Book picks similar to
The Imagine Project: Stories of Courage, Hope and Love by Dianne Maroney


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Regine's Book: A Teen Girl's Last Words


Regine Stokke - 2010
    Instead, she started a blog and turned her fight against leukemia into a source of vitality, power, and beauty. Through music, photography, writing, and time spent with loved ones, she made the most of her life. She was a typical teenager with an amazing will to live, and the lessons she learned have relevance to us all.“Seventeen-year-old Regine began a blog to document and share her experience after being diagnosed with leukemia in 2008. . . . Her writing is honest and raw, insightful and inspiring. . . . Her obsession with rock music and attending concerts saturates the text as it does her short life, and her original poems and artistic photographs add extra dimension to what is sure to be an inspiring read for a new audience for this moving title.”–Booklist“Stokke’s openness and honesty. . . are the chief draw; readers will feel as though they have truly come to know her. . . . it’s a rare, valuable window into life with a terminal illness.”—Publishers Weekly “In direct, emotionally open prose, Regine describes the details of cancer treatment, her optimism and frustrations, her excitement about rock music, and her relationships with friends and family. . . . Regine's voice is matter-of-fact and honest, with a tone that is occasionally raw. . . . A heartfelt and visually appealing window into Regine's last year.”–Kirkus Reviews “With a moving and honest voice, she takes readers along on her journey from diagnosis to despair to acceptance. . . . readers will find themselves rooting for Regine until the end.”–School Library Journal “There is no tale of end-of-life romance or melodrama in Regine's memoir, just an honest portrayal of a child struggling to come to terms with something every human being will one day face. What makes her memoir so valuable is the message that she keeps coming back to. . . 'Face your fear. Accept your war. It is what it is.' In other words. . . 'Live.'"–Voice of Youth Advocates* A Junior Library Guild Selection* ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Winner* YALSA Quick Picks Nominee

The Command to Look: A Master Photographer's Method for Controlling the Human Gaze


William Mortensen - 2014
    Until now, copies on the antiquarian book circuit sold for many hundreds of dollars. It is a crucial book for understanding both Mortensen’s philosophy and his use of psychology in the making of his pictures. To illustrate the text Mortensen includes an amazing gallery of his best-known and most challenging images with explanations, by him, of what makes those photographs so compelling.The reprint of The Command to Lookalso contains two new major essays that assess the significance and impact of the original book. An introduction by Mortensen biographer Larry Lytle explores Mortensen’s use of Jungian psychology and also discusses new advances in neural psychology that confirm Mortensen’s methods of controlling the viewer’s eye. The second essay, by historian Michael Moynihan (author of Lords of Chaos), details a strange and unexpected reception of the book: how this small volume on photographic methods played a role in the creation of the modern Church of Satan and Anton LaVey’s theories about Satanic Magic.

The EveryGirl's Cookbook


Maria Menounos - 2016
    Well, here it all is: recipes with few ingredients that are so simple and easy you’ll have no excuse not to make them. Everyone at your table will be begging for seconds!” Inspired by her healthy Mediterranean heritage, her hectic schedule, her beloved Greek family—and packed with beautiful photos—The EveryGirl’s Cookbook focuses on fresh and natural ingredients that yield a wide variety of both healthy and splurge-worthy food, including  Breakfast: Strawberry Shortcake French Toast, Apple Pie Quinoa Porridge, Sweet Potato and Black Bean Breakfast BurritoLunch: Three-Bean Power Salad, Caramelized Veggie Flatbreads, Kale and Lemon Oil PizzaDinner: Melted Baked Ziti with Charred Cauliflower, Double-Cheese-Stuffed Artichokes, Spinach and Walnut-Stuffed Portobello MushroomsEntertaining: Meatball Sliders, Sloppy BBQ Buns with Cabbage Coleslaw, Summertime Watermelon-Feta SaladProtein Snacks: Spicy Avocado Toasts, Chickpea Poppers, Speedy Egg SaladDesserts: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies with Toasted Pecans, Anytime Oatmeal Fruit Crumble, Greek Yogurt Strawberry Sunday.   Maria also includes recipes for pre- and post-workout smoothies, dishes to boost your immune system, diabetic-friendly and gluten-free fare, and even a bonus selection of healthy doggie treats to make your pup’s tail wag. Whether you are a whiz in the kitchen or just learning your way around it, Maria’s warm and supportive guidance will help EveryGirl live healthily, happily, and meaningfully. As she says: “No experience? No problem. Let’s get cooking!”From the Trade Paperback edition.

Stuff On My Cat: The Book


Mario Garza - 2006
    Over time, the objects became bigger: remote controls, shoes, empty pizza boxes. And then cat owners everywhere were sucked into the Internet phenomenon that is defined by a simple motto: stuff + cats = awesome. From Stuffonmycat.com (the amazingly popular website that redefines hilarious and that was named one of the coolest sites of the year by Yahoo! And GQ magazine) comes Stuff On My Cat: The Book. Culled from the thousands of outrageous photographs submitted by mischievous animal lovers, here are 200 of the most unbelievably entertaining images of cats with all manner of things on them: wigs, Easter eggs, dogs, cheeseburgers, cookware, gummi bears, action figures, tiaras, beer cans, pinecones, a statue of the Buddha, and much more. An introduction by the site's creator explains the Stuff on My Cat philosophy, and playful illustrations and graphics are sprinkled throughout. Just try to keep a straight face.

A Life on the Road


Charles Kuralt - 1990
    From a southern boy bitten by wanderlust and wonder, to a curious rover writing for newspapers, radio, and TV, to a CBS News correspondent adventuring around the world--from Cuba and Vietnam to the Congo and the North Pole, to his twenty-plus years roaming the back roads of America. In this engaging memoir, Kuralt relives a lifetime of discovering places and people whose unique stories enriched him, shaped him, and fueled his all-consuming passion: to find out what wonderful thing waits just around the next bend.From the Paperback edition.

The Seasoning


Manon Steffan Ros - 2012
    Hard-backed with brown and pale yellow marbling on the cover, like chocolate in cream.'I want you to write something for me,' said Jonathan, his dark eyes locking onto mine. 'I want you to write your story, Mam.'Peggy's story is the story of her Snowdonia village – of a community that that shares its joys and its woes across floured kitchen tables and scrubbed shop counters.Throughout Peggy's life food looms large – the lack of it, the sharing of it, the eating of it – from gingerbread to cawl, ce-cream to bara-brith. Her recipes are well-used and much ppreciated, but no one is quite sure where her inspiration comes from, why she is the way she is.Not until everyone's tale is told does Peggy's story unfold... as thick, dark and sticky as treacle.

Powerless: A Superhero Novel


Tony Cooper - 2013
    I haven't used my powers in almost two decades. I've been a night security guard for four years and not had a panic attack for nearly ten months.Then my old teammate and best friend Vincent is murdered by another power. My carefully constructed solitude crumbles around me as the Police, the Powered Crime Agency and the rest of the team search for answers.All I want is to find out who killed him without having to dredge up too much pain from the past, but when the super-powered killer comes after me, all I'm left with are nightmares.Please note, the 3rd edition of this book has the same ISBN but a new cover and expanded title, so this is an alternate cover of the book with the details below.ISBN: 9781301455171ASIN: B00B0JOR7M

Apparition,


Gail Gallant - 2013
    When he is found the next day in an abandoned barn at the edge of town, an apparent suicide, Amelia's whole world comes crashing down.And then she sees him again. Because Amelia has a secret that even Matthew didn't know: sometimes, she sees ghosts.When a local history columnist named Morris Dyson contacts Amelia after the funeral and tells her that he thinks the barn Matthew died in is haunted, and that Matthew wasn't its first victim, an unlikely partnership is born. With Amelia's gift for seeing ghosts, Morris's radical theories on the supernatural, and a bit of help from Morris's sexy but skeptical son, Kip, a mystery unfolds. One by one, the barn's other ghostly residents are revealed: all innocent, love-struck young men who've died horrific deaths, seemingly by their own hands.Life and death couldn't get more complicated as Amelia is torn between her devotion to the ghostly Matthew and her growing attraction to Kip, who may not believe in ghosts but can't help believing in Amelia. When she's confronted with a rivalry between the living and the dead, which side of the great divide will Amelia choose?Apparition is a fast-paced supernatural mystery about memory and obsession, bodies and spirits, love and loss.

Kookooland


Gloria Norris - 2015
    Her parents are Jimmy and Shirley, her sister is Virginia, and her cat is Sylvester. A photo might show a happy, young family, but only a dummkopf would believe that. Jimmy's a wiseguy who relies on charm, snappy wit, and an unyielding belief that he's above the law; as his youngest daughter, Gloria is just like him. Or at least, she knows that she needs to stay on his good side so he doesn't brain her one. Jimmy is violent: he's passionate about hunting, horse races and slasher flicks, and he's prone to outbursts that have him screaming and reaching for his shotgun. Shirley, mild and meek as she is, tries to protect the girls from Jimmy's most brutal moments, but the thing with Jimmy is that it's his way or the highway. Virginia, older and wiser, tries to stand up to Jimmy. Gloria just wants to make him happy. He takes Gloria everywhere. Fishing, hunting, drive-ins, and to his parents dingy bar - a hole in the wall with pickled eggs and pickled alkies. The only place Gloria can't go is the dive where Jimmy bets on horses. It's there, as she sits and waits for hours on end, that she imagines a life different from her own. Gloria's favorite of Jimmy's haunts? Hank Piasceny's gun shop. While Hank and Jimmy throw good-humored insults at each other, Gloria talks to Hank's daughter, Susan. Smart, pretty, kind, and ambitious, Susan is Gloria's idol. She represents everything Gloria wants to be - and can be, as long as she tries as hard in school. Just like Susan tells her too. It's only when Hank commits an unspeakable act of violence, that Gloria and Susan suddenly find themselves on different paths. Hank's violence and Susan's grief serve as eerie warnings of a life to come, especially as Jimmy falls into a depression that has him making threats and reaching for his guns more often and with greater relish. Against all odds, Gloria's fiery determination takes shape and she sets herself on a path away from the cycle of violence whirling around her - in her home, in the projects, in her small New Hampshire city and even in the national landscape where the assassinations of President Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the brutality of Vietnam underscore the tragedies she witnesses up close. Gloria Norris's unconventional coming-of-age memoir jangles with electricity and suspense. The life of this gutsy young girl is unforgettable and inspiring, wrought with dark humor and tenderness. From the darkness her irrepressible pluck and determination emerges and Gloria triumphantly carves out a good life on her own terms.

Lee Miller: A Life


Carolyn Burke - 2005
    Carolyn Burke, a biographer and art critic, here reveals how the muse who inspired Man Ray, Cocteau, and Picasso could be the same person who unflinchingly photographed the horrors of Buchenwald and Dachau. Burke captures all the verve and energy of Miller’s life: from her early childhood trauma to her stint as a Vogue model and art-world ingénue, from her harrowing years as a war correspondent to her unconventional marriages and passion for gourmet cooking. A lavishly illustrated story of art and beauty, sex and power, Modernism and Surrealism, Lee Miller illuminates an astonishing woman’s journey from art object to artist.

The Funeral Bride


Kathleen McKenna Hewtson - 2015
    Tsar Nicholas never wanted to be Tsar, was never trained to be Tsar, and indeed proved to be catastrophically inept in the role. Empress Alexandra was stunningly beautiful but socially and physically clumsy to the point of being repellent to her mother-in-law, Dowager-Empress Marie, most of the Russian court, and therefore by extension to the Russian people at large.When King George V of Britain heard of the executions, he remarked that, as they regarded Nicholas and Alexandra, they were probably for the best, but the children's deaths were truly tragic. The British Ambassador to France, Lord Bertie, reported that seasoned diplomatic observers considered Nicholas to have been criminally weak and Alexandra to have been criminally insane.So what is the truth, and what was the truth as Empress Alexandra saw it? Pulling together what is known about Empress Alexandra and her family, and indeed much that is little known, in the 'Autobiography of Empress Alexandra' series Kathleen McKenna Hewtson is placing the reader in Empress Alexandra's shoes and behind her eyes from the moment she first met the heir to the Russian throne, Nicholas Romanov, when she was twelve, to the early morning that she and all five of their children died violently at his side.All six volumes are (planned) as follows:1. 'The Funeral Bride' 1884-1894 - published November 20152. 'The Empress of Tears' 1895-1904 - published March 20163. 'The Shaken Throne' 1904-1907 - published July 20164. 'The Pride of Eagles' 1907-1913 - published May 20175. 'No Greater Crown' 1914-1917 - published September 20186. ' The Far Kingdom' 1917 - 1918 - to be published Spring 2020

We Rose Up Slowly


Jon Gresham - 2015
    11, No. 1, June 2017 "Gresham's surrealistic stories, at their best, shake us from within, and deepen the notion that we are islands of consciousness; in this way, they compel us to confront our own intellectual detachments and emotional blindspots in order for us to engage better with the world. They are also fundamentally stories about our modern world, its cross-cultural realities, and the fractured lives we lead in them. We Rose Up Slowly is an absorbing and disturbing read definitely worth spending an afternoon with." Sam Ng in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, July 2016 Read more about the book on the We Rose Up Slowly Facebook Page or on the author's website.

Awkward Family Pet Photos


Mike Bender - 2011
    They love us unconditionally, shower us with attention, and because of them, we actually live longer. So, what can possibly be awkward about our animal BFFs? Well . . . nothing. In fact, we’re the awkward ones. We adore our pets, but let’s face it—sometimes L-O-V-E makes us go a little overboard. Like giving them middle names, throwing them elaborate birthday parties, and making them a Christmas sweater to match with the rest of the family. Truth is, what they cherish most is our companionship. And maybe that’s the reason we care about them so much—because for such simple pleasures, they allow us to be as awkward as we want.

Game of Edges


Kent Allen - 2015
    Amanda is about to play the most important match of her career which, if won, will confirm her status as one of the greatest competitors in the history of women's tennis. Little does she suspect that her opponent-Sophie Moffat, an unassuming farm girl from the middle of Nowhere, U.S.A.-will change Amanda's life forever.Do you know the difference between a tennis racquet and a baseball bat? If so, that's all that's required to enjoy Game Of Edges! In this delightful, engaging novel, author Kent Allen draws you into the fascinating world of women's professional tennis, and provides an intimate look at the intriguing life of a world-class athlete.

Penguins Can't Fly: +39 Other Rules That Don't Exist


Jason W. Kotecki - 2015
    We knew this instinctively as kids, but somehow forgot on the way to adulthood. We got busy and overwhelmed, started valuing things that don't matter, and learned to follow the rules that don't even exist:hate mondaysonly celebrate when the calendar gives you permissiondon't make a messdon't play hookyhide your weirdnesshide your wrinklescare what other people thinkFollowing these so-called rules is a terrific way to stress you out, sap your energy, and ensure a boring life. But there's a better way. In his enlightening book, author and artist Jason Kotecki uncovers some of the most useless rules so you can shift perspective and start seeing the world with wonder once again.It's time to stop living by someone else's rules. Your life is a story, and a short one at that. Make it a good one.