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Love and Other Ways of Dying: Essays
Michael Paterniti - 2015
In the seventeen wide-ranging essays collected for the first time in Love and Other Ways of Dying, he brings his full literary powers to bear, pondering happiness and grief, memory and the redemptive power of human connection. In the remote Ukranian countryside, Paterniti picks apples (and faces mortality) with a real-life giant; in Nanjing, China, he confronts a distraught jumper on a suicide bridge; in Dodge City, Kansas, he takes up residence at a roadside hotel and sees, firsthand, the ways in which the racial divide turns neighbor against neighbor. In each instance, Paterniti illuminates the full spectrum of human experience, introducing us to unforgettable everyday people and bygone legends, exploring the big ideas and emotions that move us. Paterniti reenacts François Mitterrand’s last meal in a rustic dining room in France and drives across America with Albert Einstein’s brain in the trunk of his rental car, floating in a Tupperware container. He delves with heartbreaking detail into the aftermath of a plane crash off the coast of Nova Scotia, an earthquake in Haiti, and a tsunami in Japan—and, in searing swirls of language, unearths the complicated, hidden truths these moments of extremity teach us about our ability to endure, and to love. Michael Paterniti has spent the past two decades grappling with some of our most powerful subjects and incomprehensible events, taking an unflinching point of view that seeks to edify as it resists easy answers. At every turn, his work attempts to make sense of both love and loss, and leaves us with a profound sense of what it means to be human. As he writes in the Introduction to this book, “The more we examine the grooves and scars of this life, the more free and complete we become.”
Love Saves the Day
Gwen Cooper - 2013
Like how sometimes the best way to catch a mouse that’s right in front of you is to back up before you pounce.So notes Prudence, the irresistible brown tabby at the center of Gwen Cooper’s tender, joyful, utterly unforgettable novel, which is mostly told through the eyes of this curious (and occasionally cranky) feline.When five-week-old Prudence meets a woman named Sarah in a deserted construction site on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, she knows she’s found the human she was meant to adopt. For three years their lives are filled with laughter, tuna, catnaps, music, and the unchanging routines Prudence craves. Then one day Sarah doesn’t come home. From Prudence’s perch on the windowsill she sees Laura, the daughter who hardly ever comes to visit Sarah, arrive with her new husband. They’re carrying boxes. Before they even get to the front door, Prudence realizes that her life has changed forever.Suddenly Prudence finds herself living in a strange apartment with humans she barely knows. It could take years to train them in the feline courtesies and customs (for example, a cat should always be fed before the humans, and at the same exact time every day) that Sarah understood so well. Prudence clings to the hope that Sarah will come back for her while Laura, a rising young corporate attorney, tries to push away memories of her mother and the tumultuous childhood spent in her mother’s dusty downtown record store. But the secret joys, past hurts, and life-changing moments that make every mother-daughter relationship special will come to the surface. With Prudence’s help Laura will learn that the past, like a mother’s love, never dies.Poignant, insightful, and laugh-out-loud funny, Love Saves the Day is a story of hope, healing, and how the love of an animal can make all of us better humans. It’s the story of a mother and daughter divided by the turmoil of bohemian New York, and the opinionated, irrepressible feline who will become the bridge between them. It’s a novel for anyone who’s ever lost a loved one, wondered what their cat was really thinking, or fallen asleep with a purring feline nestled in their arms. Prudence, a cat like no other, is sure to steal your heart.Praise for Love Saves the Day “Prudence [is a] sassy but sensitive feline heroine.”—Time“Unforgettably moving . . . a hard one to put down.”—Modern Cat “If you are the Most Important Person to a cat, you will hold them much tighter by the book’s end. If you don’t have a cat, Prudence will have surreptitiously lured you into the danger zone: Falling in love with a cat because they need family, too.”—The Vancouver Sun “Cooper brings readers a fictional tale that cat lovers will treasure. . . . This book will make most readers laugh and cry, and probably lead them to wonder more often what, exactly, their pet is thinking.”—Fredericksburg Free Lance–Star “The interspersed viewpoints . . . enrich Cooper’s sensitively told novel that unravels a story (based on actual events) about a century-old tenement building—and the inhabitants therein. That story ultimately serves as the basis to understanding the emotional subtexts of these authentic, well-drawn characters.”—Shelf Awareness
Running from the Devil: How I Survived a Stolen Childhood
Sara Davies - 2006
When Sara was only five years old, her violent father began to sexually abuse her. She suffered in silence for many years, as her father took advantage of her innocence and her mother turned a blind eye to the horrors that were taking place in her own home. It was only when Sara found the courage to tell her mother what had happened that the truth about the trauma and abuse she had suffered came out. In an attempt to rebuild her life, as a teenager, Sara became a model but even this choice was to lead to more misery when she discovered that the agency had been drugging and abusing her. Despite the horrors that Sara has endured, she has survived and, partly by telling her story, has overcome the past to re-build her life.
Take My Hand
Kerry Fisher - 2020
They shine a light on what it really feels like when your world shatters and how they found hope in the deepest despair.Best friends since they met at university, Kerry and Pat had no idea that thirty years later, they’d need every ounce of their friendship to survive. In 2017, their worlds came crashing down when their teenage sons were both diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses within weeks of each other.During the following rollercoaster months, Kerry and Pat regularly snatched time to message each other – often with black humour – providing a momentary refuge from their frightening realities. Together these two ordinary mums found a way to survive their extraordinary challenges and to navigate a new normal in an alien and isolating world. With raw honesty, they share the things they’ve learnt and what they wish they’d known – from how to tame raging mother guilt to restoring their natural optimism in the aftershock of tragedy.In this profoundly moving book, Kerry and Pat take readers on a very personal exploration of the universal experiences of grief and loss, love and friendship that connect us all. Like a wise companion offering comfort, Take My Hand is a lifeline both to those overwhelmed by heartbreak and for friends and family who don’t know how to help. Most of all, it’s a powerful reminder that no matter how difficult life gets, you are not alone.
In Too Deep
Amanda Grace - 2012
People at school think he did. Suddenly, new friends are rushing to my side, telling me that Carter hurt them, too. They say he's getting what he deserves.Maybe I don't want to fix this.Sam is in love with her best friend Nick, but she can't seem to tell him. So she decides to flirt with golden-boy Carter Wellesley, hoping Nick will see it and finally realize his true feelings for her.On Monday, everyone at school is saying that Carter raped Sam. He didn't, but Sam can't find the words to tell the truth. Worst of all, she's afraid she'll lose Nick if he finds out what really happened.As graduation approaches, Sam discovers that living the lie isn't as easy as her new friends make it sound--and telling the truth might be even worse.A Junior Library Guild Selection
How to be a Productivity Ninja - FREE SAMPLER: Worry Less, Achieve More and Love What You Do
Graham Allcott - 2014
IT INCLUDES THE FIRST 42 PAGES OF THE FULL BOOK. If you would like to purchase Graham Allcott's How to be a Productivity Ninja in full, you can do so with all good ebook retailers. In the age of information overload, traditional time management techniques simply don’t cut it when it comes to overflowing inboxes, ever-expanding to-do lists and endless, pointless meetings. Thankfully there is a better way: The Way of the Productivity Ninja.Using techniques including Ruthlessness, Mindfulness, Zen-like Calm and Stealth & Camouflage you will get your inbox down to zero, make the most of your attention, beat procrastination and learn to work smarter, not harder.Written by one of the UK’s foremost productivity experts, How to be a Productivity Ninja is a fun, accessible and practical guide to staying cool, calm and collected, getting more done, and learning to love your work again.If you enjoy this free sampler why not check out the complete book and learn the ways of the Productivity Ninja!
Rupee Millionaires
Frank Kusy - 2013
Then he meets up with thuggish ‘Spud’ who is so good at scaring people, notably the Petrovs, two encroaching Russian gangsters, that he hires him on the spot as his business partner. It’s a deal with the Devil. Spud is a loose cannon, liable to blow up at any moment. The two travel to India to become the largest wholesaler of hippy-Hindi glad rags in the UK, and to fulfill their dream of becoming rupee millionaires. Along the way, they pick up a motley crew of kooky characters––Ram, a lovable, crutch-bound Rajasthani, George, an irascible American, Nick and Anna, a quirky Canadian couple, Susie, a Dagenham girl gone ‘native’, and Rose, the secret love of Ram’s life. These become the ‘Pushkar Posse’, a group of oddball traveller-entrepreneurs who meet once a year to have fun and make money in equal measure. Join Frank on this wild rite of passage through India.
Galdoni
Cheree Alsop - 2011
Kale, rescued by three high school students and nursed back from the brink of death, is given the chance to experience life as a human. When he is captured, he has to use what he learned in the world outside the Academy in order to free the other Galdoni and return to the human girl he loves. Dark and exciting, Galdoni pushes the boundaries of love in a world of violence.
Not Quite the Classics
Colin Mochrie - 2012
Borrowing from a well-known improve game, Mochrie takes the first and last lines from familiar classics and reimagines everything in between. With the same engaging humour he exhibits on stage, television, and film, he takes the reader in bizarre and hilarious new directions, using the original writer's words as a launch and landing point. Imagine A Tale of Two Cities in which Wile E. Coyote gets his revenge on the Road Runner, Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat with zombies, or The Night Before Christmas with a time travelling twist. Imagine Sherlock Holmes devising a foolproof method for eliciting laughter and then taking the stage at a Victorian comedy club in Old London.This inspired collection is comical, quirky, and clever classic Mochrie.
Charm & Strange
Stephanie Kuehn - 2013
It’s impossible to see anything, really. Not without bars . . . Andrew Winston Winters is at war with himself. He’s part Win, the lonely teenager exiled to a remote Vermont boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy. The guy who shuts all his classmates out, no matter the cost.He’s part Drew, the angry young boy with violent impulses that control him. The boy who spent a fateful, long-ago summer with his brother and teenage cousins, only to endure a secret so monstrous it led three children to do the unthinkable. Over the course of one night, while stuck at a party deep in the New England woods, Andrew battles both the pain of his past and the isolation of his present. Before the sun rises, he’ll either surrender his sanity to the wild darkness inside his mind or make peace with the most elemental of truths—that choosing to live can mean so much more than not dying.
The Empire at War Box Set
Christopher G. Nuttall - 2016
Nuttall. Aliens take control of Britain’s cities and force the remainder of the British military to go on the run. With the government destroyed, the population must choose between fighting and collaborating with the alien overlords. . Discovery of the Saiph by P.P. Corcoran.The Marco Polo leads mankind to Proxima Centauri outside Earth's Solar System where the ship's scientists detect power readings they are artificial, alien and emanate from Planet III... a wasteland that suffered a devastating nuclear bombardment many thousands of years before. Archaeologists discover an alien library deep underground and are astonished to unlock its secrets with human DNA. C.R.O.W. by Phillip Richards.Andy Moralee knew that life with his new company of Dropship Infantry would be hard, but nothing could prepare him for life in one of the toughest units in the Union army. New arrivals, nicknamed ‘Crow’ by their platoons, are the lowest form of life in his Company, and he finds himself at the mercy of unforgiving commanders and bullies, all the time knowing that the real enemy are waiting for him at the end of his journey through the void. The enemy know that the Union are coming, they have dug in and fortified, and they are ready Marine Cadet by Tim C. Taylor.2565 A.D. When seventeen-year old Marine Cadet, Arun McEwan, forges an unlikely friendship with an alien scribe, he crashes into a world of treachery and conspiracy. How can he possibly survive three more years until graduation when every day brings a new deadly threat? But survive he must because his new alien allies show him glimpses of his destiny — a vision of a better future that only he can forge.A dream called the Human Legion The Exclusive Short Stories- Haven One-Eight by P.P. Corcoran. A relentless foe seeks to murder the Faithful in their haven, but who are these unstoppable servants of Satan? The answer will shock you. The President’s Son by Tim C. Taylor. The characters in the Human Legion series have been isolated from the rest of humanity for centuries, but their distant ancestors were taken as children from Earth. In The President’s Son, a short story exclusive to this collection, we hear the story of that first group of slave children. Fallen Witness artwork by Andy Bigwood and words by Tim C. Taylor.The third short story in the collection is special.
Blackbeard's Freedom: A Historical Fantasy Pirate Adventure Novel
Jeremy McLean - 2012
The two will have to fight not only to stay alive, but to stay free during the so-called “Golden Age” of piracy.Edward also finds that half the ship he bought is locked, and the previous owner left clues to find the keys. Edward and his crew must follow the clues and face games of life and death before they can claim said keys.Will Edward and Henry embrace the life that’s been thrust upon them, or will they crash against the rocks of their misfortune? See how Blackbeard came to be the scourge of the Caribbean Sea and beyond, and follow him on his fantasy adventures in The Voyages of Queen Anne’s Revenge!
I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship: Hilarious, Heartwarming Tales about Man's Best Friend from America's Favorite Humorists
Wade Rouse - 2011
Critically acclaimed memoirist Wade Rouse has gathered some of America's best known humorists- authors, comedians, and actors-to offer biting commentary on what it means to share a life, and a heart, with a dog. From battling for bed space to trying to transform a pampered NYC pup into a Texas rawhide, and from helping a shelter rescue navigate through her new life to interpreting dog run dynamics (and politics), being a canine companion has challenges as tough as any agility course, but laughter is just a tail-wag away. This collection features uncanny insight and witty prose from...Jen Lancaster Rita Mae Brown Laurie Notaro Jane Green Beth Harbison W. Bruce Cameron and many others, including a Foreword by Chelsea Handler's dog, Chunk
True Crime Stories Volume 4: 12 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases (True Crime Anthology)
Jack Rosewood - 2016
In the pages of this book are assembled twelve of the strangest true crime stories in human history. There is no doubt that some of these cases will disturb you, but it is equally assured that you will not be able to put this book down! Follow along in various criminal investigations as astute investigators race to solve cold murder cases. Some of the cases in this true crime anthology will boggle your mind as much as the police were when they investigated them. You will read about the abduction of girls from safe neighborhoods during broad daylight and how the dogged detectives eventually caught their killers through a combination of advances in science, some lucky breaks, and excellent police work. There are also some true crime murder cases profiled where killers have yet to be brought to justice and unfortunately, probably never will be. You may have already heard about some of these cases, while it will be the first time you read about others, but make no mistake, you will keep turning the pages for more. So open the pages and read about bizarre abductions, true murder cases, and other strange crimes that have intrigued people around the world. Once you do, you will want to read more.
Torch
Cheryl Strayed - 2006
"Work hard. Do good. Be incredible!" is the advice Teresa Rae Wood shares with the listeners of her local radio show, Modern Pioneers, and the advice she strives to live by every day. She has fled a bad marriage and rebuilt a life with her children, Claire and Joshua, and their caring stepfather, Bruce. Their love for each other binds them as a family through the daily struggles of making ends meet. But when they received unexpected news that Teresa, only 38, is dying of cancer, their lives all begin to unravel and drift apart. Strayed's intimate portraits of these fully human characters in a time of crisis show the varying truths of grief, forgiveness, and the beautiful terrors of learning how to keep living.