Staying Strong: 365 Days a Year


Demi Lovato - 2012
    Those commitments are the bedrock of her recovery and her work helping other young people dealing with the issues she lives with every single day. Demi is a platinum-selling recording artist whose latest album—DEMI—is already a smash hit. She’s about to embark on her second season as a judge on X-Factor, and just launched The Lovato Treatment Scholarship Program. And she is an outspoken advocate for young people everywhere. Demi is also a young woman finding her way in the world. She has dealt deftly with her struggles in the face of public scrutiny, and she has always relied, not just on friends and family, but daily affirmations of her self-worth and value. Affirmations that steady her days and strengthen her resolve. Those affirmations have grown into STAYING STRONG, a powerful 365-day collection of Demi’s most powerful, honest, and hopeful insights. Each day will provide the readers with a quote, a personal reflection and a goal. These are Demi’s words. Words she lives by and shares with the people she loves and total strangers alike. They are a powerful testament to a young woman standing up and fighting back.

Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide


Karen Kilgariff - 2019
    Includes special bonus material!Sharing never-before-heard stories ranging from their struggles with depression, eating disorders, and addiction, Karen and Georgia irreverently recount their biggest mistakes and deepest fears, reflecting on the formative life events that shaped them into two of the most followed voices in the nation.In Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered, Karen and Georgia focus on the importance of self-advocating and valuing personal safety over being ‘nice’ or ‘helpful.’ They delve into their own pasts, true crime stories, and beyond to discuss meaningful cultural and societal issues with fierce empathy and unapologetic frankness.

Remembering Judith - A true story of shattered childhoods


Ruth Joseph - 2005
    - Prima MagazineA true story of shattered childhoods...Following her escape from Nazi Germany and the loss of her family Judith searches for unconditional love and acceptance. In a bleak boarding house she meets her future husband – another Jewish refugee who cares for her when she is ill.Tragically she associates illness with love and a pattern is set. Judith’s behaviour eventually spiral into anorexia – a disease little known or understood in 1950’s Britain. While she starves herself, Judith forces Ruth, her daughter, to eat. She makes elaborate meals and watches her consume them. She gives her a pint of custard before bed each night. As the disease progresses roles are reversed. Ruth must care for her mother and loses any hope of a normal childhood. The generation gap is tragically bridged by loss and extreme self-loathing, in this moving true story of a family’s fight to survive.Ruth Joseph lives in Cardiff, Wales where she is part of the strong Jewish community. She has a strong, evovative voice which speaks directly to the reader about guilt, love and food. Her work has perviously been published by Honno, Parthian and Loki.

Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and You Too!


Chelsea Handler - 2019
    in the fall of 2016, Chelsea Handler daydreams about what life will be like with a woman in the White House. And then Donald Trump happens. In a torpor of despair, she decides that she's had enough of the privileged bubble she's lived in--a bubble within a bubble--and that it's time to make some changes, both in her personal life and in the world at large.At home, she embarks on a year of self-sufficiency--learning how to work the remote, how to pick up dog shit, where to find the toaster. She meets her match in an earnest, brainy psychiatrist and enters into therapy, prepared to do the heavy lifting required to look within and make sense of a childhood marked by love and loss and to figure out why people are afraid of her. She becomes politically active--finding her voice as an advocate for change, having difficult conversations, and energizing her base. In the process, she develops a healthy fixation on Special Counsel Robert Mueller and, through unflinching self-reflection and psychological excavation, unearths some glittering truths that light up the road ahead.

Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity, and the Perfect Knuckleball


R.A. Dickey - 2012
    Dickey weaves searing honesty and baseball insight in this memoir about his unlikely journey to the big leagues.An English Lit major at the University of Tennessee, Dickey is as articulate and thoughtful as any professional athlete in any sport-and proves it page after page, as he provides fresh and honest insight into baseball and a career unlike any other. Fourteen years ago, Dickey was a heralded No. 1 draft choice of the Texas Rangers, only to have an $810,000 signing bonus, and his lifelong dream, ripped away by an X- ray-and the discovery that he did not have an ulna collateral ligament in his right elbow. Five years ago, he gave up a record six home runs in three innings to the Detroit Tigers-and was effectively consigned to the baseball scrap heap.Sustained by his profound Christian faith, the love of his wife and children, and a relentless quest for self-awareness and authenticity, the immensely likable Dickey details his transformation from a reckless, risk-taking loner to a grounded, life- affirming big leaguer. He emerged as one of the premier pitchers in the National League in 2010-and the knuckleballing embodiment of the wonders that perseverance and human wisdom can produce. Dickey views his story as one of redemption. Readers will come to see it as something more-a uniquely American story of beating back demons, listening to your heart, and overcoming extraordinary odds.

Jonesy: Put Your Head Down and Skate: The Improbable Career of Keith Jones


Keith Jones - 2007
    The improbable hockey career of Jonsey started in 1992, when he was with the Washington Capitals. After a brief stint in Colorado, Keith was traded to Philadelphia, where is hard work, dirty play and colorful personality made him one of the more popular players in recent history. Jonsey is the story of Keith s career in the league as well as all of the interesting stories he accumulated over the course of his career, playing with some of the leagues best players in the last 15 years, including Peter Forsberg, Joe Sakic, Mark Recchi and Eric Lindros. The book will include a forward written by Hall of Fame defense-man Ray Bourque.

Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story


Arnold Schwarzenegger - 2012
    Within ten years, he was a millionaire businessman. After twenty years, he was the world’s biggest movie star. In 2003, he was elected governor of California and a household name around the world.Chronicling his embodiment of the American Dream, Total Recall covers Schwarzenegger’s high-stakes journey to the United States, from creating the international bodybuilding industry out of the sands of Venice Beach, to breathing life into cinema’s most iconic characters, and becoming one of the leading political figures of our time. Proud of his accomplishments and honest about his regrets, Schwarzenegger spares nothing in sharing his amazing story.

When Breath Becomes Air


Paul Kalanithi - 2016
    One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

Breaking Out Of A Broken System


Seth Bolt - 2014
    Find out below how all profits from every purchase of this book saves another person's life.Has your life turned out exactly as planned?When you were younger did you have dreams of being a rockstar?...a fireman?...a doctor?Who did you want to be before the world told you who you should be?When we're born, we enter a world full of systems, most of which are out of our control. There are tons of unwritten rules and social pressures we feel forced to follow. We're pressured to:- study hard and get good grades- get accepted and attend college- graduate and find a secure job- get married and start a familyWe're trained not to stray too far from the path.If we follow this recommended path, why do we still feel that we're missing something? In Breaking Out of a Broken System, Seth & Chandler Bolt give you the tools to re-draw the lines, chart new roads, and expand the borders around your life. Each of the brothers writes a totally different perspective on the 15 most important life lessons taught by their parents. These are things they thought everyone learned growing up, but they realized otherwise after going out into the "real world".As you read, you'll have the option to read two completely different perspectives on each life lesson.You can start with the artistic account written by Seth, bass player for the southern rock band NEEDTOBREATHE.Or...Dive into Chandler's entrepreneurial story told from the perspective of the younger brother.There are two major benefits that will manifest from reading these intriguing tales. First, your life will gain a fresh new outlook on how blazing new trails can be the perfect addition to your own path.And secondly, you'll be saving someone else's life.Each book sold saves a life by providing a life-saving malaria pill (#1book1life). Each year, 1.2 million people die from malaria. This is solely because many villages only receive 3-4 months worth of pills per year to cure the disease.Our mission with the "Breaking Out of a Broken System" book launch is to buy 10,000 life-saving malaria pills by selling 10,000 copies of this book.Buy this book, change your life. Buy this book, save another.Buy the book during launch week to get tons of free stuff & a chance to win the trip of lifetime to Uganda!

My Animals and Other Family


Clare Balding - 2012
    By the time I was ten I had discovered the pain of unbearable loss. I had felt joy and jealousy. Most important of all, I knew how to love and how to let myself be loved. All these things I learnt through animals. Horses and dogs were my family and my friends. This is their story as much as it is mine'Clare Balding grew up in a rather unusual household. Her father a champion trainer, she shared her life with more than 100 thoroughbred racehorses, mares, foals and ponies, as well as an ever-present pack of boxers and lurchers. As a toddler she would happily ride the legendary Mill Reef and take breakfast with the Queen.She and her younger brother came very low down the pecking order. Left to their own devices, they had to learn life's toughest lessons through the animals, and through their adventures in the stables and the idyllic Hampshire Downs. From the protective Candy to the pot-bellied Valkyrie and the frisky Hattie, each horse and each dog had their own character and their own special part to play.The running family joke was that "women ain't people". Clare had to prove them wrong, to make her voice heard - but first she had to make sure she had something to say.My Animals and Other Family is a funny, brave, tender story of self- discovery.

Madness: A Bipolar Life


Marya Hornbacher - 2008
    At age twenty-four, Hornbacher was diagnosed with Type I rapid-cycle bipolar, the most severe form of bipolar disorder.In Madness, in her trademark wry and utterly self-revealing voice, Hornbacher tells her new story. Through scenes of astonishing visceral and emotional power, she takes us inside her own desperate attempts to counteract violently careening mood swings by self-starvation, substance abuse, numbing sex, and self-mutilation. How Hornbacher fights her way up from a madness that all but destroys her, and what it is like to live in a difficult and sometimes beautiful life and marriage -- where bipolar always beckons -- is at the center of this brave and heart-stopping memoir.Madness delivers the revelation that Hornbacher is not alone: millions of people in America today are struggling with a variety of disorders that may disguise their bipolar disease. And Hornbacher's fiercely self-aware portrait of her own bipolar as early as age four will powerfully change, too, the current debate on whether bipolar in children actually exists.Ten years after Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind, this storm of a memoir will revolutionize our understanding of bipolar disorder.

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things


Jenny Lawson - 2015
    And that's what Furiously Happy is all about."Jenny’s readings are standing room only, with fans lining up to have Jenny sign their bottles of Xanax or Prozac as often as they are to have her sign their books. Furiously Happy appeals to Jenny's core fan base but also transcends it. There are so many people out there struggling with depression and mental illness, either themselves or someone in their family—and in Furiously Happy they will find a member of their tribe offering up an uplifting message (via a taxidermied roadkill raccoon). Let's Pretend This Never Happened ostensibly was about embracing your own weirdness, but deep down it was about family. Furiously Happy is about depression and mental illness, but deep down it's about joy—and who doesn't want a bit more of that?

Still Life With Brass Pole


Craig Machen - 2011
    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.

Building a Life Worth Living: A Memoir


Marsha M. Linehan - 2020
    "Because if you were, it would give all of us so much hope."Over the years, DBT had saved the lives of countless people fighting depression and suicidal thoughts, but Linehan had never revealed that her pioneering work was inspired by her own desperate struggles as a young woman. Only when she received this question did she finally decide to tell her story.In this remarkable and inspiring memoir, Linehan describes how, when she was eighteen years old, she began an abrupt downward spiral from popular teenager to suicidal young woman. After several miserable years in a psychiatric institute, Linehan made a vow that if she could get out of emotional hell, she would try to find a way to help others get out of hell too, and to build a life worth living. She went on to put herself through night school and college, living at a YWCA and often scraping together spare change to buy food. She went on to get her PhD in psychology, specializing in behavior therapy. In the 1980s, she achieved a breakthrough when she developed Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a therapeutic approach that combines acceptance of the self and ways to change. Linehan included mindfulness as a key component in therapy treatment, along with original and specific life-skill techniques. She says, You can't think yourself into new ways of acting; you can only act yourself into new ways of thinking.Throughout her extraordinary scientific career, Marsha Linehan remained a woman of deep spirituality. Her powerful and moving story is one of faith and perseverance. Linehan shows, in Building a Life Worth Living, how the principles of DBT really work--and how, using her life skills and techniques, people can build lives worth living.

Trail Blazer: My Life as an Ultra-distance Runner


Ryan Sandes - 2016
    Since bursting onto the international trail-running scene by winning the first multistage race he ever entered – the brutal Gobi March – Ryan has gone on to win various other multistage and single-day races around the globe. Written with bestselling author and journalist Steve Smith, Trail Blazer – My Life as an Ultra-distance Trail Runner recounts the life story of this intrepid sportsman, from his experiences as a rudderless party animal to becoming a world-class athlete, and includes details on his training regimes, race strategies and aspirations for future sporting endeavours.Sports enthusiasts will enjoy the adrenaline-inducing trials and tribulations of one of South Africa’s most awe-inspiring athletes, while endurance-sport participants – from beginners to aspirant pros – will benefit from his insights and advice. As Professor Tim Noakes says in the Foreword to this book: ‘However much we might think we know and understand, there are some phenomena which now, and perhaps forever, we will never fully comprehend. We call such happenings “enigmas”. Or even miracles. Ryan Sandes is one such.’