In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder and CIA Director George Tenet brought her donuts. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for weapons of mass destruction. She created a chemical terror chart that someone in the White House altered to convey information she did not have or believe, leading to the Iraq invasion. Driven to stop terrorism, Walder debriefed terrorists - men who swore they’d never speak to a woman - until they gave her leads. She followed trails through North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, shutting down multiple chemical attacks. Then Walder moved to the FBI, where she worked in counterintelligence. In a single year, she helped take down one of the most notorious foreign spies ever caught on American soil. Catching the bad guys wasn’t a problem in the FBI, but rampant sexism was. Walder left the FBI to teach young women, encouraging them to find a place in the FBI, CIA, State Department or the Senate - and thus change the world. Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins

    After losing 140 pounds on the keto diet, bestselling author Stephanie Laska makes the keto diet more accessible and foolproof than ever before with these 100 delicious recipes made with only 5 (or fewer) main ingredients! The easy-going approach of The DIRTY, LAZY KETO 5-Ingredient Cookbook makes weight loss manageable, sustainable, and even fun. Packed with her trademark sass and practical advice, Stephanie teaches the proven fundamentals of dirty keto cooking in a way that gets you excited and motivated. You’ll find 100 easy, great-tasting classic recipes that the entire family will enjoy—even the pickiest eaters. Making the keto diet more convenient than ever, this is a flexible, honest, real-world approach to losing weight that anyone can accomplish. In this cookbook, you’ll find no judgment—just plenty of support to help you pursue your own unique path to sustainable healthy weight loss—not perfection. This is lazy keto at its finest!

    Her book is a delightful and perfect reflection of her. Its tenderness sneaks up on you and really packs a punch. What a magnificent read!"--Julia Louis DreyfusJenny Lawson meets Nora Ephron in this joyful memoir-in-vignettes on living--and thriving--with anxiety from a multiple Emmy Award-winning comedy writer whose credits include Succession and Veep.When Georgia Pritchett found herself lost for words--a bit of a predicament for a comedy writer--she turned to a therapist, who suggested she try writing down some of the things that worried her. But instead of a grocery list of concerns, Georgia wrote this book.A natural born worrywart, Georgia's life has been defined by her quirky anxiety. During childhood, she was agitated about the monsters under her bed (Were they comfy enough?). Going into labor, she fretted about making a fuss ("Sorry to interrupt, but the baby is coming out of my body," I said politely). Winning a prestigious award, she agonized over receiving free gifts after the ceremony (It was an excruciating experience. Mortifying).Soul-baring yet lighthearted, poignant yet written with a healthy dose of self-deprecation, My Mess Is a Bit of a Life is a tour through the carnival funhouse of Georgia's life, from her anxiety-ridden early childhood where disaster loomed around every corner (When I was little I used to think that sheep were clouds that had fallen to earth. On cloudy days I used to worry that I would be squashed by a sheep), through the challenges of breaking into an industry dominated by male writers, to the exquisite terror (and incomparable joy) of raising children.Delightfully offbeat, painfully honest, full of surprising wonders, and delivering plenty of hilarious, laugh-out-loud moments, My Mess Is a Bit of a Life reveals a talented, vulnerable, and strong woman in all her wisecracking weirdness, and makes us love it--and her--too.

    She startles awake, saying his name. It is always about him: one of her closest high school friends, a boy named Mark. A boy who raped her.When her nightmares worsen, Jeannie decides—after fourteen years of silence—to reach out to Mark. He agrees to talk on the record and meet in person. "It's the least I can do," he says.Jeannie details her friendship with Mark before and after the assault, asking the brave and urgent question: Is it possible for a good person to commit a terrible act? Jeannie interviews Mark, exploring how rape has impacted his life as well as her own. She examines the language surrounding sexual assault and pushes against its confines, contributing to and deepening the #MeToo discussion.Exacting and courageous, Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl is part memoir, part true crime record, and part testament to the strength of female friendships—a recounting and reckoning that will inspire us to ask harder questions and interrogate our biases. Jeannie Vanasco examines and dismantles long-held myths of victimhood, discovering grace and power in this genre-bending investigation into the trauma of sexual violence.

    Growing up in Beverly Hills, Amy Dresner had it all: a top-notch private school education, the most expensive summer camps, and even a weekly clothing allowance. But at 24, she started dabbling in meth in San Francisco and unleashed a fiendish addiction monster. Soon, if you could snort it, smoke it, or have sex with, she did. Smart and charming, with Daddy's money to fall back on, she sort of managed to keep it all together. But on Christmas Eve 2011 all of that changed when, high on Oxycontin, she stupidly "brandished" a bread knife on her husband and was promptly arrested for "felony domestic violence with a deadly weapon." Within months, she found herself in the psych ward--and then penniless, divorced, and looking at 240 hours of court-ordered community service. For two years, assigned to a Hollywood Boulevard "chain gang," she swept up syringes (and worse) as she bounced from rehabs to halfway houses, all while struggling with sobriety, sex addiction, and starting over in her forties. In the tradition of Orange Is the New Black and Jerry Stahl's Permanent Midnight, Amy Dresner's My Fair Junkie is an insightful, darkly funny, and shamelessly honest memoir of one woman's battle with all forms of addiction, hitting rock bottom, and forging a path to a life worth living.

    In Cabin Fever she tells the good, the bad and the downright naughty tales of life in the air. From dealing with projectile vomit and celebrity tantrums to sipping Manhattans and shopping in New York, this is riotous good fun. Set against a backdrop of exotic locations, the cast of zany characters includes everyone from Courtney Love to Sir Richard himself. Mandy’s jet-setting job allowed her to search the globe for Mr Right, which led her to many steamy love affairs. She even joined the Mile High Club, though not with a clumsy quickie in the toilet but a leisurely bonk in a Cessna. She’s no Virgin, and in-flight entertainment has never been so risqué!

    Emboldened by the cool confidence that comes with the end of one's 20s plus the newfound independence of an attachment-free lifestyle, Mamrie commits herself to living life as fully as possible. She seeks out once-in-a-lifetime experiences (like meeting Dolly Parton), bucket-list goals (like visiting the Moulin Rouge), and madcap adventures (like going anchors-away on a Backstreet Boys cruise)--all while diving back into the dating world for the first time in a decade.In I've Got This Round, readers will find the same shameless honesty and I'll-try-anything-once spirit they loved in You Deserve a Drink. Mamrie doubles down on her strong female friendships, her willingness to engage in shenanigans, and her inimitable candor, taking the reader along for a wild and unforgettable journey through adulting.

    In 48 hours he has ‘fallen in love’ with her, calls her day and night, urges her to marry him, join him in Syria to enjoy a life of paradise – and join his jihad.Discover how ISIS entraps people such as the teenage girls from Bethnal GreenAnna Erelle is the undercover journalist behind "Melodie". Created to investigate the powerful propaganda weapons of Islamic State, “Melodie” is soon sucked in by Bilel, right-hand man of the infamous Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. An Iraqi for whose capture the US government has promised $10 million, al-Baghdadi is described by Time Magazine as the most dangerous man in the world and by himself as the caliph of Islamic State. Bilel shows off his jeep, his guns, his expensive watch. He boasts about the people he has just killed.With Bilel impatient for his future wife, “Melodie” embarks on her highly dangerous mission, which – at its ultimate stage – will go very wrong … Enticed into this lethal online world like hundreds of other young people, including many young British girls and boys, Erelle’s harrowing and gripping investigation helps us to understand the true face of terrorism.

    A thousand dollars for a broken leg, a few hundred for a nasty cut while cooking dinner. Then there are the greater costs for even greater misfortunes. The car accidents, breast cancers, blood diseases, and dark depressions.When Emily Maloney was nineteen she tried to kill herself. An act that would not only cost a great deal personally, but also financially, sending her down a dark spiral of misdiagnoses, years spent in and out of hospitals and doctor’s offices, and tens of thousands owed in medical debt. To work to pay off this crippling burden, Emily becomes an emergency room technician. Doing the grunt work in a hospital, and taking care of patients at their most vulnerable moments, chronicling these interactions in searingly beautiful, surprising ways.Shocking and often slyly humorous, Cost of Living is a brilliant examination of just what exactly our troubled healthcare system asks us to pay, as well as a look at what goes on behind the scenes at our hospitals and in the minds of caregivers.

    Dawn Davies is in the third category. A six-foot-tall divorcee, she isn’t chatty, couldn’t care less about anyone’s potty training progress, doesn’t care to share her own children’s milestones with people who don’t love them. But even if she has never fit in with other moms, she has raised three children with her own particular brand of fierce, unflagging love. In stories that cut to the quick, we see Davies grow from a young girl who moves to a new town every couple of years; to a misfit teenager who finds solace in a local music scene; to an adrift twenty-something who summons inner strength as she holds the hand of a dying stranger; to a woman dealing with difficult pregnancies and post-partum depression. And in her powerful titular story, we see Davies struggling with the weight of knowing that her son is deeply troubled.Mothers of Sparta is not a blow-by-blow of Davies’ life but rather an examination of the exquisite and often painful moments of a life, the moments we look back on and say, That one, that one mattered. Straddling the fence between humor and, well…not humor, Davies has written a book about what it’s like to be a woman trying to carve a place for herself in the world, no matter how unyielding the rock can be.

    Brilliantly resisting the postcard kitsch typically associated with her subject, On Lighthouses is a sweeping work that connects figures such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginia Woolf, Walter Benjamin, and Anne Carson; Barrera’s interconnected essays offer a mesmerizing portrait—historical, literary, and decidedly personal—of her obsession, those structures whose message is “first and foremost, that human beings are here.” On Lighthouses, described as “alluring and arresting as the landscapes and stories it conveys” by the Los Angeles Review of Books, takes readers on a journey from raging sea to cold stone—from a hopeless isolation to a meaningful one—concluding at last in a place of peace.

    Hannah Jane Parkinson is a specialist in savouring the small pleasures of life. She revels in her fluffy dressing gown ('like bathing in marshmallow'), finds calm in solo cinema trips, is charmed by the personalities of fonts ('you'll never see Comic Sans on a funeral notice'), celebrates pockets and gleefully abandons a book she isn't enjoying. Parkinson's everyday exaltations - selected from her immensely successful Guardian column - will utterly delight.Features brand-new material

    You’d better come if you want to save her.”  Lorraine—“Rainy”—lives at the top of Tiger Mountain. Remote, moody, cloistered in pine trees and fog, it’s a sanctuary, a new life. She can hide from the disturbing past she wants to forget. If she’s allowed to. When Rainy reluctantly agrees to a girls’ weekend in Vegas, she’s prepared for an exhausting parade of shots and slot machines. But after a wild night, her friend Braithe doesn’t come back to the hotel room. And then Rainy gets the text message, sent from Braithe’s phone: someone has her. But Rainy is who they really want, and Rainy knows why. What follows is a twisted, shocking journey on the knife-edge of life and death. If she wants to save Braithe—and herself—the only way is to step back into the past. This seething, gut-punch of a thriller can only have sprung from the fiendish brain of Tarryn Fisher, one of the most cunning writers of our time.Looking for more great reads by Tarryn Fisher? Don't miss The Wives and The Wrong Family.

    In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is "illegal" and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive.In Chinatown, Qian’s parents labor in sweatshops. Instead of laughing at her jokes, they fight constantly, taking out the stress of their new life on one another. Shunned by her classmates and teachers for her limited English, Qian takes refuge in the library and masters the language through books, coming to think of The Berenstain Bears as her first American friends. And where there is delight to be found, Qian relishes it: her first bite of gloriously greasy pizza, weekly "shopping days," when Qian finds small treasures in the trash lining Brooklyn’s streets, and a magical Christmas visit to Rockefeller Center — confirmation that the New York City she saw in movies does exist after all.But then Qian’s headstrong Ma Ma collapses, revealing an illness that she has kept secret for months for fear of the cost and scrutiny of a doctor’s visit. As Ba Ba retreats further inward, Qian has little to hold onto beyond his constant refrain: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you’ve always lived here.Inhabiting her childhood perspective with exquisite lyric clarity and unforgettable charm and strength, Qian Julie Wang has penned an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light.

    Irrealis moods are also known as counterfactual moods and include the conditional, the subjunctive, the optative, and the imperative--all best expressed in this book as the might-be and the might-have-been. One of the great prose stylists of his generation, Andr� Aciman returns to the essay form in Homo Irrealis to explore what time means to artists who cannot grasp life in the present. Irrealis moods are not about the present or the past or the future; they are about what might have been but never was but could in theory still happen. From meditations on subway poetry and the temporal resonances of an empty Italian street to considerations of the lives and work of Sigmund Freud, C. P. Cavafy, W. G. Sebald, John Sloan, �ric Rohmer, Marcel Proust, and Fernando Pessoa and portraits of cities such as Alexandria and St. Petersburg, Homo Irrealis is a deep reflection on the imagination's power to forge a zone outside of time's intractable hold.