starving. It is a story of courage, determination, perseverance and the power of the human spirit. Irene spent 8 years of her life in orphanages, but this did not destroy her dreams and desire to live live a full and rich life.

    The Chamberlain Keytells how Timothy Smith, an appraiser and conservator of artifacts and antiquities, discovered and decoded a complex message in an ancient Hebrew manuscript of the Bible--a message that applied startlingly and unmistakably tohim!The book relates the painstaking process Smith undertook to verify and authenticate this "contact"--a quest filled with adventure and mystery. But instead of using old maps to find buried treasure, this hunt uses the data calculation power of modern technology. The author's remarkable discovery shows how the Bible is even more amazing than we ever dreamed... layered with meaning and insight, a book like no other, prepared by a brilliant Creator who wants to explain his loving plans, as well as issue serious warnings that may apply to the generations alive today."

    The text is published in full color and contains striking sailing photography from well-known photographer Billy Black, and world-class illustrations from award-winning illustrator Peter Bull. One of the text's most distinguishing features is its user friendly "spreads" in which instructional topics are self-contained on opposing pages throughout the book. This easy to read learning tool follows the critically acclaimed Sailing Made Easy, which Sailing Magazine called "best in class" upon its release in 2010. Sailing Made Easy is the #1 resource in basic sailing education, and Coastal Cruising Made Easy is poised to become the industry standard in intermediate sailing education.

    Call us the apathetic generation and we will become that. Say times are changing, nobody cares about prom queens and getting into the college of his choice any more—say that (because it sounds good, it indicates a trend, gives a symmetry to history) and you make a movement and a unit out of a generation unified only in its common fragmentation. If there is a reason why we are where we are, it comes from where we have been.In An 18-Year-Old Looks Back on Life, Joyce Maynard, the New York Times bestselling author of Labor Day and After Her, then just an 18-year-old freshman at Yale, reflects on the culture she inherited—from Jackie Kennedy, to TV, to Women’s Lib—in what became a generation-defining essay. Features an introduction by the author.An 18-Year-Old Looks Back on Life was originally published in the New York Times Magazine, April 23, 1972. Cover design by Adil Dara.Photograph by Ted Croner.

    But that was only part of the tale… Now, in his own words, “Irish” Micky Ward tells his inspirational life story as only he can. From his first bout at the age of seven, Micky Ward was known first and foremost for giving as good as he got, and for leaving absolutely everything he had in the ring. When he fought, quitting was never an option. It was that indomitable spirit that would allow him to survive, battle against, and overcome the harsh realities that he faced every day of his life.For it was outside the ring that Ward’s heart would be most needed, from witnessing his idolized older half-brother Dicky fall from grace, to dealing with his wildly dysfunctional—if frighteningly loyal—family, to the darkest of secrets that he has never revealed until now, and the numerous setbacks and defeats that would have stopped a lesser man. Micky Ward has remained a fighter, through and through—both as a professional boxer, and as a man who finally found his greatest strength in friendship, family, and faith in himselfFrom the rough streets of Lowell, Massachusetts, to the blood and sweat of the international fight game, to the bright lights and adulation of Hollywood, this is the rousing, moving, tragic, and humorous story of the one and only Micky Ward.

    Las Vegas lures you to shed moral responsibility and piss away your money on indulgences like decadent food, entertainment, gambling, and sex. If you don't enjoy these pastimes, then what's the point of visiting the land of compromised values? Where else can you get a cheap steak, crash a Mexican wedding, get cold-decked in blackjack by a dealer named Dong, play video poker for thirteen straight hours, drink pina coladas out of a plastic coconut, bum a cigarette from an 85-year-old woman with an oxygen tank, speed away to the Spearmint Rhino in a free limo, get rubbed by a former Miss Teen USA, puke in the back of a cab driven by a retired Navy SEAL, snort cheap cocaine in the bathroom at O'Sheas, and then catch a lucky card on the river to crack pocket aces and win a poker tournament? Only in Las Vegas.

    The internationally acclaimed “American with the Venetian heart,” Donna Leon, tells its fascinating story (The Washington Post).First used in medieval Venice as a deftly maneuverable getaway boat, the gondola evolved over the centuries into a floating pleasure palace, bedecked in silk, that facilitated the romantic escapades of the Venetian elite. Today, the gondola wears black—a gleaming, elegant hue, and is manned by robust gondolieri in black-and-white-striped shirts and straw hats.A tourist favorite, the gondola has never ceased to be a part of authentic Venice. Each boat’s 280 pieces are carefully fashioned in a maestro’s workshop—though Leon also recounts a tale of an American friend who attempted to make a gondola all on his own. The feat took five years and countless do-overs. But the gondola is a work of art well worth the labor. And once its arched prow pushes off from the dock, the single Venetian at its oar just might break out in a barcarole, a popular Italian boat song. The best of these songs, as timeless as the allure of the gondola itself, are compiled into an accompanying CD.

    She watches magnificent ships slowly making their way into Whelan’s Cove, the sense of exoticism bursting from their holds along with foreign goods. As a young woman, Azuba marries a seasoned merchant sea captain, Nathaniel Bradstock. Unwilling to have him away at sea for most of their married life, and anxious to see far shores, she extracts a promise that he will take her with him. But Azuba becomes pregnant soon after they marry and Nathaniel knows too well the perils of life on a ship. He reneges on his promise and refuses to allow Azuba to join him. When Nathaniel leaves on his journey, Azuba desperately misses her husband. Days turn into weeks and months – voyages can take two, three years before the ship and crew return home. Despite her loneliness, Azuba becomes a strong, independent woman, caring for her child and her home. With her parents and beloved grandmother nearby, she settles into a life of quietude and predictability, all the while yearning to be by her husband’s side aboard his ship. Her loneliness eventually propels her into a friendship with the local vicar, Reverend Simon Walton. He is a quiet, kind and contemplative man, and Azuba takes comfort and enjoyment in their increasingly intimate friendship. One afternoon, despite her misgivings, Azuba goes on a picnic with the vicar and becomes trapped by the tide. When they return home the next morning, Azuba and Reverend Walton have become a topic of gossip. When Nathaniel returns home he is enraged by her impropriety. Reluctantly he decides to take Azuba and their young daughter, Carrie, with him on his next voyage. Mother and child are loaded from a rowboat and hauled onto the weather deck along with barrels of coal and crates of chickens. Nathaniel has drawn a line across the deck. “You’ll never again cross that line,” he instructs Azuba.It is October 1862. It will be three years before Azuba sees the shores of Whelan’s Cove again. Aboard Traveller, the small family visits places Azuba dreamed she would one day see: London, San Francisco and exotic countries in Europe.  But she also experiences the terror that can come during a life at sea: a harrowing passage around Cape Horn, half-starvation while listlessly floating in the doldrums, and a stop at the Chincha Islands to pick up a load of guano, where she witnesses a mass suicide by slaves. She begins to question her decision to join her husband, particularly when she realizes there is “no way to erase horror from a child’s memory.”Misery follows misfortune and Azuba feels alone in a male world, surrounded by the splendour and the terror of the open sea. The voyage tests not only her already precarious marriage, but everything Azuba believes in. With a sure hand, Beth Powning captures life aboard a sailing ship – ferocious storms, the impossibly isolated ports of call, the gruelling daily routine – and shows how love evolves even in the most extreme circumstances.  The Sea Captain’s Wife is an awe-inspiring tour that captures the vigour of life in the last days of the Age of Sail and gives us an unforgettable young heroine who shows compassion, courage and love while under incredible duress.

    Taylor Jr. and his brother Marines are assembled into a new reaction force that is immediately tested in the fire of a bloody conflict known as Operation Beaver Cage. After a traumatic first fight, they push through back-to-back operations with little time to rest or reflect. Those who survive will return home ensnared by everlasting memories of a real, but entirely surreal nightmare. Now after more than fifty years of holding everything in, Taylor shares his experience in explicit and often horrific detail and with a reverent honor for those Marines who did not live to tell the tale.Taylor reveals what it truly means to walk the path of a warrior, to sacrifice, and to live a lifetime with the memories of a war—seeking answers to the question, “Was it worth it?"

    In 2007 they left their jobs, as newt catchers, and their native English shores for beautiful green Galicia, in the remote northwest of Spain – a place of mystery and mists, Celtic legends and bagpipes, and a language of its very own. There, they set to work to self-renovate a derelict farmhouse, whilst trying to become self-sufficient and learn more about this untamed part of the Iberian peninsula.When S suggested a three week holiday, walking one of the old pilgrim routes to Santiago de Compostela, little did they know it would change their lives totally. From the outset with too much weight and too little training they realised their Camino goal was not going to be met. With failure looming, they chose to abandon their pilgrimage to view abandoned houses instead. “We first saw A Casa do Campo on a rainswept November morning. Mists were rising and water dripped onto the rusted kitchen range from gaping holes in the roof. There were bird’s nests in the bedrooms and bats in the hallway. Bare, dead looking trees surrounded the property which the Spanish estate agent enthusiastically promised us would be laden with fruit come August. It was love at first sight.”If only buying it were so easy!Deaths, taxes and even Spanish bureaucracy fail to dent their enthusiasm and eventually Lisa and S head off for their new Good Life abroad with an overloaded Ford Escort, tool bags, vegetable seeds and a trusty stereo stacking system. Oh, and two deckchairs in which to relax in the evenings.Plum, Courgette & Green Bean Tart tells the story of that first 12 months living la vida dulce, The Good Life, in this beautiful green part of mainland Spain, Galicia, or Galiza in its own language.This fly on the wall account uses genuine letters home and diary entries to tell a true story: a story of battles with Spanish bureaucracy and mañana timekeeping; of struggles to self-renovate a derelict home before the bats and the weather reclaim it; of learning to protect chickens against aerial assassins and precious food for the table from underground vegetable thieves; of gardening in bizarre weather conditions; of discovering how to cook delicious and sometimes interesting meals on a finally mouse-free wood burning stove; and of falling in love. Plum, Courgette & Green Bean Tart, Book One of the ‘writing home’ series, has an immediacy which has you falling under its spell. Twelve chapters tell a story of twelve months, of four seasons, of a whole year to write home about. Also included are genuine Galician recipes plus a plum, courgette & green bean tart to make, and a free photo album to follow as the story unfolds. The interwoven information and anecdotes about Galicia are told by someone who has truly fallen in love with this little known and timeless green region with its gentle people and erratic weather, ensuring this will truly be a book to write home about.

    When he agreed to command the Fantome, Windjammer's marquee ship, a beautiful 282-foot schooner that "sailed like a pig" in the Gulf of Honduras, he knew that a storm would leave him little space to run. In the southern reaches of the Caribbean, Tropical Storm Mitch whirled to life like a nebula and became Captain March's worst nightmare--a category five storm with 180-mile-per-hour winds and fifty-foot seas. After discharging his passengers in Belize, Captain March and his crew, most of them West Indians, took the $20 million uninsured tall ship out to sea to dodge the approaching storm. What ensued was a deadly game of cat and mouse that confounded experts' predictions and cornered the Fantome with eerie precision. Based on journalist Jim Carrier's exhaustive research and hundreds of interviews, The Ship and the Storm explores the story of the Fantome and Hurricane Mitch from every angle. From the deck of the ship, to the research planes flying into the eye of the hurricane, to islanders and coastal villagers in a desperate battle for survival, The Ship and the Storm is the heartbreaking and horrifying story of the most destructive hurricane in Western Hemisphere history.

    Rigorous and thorough searches by some of the best climbers in the history of the range failed to locate him despite a number of promising clues. When all hope seemed gone and the last search party had left the Minarets, mountaineering legend Norman Clyde refused to give up. Climbing alone, he persevered in the face of failure, resolved that he would learn the fate of the lost man. Clyde’s discovery and the events that followed make for compelling reading. Recently reissued with a new afterword, this re-creation of a famous episode in the annals of the Sierra Nevada is mountaineering literature at its best.

    in black-and-white. Opening note by Coretta Scott King. For the first time, the most important account ever written of a childhood in slavery is accessible to young readers. From his days as a young boy on a plantation to his first months as a freeman in Massachusetts, here are Douglass's own firsthand experiences vividly recounted--expertly excerpted and powerfully illustrated.

    Retraces Ulysses' logical homeward route using a replica of a Bronze Age galley.

    The photo looks completely out of place on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list where it’s been since December, 8, 2007. For eight of those years, Jason appeared directly beside Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden is long gone, but Jason is still wanted for armed robbery and murder.For years, his sister, Jami D. Brown Martin has watched the true crime programs and read the amateur investigative blogs devoted to Jason, his crime, and the efforts to apprehend him knowing the story wasn’t as simple, nor was it just Jason’s. To be the sister, brother, or relative of one of the world’s most wanted men is to live every day with the horrible truth and many consequences of his brutal act.CENTER OF ATTENTION is the story of a former Mormon missionary turned murderer. It is also a riveting look behind the facade of the genetically blessed, seemingly prominent and pious Brown family of Laguna Beach, California. It is a tale of the family patriarch, John Brown, who disappeared without a trace ten years before his son. More important, it is the gripping and ultimately hopeful story of the sister of one of the world’s most wanted fugitives and her journey to accept that despite being a product of the same crazy environment as her brother, her life and path are her own.