He loves to carve boats out of the driftwood he finds on the beach nearby. He makes:big boatslong boatsshort boats andtall boats,each one more beautiful than the last, and sends them out to sea. If they don't come back, he knows they've found their way to his papa, whom he misses very much. In this stunning debut, author/illustrator Jessixa Bagley explores the subtle and deep emotions associated with loss in a heartwarming tale that is sure to stay with the reader long after the book is closed.A Neal Porter Book

    Today couples are more inclined to test the waters before tying the knot.In What Would Judy Say? A Grown-Up Guide to Living Together (with Benefits), Judge Judy Sheindlin enters a lively dialogue with readers from her popular Web site, www.whatwouldjudysay.com, to explore, with humor and savvy the pitfalls and possibilities of sharing a life together before marriage.Judy’s wisdom, based on a lifetime of experience, both in and out of court, covers the territory. In her inimitable way she offers reality checks: “Men are warriors, and warriors don’t clean up after themselves.” She cautions against blind love: “Frogs don’t become princes.” About mingling money and property, she warns: “No joint before the ring.” She advises that couples entering live-in relationships protect themselves because there is no court of People Just Living Together.Rich with stories of real men and women who share their travels in the land of love and commitment, this is a heartwarming, funny and smart guide, to help people negotiate and really enjoy what is supposed to be this wonderful journey of life.

    A sandhog, he burrows beneath the East River, digging the tunnel that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed, the sandhogs—black, white, Irish, Italian—dig together, the darkness erasing all differences. Above ground, though, the men keep their distance until a spectacular accident welds a bond between Walker and his fellow sandhogs that will both bless and curse three generations.

    Laced throughout with intimate recollections of moments of crises and joy from the middle years of their relationship, the novel charts the ebb and flow of marriage, illuminating the mysteries and magic of marital love.Neither sentimental nor cynical, and written with an intense devotion to character and emotional suspense, A Happy Marriage reveals a partnership that brings maturity and great pleasure to the lives of two people. Bold, elegiac, and stunningly vivid, A Happy Marriage will break every reader’s heart—and perhaps infuse some marriages with greater love.

    Life is now nowhere Else. Live, live for Today I say, but The moments tick And groan, moan With the dismal passage Of time and I wait Forever for what Cannot be. Poems of feeling and experience, the anthology encompasses all of life and beyond: death, the universe, hopes, dreams, love, loss - all of existence contained in one work. Poetry that captures both moments and lifetimes, memories and hopes, reality and dreams. Poems to identify with, poems of life.

     A gold Rolex on his wrist. A custom-tailored suit designed to highlight every single muscle. A different model each week, all clutching his arm with perfectly manicured nails and Botox smiles. There is no way I could ever be with a man who is a) way out of my league b) richer than anyone I’ve ever met c) would hate me on sight if he knew whose daughter I am. But I’m mesmerized by the way Holden looks at me, like he could gobble me up in one wolfish bite. I’m mesmerized by thoughts of his mouth pressing against mine, how those taut muscles beneath his suit would feel against my naked skin. He can be brooding and cold, then explode into violent rage when provoked. His unpredictability is an asset in his business, but makes it impossible for him to have any kind of stable romantic relationship. He wakes up in cold sweats at night, coming out of horrific vivid nightmares where he sees violence played out over and over again. He still lives with the guilt of a horrible secret—a secret he’s never told another soul. I want to get through to him, want to be the one to save him. If he doesn’t reveal his demons, he’ll break my heart. If he does, I might be too scared to stay. Either way is a dead end. Because when it comes right down to it, my heart knows the truth. Holden Quinn is a cold, billionaire bastard. And that’s all he’ll ever be…

    It serves as a reminder to the reader that healing, transformation, and freedom are possible.

    Charles Bernstein here proves them alive and well in poems elegiac, defiant, and resilient to the point of approaching song. Heir to the democratic and poetic sensibilities of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg, Bernstein has always crafted verse that responds to its historical moment, but no previous collection of his poems so specifically addresses the events of its time as Girly Man, whichfeatures works written on the evening of September 11, 2001, and in response to the war in Iraq. Here, Bernstein speaks out, combining self-deprecating humor with incisive philosophical and political thinking. Composed of works of very different forms and moods—etchings from moments of acute crisis, comic excursions, formal excavations, confrontations with the cultural illogics of contemporary political consciousness—the poems work as an ensemble, each part contributing something necessary to an unrealizable and unrepresentable whole. Indeed, representation—and related claims to truth and moral certainty—is an active concern throughout the book. The poems of Girly Man may be oblique, satiric, or elusive, but their sense is emphatic. Indeed, Bernstein’s poetry performsits ideas so that they can be experienced as well as understood. A passionate defense of contingency, resistance, and multiplicity, Girly Man is a provocative and aesthetically challenging collection of radical verse from one of America’s most controversial poets.

    This series of elegies records the transit of grief, observing with an unflinching eye how a singular traumatic event can permanently alter our understanding of time, danger, the material world and family. Marked by clarity and restraint, these lyric poems narrate a suspenseful, wrenching story that explores the depths and limits of empathy.“Living Room Altar”Except for the shirt pulled from the ocean,except for her hands, which keep folding the shirt,except for her body, which once held their bodies,my sister wants everything back now—If there were a god who could out of empty shellscarried by waves to shoremake amends—If the ocean saved in a jarcould keep from turning to salt—She’s hearing things:bird calling to bird,cat outside the door,thorn of the blackberry against the trellis."These heart-breaking poems of an all-too-human life stay as absolute as the determined craft which made them. There is finally neither irony nor simple despair in what they record. Rather, it is the far deeper response of witness, of recognizing what must be acknowledged and of having the courage and the care to say so." —Robert Creeley

    We want to be recognized for our contributions while we can still hear the praise. Most of us fear the idea of being loved more after we die. Don’t Wait I Die To Love Me expressed our deepest fears and thoughts. Subjects of anxiety, appreciating who you are and what what you have, earth, love and dealing with life itself are discussed in this collection. DWTID2LM will take its reader through an emotional journey.

    Do animals have spirits? Find out God's true relationship with animals, and how He really feels about them. The author shares his divine visions along with scriptural proof, which Jesus reveals and explains to him, concerning God's entire creation. Whether you are a pet lover or not, you will gain a greater understanding of the immense love of Jesus, for all of His creation. After reading this testimony, you will look at love and forgiveness in a whole new light.

    A FINALIST and highly recommended!’ The Wishing Shelf Book AwardsA young homeless boy. An old man who had lost everything. An unlikely friendship that brought healing to both.Ben doesn’t know what to think when a homeless boy shows up late one night behind Angelo’s Bakery where he works as a handyman. He’d seen his share of suffering humanity on the streets of Philadelphia, but there was something about this boy—so young, so vulnerable. Pushing sixty and feeling as if his life has no purpose, Ben struggles with his own problems. A recovering alcoholic, he is gripped with remorse over the loss of his wife and son, but determined to stay sober. Twelve-year-old Aden starts to run when an old man comes out of Angelo’s Bakery and catches him hiding, but something about the man draws Aden to him. Terrified and naive to life on the streets, Aden was forced to forge his own survival in the face of dangerous predators and violence after his mother abandoned him almost a year ago. Can Aden trust the gentle old man who offers him food and a hand of friendship? Will Ben be able to forgive himself and look for his son? While You Walked By delivers a heartfelt, coming-of-age story about the hope that can be found even in the most desperate circumstances.

    She struggles to fit in—she’s young and unexotic, a naive new girl—but soon she forges friendships and finds a place for herself in the big city.Then she meets an attractive older man. He’s an established actor, 20 years older, and the inevitable clamorous relationship that ensues is one that will change her forever.A redemptive, captivating story of passion and innocence set across the bedsits of mid-1990s London, McBride holds new love under her fierce gaze, giving us all a chance to remember what it’s like to fall hard for another.

     Ben and Annie Flurry have the perfect family, until an accident takes Annie's life and leaves their daughter severely injured. Now Ben struggles to come to terms with his own grief and guilt. As the past he tried to leave behind threatens all he holds dear, Ben makes the difficult decision to move back to his childhood home to seek the help of his mother — and the father he remembers as abusive and an alcoholic. His mother claims his father is a changed man, but Ben isn't so sure. Can he find the strength to be the dad and man his father never was? Or will the wounds of the past ruin Ben's chance to love again?

    You haven't even learned it:ecstasy and suffering make the same face.--from "The Offering"May Day is both a distress call and a celebration of the arrival of spring. In this rich and unusually assured first collection, the poet Gretchen Marquette writes of the losses of a brother gone off to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a great love--losses that have left the world charged with absence and grief. But there is also the wonder of the natural world: the deer at the edge of the forest, the dog reliably coaxing the poet beyond herself and into the city park where by tradition every May Day is pageantry, a festival of surviving the long winter. "What does it mean to be in love?" one poem asks. "As it turns out, / the second best thing that can happen to you / is a broken heart."May Day introduces readers to a new poet of depth and power.