The phrase he hates most is "throw like a girl," so he teaches them to climb trees and play ball. But when he discovers a lump in five-year-old Zoë's midsection as she sits on his lap at a Chicago Cubs game, everything changes. Surgery, sleepless nights, treatments, a drumbeat of worry. Even as the family moves to New York and Zoë starts kindergarten, they must navigate a new normal: school and soccer games and hot chocolates in cafés regularly interrupted by anxious visits to the hospital. And Elisha is forced to balance his desire to be a protective parent—even as he encourages his girls to take risks—against the increasing helplessness he feels for his child's well-being, and his own. With the observant eye of an artist and remarkable humor, Elisha writes about what it took for him and his wife to preserve a sense of normalcy and joy in their daughters' lives; how the family emerged from this experience profoundly changed, but healed and whole; how we are all transformed by the fear and hope we feel for those we love.From the Hardcover edition.

    Born two years after her parents' only son died just hours after his birth, Kat Chow became unusually fixated with death. She worried constantly about her parents dying -- especially her mother. One morning, when Kat was nine, her mother, a vivacious and mischievous woman, casually made a morbid joke: When she eventually dies, she said laughing, she'd like to be stuffed and displayed in Kat's future apartment in order to always watch over her.Four years later when her mother dies unexpectedly from cancer, Kat, her two older sisters, and their father are plunged into a debilitating, lonely grief. With a distinct voice that is wry and heartfelt, Kat weaves together what is part ghost story and part excavation of her family's history of loss spanning three generations and their immigration from China and Hong Kong to America and Cuba. This redemptive coming-of-age story uncovers the uncanny parallels in Kat's lineage, including the strength of sisterhood and the complicated duty of looking after parents, even after death.Seeing Ghosts asks what it means to claim and tell your family's story: Is writing an exorcism or is it its own form of preservation? What do we owe to our families in our grief, and how does it shape us? In order to answer these questions and to understand her family's ghosts, Kat unearths their sorrow and challenges the power structures of race, class, and gender. The result is an extraordinary new contribution to the literature of grief and the American family, and a provocative and transformative meditation on who we become under the specter of loss.

    Strength in What Remains is a wonderfully written, inspiring account of one man’s remarkable American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him – a brilliant testament to the power of will and of second chances. Deo arrives in America from Burundi in search of a new life. Having survived a civil war and genocide, plagued by horrific dreams, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park, and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores. Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life, pointing him eventually in the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing. Kidder breaks new ground in telling this unforgettable story as he travels with Deo back over a turbulent life in search of meaning and forgiveness. An extraordinary writer, Tracy Kidder once again shows us what it means to be fully human by telling a story about the heroism inherent in ordinary people, a story about a life based on hope.

    They are planning a wedding and have bought a new home. The last thing the two of them need right now is a new cat.But their recently purchased house seems to come complete with a stray orange feline--a cat with a vibrant personality and a talent for mousing. So Shawn soon finds himself with a regular companion. Little does he realize that this cat will shortly become more important to him than he can possibly imagine.As Shawn's personal life begins to shift in ways he never saw coming, Kitty remains a constant source of stability and comfort. Shawn gave Kitty a home, and now Kitty gives Shawn the love he needs to heal.A touching and inspiring story of heartfelt companionship, The Kitty offers an uplifting perspective on what it means to find true friendship in this world. Anyone who has ever shared a meaningful connection with a pet will fall head over heels in love with Kitty and Shawn.As Shawn discovers, sometimes we don't even realize we need to be rescued--until we are.

    

    It would take a young warrior to survive it.Cinelle Barnes was barely three years old when her family moved into Mansion Royale, a stately ten-bedroom home in the Philippines. Filled with her mother’s opulent social aspirations and the gloriously excessive evidence of her father’s self-made success, it was a girl’s storybook playland. But when a monsoon hits, her father leaves, and her mother’s terrible lover takes the reins, Cinelle’s fantastical childhood turns toward tyranny she could never have imagined. Formerly a home worthy of magazines and lavish parties, Mansion Royale becomes a dangerous shell of the splendid palace it had once been.In this remarkable ode to survival, Cinelle creates something magical out of her truth—underscored by her complicated relationship with her mother. Through a tangle of tragedy and betrayal emerges a revelatory journey of perseverance and strength, of grit and beauty, and of coming to terms with the price of family—and what it takes to grow up.

    She had a husband and two children. She was educated and made a good living as a writer. She had a vibrant social life with a tight circle of friends. She could party until dawn and take her children to school the next day. From the outside, she appeared to have it all together. But, in truth, alcohol was slowly taking over, turning her world on its side. Waking up to another hangover, growing tired of embarrassing herself in front of friends and family, and feeling important moments slip away, Brenda made the most critical decision of her life: to get sober. She kept a diary of her first year (and beyond) in recovery, chronicling the struggles of finding a meeting she could look forward to, relating to her fellow alcoholics, and finding a sponsor with whom she connected. Along the way, she discovered the challenges and pleasures of living each day without alcohol, navigating a social circle where booze is a centerpiece, and dealing with her alcoholic father's terminal illness and denial. Brenda Wilhelmson's Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife offers insight, wisdom, and relevance for readers in recovery, as well as their loved ones, no matter how long they've been sober.

    Unafraid of rejection or failure, Michael has taken on the most difficult and challenging cases of our times and despite the odds, won plenty. In Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer Michael dissects many of them, revealing his motivations, meticulous approach to forensic science, cross examination techniques, the political dimensions and emotional reactions with clarity, subtlety and charm. Interspersed with personal anecdotes and recollections, this insightful book is liberally laced with Michael's quirky brand of anarchic humour. Cases range from the Angry Brigade, the Bradford 12, the Birmingham Six, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, Angela Cannings, Jill Dando, Ruth Ellis, Dodi Fayed, the 'Fertilizer' conspiracy, Iraqi hi-jackers, Stephen Lawrence, Fatmir Limaj (Leader of the Kosovan Liberation Army), the Marchioness Disaster, the Price sisters, the 'Ricin' trial, Risley prison riots, Tahira Tabassum, Judith Ward, Arthur Scargill and the miners to the Jean Charles de Menezes inquiry, and many more. Issues of public concern, human rights and innovative attempts to construct a democratic legal system are discussed in full, but Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer also unveils with honesty and wit a man who has put as much passion and energy into his life as his work, one of the great personalities of our time.

    Some of his tales will seem far fetched, unless you're a cop and then you know that anything can happen - and just when you think you've seen it all, someone will surprise you.

    Brought up in Washington, DC, in an abusive family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia, when he told her he couldn't move with her. Her marriage at an end, Harper began her new life in a new city, in a new job, as a newly single woman.In the ensuing years, as Harper learned to become an effective ER physician, bringing insight and empathy to every patient encounter, she came to understand that each of us is broken—physically, emotionally, psychically. How we recognize those breaks, how we try to mend them, and where we go from there are all crucial parts of the healing process.The Beauty in Breaking is the poignant true story of Harper's journey toward self-healing. Each of the patients Harper writes about taught her something important about recuperation and recovery. How to let go of fear even when the future is murky. How to tell the truth when it's simpler to overlook it. How to understand that compassion isn't the same as justice. As she shines a light on the systemic disenfranchisement of the patients she treats as they struggle to maintain their health and dignity, Harper comes to understand the importance of allowing ourselves to make peace with the past as we draw support from the present. In this hopeful, moving, and beautiful book, she passes along the precious, necessary lessons that she has learned as a daughter, a woman, and a physician.

    It is also an important addition to a thin historical record.... Her account of the revolutionary rhetoric, set against the reality of what the revolutionaries were actually doing, is as macabre as any of the descriptions of bodies." --The Wall Street Journal"This is a powerful and compelling story of terror, struggle and death sprinkled with moments of tenderness, written by a woman who writes not of politics but only of what she experienced." --New York Times Book ReviewIn 1975, Molyda Szymusiak (her adoptive name), the daughter of a high Cambodian official, was twelve years old and leading a relatively peaceful life in Phnom Penh. Suddenly, on April 17, Khmer Rouge radicals seized the capital and drove all its inhabitants into the countryside. The chaos that followed has been widely publicized, most notably in the movie The Killing Fields. Murderous brutality coupled with raging famine caused the death of more than two million people, nearly a third of the population. This powerful memoir documents the horror Cambodians experienced in daily life.

    But lacking a written language of their own, the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others. Driven to tell her family’s story after her grandmother’s death, The Latehomecomer is Kao Kalia Yang’s tribute to the remarkable woman whose spirit held them all together. It is also an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard.Beginning in the 1970s, as the Hmong were being massacred for their collaboration with the United States during the Vietnam War, Yang recounts the harrowing story of her family’s captivity, the daring rescue undertaken by her father and uncles, and their narrow escape into Thailand where Yang was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp.When she was six years old, Yang’s family immigrated to America, and she evocatively captures the challenges of adapting to a new place and a new language. Through her words, the dreams, wisdom, and traditions passed down from her grandmother and shared by an entire community have finally found a voice.

    Ostensibly about the building of a beautiful vintage motorcycle from a cardboard box full of parts, "Rebuilding the Indian" is really about countless other things as well: mid-life, the joys of fatherhood, the heartbreak of fatherhood, the changing seasons in Montana, the beauty of everyday life, the sadness of everyday life.

    I, on the other hand, have a crystal-clear memory of that moment. It happened at night in the summer of 1966, when my elementary school headmaster hanged himself.In 1966 Moying, a student at a prestigious language school in Beijing, seems destined for a promising future. Everything changes when student Red Guards begin to orchestrate brutal assaults, violent public humiliations, and forced confessions. After watching her teachers and headmasters beaten in public, Moying flees school for the safety of home, only to witness her beloved grandmother denounced, her home ransacked, her father's precious books flung onto the back of a truck, and Baba himself taken away. From labor camp, Baba entrusts a friend to deliver a reading list of banned books to Moying so that she can continue to learn. Now, with so much of her life at risk, she finds sanctuary in the world of imagination and learning.This inspiring memoir follows Moying Li from age twelve to twenty-two, illuminating a complex, dark time in China's history as it tells the compelling story of one girl's difficult but determined coming-of-age during the Cultural Revolution.Snow Falling in Spring is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

    Highly recommended." —Tim Cahill, author of Lost in My Own Backyard, Hold the Enlightenment and Jaguars Ripped My Flesh"After over a decade in the country, Hopkins knows and loves his subject dearly—that much is obvious—and his vivid portrait projects that love from every page." —Jann Wenner, editor and founder of Rolling Stone Magazine"A loving expose of everything that's wonderful about Thailand, and much that isn't. Should be required reading for all newcomers." —Joe Cummings, author of the Lonely Planet Thailand GuideWriter Jerry Hopkins came to Thailand for a visit in the 1980s, and ended up a permanent resident with a temporary visa—a big, white farang haunting the bars and back alleys of Bangkok. His essays explore the mystery and mayhem of "The Land of Smiles" to hilarious—and sometimes disturbing—effect. Travel with him to a place where whisky is rum, water buffaloes are gay, insects are dinner, dildos are lucky charms, and your wildest adolescent fantasies can come true (for a nominal fee).