Crushed: An Amazing True Story of Determination and Survival


Kathryn Mann - 2013
    Crushed and left with broken ribs, a punctured lung, and compression fractures in his chest, spine, and pelvis, Bob pushed his arms forward, dug his fingers into the freezing mud and dragged his mostly paralyzed body forward. Saturated to the skin in freezing rain, far from help, and with the night fast approaching, Bob refused to give up.This includes photographs, documentation, and inspirational verses.This amazing true story was featured on the It's a Miracle series hosted by Richard Thomas. It aired on PAX Television as Chain Reaction in 1999.

L.A. Bizarro: The All New Insider's Guide to the Obscure, the Absurd, and the Perverse in Los Angeles


Matt Maranian - 2009
    has been fully revised. Packed with 75% new material, L.A. Bizarro boasts scores of fresh discoveries plus original photos presented in luscious, lurid color. Connoisseurs of the weird and wonderful, Anthony Lovett and Matt Maranian steer readers into a world of culinary curiosities, morbid museums, sexual sideshows, and dipsomaniacal dives. From pet cemeteries to piata district, hundreds of odd and outr delights are laid bare for visitors and Angelenos alike.

Ruth and Martin’s Album Club


Martin Fitzgerald - 2017
    Make them listen to it two more times. Get them to explain why they never bothered with it before. Then ask them to review it.What began as a simple whim quickly grew in popularity, and now Ruth and Martin’s Album Club has featured some remarkable guests: Ian Rankin on Madonna’s Madonna. Chris Addison on Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. Brian Koppelman on The Smiths’ Meat is Murder. JK Rowling on the Violent Femmes’ Violent Femmes. Bonnie Greer on The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Martin Carr on Paul McCartney’s Ram. Brian Bilston on Neil Young’s Harvest. Anita Rani on The Strokes’ Is This It. Richard Osman on Roxy Music’s For Your Pleasure. And many, many more.Each entry features an introduction to each album by blog creator Martin Fitzgerald. What follows are delightful, humorous and insightful contributions from each guest as they have an album forced upon them and – for better or worse – they discover some of the world’s favourite music.Ruth and Martin’s Album Club is a compilation of some of the blog’s greatest hits as well as some exclusive material that has never appeared anywhere before. Throughout, we get an insight into why some people opt out of some music, and what happens when you force them to opt in.

100 Countries, 5,000 Ideas: Where to Go, When to Go, What to See, What to Do


National Geographic Society - 2011
    Filled with new content, 11 new countries, and brand-new photography from National Geographic, you’ll find everything you need to plan your next globetrotting adventure. Travel to Vietnam where you can paddle Ha Long Bay and temple hop on a tuk tuk city tour. In France, visit well-known Parisian spots, then make your way to the off-the-beaten Dinan (France’s only walled city) and the Loire Valley. In South Africa, find yourself in an urban oasis in Cape Town before heading on a safari adventure. Go to the ends of the Earth in Chile before hopping a boat to cruise a glacier-filled bay. And history buffs will be fascinated by a three-country WWII tour. Whatever your pleasure, this rich guidebook has the trip--and country--for you. Complete with essential tips like when to go and what to bring, you’ll be packing your bags and crossing off bucket list destinations in no time.

The Smash-Up


Ali BenjaminAli Benjamin - 2021
    Ethan co-founded a lucrative media start-up, and Zo was well on her way to becoming a successful filmmaker. Then they moved to a rural community for a little more tranquility--or so they thought.When newfound political activism transforms Zo into a barely recognizable ball of outrage and #MeToo allegations rock his old firm, Ethan finds himself a misfit in his own life. Enter a houseguest who is young, fun, and not at all concerned with the real world, and Ethan is abruptly forced to question everything: his past, his future, his marriage, and what he values most.Startling, witty, thought-provoking, and wise, Ali Benjamin's exciting debut novel offers the shock of recognition as it deftly illuminates some of the biggest issues of our time. Taking inspiration from a classic Edith Wharton tale about a small-town love triangle, The Smash-Up is a wholly contemporary exploration of how the things we fail to see can fracture a life, a family, a community, and a nation.

The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon


Marcy McCreary - 2021
    The glamorous and gregarious matriarch, Rachel. The cunning and successful businessman, Stan. Four beautiful children. A perfect family deserving of respect and loyalty. Or so it seemed.Fast forward forty years. The Roths have lost their clout. When skeletal remains are found on the side of the road, the disappearance of Trudy Solomon, a coffee shop waitress at the Cuttman in 1978, is reopened. Each member of the Roth family holds a clue to the case, but getting them to admit what they know will force Detective Susan Ford to face a family she’d hoped never to see again.

Think of Me


Frances Liardet - 2022
    Covered in dust, Yvette and James hold hands for the first time as bombs explode above them. As the war rages on, they will find their way back to each other time and again, their love a beacon for their survival. After the war, their happiness takes root in England and blossoms, until a tragic event drives a wedge between them. The way back to one another is uncharted territory that both must be brave enough to face. 1974. Ten years after his wife's death and with his son now at university, James craves change. He moves to the beautiful English village of Upton not thirty minutes from the city where he brought his bride Yvette, nearly twenty-five years ago. There he discovers a scarf that lights the dark edges of his memory. Could it be Yvette's? As James makes a new home for himself and gently presses into the feelings the scarf evokes, he begins to unlock new revelations about his past that change everything he believes. Revelations that just might give James a new reason to live and the possibility of new love at last, after ten years alone.

Leah Remini: My Escape from Scientology


Johnny Dodd - 2016
    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.

The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize


Keith Dunnavant - 2006
    It is both a story of a changing era and of an extraordinary team on a championship quest. Very few institutions in American sports can match the enduring excellence of the University of Alabama football program. Across a wide swath of the last century, the tradition-rich Crimson Tide has claimed twelve national championships, captured twenty-five conference titles, finished thirty-four times among the country's top ten, and played in fifty-three bowl games.Especially dominant during the era of the legendary Paul "Bear" Bryant, the larger-than-life figure who towered over the landscape like no man before or since, Alabama entered the 1966 season with the chance to become the first college football team to win three consecutive national championships. Every aspect of Bryant's grueling system was geared around competing for the big prize each and every year, and in 1966 the idea of the threepeat tantalized the players, pushing them toward greatness. Driven by Bryant's enthusiasm, dedication, and perseverance, players were made to believe in their team and themselves. Led by the electrifying force of quarterback Kenny "Snake" Stabler and one of the most punishing defenses in the storied annals of the Southeastern Conference, the Crimson Tide cruised to a magical season, finishing as the nation's only undefeated, untied team. But something happened on the way to the history books.The Missing Ring is the story of the one that got away, the one that haunts Alabama fans still, and native Alabamian Keith Dunnavant takes readers deep inside the Crimson Tide program during a more innocent time, before widespread telecasting, before scholarship limitations, before end-zone dances. Meticulously revealing the strategies, tactics, and personal dramas that bring the overachieving boys of 1966 to life, Dunnavant's insightful, anecdotally rich narrative shows how Bryant molded a diverse group of young men into a powerful force that overcame various obstacles to achieve perfection in an imperfect world.Set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, the still-escalating Vietnam War, and a world and a sport teetering on the brink of change in a variety of ways, The Missing Ring tells an important story about the collision between football and culture. Ultimately, it is this clash that produces the Crimson Tide's most implacable foe, enabling the greatest injustice in college football history. "Keith Dunnavant has written yet another fabulous book about the fabled Alabama football program. You will be amazed at how one of the great injustices in the history of college football cost them their rightful place in history. And you just thought the system was screwed up now." ---Jim Dent, author of The Junction Boys "Keith Dunnavant nails it: all the sacrifices the 1966 Alabama team made to win three national championships in a row, and how we were robbed at the ballot box."---Jerry Duncan, one of the boys of 1966 "Dunnavant infuses reportage and passion into a tale that every Alabamian of a certain age knows: For all the crying about Penn State in 1969, Penn State in 1994, or Auburn in 2004, no team ever got shafted the way the 1966 Crimson Tide did. It's all here: the churning legs, the churning stomachs, and the dreaded gym classes where Bear Bryant's boys made the sacrifices he demanded in order to become champions. They conquered their opponents on the field, but proved to be no match for the politics of the day off the field. The '66 Tide is still waiting for the Missing Ring. Thanks to Dunnavant, we don't have to." ---Ivan Maisel, senior writer, ESPN.com, and co-author of A War in Dixie "Absolutely stunning. The Missing Ring left me breathless. Keith Dunnavant has proven again why he is one of America's greatest sports authors and historians. With so much having been written about Bryant and Alabama, I had my doubts going into this book that there was something I didn't know or hadn't read. Yet Dunnavant has managed to strike gold with The Missing Ring in every way and shape imaginable. His quiet prose goes down as effortlessly as bourbon and branch water. Fans of college football will marvel at his painstaking research. Dunnavant turned the clock back forty years and it was 1966 all over again. The pain and the glory, the pride and the prejudice, all brought to life in the pages of this extraordinary book." ---Paul Finebaum, Paul Finebaum Radio Network

When We Are Called to Part: Hope and Heartbreak in the Vanishing World of the Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement


Brooke Jarvis - 2013
    Once it had been a forbidding place of exile, inhabited by thousands of the disease’s victims who had been removed from their families and confined against their will, far away from a society that feared and misunderstood their condition. When Brooke Jarvis came across a posting for a job in Kalaupapa, tending to the needs of the handful of remaining patients, it seemed like an impossibly exotic opportunity for a college student. But what she found there was both more remarkable and more familiar than what she had imagined. When We Are Called to Part is the absorbing, affecting, and often funny story of life in the last years of a rapidly vanishing community. “Even a prison,” she would learn, “eventually becomes a home, becomes something you mourn.”

On Lighthouses


Jazmina Barrera
    Brilliantly resisting the postcard kitsch typically associated with her subject, On Lighthouses is a sweeping work that connects figures such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginia Woolf, Walter Benjamin, and Anne Carson; Barrera’s interconnected essays offer a mesmerizing portrait—historical, literary, and decidedly personal—of her obsession, those structures whose message is “first and foremost, that human beings are here.” On Lighthouses, described as “alluring and arresting as the landscapes and stories it conveys” by the Los Angeles Review of Books, takes readers on a journey from raging sea to cold stone—from a hopeless isolation to a meaningful one—concluding at last in a place of peace.

The Everlasting Hatred: The Roots of Jihad


Hal Lindsey - 2002
    A bestselling author explains how on September 11th an ancient fight-to-the-death conflict exploded on the shores of the United States.

I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad


Souad Mekhennet - 2017
    I was not to carry any identification, and would have to leave my cell phone, audio recorder, watch, and purse at my hotel. . . ."For her whole life, Souad Mekhennet, a reporter for The Washington Post who was born and educated in Germany, has had to balance the two sides of her upbringing - Muslim and Western. She has also sought to provide a mediating voice between these cultures, which too often misunderstand each other.In this compelling and evocative memoir, we accompany Mekhennet as she journeys behind the lines of jihad, starting in the German neighborhoods where the 9/11 plotters were radicalized and the Iraqi neighborhoods where Sunnis and Shia turned against one another, and culminating on the Turkish/Syrian border region where ISIS is a daily presence. In her travels across the Middle East and North Africa, she documents her chilling run-ins with various intelligence services and shows why the Arab Spring never lived up to its promise. She then returns to Europe, first in London, where she uncovers the identity of the notorious ISIS executioner "Jihadi John," and then in France, Belgium, and her native Germany, where terror has come to the heart of Western civilization.Mekhennet's background has given her unique access to some of the world's most wanted men, who generally refuse to speak to Western journalists. She is not afraid to face personal danger to reach out to individuals in the inner circles of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and their affiliates; when she is told to come alone to an interview, she never knows what awaits at her destination.Souad Mekhennet is an ideal guide to introduce us to the human beings behind the ominous headlines, as she shares her transformative journey with us. Hers is a story you will not soon forget.

Woodrow on the Bench: Life Lessons from a Wise Old Dog


Jenna Blum - 2021
    It will also make you understand the majesty and wisdom imparted by the animals we are lucky to keep by our sides for as long as we can.”—New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth BergThe New York Times and internationally bestselling author of Those Who Save Us pays tribute to her beloved black Lab, Woodrow, in this beautiful memoir that recalls the last six months of his life and the ways in which he taught her to live.  “For anyone who’s ever loved an old dog.”Since she adopted him as a puppy fifteen years earlier, Jenna Blum and Woodrow have been inseparable. Known to many as “the George Clooney of dogs” for his good looks and charm, Woodrow and his “Mommoo” are fixtures in their Boston neighborhood. But Woodrow is aging. As he begins to fail, the true nature of his extraordinary relationship with Jenna is revealed. Jenna may be the dog parent, but it is Woodrow, with his amazing personality and trusting nature, who has much to teach her. A divorcée who has experienced her share of sadness and loss, Jenna discovers, over the months she spends caring for her ailing dog, what it is to be present in the moment, and what it truly means to love.Aided by an amazing group of friends and buoyed by the support of strangers, Jenna and Woodrow navigate these precious final days together with kindness, humor, and grace. Their unforgettable love story will reaffirm your belief in kindness, break your heart, and leave your spirit soaring.

Uncle John's Actual and Factual Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader #31)


Bathroom Readers' Institute - 2018
    This entertaining 31st anniversary edition contains 512 pages of all-new articles that will appeal to readers everywhere. Pop culture, history, dumb crooks, and other actual and factual tidbits are packed onto every page of this book. Inside, you’ll find . . .Dogs and cats who ran for political officeThe bizarre method people in Victorian England used to resuscitate drowning victimsThe man who met his future pet—a stray dog—while running across the Gobi DesertSearching for Planet X—the last unknown planet in our solar systemTwantrums—strange Twitter rants that had disastrous effectsThe true story of Boaty McBoatfaceAnd much more!