But for years Jenna Hollenstein worried that she was using alcohol for the wrong reasons. Though it didn't cause her to spiral out of control, drinking seemed to be detracting from her life in subtler ways: missed opportunities, unaddressed fears, challenges not taken, relationships not cherished, and creativity unexplored. Rather than a series of dramatic events often associated with alcoholism, her decision to stop drinking was based on years of introspection, pros and cons lists, and conversations with friends, family, and a wise therapist. Though she never "hit bottom," Hollenstein eventually realized that drinking was not enhancing her life: it was distracting her from it.

    A few years later, she stopped calling herself a woman and became famous as a gender outlaw.Kate Bornstein—gender theorist, performance artist, author—is set to change lives with her compelling memoir. Wickedly funny and disarmingly honest, this is Bornstein's most intimate book yet, encompassing her early childhood and adolescence, college at Brown, a life in the theater, three marriages and fatherhood, the Scientology hierarchy, transsexual life, LGBTQ politics, and life on the road as a sought-after speaker.

    And there are really only three things that Blue Bloods-and everyone else-need to make a successful family dinner: family, love and food. Bring the first two to the table and The Blue Bloods Cookbook will provide the third!Bridget Moynahan, the show's star, invites you to partake in that sacred family ritual, offering food lovers more than 100 delectable recipes and bringing you Irish/Italian comfort food that will make you feel right at home, including:-Clam Chowder (Manhattan, of course!)-Arthur Avenue Spaghetti and Meatballs-Chicken Francese-Pizza, Reagan Style-Standing Rib Roast with Cippolini Onion Sauce-Cheesecake with NYPD Blue ToppingJust as there is a chair around the table for every family member, there is a recipe in this cookbook sure to make any eater happy to be home again. Hearty and soulful, The Blue Bloods Cookbook will make you say, "Amen, now pass the potatoes!"

    Both sought to redefine themselves beneath the stars. By the time they made it to the snowy Cascade Range of British Columbia—the trail’s end—Aspen and Justin were in love.Embarking on a new pilgrimage the next summer, they returned to those same mossy mountains where they’d met, and they married. They built a world together, three years of a happy marriage. Until a cold November morning, when, after kissing Aspen goodbye, Justin left to attend the funeral of a close friend.He never came back. As days became weeks, her husband’s inexplicable absence left Aspen unmoored. Shock, grief, fear, and anger battled for control—but nothing prepared her for the disarming truth. A revelation that would lead Aspen to reassess not only her own life but that of the disappeared as well.The result is a brave and inspiring memoir of secrets kept and unearthed, of a vanishing that became a gift: a woman’s empowering reclamation of unmitigated purpose in the surreal wake of mystifying loss.

    At 16, he was already a ranking member in Hizb ut-Tahrir, a London-based Islamist group. He quickly rose through the ranks to become a top recruiter, a charismatic spokesman for the cause of uniting Islam’s political power across the world. Nawaz was setting up satellite groups in Pakistan, Denmark, and Egypt when he was rounded up in the aftermath of 9/11 along with many other radical Muslims. He was sent to an Egyptian prison where he was, fortuitously, jailed along with the assassins of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. The 20 years in prison had changed the assassins’ views on Islam and violence; Maajid went into prison preaching to them about the Islamist cause, but the lessons ended up going the other way. He came out of prison four years later completely changed, convinced that his entire belief system had been wrong, and determined to do something about it.He met with activists and heads of state, built a network, and started a foundation, Quilliam, to combat the rising Islamist tide in Europe and elsewhere, using his intimate knowledge of recruitment tactics in order to reverse extremism and persuade Muslims that the ‘narrative’ used to recruit them (that the West is evil and the cause of all of Muslim suffering), is false. Radical, first published in the UK, is a fascinating and important look into one man's journey out of extremism and into something else entirely.This U.S. edition contains a "Preface for US readers" and a new, updated epilogue.

    Growing up on a farm in rural Mexico, where authorities turned a blind eye to the practices of her community, Ruth lives in a ramshackle house without indoor plumbing or electricity. At church, preachers teach that God will punish the wicked by destroying the world and that women can only ascend to Heaven by entering into polygamous marriages and giving birth to as many children as possible. After Ruth's father—the man who had been the founding prophet of the colony—is brutally murdered by his brother in a bid for church power, her mother remarries, becoming the second wife of another faithful congregant.In need of government assistance and supplemental income, Ruth and her siblings are carted back and forth between Mexico and the United States, where her mother collects welfare and her stepfather works a variety of odd jobs. Ruth comes to love the time she spends in the States, realizing that perhaps the community into which she was born is not the right one for her. As Ruth begins to doubt her family’s beliefs and question her mother’s choices, she struggles to balance her fierce love for her siblings with her determination to forge a better life for herself.Recounted from the innocent and hopeful perspective of a child, The Sound of Gravel is the remarkable true story of a girl fighting for peace and love. This is an intimate, gripping tale of triumph, courage, and resilience.

    It would be the beginning of her three-year journey from Terezin to the Czech family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, to the slave labor camps in Hamburg, and Bergen Belsen. After liberation by the British in April 1945, she finally returned to Prague.Franci was known in her group as the Prague dress designer who lied to Dr. Mengele at an Auschwitz selection, saying she was an electrician, an occupation that both endangered and saved her life. In this memoir, she offers her intense, candid, and sometimes funny account of those dark years, with the women prisoners in her tight-knit circle of friends.Franci's War is the powerful testimony of one incredibly strong young woman who endured the horrors of the Holocaust and survived.

    They are the most traditional and insular of all the Amish sects: the Swartzentrubers live without gas, electricity, or indoor plumbing; without lights on their buggies or cushioned chairs in their homes; and without rumspringa, the recently popularized "running-around time" that some Amish sects allow their sixteen-year-olds.Over the years, Mackall has developed a steady relationship with the Shetler family (Samuel and Mary, their nine children, and their extended family). Plain Secrets tells the Shetlers' story over these years, using their lives to paint a portrait of Swartzentruber Amish life and mores. During this time, Samuel's nephew Jonas finally rejects the strictures of the Amish way of life for good, after two failed attempts to leave, and his bright young daughter reaches the end of school for Amish children: the eighth grade. But Plain Secrets is also the story of the unusual friendship between Samuel and Joe. Samuel is quietly bemused—and, one suspects, secretly delighted—at Joe's ignorance of crops and planting, carpentry and cattle. He knows Joe is planning to write a book about the family, and yet he allows him a glimpse of the tensions inside this intensely private community. These and other stories from the life of the family reveal the larger questions posed by the Amish way of life. If the continued existence of the Amish in the midst of modern society asks us to consider the appeal of traditional, highly restrictive, and gendered religious communities, it also asks how we romanticize or condemn these communities—and why. Mackall's attempt to parse these questions—to write as honestly as possible about what he has seen of Amish life—tests his relationship with Samuel and reveals the limits of a friendship between "English" and Amish.

    The Himsels followed an evangelical branch of Christianity—the Worldwide Church of God—which espoused a doomsday philosophy. Only faith in Jesus, the Bible, significant tithing, and the church's leader could save them from the evils of American culture—divorce, television, makeup, and even medicine.From the time she was a young girl, Himsel believed that the Bible was the guidebook to being saved, and only strict adherence to the church's tenets could allow her to escape a certain, gruesome death, receive the Holy Spirit, and live forever in the Kingdom of God. With self-preservation in mind, she decided, at nineteen, to study at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. But instead of strengthening her faith, Himsel was introduced to a whole new world—one with different people and perspectives. Her eyes were slowly opened to the church's shortcomings, even dangers, and fueled her natural tendency to question everything she had been taught, including the guiding principles of the church and the words of the Bible itself.Ultimately, the connection to God she so relentlessly pursued was found in the most unexpected place: a mikvah on Manhattan's Upper West Side. This devout Christian Midwesterner found her own form of salvation—as a practicing Jewish woman.Himsel's seemingly impossible road from childhood cult to a committed Jewish life is traced in and around the major events of the 1970s and 80s with warmth, humor, and a multitude of religious and philosophical insights. A River Could Be a Tree: A Memoir is a fascinating story of struggle, doubt, and finally, personal fulfillment.

    But it was only after she joined Scientology's elite inner circle, the Sea Organization, and signed a Billion Year contract that she she discovered the dark world of fanaticism and abuse at the center of Scientology's vast empire. For more than two decades she worked at all levels of the organization, from serving as a personal aide to the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, who placed her in charge of the religion's worldwide expansion to becoming the head of Celebrity Center in Los Angeles, the organization that caters to Scientology's celebrity members.Early in her Scientology career, she spent five years as a covert agent engaged in espionage activities for the Church's shadowy Guardian's Office. After leaving the Sea Org, she spent an additional two years as an undercover operative for the "reformed" Guardian's Office, the Office of Special Affairs which continued the same pattern of covert intelligence and dirty tricks against the Church's perceived enemies while using intense legal attacks and bolstered by hired private investigators. She personally experienced the Sea Organization's Rehabilitation Project Force; a labor camp where erring members are "reeducated".When her loyalty came into question she was subjected to weeks of grueling interrogation, ending up in restraints after being rushed to a hospital by ambulance, unable to even recognize her own husband.It is a shocking story of abuse, imprisonment, espionage, lies, mental torture and suicide-vital reading for anyone who wants to know what goes on behind Scientology's curtain.

    But what do we do when nothing goes as we had ever hoped? Jenni Berebitsky, diagnosed in 2009 with ALS has been answering these questions every day. With the hope of helping others move forward after life altering events, Jenni shares her story of life wiht ALS, outlining practical and existential changes needed to adapt and thrive.

    Her family dated back to the group's origins in the first half of the nineteenth century, and her father was a high-ranking minister. However, as an intelligent, inquiring child, Stott was always asking dangerous questions and so, it turns out, was her father, who was also full of doubt. When a sex scandal tore the Exclusive Brethren apart in 1970, her father pulled the family out of the cult. But its impact on their lives shaped everything before and all that was to come.The Iron Room (named for the windowless meeting houses made of corrugated iron where the Brethren would worship) is Stott's attempt to understand and even forgive her father: a brilliant, charismatic, difficult, and at times cruel man who nonetheless inspired his daughter with his love of literature, film, and art and with his passion for life.

    It reveals three lives, separate but entwined, that have experienced unspeakable horror, unrelenting loyalty and unforgettable courage.From as early as three years old, Juliana, Celeste and Kristina were treated as sexual beings by their 'guardians' in the infamous religious cult known as the Children of God. They were made to watch and mimic orgies, received love letters and sexual advances from men old enough to be their grandfather, and were forced into abusive relationships. They were denied access to formal schooling, had to wander the streets begging for money, and were mercilessly beaten for 'crimes' as unpredictable as reading an encyclopaedia.Finally, unable to live with the guilt of what had happened to her children, their mother escaped with Kristina, cutting herself off from her remaining children in a bid to save at least one child. Desperate to save her sisters, Kristina eventually returned to the place of her torture to free Celeste. Years later, Juliana found the courage to escape, knowing that the child she was carrying would be subjected to the same fate if she did not.Now the three sisters have finally come together to reveal in full and horrific detail their existence within the Children of God cult. Their stories reveal a community spread throughout the world and its legacy of anorexia, depression, drug abuse, suicide and even murder. Lives are ripped apart and painstakingly mended with a shared strength that finally enabled the sisters to free themselves from the shadows of their past.

    Once all-American hometown boy, Charles "Tex" Watson answered "Yes" and thus became hopelessly caught in the dizzying downward spiral into the Manson family and into the brutal role of Helter-Skelter executioner. Finally, on the verge of insanity, Tex Watson found release from the drugs, the sex, the violence, and the mindlessness of his past. Here is his personal story-both of the Manson madness and of his new life in Christ.

    After a highly publicized and controversial exit from Mormonism, Lamborn intertwines the story of his awakening with psychological aspects of religious belief.