All of a sudden, he found himself falling back into the old religious devotions of an earlier time. The meaning he had found through years of engagement with therapy began to dissolve. Here, in On Tuesdays I'm a Buddhist, Harding examines the search for meaning in life which keeps him fastened to the idea of god. After many therapy sessions focused on an effort to uncover personal truth, and long solitary months on the road with a one man show, Harding is finally led to an artists' retreat in the shadow of Skellig Michael.Mixing stories from the road with dispatches from his Irish Times columns, On Tuesdays I'm a Buddhist is a spell-binding and powerful book about the human condition, the narratives we weave around the self, and the ultimate bliss of living in the present moment. 'What happens between one story and the next? That's the really interesting part. That's the space where we find bliss; where we float sometimes, suspended, and only for a brief moment. Perhaps only for a few scarce moments in an entire life.'

    For nearly three decades they created a deliberate life using no running water or electricity. It was an extreme that most of us can only imagine sustaining for a week or two.The end of their marriage came on a frigid day, February 6, 2000 when Guy climbed to the summit of Mount Lafayette in New Hampshire’s White Mountains and sat down among the rocks to die. Losing the Garden is the memoir of a woman who was compelled to ask herself "How could I support my husband's plan to commit suicide?" It is an intimate examination of dark family histories and a marriage that tried to transcend them.Laura’s father was the pre-eminent scholar of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, whose brilliance was muddied by alcoholism. Guy Waterman lost two sons (one son was a subject of Jon Krakauer’s bestselling book Into the Wild). Finally, Laura Waterman comes to terms with her husband’s long depression and his complex nature. Her awakening and affirmation of life after loss is a love story, a portrait of an intense and unusual marriage.

    And I am at the hospital. A coming-of-age memoir for modern times, Bleeder is the incredibly compelling tale of author Shelby Smoak. A hemophiliac, Smoak discovered he had been infected with HIV during a blood transfusion at the start of his college career. This devastating and destabilizing news led Smoak to see his world from an entirely new perspective, one in which life-threatening illness was perpetually just around the corner. Set in the 1990s along the North Carolina coast, Bleeder traces Smoak’s quest for love in a world that feels increasingly dangerous, and despite a future that feels increasingly uncertain. From the bedroom to the operating room, and from one hospital to the next, Smoak seeks out hope and better health. Winner of a PEN American Center award for writers living with HIV, Smoak, whose work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, constructs this unforgettable story of life and love against insurmountable difficulties in breathtaking, tightly drawn prose.

    An intelligent account of one man's experiences of mental illness and institutions: a rare insight into a hidden world.

    A nice girl from a good home, she had no idea the young lads she and her friends met every Saturday in the shopping mall weren’t all they seemed.The boys were part of an organised child sexual exploitation gang targeting innocent young girls, grooming them for prostitution. Captivated by the ring leader, and the alcohol and drugs he freely handed round, Emma didn't see the first brutal rape coming. From that moment, her life was never her own.Emma found herself drawn into a trap of degradation and violence, frightened for her life and not knowing where to turn. But Exploited is also the story of how she found the courage and inner strength to risk everything, and escape.Exploited is an updated edition of Emma's book The End of My World - brought bang up to date with a brand new chapter.

    But it was through the death of a close friend that he learned a profound lesson and discovered a secret that changed his life forever. This is a story about finding what you want most, in the most unlikely places, and usually right under your nose. Share the joy of seeing your own life–and everything around you–in bold new ways.

    In Made in Reality, Stephanie gives an exclusive insight into the trials and tribulations of life on reality TV, taking us behind the scenes of The Hills, Made in Chelsea and even the Big Brother House. Nothing is off-limits, from the drama of her relationship with Spencer Matthews, to her issues with her brother Spencer Pratt. But there is more to Stephanie than the glamour of Beverly Hills and the Kings Road. For the first time, she shares her struggles with drug addiction, eating disorders, and the pressures of fame in the internet age.Inspiring, fascinating, and insightful throughout, this is an honest account of the truth behind reality.

    Along the way, a whole sideshow troupe began to sprout, and the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow received national attention from the likes of Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone and Howard Stern. With extraordinary photos, this is a ringside seat at the most astounding circus in the world.

    Forcing food on an increasingly recalcitrant spouse. Brushing his teeth. Watching someone you love more than ever slip away day by day. As her husband James’s Parkinson’s disease with eventual dementia began to progress, writer Susan Allen Toth decides she intensely wants to keep her husband at home—the home he designed and loved and lived in for a quarter century—until the end.No saint, as she often reminds the reader, Toth found solace in documenting her days as a caregiver. The result, written in brief, episodic bursts during the final eighteen months of James’s life, has a rare and poignant immediacy. Wrenching, occasionally peevish, at times darkly funny, and always deeply felt, Toth’s intimate, unsparing account reflects the realities of seeing a loved one out of life: the critical support of some friends and the disappearance of others; the elasticity of time, infinitely slow and yet in such short supply; the sheer physicality of James’s decline and the author’s own loneliness; the practical challenges—the right food, the right wheelchair, the right hospital bed—all intricately interlocking parts of the act of loving and caring for someone who in so many ways is fading away.“We all need someone to hear us,” Toth says of the millions who devote their days to the care of a loved one. Her memoir is at once an eloquent expression of that need and an opening for others. No Saints around Here is the beginning of a conversation in which so many of us may someday find our voices.

    But as a novice mountain climber and newlywed, could he really leave his wife, Rachel, on the other side of the world to pursue such a dangerous quest? After all, Rachel's dream was to be a wife and mother. She knew that her husband's audacious goal might lead to her to give up everything.A Higher Calling takes us on a beautiful journey through the ups and downs of their relationship, from their unlikely introduction and whirlwind romance to their fairy-tale wedding and the dreams they shared. Dreams that required tremendous sacrifice and faith--in each other and in God.As their dreams are realized, witness how Harold and Rachel used their powerful bond of love to overcome obstacles and learn that life is about doing versus having, serving versus getting, being versus wanting.A Higher Calling shows each of us that when God's purpose and our passion meet, we can transcend any sacrifice we make on the mountains of adversity. And as we approach life with an attitude of thanksgiving, we realize that being joyful and living in love is worth it. Every time.

    For anyone who ever imagined trying to make a life out of what they love.

    Armed with an MBA from India, Singh can get only a minimum-wage job in an electronics store. Every day he confronts unfamiliar American mores, from strange idioms to deeply entrenched racism.   Telling stories through the unique lens of an initially credulous outsider who is “fresh off the plane,” Singh learns about the struggles of his colleagues: Ron, a middle-aged African-American man trying to keep his life intact despite health concerns; Jackie, a young African-American woman diligently attending school after work; and Cindy, whose matter-of-fact attitude helps Deepak adapt to his job and his new life.   How May I Help You? is an incisive take on life in the United States and a reminder that the stories of low-wage employees can bring candor and humanity to debates about work, race, and immigration.

    Both heartbreaking and haunting, his words will stay with you like that 'forever September morning.'" --Meredith Vieira, NBC's  Today Tom Flynn brings to his subject three invaluable attributes: the eye of a seasoned journalist, the soul of a poet, and his stunning, first-hand experience of that horrific day." --David Friend, Vanity FairFrom Bikeman:The dead from hereare my forever companionsI am their pine box,their marble reliquary,their bronze urn,the living, breathing coffin they never had,their final resting place without a stone.I move on at peace.Modeled on Dante's Inferno, veteran journalist Thomas Flynn's Bikeman chronicles the morning of September 11, 2001 like no other published work. Flynn delivers a personal account of his experiences beginning with the first strike on the World Trade Center when he decided to follow his journalist's instinct and point his bike's handlebars in the direction of the north tower. His story continues as he transitions from reporter to participant hoping to survive the fall of the south tower. Now Flynn, as both journalist and now survivor, must come to terms with the harrowing ordeal and somehow find peace in the very act of surviving.Part journalist's record, part survivor's eulogy, Flynn writes:Survival is the absence of death.It is a subdued, a hushed existence. . .I live to talk about it,to relate the tale as it happens,not only its extremities and cruelty,but also the goodness that flourishes too.

     The pianist Leon  Fleisher—whose student–teacher lineage linked him to Beethoven by way of his instructor, Artur Schnabel—displayed an exceptional gift from his earliest years. And then, like the hero of a Greek tragedy, he was struck down in his prime: at thirty-six years old, he suddenly and mysteri­ously became unable to use two fingers of his right hand. It is not just Fleisher’s thirty-year search for a cure that drives this remarkable memoir. With his coauthor, celebrated music critic Anne Midgette, the pianist explores the depression that engulfed him as his condition worsened and, perhaps most powerfully of all, the sheer love of music that rescued him from complete self-destruction. Miraculously, at the age of sixty-six, Fleisher was diagnosed with focal dystonia, and cured by experimental Botox injections. In 2003, he returned to Carnegie Hall to give his first two-handed recital in over three decades, bringing down the house. Sad, reflective, but ultimately triumphant, My Nine Lives com­bines the glamour, pathos, and courage of Fleisher’s life with real musical and intellectual substance. Fleisher embodies the resilience of the human spirit, and his memoir proves that true passion always finds a way.

    He is patriotic—a veteran who loves his country. He is independent—choosing his own path on his motorcycle, living life on his own terms. He is outspoken—he has boldly criticized injustices in American law and society despite the backlash this has evoked from the establishment. Yet the element that he finds most important, most sacred, most American, is freedom.In Freedom, Sonny articulates many of the principles he employs in his own life. Whether he is regarded as a leader, a rebel, a revolutionary, a criminal, or a soldier, Sonny's outlook has been influenced not just by school but by the military, prison, and his experiences riding with the world's most notorious motorcycle club. It was on these various journeys that he learned the lessons that are most important in his life and the qualities he respects when he sees them in others:IndependenceCustomize Yourself; Originals Don't Come Off an Assembly LineToughnessTemper the Steel to Forge a Strong BladeFairness Treat Me Good, I'll Treat You Better; Treat Me Bad, I'll Treat You WorsePresented in the form of fifty credos, this book gives Sonny Barger's perspective on how to live a life that embodies the most fundamental of American virtues: freedom.