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Trading Places: Becoming My Mother's Mother: A Daughter's Memoir


Sandra Bullock Smith - 2015
    The role reversal involved is emotionally and intellectually demanding, and many caregivers find themselves unprepared to undertake such a difficult task. In Trading Places: Becoming My Mother’s Mother, author Sandra Bullock Smith shares her personal experiences spending ten years caring for her ailing mother. This heartfelt look at the trials and tribulations of that decade offers powerful insight and encouragement for anyone entering into a similar period of life. Smith’s touching stories share the heartbreaking, and sometimes comical, moments she experienced while providing assistance to her aging parent—and how they mirrored similar events from her own childhood. In a very real sense, the two women traded places. Smith found herself uttering phrases she heard all too often as a child, such as, “Don’t give your food to the dog” and, “You’ve had enough sugar today.” Smith began jotting down the things she said, and thus this charming book was born. Filled with respect, compassion, and love, this uplifting and amusing memoir is for anyone involved in elder care or who may face the role in the future.

Never Ever Give Up: The Inspiring Story of Jessie and Her JoyJars


Erik Rees - 2014
    When Jessica Joy Rees was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor at age 11, she chose to focus not on herself but on bringing joy and hope to other children suffering from cancer.During the ten months she battled cancer, she and her family worked in the 'Joy Factory' (originally their garage) making JoyJar - packages filled with toys, games, and love for other kids with cancer. Jessie first handed them out personally at the hospital where she was being treated, but the effort blossomed quickly and there were soon thousands of JoyJars being distributed across the United States and to over fifteen countries. Today, more than 100,000 kids have received JoyJars, and they continue shipping each week to kids in over 200 children's hospitals and 175 Ronald McDonald Houses.Jessie lost her battle with cancer in January 2012, but her message lives on in the Jessie Rees Foundation, which has become a beacon of hope for families fighting pediatric cancer.

Primary School Confidential: Confessions From the Classroom


Mrs. Woog - 2016
    Woog lifts the lid on a world that's part jungle, part nursery, a place both sweet and feral, where the rule of law is tenuous at best and primitive desires hold sway over order and discipline. And wait till you see the children!We're talking about primary school, that special place where little kids turn into big kids, where letters turn into words, numbers turn into more confusing numbers and lunchboxes turn into bacterial breeding grounds. Where teachers rule (mostly) and parents realise primary school's not just for children - that they.re back at school too, just in different roles.Having been a student during the Smurf, Swatch and Strawberry Shortcake Era, and then a teacher in tough-as-nails South London and a back-of-Woop Woop country school, Mrs Woog knew her way around a primary school and thought nothing could surprise or intimidate her . until she became a primary school parent!You'll laugh till lemonade comes out of your nose in this irreverent, hilarious, no-holds-barred and loving homage to primary school and all who dwell in it. Therapy for former teachers, a revelation to prospective parents, a trip down memory lane for us all, Primary School Confidential is a joy to read and essential homework for anyone interested in what really happens beyond the school gate.

Memoirs of a Former Fatty: How one girl went from fat to fit


Gemma Reucroft - 2016
    I was also so chronically unfit that I couldn’t manage more than one flight of stairs without getting seriously out of breath. I was eating my way to a whole host of health problems and my knees were knackered. Now nearly four years on, I am over 80lbs lighter and a whole heck of a lot fitter. I’m now training to be a Personal Trainer so that I can help other people like me. This is why I have written this book. Along the way I learned a lot, and came up with some ideas of my own about how and why people lose weight….or don’t. This is my story.

L.E.O.: The True Stories of Lt. Wayne Cotes


Wayne Cotes - 2018
    Some of his tales will seem far fetched, unless you're a cop and then you know that anything can happen - and just when you think you've seen it all, someone will surprise you.

Ferocious Warrior: Dismantle Your Enemy and Rise


Cora Jakes-Coleman - 2019
      This book will teach me how to train with my pain, push with my prayers and conquer what’s trying to conquer me.  SUMMARY: This book isn’t about winning pretty. Rather, it will show you how to punch through your pain, deliver a fatal blow to the enemy, possess all God has for you, and experience ferocious victory. The devil is striking from every side and it’s not because he wants to distract you or ruin your day—he wants to take you out! He’ll do anything to break you down. But you can flip the script and dismantle him instead!  When the enemy attacks, the fight gets ugly.  Your prayers and your faith have to get intense. You have to remove the makeup, take off the tie, and get down in the dirt of life to destroy the work of the devil.   In Ferocious Warrior, Cora Jakes Coleman shows you how to win. Sharing keys that helped her through personal battles with depression, insecurity, infertility, and loss, Cora offers strategies to help identify the tactics and agenda of the enemy, and the obstacles to your breakthrough.  Ferocious warriors don’t shrink back from the enemy—they go into his camp and take back everything he stole from them.   The book also reveals: How to use the weapons of warfare that are already at your disposal How to implement the five principles of prayer How to let your pain push you to your next level How to think like a warrior and win even the toughest fights  FEATURES AND BENEFITS: Prayers and affirmations to help readers activate their faith How to experience and maintain deliverance Guidance to develop the lifestyle of a warrior and sharpen the weapons that bring victory

Uphill All the Way: A Memoir of a Depression Era Family, their trials, tribulations and triumphs.


James Sloter - 2003
    A light snow was falling as our family of six and a dog started out in our 1935 Ford. The tires were almost bald and there was a third of the steering wheel missing. The trailer behind was a modified shell of a travel trailer. It was loaded with the bare necessities to set up housekeeping nearly two thousand miles away. We were moving from Kanawha, Iowa to Yakima, Washington to seek our fortune picking fruit in the fruit-rich Yakima Valley.” UPHILL ALL THE WAY, a collection of sixty-seven short stories, is a first hand account of the life of the author’s family and their struggles through the Great Depression and World War II, and their eventual triumph. The circumstances they endured, some beyond their control and some created by the choices they made along the way, provided rich experiences for their family and does the same for the reader. The author’s father suffered ill health the last twelve years of his life. It was during this time that the author spent many hours with his father and heard, for the first time, several of the stories told in this book. After his father died, the author had many visits with his mother to get a better understanding of his parents’ lives before they were married and to clarify some of the things he remembered from his youth, taking notes and recording it all in the form of short stories. The end result is an unusual collection of poignant vignettes that draw the reader in and make the pages turn. More than 2,000 copies have been sold. Here are some comments from readers. * “UPHILL ALL THE WAY” By James Sloter. “Anyone who grew up in small-town Iowa and especially those who grew up right after the Great Depression will find something to relate to in James Sloter’s stories about the obstacles his parents overcame in raising their family in Iowa.” Ellen Heath, Homegrown Writing, The Des Moines Register and Tribune. “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested.” “OF STUDIES” ESSAYS II, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) “Thanks, Jim, for the copy of “UPHILL ALL THE WAY”. We are ‘digesting it’. The book signing was such fun—we’ll do it again for the sequel!” Claudia Warner, Administrator: Algona Public Library, Algona, Iowa “You asked me to tell you what I thought of your book “UPHILL ALL THE WAY”. You said that you rewrote each story several times to ‘make it flow’. Does it ever flow! WOW!” Betty Shipman, Corwith News editor, Corwith, Iowa “I just finished “UPHILL ALL THE WAY”. It was wonderful. I would like to buy ten copies for my book club.” Peg Williams, Minneapolis, MN “This check is for five more copies of your fascinating book. Thank you very much for the privilege of reading it.” Kent Ryerson, Norwalk, IA “I just finished reading your book. I enjoyed it so much.” Delores Huse, Pharr, TX “I enjoyed your book so much and am passing it around for all my family to read.” Maxine S., Dixon, IL “I hope your travels through Iowa and book-signings have been successful. I have finished your book—enjoyed it very much—it has us reminiscing about our own youth.” Pearl White, Sioux Falls, SD “Your book was interesting reading and factual, as I can really remember doing many of the things you mentioned doing in your childhood. The one difference though is that you were loved and you knew it.

Anything But a Wasted Life


Sita Kaylin - 2018
    You're often treated like a living blow-up doll and a therapist simultaneously. It's a life that many judge easily ... until you know more. Sita Kaylin, a California-based veteran in the sex industry, has lived the pitfalls of being naked in front of strangers and the absurdities that arise when you fake intimacy for a living. She left home when she was sixteen, worked hard at several jobs and eventually started college after dropping out of high school. There, a roommate turned her on to stripping, revealing a way out of the crushing financial pressures she felt and her struggles as a pre-law student with very little time or energy to study. She had no idea how wild her journey would become and what a large part of her life it would be. Sita's stories take shape through an often altered, occasionally sarcastic, sometimes illegal and frequently funny magnifying glass she holds up to not just the sex industry, but also to human needs and desires, modern relationships, mental health, personal independence. Anything But a Wasted Life is the memoir of an unorthodox life about a woman who has rarely said 'no' to life.

Out of the Shadows: A Memoir


Timea E. Nagy - 2019
    Interviewed and hired by what seemed like a bona fide recruitment agency, Timea left her home on the promise she would earn good money to send home to her family. She had no idea that she'd been lured by a ring of international human traffickers. Upon her arrival in Toronto, she was forced into sex labour in some of the city's seediest nightclubs and kept by her "agents" for three months until she escaped.This is her captivating, heartbreaking but ultimately redemptive story. It will take readers from the early years of Timea's life in Communist Hungary, offering a look inside an austere but complicated world ruled by community, restriction and struggle; then, to the dark, abusive three months working as a sex slave in a country that Timea once believed would offer her freedom and opportunity; and, finally, in riveting detail, through the heart-pounding escape Timea plots.Compelling and sweeping, balancing a tragic and unbelievable experience with a powerful story of grace, Timea Nagy's journey is one that will stay with you long after you read the last page.

Asylum Archives Case Study Vol. 2: True accounts from the insane


Jaron Briggs - 2017
    Giles, acclaimed filmmaker Richard Dutcher, and bestselling author Jaron Briggs, Asylum Archives is prescribed as a few milligrams of insanity!

Misconception: A True Story of Life, Love and Infertility


Jay-Jay Feeney - 2013
    I want a baby but not in that crazy, desperate way where I cringe whenever I see someone else with one, or I think nasty, evil thoughts about people who are pregnant, but a child of my own would complete my life and make my husband extremely happy.Jay-Jay Feeney has been married to Dom Harvey since 2004. She always imagined they'd get married, have children, grow old. But so far, things haven't worked out quite as she expected. A high-profile job, an unpredictable family life, and medical procedures and emergencies have kept her on her toes. Here is Jay-Jay's story, told with a mix of brutal honesty and humor, in which she charts the highs and lows of life lived both in the public gaze and in the shadow of infertility.

The Best of 2.13.61


Henry Rollins - 1998
    Culling over 300 pages of some of today's most thrilling writers, The Best of 2.13.61 Publications hallmarks our company's ten year existence. Excerpts include new material from Henry Rollins and Hubert Selby, Jr, as well as excerpts from Henry Miller's love letters, Nick Zedd's hilarious nihilistic New York urban spelunkings, Ian Shoales' undeniably witty social commentaries and so much more.

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott (30 Minute Spiritual Series)


30 Minute Spiritual Series - 2013
    Help, Thanks, Wow ...in 30 minutes is the concise guide to quickly understanding the three simple prayers outlined in Anne Lamott's best-selling book, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. Understand the thought-provoking ideas behind Help, Thanks, Wow:* Learn what it means to pray, and the life-opening power of prayer, independent of your faith or lack thereof.* Inspirational stories convey Lamott's personal insight and exploration of faith.* Discover how the three essential prayers help us endure difficult times and continue to move ahead. In Help, Thanks, Wow, best-selling author Anne Lamott demystifies prayer, declaring that there are no rules--a higher power can be called anything, and people can believe in any religion they'd like (or none at all) and still pray.Prayer can take countless forms, but Lamott believes that it all boils down to three essential prayers: Help, Thanks, and Wow. Help is an admission of powerlessness and a plea for assistance; Thanks is a cry of gratitude; and Wow is the experience of awe.A thought-provoking spirituality guide for people of all faiths and creeds, Help, Thanks, Wow examines the importance of the three prayers vital to enduring hardship and experiencing a transformative sense of gratitude and wonder in the world.Help, Thanks, Wow ...in 30 minutesDesigned for those whose desire to enrich their faith exceeds the time they have available, Help, Thanks, Wow ...in 30 minutes enable readers to rapidly understand the essential ideas behind critically acclaimed books. With a condensed format and chapter-by-chapter synopsis that highlights key insights, this summary helps readers easily devote time to growing their faith.

My Every Breath: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Hope


Anna Maynard - 2019
    Throughout her tumultuous childhood, Anna found for a life of normalcy and despite the death of her older sister, France—who succumbed to the same disease—Anna pursued her dream to live a long, productive life with courage, determination and hope.

Gypsy Bride: One girl's true story of falling in love with a gypsy boy


Sam Skye Lee - 2011
    But then she didn't count on having a gypsy wedding...It's rare for a 'gorger', or non-traveller, to marry into the gypsy community. But after a shocking childhood tragedy, Sam found the comfort she needed from an unxpected source - Patrick and his family of travellers.Gypsy Bride is the heartwarming true story of how an ordinary girl finds herself discovering an extraordinary world. A place where 'grabbing' is a sign a boy fancies you, six-year-olds get spray tans, and christenings, weddings and funerals are jaw-droppingly flamboyant.This love story is more than boy meets girl. It's about a girl who falls in love with a whole race of people and their wonderful ways.