Then, on a running trail in North Carolina, she met Ismail, sincere, passionate, kind, yet from a very different world. Raised a Muslim—one of eight siblings born in an impoverished fishing village in Libya—his faith informed his life. When she and Ismail made the decision to become a family, Krista embarked on a journey she never could have imagined, an accidental jihad: a quest for spiritual and intellectual growth that would open her mind, and more important, her heart.

    Restlessly crossing back and forth between the boundaries of family and freedom, England and America, home and away, she has sought but generally failed to contain an adventurous spirit within the confines of conventional living. When she awakes one morning stymied by an existential panic, Pollen grudgingly concludes that in order to move forward, she needs to take a good look at her past. In Meet Me in the In-Between, Pollen takes us on the illuminating journey of a life, from her privileged, unorthodox childhood in Upper Manhattan through early marriage to a son of an alluring Mafioso, to the dusty border towns of Mexico where she falls in with a crowd of Pink Floyd-loving smugglers. Throughout all, Bella grapples intently with relationships, motherhood, career ups and downs, and a pathological fear of being boxed in. Interwoven with exquisite passages of graphic memoir, this is a tender, funny, and deeply honest story of one woman's quest to keep looking for the extraordinary in an ordinary life. With patented mix of humor and pain, novelist Bella Pollen takes a dead-on look at what it means to be a smart, reasonably sane woman navigating the modern world.

    matchmaker and her daily struggles to keep her self-esteem from imploding in a town where looks are everything and money talks. From juggling the demands of an insensitive boss… to the ups and downs of her own marriage to a Latin husband who doesn’t think that she is “domestic” enough, Marla writes with charm and self-effacement about the universal struggles that all women face in their lives. Readers will laugh, cringe and cry as they journey with her through outrageous stories about the indignities of dating in Los Angeles, dealing with overblown egos, vicariously hobnobbing with celebrities, and navigating the wannabe-land of Beverly Hills. In a city where perfection is almost a prerequisite, even Marla can’t help but run for the Botox every once in a while.

    Through research and study he begins to understand what the most joyful among us have in common is that they remember the past with peace, anticipate the future with confidence and live in the present with joy and exuberance. He further discovers that what gives them this perspective is a set of skills that they consistently, even if subconsciously, practice. He also realizes that he is not particularly good at several of these skills. In Happiness: The Art of Living with Peace, Confidence and Joy the author recounts, with insight and humor his journey to better understand and practice the skills of happiness with the goal of helping others on their own paths to joyful, meaningful living.

    On her blog, in her magazine, and on her cooking show, Ree shares recipes, tales of her adventures in the country, and stories of everyday life with her four children and cowboy/rancher husband.In this down-to-earth and charming book, Ree shares real-life anecdotes about parenting from her own unique vantage point. While her busy life is constantly full of new surprises, what's most important to her is family. Over the years she's learned a few things about balancing motherhood with a million other things, and now she offers the wisdom of her experiences; the ups, the downs, the bumps in the road, the laughter and the tears; in stories brimming with the relatable wit and humor found in her cookbooks and her bestselling love story, The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels.A celebration of motherhood, family, love, and laughter, Frontier Follies is a keepsake to treasure and share with the wonderful women in your life

    In the same moment, his dreams of settling down with his pregnant girlfriend are dashed when she is moved off to Texas by her parents. Left alone in small town Oklahoma, he embarks on a deranged, cross-country quest for a family of his own.STILL LIFE WITH BRASS POLE is Craig Machen’s funny, debauched and heartfelt memoir about young love and coming of age in the titillation business. And how a roaring White Knight Complex, an eccentric comedy club owner, and a trio of unpredictable striptease artists conspire to help him achieve his aims.

    Fifty years later, Philomena decided to find him.Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Philomena’s son was trying to find her. Renamed Michael Hess, he had become a leading lawyer in the first Bush administration, and he struggled to hide secrets that would jeopardize his career in the Republican Party and endanger his quest to find his mother.A gripping exposé told with novelistic intrigue, Philomena pulls back the curtain on the role of the Catholic Church in forced adoptions and on the love between a mother and son who endured a lifelong separation.

    Now, in this uproarious collection, she sneaks her sharp wit through airport security and delivers her most absurd and hilarious stories ever.On safari in Africa, it's anyone's guess as to what's more dangerous: the wildlife or Chelsea. But whether she's fumbling the seduction of a guide by not knowing where tigers live (Asia, duh) or wearing a bathrobe into the bush because her clothes stopped fitting seven margaritas ago, she's always game for the next misadventure.The situation gets down and dirty as she defiles a kayak in the Bahamas, and outright sweaty as she escapes from a German hospital on crutches. When things get truly scary, like finding herself stuck next to a passenger with bad breath, she knows she can rely on her family to make matters even worse. Thank goodness she has the devoted Chunk by her side-except for the time she loses him in Telluride.Complete with answers to the most frequently asked traveler's questions, hot travel trips, and travel etiquette, none of which should be believed, UGANDA BE KIDDING ME has Chelsea taking on the world, one laugh-out-loud incident at a time.

    Now, for the first time, she chronicles her groundbreaking tenure as editor in chief of Gourmet, during which she spearheaded a revolution in the way we think about food.When Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America's oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone's boss. And yet . . . Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no?This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became an important part of popular culture, a time when the rise of the farm-to-table movement changed, forever, the way we eat. Readers will meet legendary chefs like David Chang and Eric Ripert, idiosyncratic writers like David Foster Wallace, and a colorful group of editors and art directors who, under Reichl's leadership, transformed stately Gourmet into a cutting-edge publication. This was the golden age of print media—the last spendthrift gasp before the Internet turned the magazine world upside down.Complete with recipes, Save Me the Plums is a personal journey of a woman coming to terms with being in charge and making a mark, following a passion and holding on to her dreams—even when she ends up in a place she never expected to be.

    There's no traffic light and no mail delivery; people can vanish without a trace and funerals are a community affair. Heather Lende posts both the obituaries and the social column for her local newspaper. If anyone knows the going-on in this close-knit town—from births to weddings to funerals—she does. Whether contemplating the mysterious death of eccentric Speedy Joe, who wore nothing but a red union suit and a hat he never took off, not even for a haircut; researching the details of a one-legged lady gold miner's adventurous life; worrying about her son's first goat-hunting expedition; observing the awe-inspiring Chilkat Bald Eagle Festival; or ice skating in the shadow of glacier-studded mountains, Lende's warmhearted style brings us inside her small-town life. We meet her husband, Chip, who owns the local lumber yard; their five children; and a colorful assortment of quirky friends and neighbors, including aging hippies, salty fishermen, native Tlingit Indians, and volunteer undertakers—as well as the moose, eagles, sea lions, and bears with whom they share this wild and perilous land. Like Bailey White's tales of Southern life or Garrison Keillor's reports from the Midwest, NPR commentator Heather Lende's take on her offbeat Alaskan hometown celebrates life in a dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful place.

    After announcing her diagnosis of Stage 2 Triple Negative Breast Cancer on Good Morning America, people all over the country rallied around Joan as she went into warrior mode. Joan appeared on the cover of People Magazine bald, showing the world her brave resolve and that breast cancer does not need to define you.Joan’s illness has changed her in profoundly unexpected ways and has redefined her values and most of all, her health. Following a new clean and healthy way of eating, Joan became her best advocate by taking control of her nutrition, which helped combat the adverse side effects of chemotherapy like a warrior. Uncharacteristically vulnerable, irreverent and straight from the heart, Had I Known is a deeply personal and powerful story of pain, persistence, and perseverance in which Joan openly evaluates her decision to go public with her battle, shaving her head, wig shopping, re-connecting with her viewers, rediscovering her purpose, and ultimately realizing that sometimes you have to look back to move forward.

    Throughout the complications of devoted caregiving, her own ongoing cancer treatments, and a stressful move to a more manageable apartment, Gubar proves that love and desire have no expiration date—on the page or in life. Late-Life Love offers a resounding retort to ageist stereotypes, appraises the obstacles unique to senior couples, and celebrates second chances.

    His new and initially intimidating classmates were high achievers from the Ivy League and other elite universities around the nation. Stern pulls back the curtain on the intense and emotionally challenging lessons he and his fellow doctors learned while studying the human condition, and ultimately, the value of connection. The narrative focuses on these residents, their growth as doctors, and the life choices they make as they try to survive their grueling four-year residency. Most importantly, as they study how to help distressed patients in search of a better life, they discover the meaning of failure and the preciousness of success.

    As newlyweds, they move to LA to conquer Hollywood. When the dream begins to fade, Henriette delves into a secret life of Pills. Diagnosed with a rejecting kidney transplant, she becomes crippled by fear. Convinced Kevin can never understand, her part-time narcotic trysts explode into a full-blown pharmaceutical affair. She is in love. Fiorinal, Vicodin, Morphine...All of them. Until onebackstabbing day, Pills lead her to her first overdose. Shattered, Kevin sacrifices his soul for his wife. He talks the ER out of a psychiatric hold. Later, he looks away when she pops Xanax on dialysis. Alone and barely holding on, Kevin believes the unconditional act of donating his kidney will save his wife's life and heal their marriage. It doesn't. The kidney rejects. There is a second overdose. Nothing seems to break Pills' obsessive hold over Henriette. But will it break Kevin? Will it break them? And after a lifetime of cheating can Henriette imagine a sober marriage of two?In Pillness and in Health sweeps its reader into the maelstrom of true love held hostage by disease. Dare to be devastated, over and over, by the relentless tornado of their story. Written with radical honesty, and startling wit, In Pillness and in Health shines new light in the dark corners of addiction and codependency, as we wonder how many devastating diseases can one marriage survive?

      Dreaming of a “year in Provence” with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoë, Katie’s teenage daughter. Katie and Zoë had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a seventy-seven-year-old woman set in her ways.   Filled with fairy-tale hope that she and her mother would become friends, and that Helen would grow close to her exceptional granddaughter, Katie embarked on an experiment in intergenerational living that she would soon discover was filled with land mines: memories of her parents’ painful divorce, of her mother’s drinking, of dislocating moves back and forth across the country,  and of Katie’s own widowhood and bumpy recovery. Helen, for her part, was also holding difficult issues at bay.   How these three women from such different generations learn to navigate their challenging, turbulent, and ultimately healing journey together makes for riveting reading. By turns heartbreaking and funny—and always insightful—Katie Hafner’s brave and loving book answers questions about the universal truths of family that are central to the lives of so many.