates. The dude two doors down invited me over for steak or pork chops--my choice--on Sunday, and I couldn't even tell you the first letter of his name. Sure, the producers of The Amazing Race have rejected all five of my applications to hotfoot around the world--all five!--and my girlfriend and I just parted ways, but I've whined all I can about the race, and the girl wasn't The Girl anyway. All in all, my life is pretty fantastic. But I feel boxed in. Look at a map, and there we are, a pin stuck in the wall. There's the United States, about twenty-four square inches worth, and there's the rest of the world, seventeen hundred square inches begging to be explored. Career, wife, babies--of course I want these things; they're on the horizon. Meanwhile, I'm a few memories short. Maybe I need a year to live a little." FROM THE PUBLISHER: During his 29th year, spending just $19,420.68, less than it would have cost him to stay at home, Adam Shepard visited seventeen countries on four continents and lived some amazing adventures. “It’s interesting to me,” he says, “that in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Europe, it’s normal for people to pack a bag, buy a plane ticket, and get ‘Out There.’ In the U.S., though, we live with this very stiff paradigm—graduate college, work, find a spouse, make babies, work some more, retire—which can be a great existence, but we leave little room to load up a backpack and dip into various cultures, to see places, to really develop our own identity.” Shepard's journey began in “the other Antigua”—Antigua, Guatemala—where he spent a month brushing up on his Spanish and traveling on the “chicken bus.” During his two months in Honduras, he served with an organization that helps improve the lives of poor children; in Nicaragua, he dug wells to install pumps for clean water and then stepped into the ring to face a savage bull; in Thailand, he rode an elephant and cut his hair into a mullet; in Australia, he hugged a koala, contemplated the present-day treatment of the Aborigines, and mustered cattle; in Poland, he visited Auschwitz; in Slovakia, he bungee jumped off a bridge; and in the Philippines, he went wakeboarding among Boracay’s craggy inlets and then made love to Ivana on the second most beautiful beach in the world. His yearlong journey, which took two years to save for, was a spirited blend of leisure, volunteerism, and enrichment. He read 71 books, including ten classics and one—slowly—in Spanish. “If you can lend a hand to someone, educate yourself about the world, and sandwich that around extraordinary moments that get your blood pumping, that’s a pretty full year,” Shepard writes. Can everybody take a year to get missing? “Maybe, maybe not,” he says, “though that’s not really the point. I’m just concerned that some of us are too set on embracing certainty. We want life to be cushy and regimented, but that’s not how we can create a lasting impact on our lives or the lives around us. There’s only so much you can learn in the classroom. Sometimes you have to get out there to experience it, to touch it, to feel it, to see it for yourself. It’s fascinating the perspective we can gain when we step out of our bubbles of comfort, even just a little bit.”

    It is created without our consent, built on top of our circumstances, the off-handed comments we hear from others, and the moments that scared us most when we were young. But in the busyness of our daily life, we rarely get the chance to think clearly about the questions that matter most. Who am I? Where do I belong? How much of who I am and what I do boils down to avoiding the things that make me feel small? We tuck these questions into the corner of our minds, but they drive our behavior far more than we give them credit for, even after we become adults.Writing with the passion and clarity that made his debut, To Shake the Sleeping Self, a national bestseller, Jenkins makes space to explore the seven topics we must think about in order to live a deeply considered life: ego, family, work, love, nature, death, and the soul. He considers the experiences that shape us into who we are, whether they're as heart-pounding as a rafting trip through the whitewater of the Grand Canyon, or as ordinary as the moment when we look in the mirror each morning. Through it all, Jenkins leads readers on a wide-ranging conversation about finding fulfillment in the people and places around us, and discovering the courage to show our deepest selves to the world.The Seven Subjects is a profound reflection from one of our most original writers, a necessary read for anyone seeking a companion on the road to understanding.

    

    But with many decisions, there's a certain amount of danger. One wrong decision can destroy a career or a marriage. A string of wrong decisions can derail a life. So how do we know if our decisions are wise ones?Pastor Bob Merritt has found that the best way to get it right is to cultivate godly wisdom. In Get Wise, he takes God's best wisdom as found in the book of Proverbs and applies it to the top decisions every person has to make--decisions about education, work, family, friends, sex, parenting, money, and more. Topic by topic, he shows readers how to make choices that result in long-term benefits in health, reputation, peace, and finances.

    But there is a pattern to who succeeds and who doesn't. And engaging in the consistent practice of its pursuit is the best way forward.Based on the breakthrough Akimbo workshop pioneered by legendary author Seth Godin, The Practice will help you get unstuck and find the courage to make and share creative work. Godin insists that writer's block is a myth, that consistency is far more important than authenticity, and that experiencing the imposter syndrome is a sign that you're a well-adjusted human. Most of all, he shows you what it takes to turn your passion from a private distraction to a productive contribution, the one you've been seeking to share all along.With this book as your guide, you'll learn to dance with your fear. To take the risks worth taking. And to embrace the empathy required to make work that contributes with authenticity and joy.

    Carl Alasko takes apart the emotional stealth disease that destroys trust and happiness in every area of life: dating, marriage, parenting, friendship and work. Nothing is exempt from this hidden plague, including your financial security.This stealth disease is actually made up of three common psychological dynamics: the Toxic Trio of Denial, Delusion and Blame. Emotional Bullshit emerges when we use these three dynamics together to:* deny, manipulate and distort essential facts* substitute a delusional and false reality, and then* blame someone or something when things fall apart.Dr. Alasko provides a revolutionary way to eliminate Emotional BS from your life, markedly improving all of your relationships.Based on twenty five years of clinical experience, Dr. Alasko leads you through a simple-to-understand and proven way to ban Emotional BS and significantly increase your happiness and fulfillment.

    And he shares them with brutal honesty in this very book, along with plenty of hilarious (and sometimes painful) anecdotes about his career.This is not a book that will tell you how to format a manuscript or write a compelling query letter. It's a book about how to cope with rejection and bad reviews. Book signings where nobody shows up. Helplessly watching your peers go on to greater success than you. He's been through all of that and so much more, and in these pages you'll have a bunch of laughs as you commiserate and figure out how to get through it all.

    

    

    Countess Julie Guicciardi’s life is about to change forever. The spirited eighteen-year-old is taking piano lessons with Ludwig van Beethoven, the most talented piano virtuoso in the musical capital of Europe. She is captivated by his volatile genius, while he is drawn to her curiosity and disarming candor. Between them, a unique romance. But Beethoven has a secret he’s yet to share, and Julie is harboring a secret of her own, one so scandalous it could destroy their perfect love story.When Beethoven discovers the truth, he sets his emotions to music, composing a mournful opus that will become the Moonlight Sonata. The haunting refrain will follow Julie for the rest of her life.Set against the rich backdrop of nineteenth-century Vienna, The Woman in the Moonlight is an exhilarating ode to eternal passion. An epic tale of love, loss, rivalry, and political intrigue. A stirring portrait of a titan who wrestled with the gods and a woman who defied convention to inspire him.

    Now available in a revised paperback edition, this classic bestseller can change the way the game of tennis is played.