A Field Guide to Getting Lost


Rebecca Solnit - 2005
    A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit's own life to explore the issues of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown. The result is a distinctive, stimulating, and poignant voyage of discovery.

Bad Feminist


Roxane Gay - 2014
    I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink—all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I’m not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue.In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman of color while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years and commenting on the state of feminism today. The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.Feel me, see me, hear me, reach me --Peculiar benefits --Typical first year professor --To scratch, claw or grope clumsily or frantically --How to be friends with another woman --Girls, girls, girls --I once was Miss America --Garish, glorious spectacles --Not here to make friends --How we all lose --Reaching for catharsis : getting fat right (or wrong) and Diana Spechler's Skinny --The smooth surfaces of idyll --The careless language of sexual violence --What we hunger for --The illusion of safety/the safety of illusion --The spectacle of broken men --A tale of three coming out stories --Beyond the measure of men --Some jokes are funnier than others --Dear young ladies who love Chris Brown --So much they would let him beat them --Blurred lines, indeed --The trouble with Prince Charming, or, He who trespassed against us --The solace of preparing fried foods and other quaint remembrances from 1960s Mississippi : thoughts on The help --Surviving Django --Beyond the struggle narrative --The morality of Tyler Perry --The last day of a young black man --When less is more --The politics of respectability --When Twitter does what journalism cannot --The alienable rights of women --Holding out for a hero --A tale of two profiles --The racism we all carry --Tragedy, call, compassion, response --Bad feminist : take one --Bad feminist : take two

The Diva Rules


Michelle Visage - 2015
    Powerful, positive, and polished, this diva's not only glamorous, she's a savvy businesswoman with serious credentials who works her tail off. From her days vogueing in the downtown Manhattan clubs in the '90s to her successful career in radio and her ultimate cult status as a judge on RuPaul's Drag Race, Michelle has achieved her dreams and then some! In The Diva Rules, Visage shares her rules and advice for living life to the fullest and finding success no matter the hand you're dealt. With her no-nonsense style and super sassy voice, Michelle tells readers to "Keep Your Shit Together," "Give Good Face," and "Be Thankful You're a Misfit," in addition to 22 other invaluable life lessons on finding your power and sparkling your way to the top.

A Taste of Hot Apple Cider: Words to Encourage and Inspire


N.J. LindquistDonna Fawcett - 2008
     Move in closer. That's it. We'll all share our stories together, like a group of close friends. Stories of heartbreak and redemption—trouble and overcoming—questioning our faith and embracing it—and, most of all, finding hope at the end of every path. There's just nothing like a circle of warm friends to share life with. All 15 of us will take turns opening up our hearts to you—sharing little pieces of ourselves. Come join us. We'll even include discussion questions so you can reflect on our stories or explore the themes with a group. Our first two Hot Apple Cider anthologies won a number of awards and have nearly 90,000 print copies in circulation. They’re also now available as ebooks. Table of Contents “Subway Surprise” by A. A. Adourian “Love Has No Limits” by Donna Fawcett “Something to Crow About” by David Kitz “Desperate Missionary in Trouble with the Law” by Don Ranney, M. D. “A Time to Have Tea” by Vilma Blenman “In His Shoes” by Keturah Harris “The Ring” by Angelina Fast-Vlaar “The Right Thing to Do” by Ruth Smith Meyer “Everybody Needs a Friend Who’ll Tell It Like It Is” by Heidi McLaughlin “Picture This!” by Kimberley Payne “My Love Affair with Gym” by Glynis Belec “My Journey to Joy” by Dorene Meyer “Loving Play” by Vilma Blenman “Conversations in Baby Blue” by N. J. Lindquist “From Hard Places” by Carmen Wittmeier "Boulderdash” by Heather McGillivray-Seers

Pillow Thoughts


Courtney Peppernell - 2016
    It is divided into sections to read when you feel you need them most. Make a cup of tea and let yourself feel.

Unholy Covenant: A True Story of Murder in North Carolina


Lynn Chandler Willis - 2000
    At last, she was marrying the man she loved, Ted Kimble—a fellow Christian and son of a local preacher. But little did she realize her new husband had a dark side. Shock waves rocked the small, North Carolina town of Pleasant Garden when Patricia’s charred body was discovered inside the Kimble’s burned-out home. Soon family and friends learned an even worse truth—Patricia had died from a bullet wound to the head. Now, in Unholy Covenant, North Carolina journalist Lynn Chandler-Willis uncovers the story behind the crime. Taking readers from the crime scene to the courtroom, she delivers a passionate account of a crime that forever changed the lives of many in the small North Carolina community.

Figuring


Maria Popova - 2019
     Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists--mostly women, mostly queer--whose public contribution has risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson.Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman--and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement.

I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry


Halsey - 2020
    In I Would Leave Me If I Could, she reveals never-before-seen poetry of longing, love, and the nuances of bipolar disorder.

Crazy Making


Justin Furstenfeld - 2009
    This amazing package includes Justin's first book spanning over 100 pages and including all lyrics from The Answers through Approaching Normal, and Justin's own thoughts on the how, why and when many of these songs came to life. The perfect companion piece to listen through all of the albums. This is a high quality hard cover, full color book.

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters


Ursula K. Le Guin - 2017
    Le Guin, and with an introduction by Karen Joy Fowler, a collection of thoughts—always adroit, often acerbic—on aging, belief, the state of literature, and the state of the nation.Ursula K. Le Guin has taken readers to imaginary worlds for decades. Now she’s in the last great frontier of life, old age, and exploring new literary territory: the blog, a forum where her voice—sharp, witty, as compassionate as it is critical—shines. No Time to Spare collects the best of Ursula’s blog, presenting perfectly crystallized dispatches on what matters to her now, her concerns with this world, and her wonder at it.   On the absurdity of denying your age, she says, If I’m ninety and believe I’m forty-five, I’m headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub. On cultural perceptions of fantasy: The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is ‘escapism’ an accusation of? On her new cat: He still won’t sit on a lap…I don’t know if he ever will. He just doesn’t accept the lap hypothesis. On breakfast: Eating an egg from the shell takes not only practice, but resolution, even courage, possibly willingness to commit crime. And on all that is unknown, all that we discover as we muddle through life: How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us.

Bluets


Maggie Nelson - 2009
    With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists.

The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion


Meghan Daum - 2014
    Her old encounters with overdrawn bank accounts and oversized ambitions in the big city have given way to a new set of challenges. The first essay, "Matricide," opens without flinching:People who weren't there like to say that my mother died at home surrounded by loving family. This is technically true, though it was just my brother and me and he was looking at Facebook and I was reading a profile of Hillary Clinton in the December 2009 issue of Vogue.Elsewhere, she carefully weighs the decision to have children—"I simply felt no calling to be a parent. As a role, as my role, it felt inauthentic and inorganic"—and finds a more fulfilling path as a court-appointed advocate for foster children. In other essays, she skewers the marriage-industrial complex and recounts a harrowing near-death experience following a sudden illness. Throughout, Daum pushes back against the false sentimentality and shrink-wrapped platitudes that surround so much of contemporary American experience and considers the unspeakable thoughts many of us harbor—that we might not love our parents enough, that "life's pleasures" sometimes feel more like chores, that life's ultimate lesson may be that we often learn nothing. But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the New Age search for the "Best Possible Experience," champions the merits of cream-of mushroom-soup casserole, and gleefully recounts a quintessential "only-in-L.A." story of playing charades at a famous person's home. Combining the piercing insight of Joan Didion with humor reminiscent of Nora Ephron's, Daum dissects our culture's most dangerous illusions, blind spots, and sentimentalities while retaining her own joy and compassion. Through it all, she dramatizes the search for an authentic self in a world where achieving an identity is never simple and never complete.

Golden Stories of Umar Ibn Al-Khatab


Abdul Malik Mujahid
    In this book the author deliberately left the stories without a sequence, so that each story is read by itself with ease. This is intended to be a unique approach in presentation and reading of Islamic books. This book describes the fact that 'Umar was exceptional in his Faith, distinguished in his knowledge, profoudly wise in his thinking, remarkable in his eloquence, noble in his manners and great in the contributions he made to this Nation.

The Glasgow Curse


William Lobban - 2013
    Writing in his own words, William Lobban tells how he was born in Exeter Prison to a violent, schizophrenic mother. His upbringing in the East End of Glasgow was just as bleak, and he ended up in care at an early age, destined for a life of violence and insecurity. At a mere 15 years old, he masterminded a daring break-in to a Glasgow pub, and many years of armed robberies, dealing class-A drugs, and gang fights followed. When he wasn’t causing mayhem on the streets, Lobban was serving terms in various high-security prisons, where he was the ringleader and instigator of two of the most serious prison riots of recent years at Perth and Full Sutton and where he took prison officers hostage on two other occasions. In the course of his criminal career, Lobban became enmeshed with the infamous Paul Ferris, who later incriminated him as the murderer of fellow gangster Arthur Thompson Jr. Police also believed that Lobban was the man behind the brutal double killing of Bobby Glover and Joe ‘Bananas’ Hanlon, but none of these charges held up. Finally released from prison in 1998, Lobban decided to walk away from a life of crime, but personal tragedy led to a dependence on alcohol and drugs, which nearly killed him. Only in recent years has he found a measure of peace and stability. He has finally decided to set the record straight, and in this searing exposé of the Glasgow underworld he reveals the true facts behind the crimes that he really committed and those of which he is falsely accused.

Shaping the World from the Shadows: The (Open) Secret History of Delta Force, Post-9/11


Chris Martin - 2012
    In SHAPING THE WORLD FROM THE SHADOWS the post-9/11 activities of Delta Force have finally been assembled and put into context, providing a wide-ranging look into the staggering secret history of the world's leading special operations force in their defining hour."Chris Martin has written an astonishing account of special operations activities around the globe. Someone at the Pentagon should check for any missing keys..." - D.B. Grady, co-author of THE COMMAND: DEEP INSIDE THE PRESIDENT'S SECRET ARMY"Chris does an amazing job compiling open source information about this often misunderstood special operations unit, a job that journalists and researchers should have done a long time ago. Delta Force is one of the most secretive organizations in the U.S. military but by aggregating information from dozens of sources Chris has put together a big picture that will give readers an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at this unit. For sure this is just a small sampling of what is really going on behind the curtain, but until these missions are declassified, this is the best information you are likely to find on the topic." - Jack Murphy, former Ranger and Special Forces Sergeant