Book picks similar to
Craving London: Confessions of an Incurable Romantic with an Insatiable Appetite by Jessica Stone
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Her Honor: My Life on the Bench...What Works, What's Broken, and How to Change It
LaDoris Hazzard Cordell - 2021
And yet, she believes in the system. From ending school segregation to legalizing same-sex marriage, its progress relies on legal professionals and jurors who strive to make the imperfect system as fair as possible.Her Honor is an entertaining and provocative look into the hearts and minds of judges. Cordell takes you into her chambers where she haggles with prosecutors and defense attorneys and into the courtroom during jury selection and sentencing hearings. She uses real cases to highlight how judges make difficult decisions, all the while facing outside pressures from the media, law enforcement, lobbyists, and the friends and families of the people involved.Cordell’s candid account of her years on the bench shines light on all areas of the legal system, from juvenile delinquency and the shift from rehabilitation to punishment, along with the racial biases therein, to the thousands of plea bargains that allow our overburdened courts to stay afloat―as long as innocent people are willing to plead guilty. There are tales of marriages and divorces, adoptions, and contested wills―some humorous, others heartwarming, still others deeply troubling.Her Honor is for anyone who’s had the good or bad fortune to stand before a judge or sit on a jury. It is for true-crime junkies and people who vote in judicial elections. Most importantly, this is a book for anyone who wants to know what our legal system, for better or worse, means to the everyday lives of all Americans.
If She Dies
Erik Therme - 2020
The driver, Brady Becker, was sentenced to two years in prison. It didn't make Tess’s pain go away.Brady also has a daughter: A twelve-year-old named Eve who walks to Chandler Middle School every day. Tess knows this because she's been watching Eve for the last few weeks. It isn’t fair that Brady’s daughter gets to live, while Tess’s daughter does not.When Eve goes missing, all eyes turn to Tess, who doesn’t have an alibi. But Tess isn’t guilty.Or so she believes.
Moranifesto
Caitlin Moran - 2016
Surely capitalism is due an upgrade or two?’When Caitlin Moran sat down to choose her favourite pieces for her new book she realised that they all seemed to join up. Turns out, it’s the same old problems and the same old ass-hats.Then she thought of the word ‘Moranifesto’, and she knew what she had to do…This is Caitlin’s engaging and amusing rallying call for our times. Combining the best of her recent columns with lots of new writing unique to this book, Caitlin deals with topics as pressing and diverse as 1980s swearing, benefits, boarding schools, and why the internet is like a drunken toddler.And whilst never afraid to address the big issues of the day – such as Benedict Cumberbatch and duffel coats – Caitlin also makes a passionate effort to understand our 21st century society and presents us with her ‘Moranifesto’ for making the world a better place.The polite revolution starts here! Please.
Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains
Kerri Arsenault - 2020
For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, physical, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname “Cancer Valley.” Mill Town is an personal investigation, where Arsenault sifts through historical archives and scientific reports, talks to family and neighbors, and examines her own childhood to illuminate the rise and collapse of the working-class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxics and disease. Mill Town is a moral wake-up call that asks, Whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?
Wholly Unraveled: A Memoir
Keele Burgin - 2019
Parties were punishable with violence. Fear was part of the daily norm. Growing up in a Catholic cult, under the unforgiving eye of her abusive father, Kathleen knew from an early age that if she were to survive, she’d have to do it on her own.But when the time came to escape, she found herself in a damaging spiral of self-destruction. At rock bottom, and with nowhere to go, Kathleen stepped off a bus in the last place she ever thought she’d find peace: a remote community in rural Canada. Spending a year in almost complete silence, Kathleen feared this experience would prove to be just another step in her unraveling. Instead, with her demons quieted, she emerged with a fresh understanding of self, an empowering new purpose, and a sense of worthiness that she would never let be challenged again.Wholly Unraveled is Keele Burgin’s gripping and inspiring journey of self-discovery and of finally finding her voice against nearly insurmountable odds.
Holy Guacamole: A Glorious Discovery of Your Undeniable Worth
Carrie Stephens - 2020
Or your relationships. Or your job. Or your whatever. Sometimes you even feel pushed to the side, put on the shelf, overlooked, and not particularly important to, well, anything. Sometimes, you feel even less important. . .than a side of rice and beans. (You know, kind of like that stuff served on the side that no one really asked for?) What if you found out you were something more like tableside guacamole—that fancy kind they wheel up to the table and make right on the spot?
What if you were made on purpose,
for a purpose that can release God’s glorious colors and flavors in the world?
You didn’t arrive here by accident, nor have you been served up as an unwanted side dish. The God of creation has created you, and He isn't waiting for you to become some better version of yourself so He can finally love you. . .or use you. . .or delight in you. Generously seasoned with humor and empathy, with stories of triumph, failure, heartbreak, and redemption, Holy Guacamole will connect your heart to the unchanging truths of God’s Word and the unfailing power of God’s call to live a life full of His love for you and for the world. God longs to reveal to you all the ways you are His beautiful, flavorful, colorful creation. Let Him show you all the ways you are Holy Guacamole—His masterpiece, His signature offering to a world in need of His love.
Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef
Gabrielle Hamilton - 2001
Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family—the result of a prickly marriage that nonetheless yields lasting dividends. By turns epic and intimate, Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion.
The Penguin Lessons
Tom Michell - 2015
When the bird refuses to leave Tom's side, the young teacher has no choice but to take it with him and look after it. This is their story.
A Year in Provence
Peter Mayle - 1989
He endures January's frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glorious regional cuisine. A Year in Provence transports us into all the earthy pleasures of Provençal life and lets us live vicariously at a tempo governed by seasons, not by days.
The Way Through the Woods: Of Mushrooms and Mourning
Long Litt Woon - 2017
Soon after her arrival, she met Eiolf. He became the love of her life. After thirty-two years together, Eiolf's sudden death left Woon struggling to imagine a life without the man who had been soulmate and best friend. Adrift in her grief, Woon signs up for a beginner's course on mushrooming. She finds, to her surprise, that the hunt for mushrooms and mushroom knowledge rekindles her appetite for life, awakens her dulled senses, and provides a source of joy and meaning.The Way Through the Woods tells the story of two parallel journeys: an inner one, through the landscape of mourning, and an outer one, into the fascinating realm of mushrooms--resilient, adaptable, dizzyingly diverse, and essential to nature's cycles of death and rebirth. An anthropologist and certified mushroom expert, Woon brings a fresh eye and boundless curiosity to the natural world and takes readers from primordial Norwegian forests to hidden-in-plain-sight Central Park pathways. She also introduces a lovable and eccentric cast of mushroom obsessives. Her explorations of the connections between humans, nature, grief, and healing are universal.
The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London
Christopher Skaife - 2018
Each year they are seen by millions of visitors, and they have become as integral a part of the Tower as its ancient stones. But their role is even more important than that—legend has it that if the ravens should ever leave, the Tower will crumble into dust and great harm will befall the kingdom.The responsibility for ensuring that such a disaster never comes to pass falls to one man: the Ravenmaster. The current holder of the position is Yeoman Warder Christopher Skaife, and in this fascinating, entertaining and touching book he memorably describes the ravens’ formidable intelligence, their idiosyncrasies and their occasionally wicked sense of humour. The Ravenmaster is a compelling, inspiring and irreverent story that will delight and surprise anyone with an interest in British history or animal behaviour.
Bell Hammers
Lancelot Schaubert - 2020
Remmy's life of constant schemes and pranks and a lifelong feud with classmate Jim Johnstone and the local oil drilling company proves consequential. This is a hoot."- Publisher's Weekly🏆 finalist for Glimmer Train's Fiction Open.PRANKS. OIL. PROTEST. JOKES BETWEEN NEWLYWEDS.AND ONE HILARIOUS SIEGE OF A MAJOR CORPORATION.Remmy grows up with Beth in Bellhammer, Illinois as oil and coal companies rob the land of everything that made it paradise. Under his Grandad, he learns how to properly prank his neighbors, friends, and foes. Beth tries to fix Remmy by taking him to church. Under his Daddy, Remmy starts the Bell Hammer Construction Company, which depends on contracts from Texarco Oil. And Beth argues with him about how to build a better business. Together, Remmy and Beth start to build a great neighborhood of "merry men" carpenters: a paradise of s’mores, porch furniture, newborn babies, and summer trips to Branson where their boys pop the tops off of the neighborhood’s two hundred soda bottles. Their witty banter builds a kind of castle among a growing nostalgia.Then one of Jim Johnstone’s faulty Texarco oil derricks falls down on their house and poisons their neighborhood's well.Poisoned wells escalate to torched dog houses. Torched dog houses escalate to stolen carpentry tools and cancelled contracts. Cancelled contracts escalate to eminent domain. Sick of the attacks from Texaco Oil on his neighborhood, Remmy assembles his merry men:"We need the world's greatest prank. One grand glorious jest that'll bloody the nose of that tyrant. Besides, pranks and jokes don't got no consequences, right?"
Fast, Feast, Repeat: The Comprehensive Guide to Delay, Don't Deny® Intermittent Fasting
Gin Stephens - 2020
You know you know that, and yet you continue to try them, because what else can you do? You can Fast. Feast. Repeat. After losing over eighty pounds and keeping every one of them off, Gin Stephens started a vibrant, successful online community with hundreds of thousands of members from around the world who have learned the magic of a Delay, Don’t Deny® intermittent fasting lifestyle.Fast. Feast. Repeat. has it all! You’ll learn how to work a variety of intermittent fasting approaches into your life, no matter what your circumstances or schedule. Once you’ve ignited your fat-burning superpower, you’ll get rid of “diet brain” forever, tweak your protocol until it’s second nature, and learn why IF is a lifestyle, not a diet.
Fast. Feast. Repeat. is for everyone! Beginners will utilize the 28-Day FAST Start. Experienced intermittent fasters will strengthen their intermittent fasting practice, work on their mindset, and read about the latest research out of top universities supporting intermittent fasting as the health plan with a side effect of weight loss. Still have questions? Gin has you covered! All of the most frequently asked intermittent fasting questions are answered in the exhaustive FAQ section.
Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai
Nina Mingya Powles - 2020
Nina Mingya Powles journeys between Wellington, Kota Kinabalu and Shanghai, tracing the constants in her life: eating and cooking, and the dishes that have come to define her. Through childhood snacks, family feasts, Shanghai street food and student dinners, she attempts to find a way back towards her Chinese-Malaysian heritage.
The Mothers
Genevieve Gannon - 2020
Inspired by a real-life case of an IVF laboratory mix-up.Grace and Dan Arden are in their forties and have been on the IVF treadmill since the day they got married. Six attempts have yielded no results, and with each failure a little piece of their hope dies. Priya Laghari and her husband Nick Archer are being treated at the same fertility clinic, and while they don’t face the same time pressure as the Ardens, the younger couple have their own problems. On the same day that Priya is booked for her next IVF cycle, Grace goes in for her final, last-chance embryo transfer. Two weeks later, both women get their results. A year on, angry and heartbroken, one of the women learns her embryo was implanted in the other’s uterus and must make a devastating choice: live a childless life knowing her son is being raised by strangers or seek custody of a baby who has been nurtured and loved by another couple.