Her addiction to the drug took her to a place about as low as a person can go. She stole and turned to prostitution to help her feed her habit. Rachel had grown up in Ballymun and had, like many others, succumbed to the lure of drugs during her teenage years. This is Rachael Keogh’s own story written in her own words. She is now thirty, a student of psychotherapy, an attractive and optimistic young woman. Her story is a remarkable account of recovery from the very edge of personal destruction. It is a heart-lifting story of human redemption.

    Look where we are. What else do we have to hide?'When nineteen-year-old Mia is fired from her job at an insurance company, she answers an ad in the newspaper. The ad says: 'Erotic Massage. Good Money. No Sex.'Mia takes to her new job with recklessness, aplomb and good humour. Over the next few years, as she works her way through Sydney's many parlours, she meets exquisite and complex women from every walk of life who choose sex work for myriad reasons. While juggling the demands of her new job, she battles her problematic drug use, and the mental illness that has shaped her life.But rather than needing saving from sex work, it is the work that sometimes helps to save Mia from herself.A raw and honest memoir about surviving, sex work, friendships, drugs and mental illness.

    Every now and again she rips the pick out of my hand and tosses it inside the guitar . . . I hold it over my head, hole down, shaking it back and forth, the pick rattling around in there. And as it ricochets from side to side, I always think about pills. Maybe the pick has turned into oxy. Or Norco, codeine, Demerol. Maybe it's a pill and when it falls out I can gobble it up.After years of hard-won sobriety, while rebuilding a life with his wife and young daughter, thirty-five-year-old Joshua Mohr suffers a stroke--his third, it turns out-- which uncovers a heart condition requiring surgery. Which requires fentanyl, one of his myriad drugs of choice. This forced "freelapse" should fix his heart, but what will it do to his sobriety? And what if it doesn't work?Told in stunning, surreal, time-hopping vignettes, Model Citizen is a raw, revealing portrait of an addict. Mohr shines a harsh spotlight into all corners of his life, throwing the wild joys, tragedies, embarrassments, and adventures of his past into bold relief.Pulsing with humanity and humor, revealing the immediacy of an addict climbing out of the murky pit of his past, Model Citizen is a darkly beautiful, incisive confession.

    The place is Dodge City, Kansas, a saloon-filled cow town jammed with liquored-up adolescent cowboys and young Irish hookers. Violence is random and routine, but when the burned body of a mixed-blood boy named Johnnie Sanders is discovered, his death shocks a part-time policeman named Wyatt Earp. And it is a matter of strangely personal importance to Doc Holliday, the frail twenty-six-year-old dentist who has just opened an office at No. 24 Dodge House.Beautifully educated, born to the life of a Southern gentleman, Dr. John Henry Holliday is given an awful choice at the age of twenty-two: die within months in Atlanta or leave everyone and everything he loves in the hope that the dry air and sunshine of the West will restore him to health. Young, scared, lonely, and sick, he arrives on the Texas frontier just as an economic crash wrecks the dreams of a nation. Soon, with few alternatives open to him, Doc Holliday is gambling professionally; he is also living with Mária Katarina Harony, a high-strung Hungarian whore with dazzling turquoise eyes, who can quote Latin classics right back at him. Kate makes it her business to find Doc the high-stakes poker games that will support them both in high style. It is Kate who insists that the couple travel to Dodge City, because “that’s where the money is.” And that is where the unlikely friendship of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp really begins—before Wyatt Earp is the prototype of the square-jawed, fearless lawman; before Doc Holliday is the quintessential frontier gambler; before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral links their names forever in American frontier mythology—when neither man wanted fame or deserved notoriety.Authentic, moving, and witty, Maria Doria Russell’s fifth novel redefines these two towering figures of the American West and brings to life an extraordinary cast of historical characters, including Holliday’s unforgettable companion, Kate. First and last, however, Doc is John Henry Holliday’s story, written with compassion, humor, and respect by one of our greatest contemporary storytellers.

    As the ad campaign for the show says, Ruby doesn′t know how she got to this weight, but she knows its killing her. Having been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and told by doctors that she would die if she continued to carry all that weight, Ruby is changing her life to save it. Her honesty, optimism and genuine commitment to uncover all the underlying causes of her addiction--mental, physical and emotional--are inspiring millions of others in the process. So too is her progress. (She′s now down to 360 pounds!)While Style′s cameras have been following Ruby′s personal journey as she sheds the weight, gets healthier, battles discrimination daily, and struggles to recover lost childhood memories, these excerpts, taken from the journal Ruby carries with her everywhere on the show, include her most intimate reflections, insights and discoveries regarding her life "before" and "during" this incredibly transformative experience. It also includes her fears, hopes and dreams for life after her goal is realized. In addition, the book will feature thoughts from the doctors, dieticians, trainers, therapists, friends and family supporting Ruby′s mission. Everyone following and touched by Ruby′s story will want to read this book.

    With a lucrative job, a wife, and a home of his own, he was destined for a life of fortune, prosperity and comfort. That was before heroin. This unique and gripping tale is the first of its kind to tell the story of addiction through the eyes of both father and son. Together, Dustin and Dallas shine a blinding light on the dark life of a junky. As Dustin decides to travel across the western states in search of a safe haven, Dustin wanders within a few footsteps of his own demise. Instead of finding freedom, however, his addiction cascades into corruption, deceit, and evil. As alcohol and drug abuse continues to ravage every community in America, this groundbreaking memoir offers important insight into the inner workings of an active user, as well as the pain of those loved ones who must helplessly stand by as the family structure disintegrates from addiction.

    mixed-genre, illustrations by Kristian Hoffman

    But underneath the gleaming mid-century house, the flawless hostess mom, and the thriving businessman dad ran an unspoken tension that, amid the upheaval of the late 1960s, was destined to fracture their precarious facade.His older sister Donna introduces him to the charismatic Valentine, who places a tab of acid on twelve-year-old Rush's tongue, proclaiming: "This is sacrament. You are one of us now."After an unceremonious ejection from an experimental art school, Rush heads to Tuscon to make a major drug purchase and, still barely a teenager, disappears into the nascent American counterculture. Stitching together a ragged assemblage of lowlifes, prophets, and fellow wanderers, he seeks kinship in the communes of the west. His adolescence is spent looking for knowledge, for the divine, for home. Given what Rush confronts on his travels--from ordinary heartbreak to unimaginable violence--it is a miracle he is still alive.The Light Years is a prayer for vanished friends, an odyssey signposted with broken and extraordinary people. It transcends one boy's story to perfectly illustrate the slow slide from the optimism of the 1960s into the darker and more sinister 1970s. This is a riveting, heart-stopping journey of discovery and reconciliation, as Rush faces his lost childhood and, finally, himself.

    He also talked a fair amount about mayonnaise. The interview was conducted by Mara Altman, the author of four bestselling Kindle Singles including “Baby Steps” and “Bearded Lady.” Altman has worked as a staff writer for The Village Voice, and has also written for New York Magazine and The New York Times. In 2009, HarperCollins published Altman's first book, “Thanks For Coming: A Young Woman's Quest for an Orgasm,” which was optioned as a comedy series by HBO. Cover design by Adil Dara Kim.

    Anyone who has followed Mary's career in film and as the popular in-your-face TV and stage character Effie, may be shocked to learn of the trials she was going through at the time. But they won't be surprised by the love she gives out to all, and receives in return, from family and friends.By giving us an intimate view of her experiences—including meeting George, the love of her life, and their journey to parenthood—we also see the universal truth that in life there's loss and, amongst the pain and tragedy of that, there is the power of hope and humour. Mary's story of the deaths of her father, her grandmother and her daughter Stevie is at times heartbreaking but, ultimately, All I Know is an enriching and uplifting celebration of life.

    Yet many may be surprised to learn that the true story behind the making of the film is as captivating as the film itself. In The Making of Slap Shot, veteran sports writer Jonathon Jackson lets fans not only relive just how the film was made, but brings to light surprising facts (i.e., Al Pacino was the first choice for the role of Reggie Dunlop; almost every scene-even the absurd and unbelievable ones-depicts a real life event). With access to those involved in the making of the film, he brings to life some of the magic behind the creation of memorable scenes and characters, especially the Charleston Chiefs, one of the most popular fictional sports teams in history. Based on interviews with over 50 cast members, production staff, and anyone of note involved in the film's creation Destined to be a collectible and keepsake (along with the jerseys, bobbleheads, and other paraphernalia associated with the film), The Making of Slapshot is a must for fans eager to learn even more about their favorite film.

    A collective cry for help from a generation who have come of age entrenched in the culture of divorce, economic instability, and AIDS, here is the intensely personal story of a young girl full of promise, whose mood swings have risen and fallen like the lines of a sad ballad.

    In simple but vivid detail, Velma Wallis depicts a landscape and way of life that are at once merciless and starkly beautiful. In her old women, she has created two heroines of steely determination whose story of betrayal, friendship, community and forgiveness "speaks straight to the heart with clarity, sweetness and wisdom" (Ursula K. Le Guin).

    This comprehensive study guide also features "The Story Behind the Story" which details the conditions under which All the Pretty Horses was written. This title also includes a short biography on Cormac McCarthy and a descriptive list of characters.

    Burroughs wrote Junky, his first novel. It is a candid eye-witness account of times and places that are now long gone, an unvarnished field report from the American post-war underground. Unafraid to portray himself in 1953 as a confirmed member of two socially-despised under classes (a narcotics addict and a homosexual), Burroughs was writing as a trained anthropologist when he unapologetically described a way of life - in New York, New Orleans, and Mexico City - that by the 1940's was already demonized by the artificial anti-drug hysteria of an opportunistic bureaucracy and a cynical, prostrate media. For this fiftieth-anniversary edition, eminent Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has painstakingly recreated the author's original text, word by word, from archival typescripts and places the book's contents against a lively historical background in a comprehensive introduction. Here as well, for the first time, are Burroughs' own unpublished introduction and an entire omitted chapter, along with many "lost" passages, as well as auxiliary texts by Allen Ginsberg and others.