Jill is one of those “accidental athletes” who stumbled into endurance racing shortly after she moved to Alaska in 2005. After a hundred miles, her first race only scratched the surface of the historic trail that spans a vast and frozen wilderness. Ever since, she dreamed about the chiming of ice crystals at thirty below zero, black spruce shadows in the moonlight, the ethereal dance of the Northern Lights, and a journey that could take her deeper into this transcendental world — the thousand-mile race to Nome. After ten years of dreaming, she finally made the leap in 2016. Fitness, however, remained elusive as ambitious preparations left a wake of failures, sickness and injury. Even the existence of the trail remained in question — throughout the winter, Alaska experienced unprecedented heat waves and snow melt that threatened to render the Iditarod Trail impassable. By the time Jill lined up at the start, she was ready to chuck her dream into the barely-frozen lake. Instead, she pedaled across waterlogged ice, repeating her mantra of “one day at a time.” This account is not just a story about seeking beauty, overcoming setbacks and uncovering hidden strength — it’s a journey into the benevolent heart of the coldest, loneliest trail.

    There have been exhilarating highs and devastating lows, but his love for the practice of neurosurgery has never wavered. Following the publication of his celebrated New York Times bestseller Do No Harm, Marsh retired from his full-time job in England to work pro bono in Ukraine and Nepal. In Admissions, he describes the difficulties of working in these troubled, impoverished countries and the further insights it has given him into the practice of medicine. Marsh also faces up to the burden of responsibility that can come with trying to reduce human suffering. Unearthing memories of his early days as a medical student and the experiences that shaped him as a young surgeon, he explores the difficulties of a profession that deals in probabilities rather than certainties and where the overwhelming urge to prolong life can come at a tragic cost for patients and those who love them. Reflecting on what forty years of handling the human brain has taught him, Marsh finds a different purpose in life as he approaches the end of his professional career and a fresh understanding of what matters to us all in the end.

    Though his mother died giving birth, he spent a contented childhood working the fields, setting traps in the jungle, and living off the land. Still, as strange and wondrous flying machines crisscrossed the skies overhead, Ousman dreamed of a different life. And so, when he was only twelve years old, he left his village and began what would be a five-year journey to Europe.Every step of the way, as he traveled across the Sahara desert, through the daunting metropolises of Accra, Tripoli, Benghazi, and Casablanca, and over the Mediterranean Sea aboard a packed migrant dinghy, Ousman was handed off like merchandise by a loose network of smugglers and in the constant, foreboding company of “sinkers”: other migrants who found themselves penniless and alone on their way north, unable to continue onward or return home.But on a path rife with violence, exploitation, and racism, Ousman also encountered friendship, generosity, and hope. North to Paradise is a visceral true story about the stark realities of life along the most dangerous migrant route across Africa; it is also a portrait of extraordinary resilience in the face of unimaginable challenges, the beauty of kindness in strangers, and the power of giving back.

    Laura Fahrenthold knew that to cope with her painful loss, she needed to do it on her own terms. So she bought an RV, took her kids and their dog, and drove across the United States and Canada in search of healing and understanding. A career in journalism fills The Pink Steering Wheel Chronicles with insight and wit as Laura shares her adventures and misadventures, her deeply-layered love story, and her hilarious slice of life dispatches during her 30,152-mile road trip.

    

    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.

    With honesty and insight, Holly Alastra recounts growing up in a violent and abusive home and her later struggles with deadly eating disorders. Though Holly spent many years of her life hating and hurting herself, the story is ultimately inspirational, showing the ability of the human spirit to triumph over hardship and misfortune. The book opens with Holly in the throes of a passionate, yet dangerous love affair with food. Food is her greatest friend and her worst enemy—a fatal attraction. Holly tries to run from the affair, but she can't escape herself, the one person she wants to get away from most.

    On the very day Richard Millhous Nixon became the 37th President, Ivan was born into a dysfunctional family. From a mentally challenged mother to an incapable father and a fragile brother, Ivan was faced with challenges no child is ready for. And yet despite all the anger and frustration that came with them, he somehow managed to persevere, to become more what society deemed him to be: an executive. This creative uncensored biography recounts in vivid detail the anger and depression of growing up in poverty, the gripping homicidal effects of drugs, racism, police brutality and a broken government system. Ivan’s voice is expressed through a masterful use of syntax that reveals a soul that, while battered, is far from broken. His tale maintains steadfast a hope for a better future that would give Richard Nixon himself reason to pause. From Illinois to Indiana comes a story over forty-years that highlights the indomitable power of a determined soul. Relive some of the most unimaginable situations, leading up to a meeting with a certain angel that will change his life for the better. Find out how a word as simple as “FAVOR” can make all the difference in the world. This unrestricted story will leave you never looking at your own “Dirty Laundry” the same.

    This self-made billionaire is far more than a talking head, however: she has leveraged her public profile to make a $3 billion fortune. She is the richest African American, and greatest black philanthropist, in history. Oprah has honorary doctorates from both Duke and Harvard Universities, and in 2013 President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her rise from childhood poverty in rural Mississippi, and her teenage years as a single mother in inner city Milwaukee, having become pregnant aged just 14, is nothing short of a miracle. Even in fairytales, heroines don’t triumph over adversity like this. Additionally You Get 2 Bonus Ebooks - 69 Ways to Make Money From Home - Bitcoins Beginner’s Guide

    In and out of institutions for the greater part of his youth; Josh, a wild teenager, falls into a rollercoaster romance with Isabel, a Southern jewel, who drives him to search for purpose in professional Mixed Martial Arts. As Isabel marches towards personal battles of her own, Josh fights his way from local MMA circuits to front and center of FOX's The Ultimate Fighter TV show. After losing the most important bout of Josh's career, the pair rekindle their love, and seek to find strength in each other. With a penchant for raw and heartfelt honesty, Samman chronicles a gut-wrenching story of love, loss, and what it means to conquer life's greatest tragedies. The Housekeeper is an intimate look into the world of a man fighting for redemption.

    She was missing for more than eighteen years, held captive by Philip and Nancy Garrido, and gave birth to two daughters during her imprisonment. In A Stolen Life Jaycee told the story of her life from her abduction in 1991 through her reappearance in 2009. Freedom: My Book of Firsts is about everything that happened next. “How do you rebuild a life?” Jaycee asks. In these pages, she describes the life she never thought she would live to see: from her first sight of her mother to her first time meeting her grownup sister, her first trip to the dentist to her daughters’ first day of school, her first taste of champagne to her first hangover, her first time behind the wheel to her first speeding ticket, and her first dance at a friend’s wedding to her first thoughts about the possibility of a future relationship. This raw and inspiring book will remind you that there is, as Jaycee writes, “life after something tragic happens…Somehow, I still believe that we each hold the key to our own happiness and you have to grab it where you can in whatever form it might take.” Freedom is an awe-inspiring memoir about the power we all hold within ourselves.

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

    Eyes wide open. I was standing at an open window, staring at the dizzying curve of Riverside Drive, five floors below. I’d stopped, somehow, poised, about to jump.Growing up the good girl in an Irish American family full of drinkers and terrible sleepers, Kathleen Frazier was twelve when her seemingly innocent sleepwalking turned dangerous. Over the next few years, she was a popular A+ student by day, the star of her high school musical. At night, she both longed for and dreaded sleep.Frazier moved to Manhattan in the 1980s, hoping for a life in the theater but getting a run of sleepwalking performances instead. Efforts to abate her malady with drinking failed miserably. She became promiscuous, looking for nighttime companionship. Could a bed partner save her from flinging herself down a flight of stairs or out an open window? Exhaustion stalked her, and rest and love were seemingly out of reach.This is the journey Frazier illuminates in her intimate memoir. While highlighting her quest to beat her sleep terrors and insomnia, this is ultimately a story of health, hope, and redemption.

    From reckless drug addict to one of Australia’s top chefs and television stars: MasterChef judge Jock Zonfrillo's powerful life story will shock and inspire. Jock’s life spiralled out of control when he tried heroin for the first time as a teenager while growing up in 1980s Glasgow. For years he balanced a career as a rising star amongst legendary chefs with a crippling drug addiction that took him down many dark paths. Fired from his job at a Michelin star restaurant in Chester, England, after a foul-mouthed rant, Jock made his way to London looking for work and found himself in front of the legendary Marco Pierre White. He credits White for saving his life, but Jock continued to struggle with addiction in a world of excess, celebrity, and cut-throat ambition. On New Year’s Eve 1999, Jock shot up his last shot of heroin before boarding a plane to Sydney, where he would find passion and new meaning in life in the most unexpected places. There would be more struggles ahead, including two failed marriages, the closure of his prized restaurant during COVID-19, his time on-country, and some very public battles.This is his unforgettable story.

    Now she turns her focus to one of the most loved, brilliant, and iconoclastic women of our time: the actress, writer, daughter, and mother Carrie Fisher.Weller traces Fisher's life from her Hollywood royalty roots to her untimely and shattering death after Christmas 2016. Her mother was the spunky and adorable Debbie Reynolds; her father, the heartthrob crooner Eddie Fisher. When Eddie ran off with Elizabeth Taylor, the scandal thrust little Carrie Frances into a bizarre spotlight, gifting her with an irony and an aplomb that would resonate throughout her life.We follow Fisher's acting career, from her debut in Shampoo, the hit movie that defined mid-1970s Hollywood, to her seizing of the plum female role in Star Wars, which catapulted her to instant fame. We explore her long, complex relationship with Paul Simon and her relatively peaceful years with the talent agent Bryan Lourd. We witness her startling leap--on the heels of a near-fatal overdose--from actress to highly praised, bestselling author, the Dorothy Parker of her place and time.Weller sympathetically reveals the conditions that Fisher lived with: serious bipolar disorder and an inherited drug addiction. Still, despite crises and overdoses, her life's work--as an actor, a novelist and memoirist, a script doctor, a hostess, and a friend--was prodigious and unique. As one of her best friends said, "I almost wish the expression 'one of a kind' didn't exist, because it applies to Carrie in a deeper way than it applies to others."Sourced by friends, colleagues, and witnesses to all stages of Fisher's life, Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge is an empathic and even-handed portrayal of a woman who--as Princess Leia, but mostly as herself--was a feminist heroine, one who died at a time when we need her blazing, healing honesty more than ever.