. . . She took God to couples counseling. In this cuttingly poignant memoir, Susan Isaacs chronicles her rocky relationship with the Almighty - from early childhood to midlife crisis - and all the churches where she and God tried to make a home: Pentecostals, Slackers for Jesus, and the über-intellectuals who turned everything, including the weekly church announcements, into a three-point sermon. Casting herself as the neglected spouse, Susan faces her inner nag and the ridiculous expectations she put on God - some her own, and some from her "crazy in-laws" at church. Originally staged as a solo show in New York and Los Angeles, Angry Conversations with God is a cheeky, heartfelt memoir that, even at its most scandalous, is still an affirmation of faith.

    This is where the author grew up, the only son of an aspirant mother and a charming, feckless father who were born into this close-knit community. But by the time of his childhood in the 1950s, prosperity was inexorably being replaced by poverty and illness (often tannery-related), with everyone barely scraping by under a very low horizon.A world elsewhere was the dream his mother instilled in Rick, and strived for herself, and their subsequent adventures and tribulations in achieving that goal—beautifully recounted here—were to prove lifelong, as would Gloversville's fearsome grasp on them both. Fraught with the timeless dynamic of going home again, encompassing hopes and fears and the relentless tides of familial and individual complications, this story is arresting, comic, heartbreaking, and truly beautiful, an immediate classic.

    Waiting for My Cats to Die is a passionately and profoundly honest look at what happens the moment you realize--beyond a shadow of a doubt--that some day the credits will roll on your life. There are all those things you haven't done yet. There are all those things you have and wish you hadn't. In the battle against time, a frontal attack is the best strategy. Horn explores abandoned cemeteries and descends into crypts. She researches long-lost relatives, interviews the elderly, and learns all she can about the ghost haunting her apartment. No sign indicating the downward pull of things goes unnoticed. And yet life, with so much to celebrate, is irresistible. Here is a wonderful, quirky, refreshing memoir of hilarity and heartache: life at the mid-point of life.

    The hypocrisy, the politics, the gargantuan building budgets, the scandals--church culture seemed so far removed from Jesus. Yet, despite her cynicism and misgivings, something kept drawing her back to Church. And so she set out on a journey to understand Church and to find her place in it.Centered around seven sacraments, Evans' quest takes readers through a liturgical year with stories about baptism, communion, confirmation, confession, marriage, vocation, and death that are funny, heartbreaking, and sharply honest.A memoir about making do and taking risks, about the messiness of community and the power of grace, Searching for Sunday is about overcoming cynicism to find hope and, somewhere in between, Church.

    With hilarious anecdotes and irreverent observations, Karo captures the twentysomething experience like never before and answers the question, "Is there life after college?" Featuring the very best of his world-renowned email column as well as brand-new material published here for the first time, Ruminations on Twentysomething Life details Karo's evolution from frat boy to manhood and explores the frenzied lives of a generation living in the strange and unique gap between college and marriage. With his trademark acerbic wit, Karo ruminates on everything from your first day on the job to the last call at the bar. Perfect for students about to get their first dose of reality, twentysomethings procrastinating at work, or anyone who wants to relive their glory days, this book is sure to have readers laughing out loud and nodding their heads in agreement that there is indeed life after college.

    Stories so compelling you'll stay in your car to hear them through--even if you're sitting in your own driveway. "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! "host Peter Sagal captures your attention with colorful tales for and about moms. Heard in "All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, News & Notes," and other NPR programs, these stories and more are for moms, moms-to-be, and anyone who has ever known or had a mother.

    In tense, searing prose, punctuated with the blackest of humor, Cooney documents the slow erosion of her mother's mind, the powerful bond the two shared, and her own descent into drink and despair.But the coping mechanism that finally serves this eloquent writer best is writing, the ability to bring to vivid life the memories her mother is losing. As her mother gropes in the gathering darkness for a grip on the world she once loved, succeeding only in conjuring sad fantasies of places and times with her late husband, Cooney revisits their true past. Death in Slow Motion becomes the mesmerizing story of Eleanor's actual childhood, straight out of the pages of John Cheever; the daring and vibrant mother she remembers; and a time that no longer exists for either of them.

    When the festival director picked them up at the airport she asked Mike if he would perform at the storytelling night. She said, "The theme of the stories is jealousy."Jen quipped, "You're jealous of Oona. You should talk about that." And so Mike began sharing some of his darkest and funniest thoughts about the decision to have a child. Jen and Mike revealed to each other their sides of what had gone down during Jen's pregnancy and that first year with their child. Over the next couple years, these stories evolved into a Broadway show, and the more Mike performed it the more he heard how it resonated -- not just with parents but also people who resist all kinds of change. So he pored over his journals, dug deeper, and created this book: The New One: Painfully True Stories From a Reluctant Dad. Along with hilarious and poignant stories he has never shared before, these pages are sprinkled with poetry Jen wrote as she navigated the same rocky shores of new parenthood.So here it is. This book is an experiment -- sort of like a family.

    But that, like everything else, is about to change. Luckily, Cooper recorded it all: from playing Outkast’s “So Fresh, So Clean” as he changes his daughter's diaper, to having a romantic dinner at Chez Panisse with his wife–and baby. Cooper’s disarmingly beautiful essays about the perils and pleasures of parenthood will appeal to any reader, and especially all parents, no matter how old their children. He has done what every new parent is too busy, or too tired, to do—captured with grace the joys, fears, and stumbles of learning to raise a child for the first time.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    If I could just figure out how to make that rhyme, it would be the beginning of a great country song.Involuntarily single. That's the true story of where Catherine Tidd found herself just three weeks after turning thirty-one. With three children under six years old, no fix-it skills, no clue how to live life as a widow and coping with grief after the death of her spouse, Catherine couldn’t help but be a little exasperated with her dead husband for leaving her to deal with life on her own.Catherine found herself in charge of her life in a way she never wanted to be, in a way that would have most of us reeling and numb. But she soon realized that when you call the shots, you can make pedicures one of the stages of grief—and that moving forward might be more fun in a new sports car. Her honest Confessions of a Mediocre Widow is not your typical book on grief and loss of a spouse, but rather a glimpse into the heartbreaking and sometimes humorous world of a young woman who learns that overcoming grief and healing after loss is possible, and that you can find joy in an unexpected life.Praise for Confessions of a Mediocre Widow:"Heartfelt and surprisingly humorous memoir...an ultimately uplifting story, and thanks to Tidd's keen sense of humor her tale never becomes maudlin...Widowers and other readers will find inspiration and useful advice in her candid story." —Publishers Weekly"This was the only helpful book that I have read about becoming and being a widow. I found myself laughing and listening to Tidd as I would listen to a friend telling her story; she has a voice that is compelling, a story that is real and a book that is an invaluable addition to grief memoirs. " —Bitter/Sweet"With wit and good humor, Tidd looks back on the time immediately following her husband's death with charming self-deprecation at her seeming inability to be a good widow. Through this, she shows readers that there is no "right way" to grieve. " —Library Journal

    During a series of visits with her father to the South he'd escaped as a young black man, Lise Funderburg, the mixed-race author of the acclaimed "Black, White, Other," comes to understand his rich and difficult background and the conflicting choices he has had to make throughout his life. Lise Funderburg is a child of the '60s, a white-looking mixed-race girl raised in an integrated Philadelphia neighborhood. As a child, she couldn't imagine what had made her father so strict, demanding, and elusive; about his past she knew only that he had grown up in the Jim Crow South and fled its brutal oppression as a young man. Then, just as she hits her forties, her father is diagnosed with advanced and terminal cancer -- an event that leads father and daughter together on a stream of pilgrimages to his hometown in rural Jasper County, Georgia. As her father's escort, proxy, and, finally, nurse, Funderburg encounters for the first time the fragrant landscape and fraught society -- and the extraordinary food -- of his childhood.In succulent, evocative, and sometimes tart prose, the author brings to life a fading rural South of pecan groves, family-run farms, and pork-laden country cuisine. She chronicles small-town relationships that span generations, the dismantling of her own assumptions about when race does and doesn't matter, and the quiet segregation that persists to this day. As Funderburg discovers the place and people her father comes from, she also, finally, gets to know her magnetic, idiosyncratic father himself. Her account of their thorny but increasingly close relationship is full of warmth, humor, and disarming candor. In one of his last grand actsFunderburg's father recruits his children, neighbors, and friends to throw a pig roast -- an unforgettable meal that caps an unforgettable portrait of a man enjoying his life and loved ones right up through his final days."Pig Candy" takes readers on a stunning journey that becomes a universal investigation of identity and a celebration of the human will, familial love, and, ultimately, life itself.

    Thrown into a profession of gallows humor and vivid characters (both living and very dead), Caitlin learned to navigate the secretive culture of those who care for the deceased.Smoke Gets in Your Eyes tells an unusual coming-of-age story full of bizarre encounters and unforgettable scenes. Caring for dead bodies of every color, shape, and affliction, Caitlin soon becomes an intrepid explorer in the world of the dead. She describes how she swept ashes from the machines (and sometimes onto her clothes) and reveals the strange history of cremation and undertaking, marveling at bizarre and wonderful funeral practices from different cultures.Her eye-opening, candid, and often hilarious story is like going on a journey with your bravest friend to the cemetery at midnight. She demystifies death, leading us behind the black curtain of her unique profession. And she answers questions you didn’t know you had: Can you catch a disease from a corpse? How many dead bodies can you fit in a Dodge van? What exactly does a flaming skull look like?Honest and heartfelt, self-deprecating and ironic, Caitlin's engaging style makes this otherwise taboo topic both approachable and engrossing. Now a licensed mortician with an alternative funeral practice, Caitlin argues that our fear of dying warps our culture and society, and she calls for better ways of dealing with death (and our dead).

    Ashley Mae Hoiland bids us follow her down “the hallowed and well-trodden path between the heart and mind,” where glimpses of godliness are discovered in rainstorms, bus rides, temples, and mountains. As a Latter-day Saint, Hoiland explores the complexities of faith in everyday life where laughter and creativity matter as much as faith, hope, and charity.

    Over the years, she has made history with a legendary talk show - the highest-rated program of its kind, launched her own television network, become the nation's only African-American billionaire, and been awarded both an honorary degree by Harvard University and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. From all her experiences, she has gleaned life lessons—which, for fourteen years, she's shared in O, The Oprah Magazine's widely popular "What I Know For Sure" column, a monthly source of inspiration and revelation.Now, for the first time, these thoughtful gems have been revised, updated, and collected in What I Know For Sure, a beautiful cloth bound book with a ribbon marker, packed with insight and revelation from Oprah Winfrey. Organized by theme—joy, resilience, connection, gratitude, possibility, awe, clarity, and power—these essays offer a rare, powerful and intimate glimpse into the heart and mind of one of the world's most extraordinary women—while providing readers a guide to becoming their best selves. Candid, moving, exhilarating, uplifting, and frequently humorous, the words Oprah shares in What I Know For Sure shimmer with the sort of truth that readers will turn to again and again.

    Raising kids is hard work. The pay sucks, your boss is a tyrant, and the working conditions are pitiful – you can't even take a bathroom break without being interrupted with another outrageous demand. Hasn't every mother said it before? “I just want to pee alone!” I Just Want to Pee Alone is a collection of hilarious essays from 37 of the most kick ass mom bloggers on the web. Including: People I Want to Punch in the Throat, Insane in the Mom-Brain, The Divine Secrets of a Domestic Diva, Baby Sideburns, and Rants From Mommyland. Read hysterical essays like: Embarrassment, Thy Name is Motherhood A Pinterest-Perfect Mom, I am Not And Then There was that Time a Priest Called Me a Terrible Mother So She Thought She Could Cut Off My Stroller