Expecting Sunshine: A Journey of Grief, Healing, and Pregnancy After Loss


Alexis Marie Chute - 2017
    After her son, Zachary, dies in her arms at birth, visual artist and author Alexis Marie Chute disappears into her “Year of Distraction.” She cannot paint or write or tap into the heart of who she used to be, mourning not only for Zachary, but also for the future they might have had together. It is only when Chute learns she is pregnant again that she sets out to find healing and rediscover her identity—just in time, she hopes, to welcome her next child. In the forty weeks of her pregnancy, Chute grapples with her strained marriage, shaken faith, and medical diagnosis, with profound results. Glowing with riveting and gorgeous prose, Expecting Sunshine chronicles the anticipation and anxiety of expecting a baby while still grieving for the child that came before—enveloping readers with insightful observations on grief and healing, life and death, and the incredible power of a mother’s love.Second Edition includes: Bonus chapter written from the author’s husband’s perspective. Plus, resource section, group discussion questions, and Q&A with author Alexis Marie Chute

Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say


Kelly Corrigan - 2018
    But that’s just what Kelly Corrigan has set out to do here. In her New York Times bestselling memoirs, Corrigan distilled our core relationships to their essences, showcasing a warm, easy storytelling style. Now, in Tell Me More, she’s back with a deeply personal, unfailingly honest, and often hilarious examination of the essential phrases that turn the wheel of life.In “I Don’t Know,” Corrigan wrestles to make peace with uncertainty, whether it’s over invitations that never came or a friend’s agonizing infertility. In “No,” she admires her mother’s ability to set boundaries and her liberating willingness to be unpopular. In “Tell Me More,” a facialist named Tish teaches her something important about listening. And in “I Was Wrong,” she comes clean about her disastrous role in a family fight—and explains why saying sorry may not be enough. With refreshing candor, a deep well of empathy, and her signature desire to understand “the thing behind the thing,” Corrigan swings between meditations on life with a preoccupied husband and two mercurial teenage daughters to profound observations on love and loss.With the streetwise, ever-relatable voice that defines Corrigan’s work, Tell Me More is a moving and meaningful take on the power of the right words at the right moment to change everything.

Confessions of an Air Ambulance Doctor


Tony Bleetman - 2013
    The first of its kind to carry doctors and surgeons who can take the hospital to the patient. Drug addicts, lorry crashes, open-heart surgery, stab wounds, headless chickens, mating llamas, and strip routines - it's all in a day's work for emergency doctor Tony Bleetman and his team.Whether they are landing in the middle of the M1 or at a maximum security jail, Tony and his crew Helimed 999 are the first on the scene in the most critical of emergencies.This gripping read will make you laugh, cry and marvel at the wonders of life (and death) in equal measure.

Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair


Anne Lamott - 2013
    In this book Lamott explores how we find meaning and peace in these loud and frantic times; where we start again after personal and public devastation; how we recapture wholeness after loss; and how we locate our true identities in this frazzled age. We begin, Lamott says, by collecting the ripped shreds of our emotional and spiritual fabric and sewing them back together, one stitch at a time. It’s in these stitches that the quilt of life begins, and embedded in them are strength, warmth, humor, and humanity.

The Lighthouse Effect: How Ordinary People Can Have an Extraordinary Impact in the World


Steve Pemberton - 2021
    Our polarized, divisive culture seems to be without heroes and role models. We are adrift in a dark sea of disillusionment and distrust and we need "human lighthouses" to give us hope and direct us back to the goodness in each other and in our own hearts. Steve Pemberton found a lighthouse in an ordinary man named John Sykes, his former high school counselor. John gave Steve a safe harbor after Steve escaped an abusive foster home and together they navigated a new path that led to personal and professional success. Through stories of people like John and several others, you will identify how the hardships you have overcome equip you to be a "human lighthouse," inspiring those around you. The humble gestures of kindness that change the course of our lives can shift the course for America too. With a unique vision for building up individuals and communities and restoring trust, The Lighthouse Effect opens your eyes to those who are quietly heroic. You will reflect on the lighthouses in your own life and be reminded that the greatest heroes are alongside us--and within us.

Yankee for Life: My 40-Year Journey in Pinstripes


Bobby Murcer - 2008
    Like Mantle, he came up to the majors as a shortstop, but was later converted to a centerfielder. And like Mantle, his first at-bat in Yankee Stadium was at the tender age of 19.Bobby wasn't the Mick, but he became one of the most beloved Yankees of all time.Yankee for Life is the story of Murcer's stellar career as both a player and as an Emmy Award-winning broadcaster. With self-effacing humor and down-home charm, he shares fascinating, illuminating, and never-before-told anecdotes about former teammates and bosses, including Mantle, Phil Rizzuto, Lou Piniella—and George Steinbrenner.But no relationship was more significant and poignant than his friendship with Yankees captain Thurman Munson, who died in a plane crash in 1979. On the morning of Munson's funeral, Murcer delivered the eulogy for his friend in Ohio; he ended the day by driving in all five runs in an extra-inning 5-4 victory at Yankee Stadium to honor his captain's memory.Following his career, Murcer became a revered figure in the Yankees broadcast booth. From the best seat in the House That Ruth Built, he has watched the latest generation of Yankee superstars—Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Mariano Rivera—grow up.No one is more qualified—or brave enough—to choose his own personal Pinstripe All-Star Team of the last 40 years.Murcer is no stranger to courage. On Christmas Eve 2006, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Five days later, after surgery to remove it, he learned that the cancer was terminal. In an uplifting, honest, and even humorous exploration of his battle with illness, Murcer explains how the love of his wife and his family, a deep religious faith, and the passionate support of fans have seen him through his ordeal.Bobby Murcer may not have become the next Mickey Mantle, but he became someone he always wanted to be—a Yankee for life.

This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.


Augusten Burroughs - 2012
    If you have ever wondered, How am I supposed to survive this? This is How.

A New Earth


Eckhart
    Tolle describes how our attachment to the ego creates the dysfunction that leads to anger, jealousy, and unhappiness, and shows readers how to awaken to a new state of consciousness and follow the path to a truly fulfilling existence.The Power of Now was a question-and-answer handbook. A New Earth has been written as a traditional narrative, offering anecdotes and philosophies in a way that is accessible to all. Illuminating, enlightening, and uplifting, A New Earth is a profoundly spiritual manifesto for a better way of life—and for building a better world.

Sit. Stay. Heal.: How Meditation Changed My Mind, Grew My Heart, and Saved My Ass


Spike Gillespie - 2015
    It traces my journey from a brutal Depression in 2012 to some amazing healing over the course of 2013 through a dedicated daily meditation practice. It also includes Twelve Lessons for those of you who wish to get a meditation practice started without tracking down a guru, without converting to a particular religion, and without investing in $500 yoga pants. All you need is your ass, your lungs, and a desire to try.

How to Self-Promote without Being a Jerk


Bruce Kasanoff - 2014
    Thanks to Bruce Kasanoff’s engaging writing and sage advice, this is an enjoyable book that’s full of new ideas to put into action immediately." -- Adam Grant, Wharton professor and bestselling author of Give and Take Do you feel uncomfortable blowing your own horn? Do you struggle to get your fair share of attention? If either is true, this little gem of a book is for you. It provides you with quick and effective tips on the most appropriate ways to make a name for yourself in our hyper-connected world. The book is organized around the author's "Simplify Your Future" framework for managing your career and life: Be generous and expert, trustworthy and clear, open-minded and adaptable, persistent and present.

Tufti the Priestess. Live Stroll Through A Movie


Vadim Zeland - 2018
    It’s Tufti. Why is it that nothing seems to work out the way you want it to, despite the fact that you act according to your own free will? You might think that the reason why nothing is working out the way you want, is because that’s just how life is. But the real reason things don‘t work out the way you want them to, is because you aren‘t acting according to your own free will —you are being directed by a script. Another reason things don‘t work out the way people want them to, is because they don‘t know how to take the right action to shape events the way they want. Rather than composing the reality of the upcoming film roll, they tend to battle with the reality they face in the current frame. Reality exists only in the here and now, and what is real is real only to the extent that it has taken place in the material world. You cannot change what has already happened. Yet when you fight with your current reality, that is exactly what you are doing, because everything that surrounds you consists of something that has already happened. If you want to change the script, you have to wake up and come alive inside the movie. Translation from the Russian language by Joanne Dobson

The Way They Were: Dealing with Your Parents' Divorce After a Lifetime of Marriage


Brooke Lea Foster - 2006
    Written by an award-winning journalist who has lived through her own parents’ midlife divorce, this practical, comforting guide includes advice on: • How to help your parents without getting caught in the middle• How to have tough conversations with your parents about money, property, and inheritance—theirs and yours• How to understand the complexities of infidelity and stepfamilies• How to rebuild relationships with each parent after the divorceFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed


Lori Gottlieb - 2019
    One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but. As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell. With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.

Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness


George Saunders - 2013
    Within days, it had been shared more than one million times. Why? Because Saunders’s words tap into a desire in all of us to lead kinder, more fulfilling lives. Powerful, funny, and wise, Congratulations, by the way is an inspiring message from one of today’s most influential and original writers.

Do Not Go Gentle: My Search for Miracles in a Cynical Time


Ann Hood - 2000
    Nonetheless, she traveled from Rhode Island to El Santuario de Chimayo in New Mexico to bring home a miracle for her dying father. Ultimately, Ann Hood discovered the courage to accept what had come her way, and an appreciation for the faith in miracles. Do Not Go Gentle is a profound journey into the nature of miracles, and one woman's revelatory reflection upon her spiritual heritage.