He was dead before he hit the ground. One moment he was sitting on his horse. The next moment he was somewhere else--somewhere beyond description. He had moved on. Without travel, transport, angelic assistance, or the passage of time he was with Jesus, where he discovered firsthand that heaven is a real place and God is a real person and that death is not the end but the beginning of true life. In The Day I Died, Vest touches on the transformation from death to heaven and some of the benefits of finding oneself in that place, including:The unforgettable awareness of God’s presence The sense of His immeasurable love The freedom from the constraints of time The ease of communication with the Lord The peace and security that attend His presence The understanding that prayers are instantly heard by God.

    Jill is trapped in an abusive marriage, while raising two young girls. Her husband has isolated her from the world and filled her days with fear. The last thing on her mind is love, but she sure could use a friend.Alex McCoy is enjoying a comfortable life, with great friends and a prosperous business. She has given up on love, after picking the wrong woman one too many times. Little does she know, a simple act of kindness might change her life forever.When Alex lends a helping hand to Jill at the local grocery store, they are surprised by their immediate connection and an unlikely friendship develops. As their friendship deepens, so too do their fears. In order to protect herself and the girls, Jill can’t let her husband know about her friendship with Alex, and Alex can’t discover what goes on behind closed doors. What would Alex do if she finds out the truth? At the same time, Alex must fight her attraction and be the friend she suspects Jill needs. Besides, Alex knows what every lesbian knows – don’t fall for a straight woman, especially one that’s married…but will her heart listen?

    She would like to tell the whole, freaking queer as hell story. Her story. Not the sidebar to a straight person's rebirth-she doesn't give a makeover or plan a wedding or get a couple back together. This isn't a queer tragedy. She doesn't die at the end of this book, having finally decided to kiss the girl. It's the sexy, honest, bumpy and triumphant dyke's tale her younger, theology major self needed to read. Because there was a long time when she thought she wouldn't make it. Not as a comic, but as a human.SAVE YOURSELF is full of funny and insightful recollections about everything from coming out (at a Catholic college where being gay can get you expelled) to how joining the circus can help you become a better comic (so much nudity) to accepting yourself for who you are--even if you're an awkward tween with an eyepatch (which Cameron was). Packed with heart, humor, and cringe-worthy stories anyone who has gone through puberty can relate to, Cameron's memoir is for that timid, fenced-in kid in all of us--and the fearless standup yearning to break free.

    While grappling with their identity and sexuality, often alone, they also faced academic meltdown, their parents' divorce, and the looming pressure of what might come after high school. Written in alternating chapters from both Tegan's point of view and Sara's, the book is a raw account of the drugs, alcohol, love, music and friendship they explored in their formative years. A transcendent story of first loves and first songs, it captures the tangle of discordant and parallel memories of two sisters who grew up in distinct ways even as they lived just down the hall from one another. This is the origin story of Tegan and Sara.

    When she lands a job looking after the horse, it is like it was meant to be, and she thinks that bringing the rescue animal back to health might be as healing for her as it is for the horse. What she doesn't count on is Josie Tearney, owner of the horse, and the most startling, intriguing woman Colette has ever met. The attraction, it turns out, is mutual, but the last thing Colette thinks she deserves is a relationship with someone who's grounded, competent, and whole – all the things Colette isn't. Josie, who runs her own business making witchy teas and essential oils, is as planted on the land where she lives as is her garden – which makes her strong, centred, stable – and lonely. All her friends have moved to the city, and she's not at all sure that Colette won't leave as abruptly as she arrived. Josie lost her mother when she was young – and she won't take the risk of being abandoned again. But healing can happen when you least expect it, and the heart, that most magical part of ourselves, knows how to lead the way.

    She kept extensive diaries of her life and loves, written partly in code. Made up of Greek letters mingled with other symbols of her own devising, Anne referred to the code as her "crypthand," and the use of it allowed her the freedom to describe her intimate life in great detail. Her diaries have been edited by Helena Whitbread, who spent years decoding and transcribing them.

    She has a comfortable home, good friends, and a loving family. She’s also a widow, carrying a burden of responsibility for her wife’s untimely death. She lost her footing that day, gave up her dream to be a doctor, and swore off relationships. Now, three years later, she’s ready to turn her life on end in an effort to regain what she lost. At 29, Coby O’Brien is a woman with secrets. She’s estranged from her family, a recovering alcoholic, and alone because she’s convinced that she’s unlovable. When she loses her job as a heavy equipment operator, she’ll accept one that’ll force her to step way outside her comfort zone into a life where nothing is, as it seems. Having caught next to no breaks in life, it may turn out to be her break of a lifetime. When Coy quits her job to accept a position in Antarctica, her path will cross with Coby’s. Their attraction to one another will be immediate, and despite their differences, it won’t be long before they fall in love. But for these two, with all their baggage, will love be enough?

    During the 1920s she held the world record as the fastest female speedboat racer. But as journalist Kate Summerscale discovered, when researching an obituary for the Daily Telegraph, Carstairs was also a notorious crossdresser who favored women and smoked cheroots. Supremely self-confident, she inherited a Standard Oil fortune and knew how to spend her money -- on fast boats and cars. on her female lovers, and on a Caribbean Island. Whale Cay, where she reigned over a colony of Bahamians. There, far from her bohemian past in London and Paris, Carstairs hosted a succession of girlfriends and celebrities, including Marlene Dietrich and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Through it all, she remained devoted to Lord Todd Wadley, a little doll who was her bosom companion until the very end.

    Three and one half months of hellish and seemingly outrageous demands would be made of those who would endure the journey through the fires of boot camp. These young men would find a pride in themselves that would last forever. Those survivors of boot camp training often look back, with a smile and even a laugh, at what they endured from the DI. Patrick Turley, driven to enlist by the events of 9/11, captures these anxious times perfectly in vivid detail establishing an emotional bond with the reader throughout his journey from man to Marine, and John Patrick Shanley said it only as a former Marine and Pulitzer Prize winner could: It's great to have gone to Marine Corps boot camp. It's terrible to be in Marine Corps boot camp. It's fun to read about Marine Corps boot camp.

    Snoop was born a three-pound cross-eyed crack baby in East Baltimore. Those streets are among the toughest in the world, but Snoop was tougher. The runt of the ghetto showed an early aptitude for drug slinging and violence and thrived as a baby gangsta until she landed in Jessup state penitentiary after killing a woman in self-defense. There she rebelled violently against the system, and it was only through the cosmic intervention of her mentor, Uncle Loney, that she turned her life around. A couple of years ago, Snoop was discovered in a nightclub by one of The Wire's cast members and quickly recruited to be one of television's most frightening and intriguing villians.While the story of coming up from the hood has been told by Antwone Fisher and Chris Gardner, among others, Snoop's tale goes far deeper into The Life than any previous books. And like Mary Karr's story, Snoop's is a woman's story from a fresh point of view. She defied traditional conventions of gender and sexual preference on the hardest streets in America and she continues to do so in front of millions of viewers on TV.

    Ten years ago Jackie fled Mountain Ridge, her need to escape the pain and abuse her single motivation. It wasn’t until after she left that she realized she’d left her heart behind. Burying her feelings for the only woman she’d ever loved, and the only loving family she’d ever known, Jackie struggles to forget her past and move on with her life. Now ten years later, she wonders if she’ll ever find someone that can love the person she’s become. A suggestion from her therapist sends Jackie back to her old hometown in search of those she’d left behind so long ago. Can she settle the past and hope to find her future?

    Erin Hughes, a local history professor with a passion for old houses. Dhari’s life is complicated enough without meeting such an attractive and intelligent woman: Her mother needs her, her father relies on her and her girlfriend worries her. But when Erin finds old letters and a diary, Dhari knows she can’t leave until she finds out the truth . . .Marianne K. Martin is the best-selling author of five novels including Mirrors and Love in the Balance.

    The Supreme Court ruled in Edie's favor, a landmark victory that set the stage for full marriage equality in the US. Beloved by the LGBTQ community, Edie embraced her new role as an icon; she had already been living an extraordinary and groundbreaking life for decades.In this memoir, which she began before passing away in 2017 and completed by her co-writer, Edie recounts her childhood in Philadelphia, her realization that she was a lesbian, and her active social life in Greenwich Village's electrifying underground gay scene during the 1950s. Edie was also one of a select group of trailblazing women in computing, working her way up the ladder at IBM and achieving their highest technical ranking while developing software. In the early 1960s Edie met Thea, an expat from a Dutch Jewish family that fled the Nazis, and a widely respected clinical psychologist. Their partnership lasted forty-four years, until Thea died in 2009. Edie found love again, marrying Judith Kasen-Windsor in 2016.A Wild and Precious Life is remarkable portrait of an iconic woman, gay life in New York in the second half of the twentieth century, and the rise of LGBT activism.

    Her mother, a distant relative of William Faulkner, told neighbors and family that her daughter had died. The two never saw each other again. Nearly twenty-five years later, after building her own family and happy home life, a lawyer called to say her mother was dead. In this story about the fragility of memory and the complexity of family, Beam decides to look back at her own dark history, and for the secret to her mother’s madness.

    Shapland recognizes herself in the letters’ language―but does not see Carson as history has portrayed her.And so, Shapland is compelled to undertake a recovery of the full narrative and language of Carson's life: She wades through the therapy transcripts; she stays at Carson’s childhood home, where she lounges in her bathtub and eats delivery pizza; she relives Carson’s days at her beloved Yaddo. As Shapland reckons with the expanding and collapsing distance between her and Carson, she see the way Carson’s story has become a way to articulate something about herself. The results articulate something entirely new not only about this one remarkable, walleyed life, but about the way we tell queer love stories.In genre-defying vignettes, Jenn Shapland interweaves her own story with Carson McCullers’s to create a vital new portrait of one of America’s most beloved writers, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are. In genre-defying vignettes, Jenn Shapland interweaves her own story with Carson McCullers’s to create a vital new portrait of one of America’s most beloved writers, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are.