Description: From #1 New York Times Bestselling author of the Immortals series, Alyson Noël, comes the first book in the Soul Seekers series. There’s no escaping the dark truth that is…her destiny. At the center of it all is Daire Santos, a 16-year-old girl whose life has taken a bizarre turn—animals follow her, crows mock her, glowing people appear out of nowhere—and the disturbing visions are getting worse. Sent to stay with her grandmother in the dusty plains of Enchantment, New Mexico, it is there that Daire learns of her true calling as a Soul Seeker—one who can navigate between the worlds of the living and the dead. Now she must embrace her fate and find out if Dace, the boy in her dreams, is her one true love…or if he is allied with the enemy she is destined to destroy.
Description: "Stacy Bierlein's stories are beautifully made, constantly surprising and utterly believable." —Pam Houston, Cowboys Are My Weakness
Two friends plan a visit to Nantucket, but find themselves on a different island completely, where the men they have loved are lined up on the beach in chronological order. A grieving mother and daughter encounter naked strangers in unexpected places en route to the Dordogne River. A restless New York artist travels to Madrid to find a European lover, only to fall for another persnickety New Yorker. Such quirks of fate are the hallmark of Stacy Bierlein’ s debut story collection. From that mysterious island in the Atlantic to the crowded highways of Los Angeles; from the Charles Bridge in Prague, to the temples of Luxor and the most remote regions of the Myanmar peninsula, Bierlein's characters are women of dazzling ironies and introspections, always in motion and trusting in love—even when it remains out of reach.
Description: The children's version of the #1 NEW YORK TIMES best-selling classic!
SERIOUSLY, JUST GO TO SLEEP is the G-rated, traditional-sized, children's version of the book every parent has been talking about. Go the F*** to Sleep, the picture book for adults, became a cultural sensation by striking a universal chord for parents. Now, Adam Mansbach and Ricardo Cortes reunite with Seriously, Just Go to Sleep, inviting the children themselves in on the joke. As parents know, kids are well aware of how difficult they can be at bedtime. With Cortes's updated illustrations (including a cameo appearance by Samuel L. Jackson, who narrated the audio book version of Go the F*** to Sleep and Mansbach's new child-appropriate narrative, the book allows kids to recognize their tactics, giggle at their own mischievousness, and empathize with their parents' struggles—a perspective most children's books don't capture. Most importantly, it provides a common ground for children and their parents to talk about one of the most stressful aspects of parenting. SERIOUSLY, JUST GO TO SLEEP came to be when Mansbach read a highly censored rendition of the original book to his three-year-old daughter, and she recognized herself as the culprit and was delighted. "We were getting a lot of feedback from parents, saying that their kids loved the book—read in an altered form—because they recognized themselves in the character of the mischievous kid who's winning the bedtime battle, and thought it was hilarious. So we figured we'd do a companion volume that lets kids in on the fun."
ADAM MANSBACH's novels include The End of the Jews, winner of the California Book Award, and the best-selling Angry Black White Boy, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2005. His fiction and essays have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Believer, Granta, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. He was the 2010-2011 New Voices Professor of Fiction at Rutgers University. His daughter, Vivien, is three. RICARDO CORTES has illustrated books about grass, electricity, the Jamaican bobsled team, and Chinese food. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, New York magazine, the Village Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle, and on the O'Reilly Factor and CNN. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, where he is working on a book about a shark. To see more of his work, visit: Rmcortes.com.
Description: “It still amazes me how little we really knew. . . . Maybe everything that happened to me and my family had nothing at all to do with the slowing. It’s possible, I guess. But I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”
Luminous, haunting, unforgettable, The Age of Miracles is a stunning fiction debut by a superb new writer, a story about coming of age during extraordinary times, about people going on with their lives in an era of profound uncertainty.
On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life—the fissures in her parents’ marriage, the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre behavior of her grandfather who, convinced of a government conspiracy, spends his days obsessively cataloging his possessions. As Julia adjusts to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues.
With spare, graceful prose and the emotional wisdom of a born storyteller, Karen Thompson Walker has created a singular narrator in Julia, a resilient and insightful young girl, and a moving portrait of family life set against the backdrop of an utterly altered world.
Description: A wrong turn in a rainstorm leads Englisher Amelia Devries to Michael Hostetler—and the young Amishman's charming Old Order community of Hickory Hollow. Despite their very different backgrounds, Amelia and Michael both feel hemmed in by the expectations of others and struggle with how to find room for their own hopes. And what first seems to be a chance encounter might just change their lives forever.
Description: A poetic elegy for Kurt Cobain from the man who created the band Hole with Cobain's wife Courtney Love.
"Eric was the spirit-boy in the Nirvana/Hole dynamic. Quiet, bemused, intelligent, and curiously intuitive to the power of hugging the devil, to say we will all be okay. The early 1990s were an explosive and defining period of creativity and excitement for the underground punk/post-punk scene, particularly with the manifest poetry of Kurt, who we were so proud to have as a light in our shared time and space. Eric expresses how enchanting Kurt was, how the whole scene was, with his thoughtful, radical adult/prose love. Bring on the future, darling."
—Thurston Moore, musician "Eric. He was always there: supportive, observing, in the thick of it. Hidden in plain sight . . . Without him, I can't imagine Seattle or L.A. or a dozen other places. This book is beautiful, brutal, brief. Happy-sad eloquence. Boy Scouts playing with the complimentary cologne in the heart of the ghost town. Listen to the man. He knows."
—Everett True, author of Nirvana: The Biography
LETTERS TO KURT IS AN ANGUISHED, ANGRY, AND TENDER meditation on the octane and ether of rock and roll and its many moons: sex, drugs, suicide, fame, and rage. It's part Berryman's Dream Songs, part Bukowski, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, and the Clash. Rants and reflections fill these fifty-two prose poems. They are raw, funny, sad, and searching. This will make a beautiful book for anyone who loved Nirvana and Hole and the time and place when their music changed everything. Ultimately, it's an elegy for Kurt and the "suicide idols" who tragically fail to find salvation in their amazing music. ERIC ERLANDSON is a musician best known as the cofounder (with Courtney Love), songwriter, and lead guitarist of alternative rock band Hole. In 1991, Hole released its debut album, Pretty on the Inside, and quickly achieved underground success in the U.S., United Kingdom, and Europe. Erlandson and Love then signed a contract with Geffen/DGC, and with new band members they wrote and recorded their major label debut, Live Through This. The album, ranked by Time magazine as one of the top 100 albums of all time, received tremendous critical acclaim and sold over a million copies. Following the deaths of Love's husband Kurt Cobain and Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff, the band toured the world in support of Live Through This. In 1998, Hole released the album Celebrity Skin, which also received rave reviews. In 2002, Erlandson and Love officially disbanded Hole. Since then, Erlandson has been involved in a number of musical projects including producing, touring, and songwriting. He has studied creative writing and occasionally reads at various poetry events in Los Angeles, where he lives.
Description: "This extraordinary tale of one little girl's End Times grabbed me by the throat. The Land of Decoration is part social observation and part crazy mysticism, held together by a brutally real story of parent-child love."—Emma Donoghue, author of Room
A mesmerizing debut about a young girl whose steadfast belief and imagination bring everything she once held dear into treacherous balance In Grace McCleen's harrowing, powerful debut, she introduces an unforgettable heroine in ten-year-old Judith McPherson, a young believer who sees the world with the clear Eyes of Faith. Persecuted at school for her beliefs and struggling with her distant, devout father at home, young Judith finds solace and connection in a model in miniature of the Promised Land that she has constructed in her room from collected discarded scraps—the Land of Decoration. Where others might see rubbish, Judith sees possibility and divinity in even the strangest traces left behind. As ominous forces disrupt the peace in her and Father's modest lives—a strike threatens her father's factory job, and the taunting at school slips into dangerous territory—Judith makes a miracle in the Land of Decoration that solidifies her blossoming convictions. She is God's chosen instrument. But the heady consequences of her newfound power are difficult to control and may threaten the very foundations of her world. With its intensely taut storytelling and crystalline prose, The Land of Decoration is a gripping, psychologically complex story of good and evil, belonging and isolation, which casts new and startling light on how far we'll go to protect the things we love most.
Description: Three years ago, Captain Brogan Talvis's late wife abandoned their son, leaving no clue as to the boy's whereabouts. After searching relentlessly, Brogan discovers his son was adopted by a New England shipbuilder. And the man's daughter, Lorena Huntley, acts as loving guardian to the child.
Lorena, who hides a dark truth, finds herself falling for the handsome captain and ex-privateer who's come to secure ownership of one of her father's ships. She's unaware of Brogan's own secret when another's deceit has her sailing toward Europe against her will.
Haunted by thoughts of Lorena in peril, Brogan is compelled to choose between the boy he longs for and the woman who has captured his heart.
Description: Ela Roeh of Parne doesn't understand why her beloved Creator, the Infinite, wants her to become His prophet. She’s undignified, bad tempered, and only seventeen—not to mention that no prophet of Parne has ever been a girl. Worst of all, as the elders often warn, if she agrees to become the Infinite's prophet, Ela knows she will die young.
Yet after experiencing His presence, she can't imagine living without Him. Determined to follow the Infinite's voice, Ela accepts the sacred vinewood branch and is sent to bring the Infinite’s word to a nation torn apart by war. Here she meets Kien, a young Traceland ambassador determined to bring his own justice for his oppressed people. As they form an unlikely partnership, Ela must surrender to her destiny... and determine how to balance the leading of her heart with the leading of the Infinite.
Description: In this gripping debut thriller from James M. Tabor, a brilliant and beautiful scientist and a mysterious special ops soldier must lead a team deep into the Earth on a desperate hunt for the cure to a deadly epidemic.
When she was unjustly fired from a clandestine government laboratory, microbiologist Hallie Leland swore she would never look back. But she can’t ignore an urgent summons from the White House to reenter the realm of cutting-edge science and dangerous secrets.
“Potentially the worst threat since Pearl Harbor” is how the president describes a mysterious epidemic killing American soldiers in Afghanistan—and now poised for outbreak in the States and beyond. Millions will die unless Hallie and a hastily mobilized team can recover the ultrarare organism needed to create a new antibiotic. The good news is that Hallie knows more about the organism than anyone else on the planet. The bad news is that it can be found only at the bottom of Earth’s deepest cave.
Hallie’s team is capable—especially the mysterious Wil Bowman, who knows as much about high-tech weaponry as he does about microbiology—but the challenge appears insurmountable. Before even reaching the supercave, they must traverse a forbidding Mexican jungle populated by warring cartels, Federales, and murderous locals. Only then can they confront the cave’s flooded tunnels, lakes of acid, bottomless chasms, and mind-warping blackness. But the deadliest enemies are hiding in plain sight: a powerful traitor high in the Washington ranks and a cunning assassin deep underground, determined to turn Hallie’s mission into a journey of no return.
The award-winning and bestselling author of two nonfiction books about adventure and exploration, James M. Tabor now plunges readers into the harrowing subterranean world of supercaves—and even deeper, into a race-with-the-devil thriller that pits one woman against a lethal epidemic and a murderous conspiracy.
Description: DON'T SWEAT. DON'T LAUGH. DON'T DRAW ANY EXTRA ATTENTION TO YOURSELF. AND MOST OF ALL, WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT FALL IN LOVE WITH THEM.
"One of the most brilliant, original books I've read in a very long time. Andrew Fukuda has created a vision of the world both terrifying and fascinating. This is the kind of book you'll want to stay up all night to finish!" —Richelle Mead, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Vampire Academy Series
"With razor-sharp prose, a genius plot, and a searing pace that will have you ripping through the pages, Fukuda creates a dark and savage post-apocalyptic world where vampires are evil, humans are nearly extinct and love manages to bloom despite all the odds stacked against it. An exceptional novel—I can't wait for the sequel!" —Alyson Noël, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Immortals Series
Gene is different than the other kids at school. He can’t run as fast, he can go outside during the day and he doesn’t have an unquenchable lust for blood. Gene is human and each day is a battle to keep his secret locked away or risk being devoured by everyone around him. When he is chosen for a once in a lifetime opportunity to hunt the few remaining humans, he is thrust into the fight of his life and into the orbit of a girl who makes hi feel things he’d never thought possible.
"Chilling, inventive, and utterly unputdownable, The Hunt masterfully dances between horror and dystopian. Readers, proceed...if you dare. This book will bleed into your nightmares." —Becca Fitzpatrick, New York Times bestselling author of the Hush, Hush Saga
"A book that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go. The Hunt is both terrifying and sublime, with every page evoking that fragile, yet unyielding thing we call humanity." —Andrea Cremer, New York Times bestselling author of the Nightshade Trilogy
Description: Cancer Clinical Trials is the definitive guide for anyone considering therapeutic options in addition to standard cancer therapy. It will help readers decide if a clinical trial is a good option for them, to choose an appropriate trial, and to navigate through the clinical trial process. The book includes lists of questions to ask, things to look for, things to watch out for, and places to look for information.
Description: This Explosive National Bestseller—now written for a young adult audience!
When the U.S. Navy sends in their elite, they send in the SEALs. When the SEALs send in their elite, they send SEAL Team Six.
I am a Seal Team Six Warrior: Memoirs of an American Soldier is the dramatic tale of how Howard Wasdin overcame a tough childhood to live his dream and enter the exciting and dangerous world of U.S. Navy SEALS and Special Forces snipers. He takes us behind the scenes—and behind enemy lines—with vivid descriptions of the intense training that it takes to become one of the Navy’s elite and shares the inside account of what really goes in when the SEAL Team Sic go out on a mission. Wasdin shows us just what it takes to become the best of the best: a SEAL team warrior. "Wasdin’s narrative is visceral and as action packed as a Tom Clancy thriller . . . will also leave readers with a new appreciation of the training that enabled SEAL Team 6 to pull off the bin Laden raid with such precision. Harrowing . . . adrenaline-laced." —Michiko Kakutani , The New York Times
Description: The Woman’s Fibromyalgia Toolkit provides clear and practical instructions to help women change their lives and effectively manage their symptoms. It gives readers the information they need to take control of fibromyalgia symptoms. It includes step-by-step instructions for using effective non-drug treatments, including exercises, yoga, and relaxation techniques; a discussion of what to expect from prescription medications; and what nutritional supplements may be helpful.
Description: New York Times Bestselling author, one of the most beloved writers in the genre, and a true author’s author, Jonathan Maberry, is back with the 4th installment of his popular series, the Joe Ledger novels. "Like a video game on steroids” –Booklist
When Joe Ledger and Echo Team rescue a group of American college kids held hostage in Iran, the Iranian government then asks them to help find six nuclear bombs planted in the Mideast oil fields. These stolen WMDs will lead Joe and Echo Team into hidden vaults of forbidden knowledge, mass-murder, betrayal, and a brotherhood of genetically-engineered killers with a thirst for blood. Accompanied by the beautiful assassin called Violin, Joe follows a series of clues to find the Book of Shadows, which contains a horrifying truth that threatens to shatter his entire worldview. They say the truth will set you free… Not this time. The secrets of the Assassin’s Code will set the world ablaze.
Note: The Joe Ledger series does not have to be read in order, but if you’re a stickler for the rules, book 1 is titled Patient Zero.
Description: An absorbing debut novel about a woman rediscovering happiness on the sunny shores of California.
Amanda Blick has a great life as a young mother and kindhearted heiress in San Francisco until she finds her French chef husband wrapped around his sous-chef. Trying to escape the pain, Amanda flees to Laguna Beach with her son Max where they spend the summer with her mother at the St. Regis Resort. With the waves right outside her windows and nothing more to worry about than finding the next relaxing thing to do, Amanda should be having the time of her life—and escaping the drama. But instead, she finds herself faced with a kind, older divorcee who showers her with attention… and she discovers that the road to healing is never simple. This is the sometimes funny, sometimes bitter, but always moving story about the mistakes and discoveries a woman makes when her perfect world is turned upside down.
"With honesty and heart, glamour and grit, Anita Hughes tells the inspiring story of an unusual woman discovering life on her own terms and finally spreading her wings. Loved it." —Melissa Senate, author of The Love Goddess’ Cooking School
"Absolutely riveting and brimming with emotion. Monarch Beach charmed me from the very first page." —Jane Porter, author of She's Gone Country
Description: A stunning debut novel set in the picturesque Key West of the 19th Century.
“A heroine readers are unlikely to ever forget….An absolutely fantastic and unputdownable read!” –Michelle Moran, nationally bestselling author of Nefertiti
Emily Lowry, born in New Orleans, forgoes high society to marry a fisherman, and together they take off for a life of adventure in the Florida Keys. One afternoon in 1839, Emily Lowry’s husband vanishes from Wreckers’ Cay, a remote island off the coast of Key West where he tends to the lighthouse. As days stretch into months, Emily has no choice but to take charge of the lighthouse while caring for her three young children.
When a runaway slave washes up on her shore, Emily is at first ready to shoot him, but she lets him help with the lighthouse, and he soon wins the hearts of the Lowry family.
“Joanna Brady knows how to stop your heart on one page and pull your strings on the next…I could not put this book down and neither will you.” –John Viele, author of The Wreckers
Description: New York Times bestselling author Francis Ray is back with this unforgettable new novel about the families we build, the choices we make, and how we find love and family along the way.
"When Morning Comes is an entertaining and touching tale about family secrets and the power of love and forgiveness." —Kimberla Lawson Roby, New York Times bestselling author of The Reverend’s Wife
Dr. Cade Mathis learned early that he was not the son of the man who raised him. His adoptive father, a cruel, bitter man had always been quick to tell him that he was a bastard and an embarrassment to the rich society family whose daughter got pregnant with him. So when Cade received a full scholarship to college, he was only too happy to leave the only home he had ever known behind and never looked back. Now a successful doctor and one of the best neurosurgeons in the state, the only thing he still wants are answers about where he came from. What he doesn’t expect to find is Sabrina Thomas, the new patient advocate at his hospital, or how this woman will lead him to the family he has been searching for and a love he never expected to find.
Description: From USA Today and New York Times bestselling author of Shakespeare Undead, comes the gripping follow-up story about vampire William Shakespeare and his Dark Lady who are stranded on a mystical island.
Fresh from a triumphant battle over the zombie horde that invaded London, Will concocts a plot to rid the love of his life from the encumbrance of her husband. Will plans to give his “dark lady,” Katherine Dymond, a potion that will make her sleep the sleep of the dead. Once she is entombed, Will can sneak in, wait for her to awaken, then spirit her away. After her husband returns to his plantation in America, Kate can return to London under a different name and assume a new identity. No one will believe that the dead Katherine and the live Kate are the same woman. Of course, as is often the case with true love, all does not go as smoothly as planned. When the two of them are shipwrecked on an island ruled by a wizard and a nymph, as well as infested by zombies, Will and Kate must stop an even larger plot afoot—one that leads all the way to the royal palaces of Queen Elizabeth.
"Handeland’s foray onto the monster-lit stage deserves a standing ovation." —Library Journal on Shakespeare Undead
"Handeland blends Elizabethan and contemporary language skillfully...and the romance sizzles between the intriguing leads." —Publishers Weekly on Shakespeare Undead
Description: A bold and exciting literary novel that contemplates the elusive line between truth and self-perception.
Ambitious and assured, Absolution propels the reader to the final page in a drive to discover the secrets and truths at its core. How or why did a young antiapartheid activist disappear twenty years earlier? How does that event link the present-day characters? And how does it explain the choices they have made or the lies they may tell themselves?
Set in contemporary South Africa, Absolution is a big-idea novel about the pitfalls of memory, the ramifications of censorship, and the ways we are silently complicit in the problems around us. It’s also a devastating, intimate, and stunningly woven story. Told in shifting perspectives, it centers on the mysterious character of Clare Wald, a controversial writer of great fame, haunted by the memories of a sister she fears she betrayed to her death and a daughter she fears she abandoned. Clare comes to learn that in this conflict the dead do not stay buried, and the missing return in other forms—such as the child witness of her daughter’s last days who has reappeared twenty years later as Clare’s official biographer, prompting an unraveling of history and a search for forgiveness. Patrick Flanery is an exhilarating new writer, and this is a masterpiece of rich, complicated characters and narration that captures the reader and does not let go.
Description: Evangeline Ames has rented a country cottage far from the London streets where she was recently attacked. Fascinated by the paranormal energy of nearby Crystal Gardens, she finds pleasure in sneaking past the wall to explore the grounds. And when her life is threatened again, she instinctively goes to the gardens for safety. Lucas Sebastian has never been one to ignore a lady in danger, even if she is trespassing on his property. Quickly disposing of her would-be assassin, he insists they keep the matter private. There are rumors enough already, about treasure buried under his garden, and occult botanical experiments performed by his uncle - who died of mysterious causes. With Evangeline's skill for detection, and Lucas's sense of the criminal mind, they soon discover that they have a common enemy. And as the energy emanating from Crystal Gardens intensifies, they realize that to survive they must unearth what has been buried for too long...
Description: On the last day of the millennium, sassy Faith Bass Darling decides to have a garage sale. Why is the richest lady in Bass, Texas, a recluse for twenty years, suddenly selling off her worldly possessions?As the townspeople grab up the heirlooms, and the antiques reveal their own secret stories,a cast of characters appears to witness the sale or try to stop it. Before the day is over, they’ll all examine their roles in the Bass family saga, as well as some of life’s most imponderable questions: Do our possessions possess us? What are we without our memories? Is there life after death or second chances here on earth? And is Faith really selling that Tiffany lamp for $1?
Description: Mark Mills, bestselling author of Amagansett, The Savage Garden, and The Information Officer, is renowned for blending riveting history, rich atmosphere, and thrilling suspense. Now, in House of the Hunted, Mills deftly unfolds a story of betrayal, love, and the inescapable pull of the past as an ex-spy finds himself drawn back into his treacherous former life.
Côte d’Azur, France, 1935: As Europe moves inexorably toward war, Tom Nash feels pleasantly removed, pursuing a quiet writing career on an idyllic stretch of the French Riveria. A former intelligence operative for the British government, Tom now finds refuge among the lively seaside community of expats and artists, hoping to put the worst deeds from his job—and memories of the woman he once loved—far behind him. But Tom’s peaceful existence is shattered when an unknown hit man tries to kill him in his sleep. Tom is sure that somebody knows his secrets, and that this attempt on his life won’t be the last.
Relying on his instincts for self-preservation, Tom suspects everyone of double-dealing, even people he considers his friends: the Russian art dealers from Paris, the exiled German dissidents, even his former boss and closest confidant. And as he plunges further into his haunted past, Tom feels himself turning into the person he used to be—a dangerous man, capable of anything.
Combining vividly drawn characters and gripping acts of espionage, House of the Hunted is a superbly crafted novel by an exceptional and versatile storyteller.
Description: For every parent whose child won't settle into bed without a dozen excuses, here is an adorable bedtime story that makes us laugh with recognition from beloved, award-winning author Marianne Richmond. With her signature heartfelt illustrations and whimsical text, I'm Not Tired Yet! helps every parent ease their child off to dreamland.
I'm Not Tired Yet! inspires a playful, endearing bedtime routine that leaves kids and grownups looking forward to nighttime, no matter how strong the allure of playtime.
Description: Amiens, France, 1916: Captain Julian Ashford, a British officer in the trenches of the Western Front, is waylaid in the town square by Kate, a beautiful young American. Julian's never seen her before, but she has information about the reconnaissance mission he's about to embark on. Who is she? And why did she track him down in Amiens?
New York, 2007: A young Wall Street analyst, Kate Wilson learned to rely on logic and cynicism. So why does she fall so desperately in love with Julian Laurence, a billionaire with a mysterious past?
What she doesn't know is that he has been waiting for her... the enchanting woman who emerged from the shadows of the Great War to save his life.
Description: Rhodes Scholar Gloria Zimmerman has come to Oxford University to study feminist poetry. Yet the rigors of academia pale in comparison to her untreated Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, fueled by her overachieving parents and manifested in a deathly aversion to germs and human contact. Her next-door neighbor (who is also, to her mortification, her loomate) is Henry Young, the appealing but underachieving English music student. Still mourning the death of his supportive mother while enduring the mockery of his disapproving and merciless father, Henry is haunted by the unexpectedly serious ramifications of a reckless and tragic youth. Gloria and Henry's relationship evolves from a shared obsession with Van Morrison's music into a desire to fill the gaps in each other’s lives. Yet the constraints of a debilitating illness and the looming revelation of a catastrophic secret conspire to throw their worlds into upheaval and threaten the possibilities of their unlikely yet redemptive love.
Description: September 1941: Reinhard Heydrich is hosting a gathering to celebrate his appointment as Reichsprotector of Czechoslovakia. He has chosen his guests with care. All are high-ranking Party members and each is a suspect in a crime as yet to be committed: the murder of Heydrich himself.
Indeed, a murder does occur, but the victim is a young adjutant on Heydrich’s staff, found dead in his room, the door and windows bolted from the inside. Anticipating foul play, Heydrich had already ordered Bernie Gunther to Prague. After more than a decade in Berlin's Kripo, Bernie had jumped ship as the Nazis came to power, setting himself up as a private detective. But Heydrich, who managed to subsume Kripo into his own SS operations, has forced Bernie back to police work. Now, searching for the killer, Gunther must pick through the lives of some of the Reich’s most odious officials.
A perfect locked-room mystery. But because Philip Kerr is a master of the sleight of hand, Prague Fatale is also a tense political thriller: a complex tale of spies, partisan terrorists, vicious infighting, and a turncoat traitor situated in the upper reaches of the Third Reich.
Description: This stunning first novel from Nebula Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist Ted Kosmatka is a riveting tale of science cut loose from ethics. Set in an amoral future where genetically engineered monstrosities fight each other to the death in an Olympic event, The Games envisions a harrowing world that may arrive sooner than you think.
Silas Williams is the brilliant geneticist in charge of preparing the U.S. entry into the Olympic Gladiator competition, an internationally sanctioned bloodsport with only one rule: no human DNA is permitted in the design of the entrants. Silas lives and breathes genetics; his designs have led the United States to the gold in every previous event. But the other countries are catching up. Now, desperate for an edge in the upcoming Games, Silas’s boss engages an experimental supercomputer to design the genetic code for a gladiator that cannot be beaten.
The result is a highly specialized killing machine, its genome never before seen on earth. Not even Silas, with all his genius and experience, can understand the horror he had a hand in making. And no one, he fears, can anticipate the consequences of entrusting the act of creation to a computer’s cold logic.
Now Silas races to understand what the computer has wrought, aided by a beautiful xenobiologist, Vidonia João. Yet as the fast-growing gladiator demonstrates preternatural strength, speed, and—most disquietingly—intelligence, Silas and Vidonia find their scientific curiosity giving way to a most unexpected emotion: sheer terror.
Description: Before there was Facebook, there was The Red Book.
In Deborah Copaken Kogan’s wry, lively, and irresistible new novel, the brief biographical Red Book entries of a once-close circle of Harvard alumni set the stage for the life-altering weekend that is their 20-year class reunion.
“The Red Book, which is filled with Deborah Copaken Kogan’s smart take on everything from friendship to sex to raising children to getting over the past—or not—makes for old-school compulsive reading.” -Meg Wolitzer
Description: Mary is a loving daughter, a quick-witted girl, and a slave to one of the wealthiest families in Richmond, Virginia. When Bet Van Lew, the outspoken daughter of the family that owns Mary, decides to send her to Philadelphia to be educated, Mary must leave her parents to seize her freedom.
Life in the North offers Mary a different kind of education than she ever expected. Carefully keeping the secrets of her own enslaved family, she joins the abolition movement to bring fugitive slaves to freedom. As the nation edges toward war, Mary defies Virginia law by returning to Richmond, vowing to care for her ailing father—and to fight for emancipation. Knowing that slaves are considered incapable of intelligence, she poses as a slave in the Confederate White House to spy on President Jefferson Davis. Together Mary and Bet risk their own lives to smuggle invaluable information to the Union commanders.
As illness and hunger ravage the city, Mary's espionage leads her to deceive even those who are closest to her. Just when it seems all her dangerous gambles to end slavery will pay off, the death and destruction of the war take their greatest toll, and Mary discovers that everything comes at a cost—even freedom.
Based on a true story , written with immense heart, The Secrets of Mary Bowser is an illuminating and inspiring tale of injustice and courage, friendship and war—and of one daring woman willing to sacrifice her own freedom to change the course of history.
Description: Every fall, the men of Loyalty Island sail from the Olympic Peninsula up to the Bering Sea to spend the winter catching king crab. Their dangerous occupation keeps food on the table but constantly threatens to leave empty seats around it.
To Cal, Alaska remains as mythical and mysterious as Treasure Island, and the stories his father returns with are as mesmerizing as those he once invented about Captain Flint before he turned pirate. But while Cal is too young to accompany his father, he is old enough to know that everything depends on the fate of those few boats thousands of miles to the north. He is also old enough to feel the tension between his parents over whether he will follow in his father's footsteps. And old enough to wonder about his mother's relationship with John Gaunt, owner of the fleet.
Then Gaunt dies suddenly, leaving the business in the hands of his son, who seems intent on selling away the fishermen's livelihood. Soon Cal stumbles on evidence that his father may have taken extreme measures to salvage their way of life. As winter comes on, his suspicions deepening and his moral compass shattered, he is forced to make a terrible choice.
Description: Get ready to S-T-R-E-T-C-H your mind!
What is a black hole? Where do they come from? How were they discovered? Can we visit one? Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano takes readers on a ride through the galaxies (ours, and others), answering these questions and many more about the phenomenon known as a black hole.
In lively and often humorous text, the book starts off with a thorough explanation of gravity and the role it plays in the formation of black holes. Paintings by Michael Carroll, coupled with real telescopic images, help readers visualize the facts and ideas presented in the text, such as how light bends, and what a supernova looks like.
A Black Hole Is NOT a Hole is an excellent introduction to an extremely complex scientific concept. Back matter includes a timeline which sums up important findings discussed throughout, while the glossary and index provide a quick point of reference for readers. Children and adults alike will learn a ton of spacey facts in this far-out book that’s sure to excite even the youngest of astrophiles.
Description: In medieval times, a pilgrimage gave the average Joe his only break from the daily grind. For Gideon Lewis-Kraus, it promises a different kind of escape. Determined to avoid the kind of constraint that kept his father, a gay rabbi, closeted until midlife, he has moved to anything-goes Berlin. But the surfeit of freedom there has begun to paralyze him, and when a friend extends a drunken invitation to join him on an ancient pilgrimage route across Spain, he grabs his sneakers, glad of the chance to be committed to something and someone.
Irreverent, moving, hilarious, and thought-provoking, A Sense of Direction is Lewis-Kraus's dazzling riff on the perpetual war between discipline and desire, and its attendant casualties. Across three pilgrimages and many hundreds of miles - the thousand-year-old Camino de Santiago, a solo circuit of eighty-eight Buddhist temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku, and, together with his father and brother, an annual mass migration to the tomb of a famous Hasidic mystic in the Ukraine - he completes an idiosyncratic odyssey to the heart of a family mystery and a human dilemma: How do we come to terms with what has been and what is - and find a way forward, with purpose?
Description: Up-Close and Personal: Behind-the-Scenes with Bill Johnson and Randy Clark
Bill Johnson and Randy Clark, known worldwide as bestselling authors and leaders in healing ministry, witness the miraculous regularly and see thousands touched by God each year.
But it wasn't always so.
Now you can listen in as, for the first time, these close friends sit down to interview each other, candidly sharing their personal journeys behind life in the healing spotlight. With honesty, humor and humility they reveal
how and why they first got into healing ministry
the trials, errors and breakthrough experiences that propelled them forward
the most amazing miracles they've seen
detailed insights and time-tested advice for more effective ministry
and more
No stages. No spotlights. No sound checks. No crowds. Just raw, rare, intimate glimpses into real lives—through both the failures and the successes—of two men devoted to God.
Description: For fans of Tina Fey and David Sedaris—Internet star Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, makes her literary debut.
Jenny Lawson realized that the most mortifying moments of our lives—the ones we’d like to pretend never happened—are in fact the ones that define us. In Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson takes readers on a hilarious journey recalling her bizarre upbringing in rural Texas, her devastatingly awkward high school years, and her relationship with her long-suffering husband, Victor. Chapters include: “Stanley the Magical, Talking Squirrel”; “A Series of Angry Post-It Notes to My Husband”; “My Vagina Is Fine. Thanks for Asking”; “And Then I Snuck a Dead Cuban Alligator on an Airplane.” Pictures with captions (no one would believe these things without proof) accompany the text.
Description: It’s odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn’t know who I was. Then I invented someone, and became her. Then I began to like what I’d invented. And finally I was what I was again.
It turned out I wasn’t alone in that particular progression.
From Anna Quindlen, #1 New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, comes this irresistible memoir about her life and the lives of women today. Candid, funny, moving, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is filled with the sharp insights and revealing observations that have long confirmed Quindlen’s status as America’s laureate of real life.
As she did in her beloved New York Times columns, and in A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Quindlen says for us here what we may wish we could have said ourselves. Using her past, present, and future to explore what matters most to women at different ages, Quindlen talks about
Marriage: “A safety net of small white lies can be the bedrock of a successful marriage. You wouldn’t believe how cheaply I can do a kitchen renovation.”
Girlfriends: “Real friends offer both hard truths and soft landings and realize that it’s sometimes more important to be nice than to be honest.”
Our bodies: “I’ve finally recognized my body for what it is, a personality-delivery system, designed expressly to carry my character from place to place, now and in the years to come. It’s like a car, and while I like a red convertible or even a Bentley as well as the next person, what I really need are four tires and an engine.”
Parenting: “Being a parent is not transactional. We do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward: We are good parents, not so they will be loving enough to stay with us, but so they will be strong enough to leave us.”
From childhood memories to manic motherhood to middle age, Quindlen uses the events of her own life to illuminate our own. Along with the downsides of age, she says, can come wisdom, a perspective on life that makes it both satisfying and even joyful. So here’s to lots of candles, plenty of cake.
Description: In 2009, New York Times bestselling author Eloisa James took a leap that many people dream about: she sold her house, took a sabbatical from her job as a Shakespeare professor, and moved her family to Paris. Paris in Love: A Memoir chronicles her joyful year in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
With no classes to teach, no committee meetings to attend, no lawn to mow or cars to park, Eloisa revels in the ordinary pleasures of life—discovering corner museums that tourists overlook, chronicling Frenchwomen’s sartorial triumphs, walking from one end of Paris to another. She copes with her Italian husband’s notions of quality time; her two hilarious children, ages eleven and fifteen, as they navigate schools—not to mention puberty—in a foreign language; and her mother-in-law Marina’s raised eyebrow in the kitchen (even as Marina overfeeds Milo, the family dog).
Paris in Love invites the reader into the life of a most enchanting family, framed by la ville de l’amour.
Description: Taras Grescoe rides the rails all over the world and makes an elegant and impassioned case for the imminent end of car culture and the coming transportation revolution "I am proud to call myself a straphanger," writes Taras Grescoe. The perception of public transportation in America is often unflattering—a squalid last resort for those with one too many drunk-driving charges, too poor to afford insurance, or too decrepit to get behind the wheel of a car. Indeed, a century of auto-centric culture and city planning has left most of the country with public transportation that is underfunded, ill maintained, and ill conceived. But as the demand for petroleum is fast outpacing the world's supply, a revolution in transportation is under way. Grescoe explores the ascendance of the straphangers—the growing number of people who rely on public transportation to go about the business of their daily lives. On a journey that takes him around the world—from New York to Moscow, Paris, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Bogotá, Phoenix, Portland, Vancouver, and Philadelphia—Grescoe profiles public transportation here and abroad, highlighting the people and ideas that may help undo the damage that car-centric planning has done to our cities and create convenient, affordable, and sustainable urban transportation—and better city living—for all.
"All the cities we admire most in the world—the places young people want to live—boast great public transit systems or are in the process of building them. Taras Grescoe explains why: there's nothing more civilized than a great subway, or a bus rapid transit system, or a squad of ferries, or any of the other ways we've learned to move ourselves around urban space. As this splendid account makes clear, a car isn't liberation: not needing a car is liberation!"—Bill McKibben, author Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet "Grescoe presents a strong and timely argument for moving metropolitan motorists away from their cars."—Publishers Weekly
Taras Grescoe is the award-winning author of four books and countless articles focusing on world travel. He's written for The New York Times, The Times (London), Wired, the Chicago Tribune Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times. He currently lives in Montreal. He has never owned a car.
Description: The Mancini sisters, Marie and Hortense, were born in Rome, brought to the court of Louis XIV of France at Versailles, and strategically married off by their uncle, Cardinal Mazarin, to secure his political power base. Such was the life of many young woman of the age: they had no independent status under the law, and were entirely a part of their husband's property once married.
Marie and Hortense, however, had another lifestyle in mind altogether. Abandoning their husbands, they took to the road, using the brand new post coach service to ferry them across Europe. Hortense was a famous gambler, the women often dressed and passed as men, and their scandalous behavior became a sensation.
Elizabeth Goldsmith has written a vibrant biography of two pioneering free spirits, feminists long before the term existed, who refused to be constrained by the morals, mores, and hypocrisies of their age.
Description: Three generations of a family living under one roof reflect the dramatic transformations of an entire society in this memoir of life in 20th century China
When Wenguang Huang was nine years old, his grandmother became obsessed with her own death. Fearing cremation, she extracted from her family the promise to bury her after she died. This was in Xi’an, a city in central China, in the 1970s, when a national ban on all traditional Chinese practices, including burials, was strictly enforced. But Huang’s grandmother was persistent, and two years later, his father built her a coffin. He also appointed his older son, Wenguang, as coffin keeper, a distinction that meant, among other things, sleeping next to the coffin at night.
Over the next fifteen years, the whole family was consumed with planning Grandma’s burial, a regular source of friction and contention, with the constant risk of being caught by the authorities. Many years after her death, the family’s memories of her coffin still loom large. Huang, now living and working in America, has come to realize how much the concern over the coffin has affected his upbringing and shaped the lives of everyone in the family. Lyrical and poignant, funny and heartrending, The Little Red Guard is the powerful tale of an ordinary family finding their way through turbulence and transition.
Description: This book just might save the planet.
What would happen if you unplugged the filter of your aquarium? One week later, would the water be clear or would it be murky? And the fish—would they still be alive? According to David Milarch, the charismatic tree planter at the center of The Man Who Planted Trees, trees are the earth’s filter. Without them—and without a systematic effort to find the most resilient trees and plant them where they are needed most—the fate of our planet could be in jeopardy.
In The Man Who Planted Trees, New York Times science writer Jim Robbins follows the ten-year odyssey of David Milarch, a Michigan nurseryman who survived a near-death experience, had an otherworldly visitation, and has taken upon himself the mission of saving the trees of the earth—and the earth itself. It is a mission that many once-skeptical scientists now say is looking smarter every day.
Description: In 2007, when Ken Budd was 39, his father collapsed. He’d just finished 18 holes of golf. He had been retired for a year. By the time Ken and his wife got to the hospital it was too late.
Over the next few weeks, as grieving friends revealed how Ken's father had impacted their lives, he began thinking about parents, and children, about people: What do we leave behind? How do we make a difference in the world? How do we live a life that matters?
Ken’s wife is his childhood sweetheart. They have been married 15 years. Ken cannot imagine life without her, and yet—she doesn’t want children. He does. In the wake of his father's death, his desire for family grew stronger. "I just don't have maternal feelings," she told him.
And then Ken got an e-mail, subject line: “Katrina Relief Volunteer Opportunities.” Ken signed up. He went to New Orleans. And then he kept volunteering: Costa Rica, to teach English; China, to work with special needs children; Ecuador, to study climate change; Palestine, to work in a refugee camp; Kenya, to work with orphans. The goal: to find purpose by helping others, one trip at a time. And to accept his childless life.
The result is a journey that is part insider look at the growing trend of voluntourism, part do-gooder manifesto, part personal journey. Wry and funny, heartbreakingly honest, as exotic in location as it is familiar in its concerns, The Voluntourist is a memoir that will inspire you, captivate you, and linger in your mind long after you’ve turned the last page.
Description: Late in the night of April 14, 1912, the mighty Titanic, a passenger liner traveling from Southampton, England, to New York City, struck an iceberg four hundred miles south of Newfoundland. Its sinking over the next two and a half hours brought the ship—mythological in name and size—one hundred years of infamy.
Of the 2,240 people aboard the ship, 1,517 perished either by drowning or by freezing to death in the frigid North Atlantic waters. What followed the disaster was tantamount to a worldwide outpouring of grief: In New York, Paris, London, and other major cities, people lined the streets and crowded around the offices of the White Star Line, the Titanic’s shipping company, to inquire for news of their loved ones and for details about the lives of some of the famous people of their time.
While many accounts of the Titanic’s voyage focus on the technical or mechanical aspects of why the ship sank, Voyagers of the Titanic follows the stories of the men, women, and children whose lives intersected on the vessel’s fateful last day, covering the full range of first, second, and third class—from plutocrats and captains of industry to cobblers and tailors looking for a better life in America.
Richard Davenport-Hines delves into the fascinating lives of those who ate, drank, reveled, dreamed, and died aboard the mythic ship: from John Jacob Astor IV, the wealthiest person on board, whose comportment that night was subject to speculation and gossip for years after the event, to Archibald Butt, the much-beloved military aide to Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft, who died helping others into the Titanic’s few lifeboats. With magnificent prose, Voyagers of the Titanic also brings to life the untold stories of the ship’s middle and third classes—clergymen, teachers, hoteliers, engineers, shopkeepers, counterjumpers, and clerks—each of whom had a story that not only illuminates the fascinating ship but also the times in which it sailed. In addition, Davenport-Hines explores the fascinating politics behind the Titanic’s creation, which involved larger-than-life figures such as J. P. Morgan, the ship’s owner, and Lord Pirrie, the ship’s builder.
The memory of this tragedy still remains a part of the American psyche and Voyagers of the Titanic brings that clear night back to us with all of its drama and pathos.
Description: Naomi Novik’s beloved series returns, with Captain Will Laurence and his fighting dragon Temeraire once again taking to the air against the broadsides of Napoleon’s forces and the friendly—and sometimes not-so-friendly—fire of British soldiers and politicians who continue to suspect them of divided loyalties, if not outright treason.
For Laurence and Temeraire, put out to pasture in Australia, it seems their part in the war has come to an end just when they are needed most. But perhaps they are no longer alone in this opinion. Newly allied with the powerful African empire of the Tswana, the French have occupied Spain and brought revolution and bloodshed to Brazil, threatening Britain’s last desperate hope to defeat Napoleon.
And now the government that sidelined them has decided they have the best chance at negotiating a peace with the angry Tswana, who have besieged the Portuguese royal family in Rio—and thus offer to reinstate Laurence to his former rank and seniority as a captain in the Aerial Corps. Temeraire is delighted by this sudden reversal of fortune, but Laurence is by no means sanguine, knowing from experience that personal honor and duty to one’s country do not always run on parallel tracks.
Nonetheless, the pair embark for Brazil, only to meet with a string of unmitigated disasters that force them to make an unexpected landing in the hostile territory of the Incan empire, where they face new unanticipated dangers.
Now with the success of the mission balanced on a razor’s edge, and failure looking more likely by the minute, the unexpected arrival of an old enemy will tip the scales toward ruin. Yet even in the midst of disaster, opportunity may lurk—for one bold enough to grasp it.
Description: Captain Josie Corsino has seen plenty of dead bodies during her twenty-one years with the Los Angeles Police Department, but the discovery of Hillary Dennis's beautiful smiling corpse begins one of the most unusual and dangerous investigations of Josie's career. The troubled teenage movie star is found murdered in a Hollywood Hills party house, a nototrious location for vice and drug orgies. While the investigation provides little evidence, there are plenty of suspects including a city councilman's son, several Hollywood police officers and even members of Josie's family.
As the case progresses, Josie realizes there aren't many of her subordinates or bosses she can trust other than homicide detective Red Behan and Lieutenant Marge Bailey, the vice supervisor; relying on them as she reluctantly takes charge of the homicide case, dodging interference and political pressure from both inside and outside her department. The situation isn't much better at home where her husband Jake and her talented but unemployed son David expose her to the sort of scrutiny that could damage or even terminate her career.
The brutal killing doesn't end with Hillary's death. Josie soon finds herself in those dangerous and deadly situations typically not considered suitable for an LAPD captain, but she's a tough cop who can run her station and still do solid police work. To catch a killer, she's willing to jeopardize her position as a commanding officer and risk losing her life - and possibly the husband and son she loves.
Description: A lively, inventive tale of Isaac that follows him beyond Genesis into the 21st century.
After being spared from Abraham's blade, he's been granted eternal youth and wanders the earth as a soldier of fortune. Turning up at a coffee shop in Los Angeles, he falls in love with Ruth Canby, a brilliant, breezy academic with a troubled past.
Isaac suspects he was forgotten, "a crumb dropped unnoticed in a kitchen crevice." Perhaps whatever saved him is long gone, leaving him "a puppet without a puppet master, like on of those Japanese soldiers stranded on an island after World War II."
Isaac and Ruth must ultimately confront a sinister, enigmatic phantom that's stalked him for forty centuries. The story makes stops that include the Spanish Inquisition, a luxury box at the Super Bowl, and the infamous cells of the Tombs of New York City. Along the way it takes stock of time and chance, good and evil, faith, forgiveness, God, Satan, and the power of everlasting love.
Description: A smart and slyly funny tale of love, temptation, confusion, and commitment, a modern recasting of Edith Wharton's classic The Age of Innocence, The Innocents is set among a close-knit community in which one young man’s pre-wedding panic illuminates the universal conflict between responsibility and passion.
Description: One of only two survivors of a plane crash, Nell Slattery wakes in the hospital with no memory of the horrific experience-or who she is, or was. Now she must piece together both body and mind, with the help of family and friends, who have their own agendas. She filters through photos, art, music, and stories, hoping something will jog her memory, and soon, in tiny bits and pieces, Nell starts remembering. . . .
It isn't long before she learns to question the stories presented by her mother, her sister and business partner, and her husband. In the end, she will discover that forgiving betrayals small and large will be the only true path to healing herself-and to finding happiness.
Description: “This whole game is just designed to make us hate ourselves.”—Shay
Uglies told Tally Youngblood’s version of life in Uglyville and the budding rebellion against the Specials. Now comes an exciting graphic novel revealing new adventures in the Uglies world—as seen through the eyes of Shay, Tally’s rebellious best friend who’s not afraid to break the rules, no matter the cost.
A few months shy of her sixteenth birthday, Shay eagerly awaits her turn to become a Pretty—a rite-of-passage operation called “the Surge” that transforms ordinary Uglies into paragons of beauty. Yet after befriending the Crims, a group of fellow teens who refuse to take anything in society at face value, Shay starts to question the whole concept. And as the Crims explore beyond the monitored borders of Uglyville into the forbidden, ungoverned wild, Shay must choose between the perks of being Pretty and the rewards of being real.
Description: Diabulimia is an eating disorder in which people with Type 1 diabetes deliberately give themselves less insulin than they need, for the purpose of weight loss. Often, people with Type 1 diabetes who omit insulin injections will have already been diagnosed with an eating disorder such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and/or compulsive eating. Diabulimia can be triggered or exacerbated by the need for diabetics to exercise constant vigilance in regard to food, weight and glycemic control. The frustration of managing blood sugars and their subsequent effects on weight and self perception (altered by dealing with a chronic illness) can also be damaging to self-esteem and body image. Here’s the inherent irony: While diabetes treatment necessitates heightened awareness of food, rehabilitating an eating disorder almost always involves the opposite, deliberately minimizing focus on food. It is a catch-22. Intensifying the toxicity of this relationship even further, eating disorders exacerbate the complications of diabetes (blindness, kidney disease, heart disease, neuropathy and amputations), and diabetes exacerbates the complications of eating disorders (isolation, emotional eating, obsession with food and body weight). It is a life threatening partnership. Eating to Lose is one woman's memoir of her journey from illness to recovery, and carves a pathway of hope and empowerment for the millions who continue to suffer with diabulimia. Eating to Lose is written for them, and perhaps even more importantly it is written for their parents, and all parents in fact, who may unknowingly and involuntarily contribute to the stereotype of distorted body image so damaging to a woman's self-esteem. Eating to Lose is a book about hope, about possibility, about transformation and renewal. It is the first book to address the toxic marriage of both diabetes and eating disorders. Written with gritty honesty Eating to Lose offers a firsthand account of true healing and provides hope both for individuals with diabulimia and their families.
Description: : In 2008, Amy Curan was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma and opted for bilateral mastectomy with Direct to Implant Reconstruction. Within three weeks of being diagnosed she had a mastectomy and was on the road to recovery. But after the surgery she had a lot of questions, the same that most women will have. As an Occupational Therapist, she knew some of the answers from her own clinical training and experience. But many more came from speaking with other women who had undergone mastectomies, from researching message boards, and a little bit of luck. Now she and her co-authors have brought together the answers to the questions that women face in chapters that cover everything from how to prepare for going to the hospital to when you come home Amy and her co-authors answer: • Why am I so tired all the time? • What about these drains? • Should I worry about Lymphedema? • Implants or flap procedure? • And more Although everyone's experience is slightly different depending upon one's individual choice: mastectomy alone or mastectomy with reconstruction; the majority of the information applies to all women who had a mastectomy. Amy and her co-authors include chapters on key issues all women face including wound management, scar massage, dressing and bathing, emotional recovery, and more. And although mastectomy is frightening, the authors make clear that today's procedure is not what it used to be. Now What?, is the first resource to provide all the information that women need after mastectomy and breast reconstruction surgery so that they can focus on what matters most: healing and staying well.
Description: Your life. God's design. Real change.
When asked about their relationship with God, many believers say the Christian life "isn't working" or that they want a walk that's more than just "okay." After extensive research, including more than 50,000 surveys on what it takes to grow spiritually, Back to the Bible leaders Arnie Cole and Michael Ross have found the key to a vital, thriving walk with Christ—and they freely share it with readers.
But more than statistics and solid evidence for the power of engaging with the Bible, Unstuck gives readers a practical and proven way to encounter Scripture daily, connect with God, and revitalize an otherwise listless faith. This book is part of a new strategic ministry plan developed by Back to the Bible, which has been on the air for more than 70 years. Through multimedia products and services, the ministry is walking alongside individuals and churches, helping Christ-followers tap into and live out God’s Word.
Description: London, winter of 1862, Adelaide McKee, a former prostitute, arrives on the doorstep of veterinarian John Crawford, a man she met once seven years earlier. Their brief meeting produced a child who, until now, had been presumed dead. McKee has learned that the girl lives—but that her life and soul are in mortal peril from a vampiric ghost. But this is no ordinary spirit; the bloodthirsty wraith is none other than John Polidori, the onetime physician to the mad, bad, and dangerous Romantic poet Lord Byron. Both McKee and Crawford have mysterious histories with creatures like Polidori, and their child is a prize the malevolent spirit covets dearly.
Polidori is also the late uncle and supernatural muse to the poet Christina Rossetti and her brother, the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. When she was just fourteen years old, Christina unwittingly brought Polidori's curse upon her family. But the curse bestowed unexpected blessings as well, inspiring Christina's poetry and Gabriel's paintings. But when Polidori resurrects Dante's dead wife—turning her into a horrifying vampire—and threatens other family members, Christina and Dante agree that they must destroy their monstrous uncle and break the spell, even if it means the end of their creative powers.
Determined to save their daughter, McKee and Crawford join forces with the Rossettis, and soon these wildly mismatched allies are plunged into a supernatural London underworld whose existence goes beyond their wildest imaginings. Ultimately, each of these disparate individuals—the sensitive poet, the tortured painter, the straitlaced animal doctor, the reformed prostitute, and even their Artful Dodger–like young daughter—must choose between the banality and constraints of human life and the unholy immortality that Polidori offers.
Sweeping from the mansions of London's high society to its grimy slums, the elegant salons of the West End to the pre-Roman catacombs beneath St. Paul's Cathedral, Hide Me Among the Graves blends the historical and the supernatural in a dazzling, edge-of-your-seat thrill ride—a modern horror story with a Victorian twist.
Description: Love me. Love me. I'm not what you expected, but oh, please love me.
That was the most defining moment of my life. That was the beginning of my story.
From the outside looking in, Kelle Hampton had the perfect life: a beautiful two-year-old daughter, a loving husband, a thriving photography career, and great friends. When she learned she was pregnant with her second child, she and her husband, Brett, were ecstatic. Her pregnancy went smoothly and the ultrasounds showed a beautiful, healthy, high-kicking baby girl.
But when her new daughter was placed in her arms in the delivery room, Kelle knew instantly that something was wrong. Nella looked different than her two-year-old sister, Lainey, had at birth. As she watched friends and family celebrate with champagne toasts and endless photographs, a terrified Kelle was certain that Nella had Down syndrome—a fear her pediatrician soon confirmed. Yet gradually Kelle's fear and pain were vanquished by joy, as she embraced the realization that she had been chosen to experience an extraordinary and special gift.
Bloom takes readers on a wondrous journey through Nella's first year of life—a gripping, hilarious, and intensely poignant trip of transformation in which a mother learns that perfection comes in all different shapes. It is a story about embracing life and really living it, of being fearless and accepting difference, of going beyond constricting definitions of beauty, and of the awesome power of perspective. As Kelle writes, "There is us. Our Family. We will embrace this beauty and make something of it. We will hold our precious gift and know that we are lucky."
Description: Nicole Patterson is a young, green and very eager probationary constable with the Ontario Provincial Police. Although she spends much of her time breaking up bar fights, giving out traffic tickets and finding lost kids, she dreams of one day becoming a detective.
Late one bitterly cold winter night, she comes across the body of a young woman lying on the edge of a snow-covered field on the outskirts of town. Nicole recognizes the victim as a local high school student with a somewhat sullied reputation, the daughter of the town drunk. Though both under-qualified and unauthorized, Nicole feels compelled to throw herself into the murder investigation.
Was the murdered girl really as promiscuous as her classmates described or the victim of bullying? What was her relationship with the star of the football team? And is Nicole heading for trouble by pretending to be a detective?
Description: Anne Blythe has a great life: a good job, good friends, and a potential book deal for her first novel. When it comes to finding someone to share it with, however, she just can’t seem to get it right.
After yet another relationship ends, Anne comes across a business card for what she thinks is a dating service, and she pockets it just in case. When her best friend, Sarah, announces she’s engaged, Anne can’t help feeling envious. On an impulse, she decides to give the service a try because maybe she could use a little assistance in finding the right man. But Anne soon discovers the company isn’t a dating service; it’s an exclusive, and pricey, arranged marriage service. She initially rejects the idea, but the more she thinks about it—and the company’s success rate—the more it appeals to her. After all, arranged marriages are the norm for millions of women around the world, so why wouldn’t it work for her?
A few months later, Anne is travelling to a Mexican resort, where in one short weekend she will meet and marry Jack. And against all odds, everything seems to be working out....
Description: What other explanation could there be? With her dark complexion and kinky hair, so unlike her fair-skinned parents, Lara knew she was different. At eight she finally learned the word "adopted." Twenty-two years later, a stranger arrives as she blows out the candles on her thirtieth birthday cake—a woman in a blue-and-black head tie who also claims the title "Lara’s mother."
Lara, always in control, now finds her life slipping free of the stranglehold she's had on it. Unexpected, dangerously unfamiliar emotions are turning Lara's life upside down, pulling her between Nigeria and London, forcing her to confront the truth about her past. But if she's brave enough to embrace the lives of her two mothers, she may discover once and for all what it truly means to be Lara.
Description: When a job opening for a Big Bad Wolf suddenly opens up, Charlie the sheep decides to apply. But he’s barely slipped on the wolf’s skin when he starts to change before his friends’ very eyes, becoming perhaps a bit more wolf (and a lot more bully) than anyone expected.
Bettina Wegenast tells this fractured fairy tale of the “sheep in wolf’s clothing” with a good dose of humor and many subtle allusions. The simple, expressive strokes of Katharina Busshoff’s black-and-white drawings on every page perfectly complement this quirky and profound new book for young readers aged 8-12.
Description: Ardennes Thrush is an award-winning movie star who suddenly and mysteriously quit acting at the height of her fame. She is in Hollywood now, at the Hotel Muse, visiting her husband Andre, a world-renowned director struggling through his latest film. Ardennes, a contemplative woman, is also something of a voyeur, and as she watches the comings and goings in the hotel she begins to fear that perhaps she is being stalked. Her period of anonymity ends after a box of dead roses is delivered to her suite. When a Beverly Hills detective comes to investigate, a powerful attraction turns unexpectedly unprofessional and quickly carnal. When the stalker turns out to be real, Ardennes’s private journey escalates into real danger, and we watch rapt as she searches her past for the answer to how she brought herself here.
Description: The critically acclaimed author of The Fool's Tale, Nicole Galland now approaches William Shakespeare's classic drama of jealousy, betrayal, and murder from the opposite side. I, Iago is an ingenious, brilliantly crafted novel that allows one of literature's greatest villains—the deceitful schemer Iago, from the Bard's immortal tragedy, Othello—to take center stage in order to reveal his "true" motivations. This is Iago as you've never known him, his past and influences breathtakingly illuminated, in a fictional reexamination that explores the eternal question: is true evil the result of nature versus nurture...or something even more complicated?
Description: A successful chef and single mother, Daisy Sprinkle, is on vacation with her teenage daughter, Coco, who picks up the wrong duffle bag at the airport. That situation is not improved by the note Daisy finds tucked into her carry-on, apparently from the man in 13-C. Daisy is in no mood for secret admirer notes or dinner dates. Or even men, for that matter.
Andrew doesn’t know what possessed him to do something like that. Hitting on strange women on airplanes is definitely not his typical style. But there was something about the woman in 6-B that could not be ignored. Of course, now he has no time to think about her, since his son Webb seems to have made off with a budding fashionista’s luggage.
Determined to make the best of a bad situation, Daisy cooks up a plan to calm her daughter’s panic over the lost bag with a week of fabulous food, shopping, and museum hopping. Andrew is busy woking on his latest project and hoping Webb finds enough to entertain himself. Little do they know the teens are making their own plan. . . one that will ultimately reunite Ms. 6-B and Mr. 13-C.
Description: Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery is a riotously funny, thought-provoking tale of one 16-year-old girl’s encounter with the adage “money can’t buy you happiness." This is Keren David’s third novel for teens and follows the success of her previous thrillers When I Was Joe and Almost True.
Life's hard for Lia. Her mom is a nag, her sister a pain and the gorgeous but mysterious Raf seems immune to her charms. When Lia wins £8 million on the lottery, though, suddenly everything is different. But will Lia's millions create more problems than they solve? First, a resentful gang of girls at school set up a “We Hate Lia Latimer” Facebook group that soon has fans in the thousands. Her friend Shazia can’t have anything to do with Lia’s new-found fortune, believing gambling to be immoral. The mom of her other best friend, Jack, is threatening to sue Lia for what she believes to be his share of the winnings. Raf’s behavior is getting stranger and stranger, and Lia can’t help but wonder whether there’s something to the school rumors that he may not even be human. Finally, when her sister Natalie goes missing, Lia begins to wonder if a millionaire lifestyle is all it’s cracked up to be…
Description: During World War II, a German agent landed in Canada from a U-boat. Curtis Parkinson has used this true historical event to tell a fast-paced, exciting story. Sixteen-year-old Scott and his friend Adam find summer jobs as deckhands on the Rapids Prince, a ship that plies the waters between the town of Prescott, on the St. Lawrence River, and Montreal. Scott overhears convincing information that a German agent is actually on board the boat. He has a good reason for not telling anybody, but his silence eventually leads him into more trouble than he can imagine, including a possible murder and a kidnapping. It is up to the boys to expose the agent in order to save the Rapids Prince and the innocent passengers on board. Curtis Parkinson has written an impossible-to-put-down novel that combines history with high adventure.
Description: What really goes on behind those perfect white picket fences?
In Frances’s mind, beautiful, successful, ecstatically married Emma Dunham is the height of female perfection. Frances, recently dumped with spectacular drama by her boyfriend, aspires to be just like Emma. So do her close friends and fellow teachers, Lisa and Jill. But Lisa’s too career-focused to find time for a family. And Jill’s recent unexpected pregnancy could have devastating consequences for her less-than-perfect marriage.
Yet sometimes the golden dream you fervently wish for turns out to be not at all what it seems—like Emma’s enviable suburban postcard life, which is about to be brutally cut short by a perfect husband turned killer. And in the shocking aftermath, three devastated friends are going to have to come to terms with their own secrets . . . and somehow learn to move forward after their dream is exposed as a lie.
Description: The terrorist to be feared is not one across the seas.
It is the one in your backyard; the one indistinguishable from your neighbors.
Redemption Day is a highly paced thriller set in Washington DC. The story is founded upon historical events and documented teachings of the Posse Comitatus. The Posse was an anti-government militia group in the 1980’s that tried to convince farmers that banks could not lawfully foreclose on their properties. Their beliefs led to the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on a date of significance to the group—April 19.
In Redemption Day, the Posse Comitatus has returned, reinvigorated and inspired by the economic downturn and anger over government intrusion. The Posse seeks to not only wreak havoc on the country, but to actually change the political landscape. In their effort to “take back the country,” they kidnap a Supreme Court Justice. With money extorted from a government contractor desperate to win back a domestic terrorism contract, redemption day unfolds.
The protagonist is Nick James, a terrorism analyst who loses his job as a result of the cutback in spending on domestic terror programs. He is one of the government’s experts on the Posse Comitatus, but he is soon framed for the killing of a West Virginia sheriff and put on the run. The Government wants him arrested; the Posse Comitatus wants him dead.
Nick has to clear his name and unravel the Posse plot before April 19 arrives.
Description: READING, WRITING, AND RAISING THE DEAD
When Chess Putnam is ordered by an infamous crime boss—who also happens to be her drug dealer—to use her powers as a witch to solve a grisly murder involving dark magic, she knows she must rise to the challenge. Adding to the intensity: Chess’s boyfriend, Terrible, doesn’t trust her, and Lex, the son of a rival crime lord, is trying to reignite the sparks between him and Chess.
Plus there’s the little matter of Chess’s real job as a ghost hunter for the Church of Real Truth, investigating reports of a haunting at a school in the heart of Downside. Someone seems to be taking a crash course in summoning the dead—and if Chess doesn’t watch her back, she may soon be joining their ranks.
As Chess is drawn into a shadowy world of twisted secrets and dark violence, it soon becomes clear that she’s not going to emerge from its depths without making the ultimate sacrifice.
Description: Ruth Wasserman has always felt like an outsider in her Alabama town. Being a curly-haired Jewish girl amongst blonde Southern Baptists was never easy and, within her own family, she has always played second fiddle to her older brother—a star athlete and student who her parents adore. So when it came to college, she went as far away as you could get, attending the University of Michigan, a Yankee school that she hoped would open up a new world to her.
But now she’s back home for the summer and though she may look like a new, wiser woman on the outside, she is struggling with low self-esteem after a dead-end relationship—and what could be the beginnings of a serious eating disorder. And now having experienced a world beyond her muggy, Kool-Aid soaked hometown, she feels even more removed from her family and friends. She’s hoping her usual summer job as a pool lifeguard and swim coach will center her again, but when a child almost drowns on her watch, she discovers that the repercussions will push her to confront long-ignored truths about her parents, her brother, and herself.
Reader-favorite Zoe Fishman brings to life one woman’s Southern summer and beautifully shows how tragedy can make us stronger and that knowing who you are on the inside is our greatest strength.
Description: Son of a Gun describes the journey of a brother and sister, eight-year-old Lucky and ten-year-old Nopi, who are kidnapped from school and forced to become child soldiers.
Lucky and Nopi manage to escape with the help of older children, but are forced to keep fleeing. In the end they are reunited with their parents, but they both know the pieces of their lives will never fit together like they used to. When will the war really be over, and when will they get to be the children they still dream about?
Based on the true stories of former child soldiers interviewed by the author in Liberia, Son of a Gun offers a sensitive and compelling look into the relevant and urgent issue of child soldiers. It will provide teachers, parents, and librarians with a tool for raising awareness about this present-day social injustice issue among children.
Description: The wisdom of faith. The power of science. The evil of man.
In the U.N. building in New York City, a U.S. Ambassador contracts an unknown virus after opening a threatening letter. In a slum near Paris, a rogue geneticist is found dead, tortured and defiled. His last message, a desperate plea for help, was sent to an old friend and fellow outcast, the ex-CIA agent and former mercenary named Hawker. His final legacy appears to be the fingerprints he left all over the letter to the Ambassador.
Consumed by thoughts of revenge but fighting to see the truth, Hawker teams up with NRI operative Danielle Laidlaw on a quest to find the killers and track down the secrets his dead friend may have lost or sold.
From the streets of Paris to an underground auction in the catacombs of Beirut to the merciless deserts of Iran, Hawker and Danielle find themselves hunting a murderous cult leader whose scientific arsenal could lead humanity to a new Eden—or unleash hell on the Earth itself.
Description: Spain had been one of the world’s most tolerant societies for eight hundred years, but that way of life was wiped out by the Inquisition. Isabel’s family feels safe from the terrors, torture, and burnings. After all, her father is a respected physician in the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. Isabel was raised as a Catholic and doesn’t know that her family’s Jewish roots may be a death sentence. When her father is arrested by Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, she makes a desperate plan to save his life – and her own.
Description: Gavin Sasaki is a promising young journalist in New York City, until he’s fired in disgrace following a series of unforgivable lapses in his work. It’s early 2009, and the world has gone dark very quickly. The economic collapse has turned an era that magazine headlines once heralded as the second gilded age into something that more closely resembles the Great Depression. The last thing Gavin wants to do is return to his hometown of Sebastian, Florida, but he’s in no position to refuse when he’s offered a job by his sister, Eilo, a real estate broker who deals in foreclosed homes. Also, Eilo has shown him a photo of a ten-yearold girl who could be homeless and in trouble. The little girl looks strikingly like Gavin and has the same last name as his high school girlfriend, Anna, from a decade ago. Gavin—a former jazz musician, a reluctant broker of foreclosed properties, obsessed with film noir and private detectives and otherwise at loose ends—begins his own private investigation in an effort to track down Anna and their apparent daughter who, it turns out, have been on the run all these years...
Description: Even as her husband is about to attain undreamed-of power, Ivy Quent fears for her family’s safety. With war looming and turmoil sweeping the nation of Altania, Ivy finds the long-abandoned manor on the moors a temporary haven. But nowhere is really safe from the treachery that threatens all the Quents have risked to achieve. And an even greater peril is stirring deep within the countryside’s beautiful green estates. As Ivy dares an alliance with a brilliant illusionist and a dangerous lord, she races to master her forbidden talents and unravel the terrible truth at the heart of her land’s unrest—even as a triumphant, inhuman darkness rises to claim Altania eternally for its own.
Description: After losing everyone she loves, concert pianist Liesl Bower has nowhere to go but to escape into her music. Searching for the peace she usually finds in her concertos and sonatas, Liesl can’t shake the feeling that she is being haunted by her past . . . and by someone following her. When she spots a familiar and eerie face in the audience of a concert she’s giving for the president in Washington, DC, the scariest day of her life comes back to her with a flash. It has been fifteen years since Liesl watched her beloved Harvard music mentor assaulted on a dark night in Moscow and just as long since the CIA disclosed to her that he’d been spying for Russia. She had seen that man—that eerie face—the night Professor Devoe was attacked. And now he’s back—and coming for her.
Description: Danny thinks he must be the only seventeen-year-old guy in Cape Breton - in Nova Scotia, maybe - who doesn't have his life figured out. His buddy Kierce has a rule for every occasion, and his best friend Jay has bad grades, no plans and no worries. Danny's dad nags him about his post-high-school plans, his friends bug him about girls and a run-in with the cops means he has to get a summer job. Worst of all, he's keeping a secret that could ruin everything. (Teen fiction)
Description: Gina Lopez is twenty-six, a postal worker during the week, a mud wrestler on weekends. She's also a recent widow, though she is not exactly mourning the death of her abusive husband Chico. Instead, she's anxiously awaiting the life-insurance settlement that will pay off his gambling debts. After that she's hoping to take her mud-wrestling skills out of small-town-Ontario bars and down to the more lucrative US circuit.
And then Marcia Beekland enters her life. Marcia has video evidence that appears to implicate Gina in Chico's death. Faced with the likelihood of a jail sentence and the certain loss of the insurance settlement, Gina succumbs to Marcia's blackmail demands. And what Marcia wants is that Gina kill her husband Stanley.
Description: Chinese, one of the oldest active languages, evolved over 5,000 years. As such, it makes for a fascinating case study in the development of language. This cultural history of Chinese demonstrates that the language grew and responded to its music and visual expression in a manner very similar to contemporary English and other Western languages. Within Chinese cultural history lie the answers to numerous questions that have haunted scholars for decades: How does language relate to worldview? What would happen to law after its language loses absolute binding power? How do music, visual, and theatrical images influence literature? By presenting Chinese not as a system of signs but as the history of a community, this study shows how language has expanded the scope of Chinese imagination and offers a glimpse into the future of younger languages throughout the world.
Description: Using kettlebells, TRX suspension training, exercise balls, foam rollers, and more, women of all abilities can use the newest strength training concepts to enjoy better health, stronger bones, and a well-toned physique. A Woman's Guide to Muscle and Strength includes over 100 exercises and progressive training programs for beginner, intermediate, advanced, and endurance-trained exercisers.
Description: Author McCord provides a thorough process for trouble shooting problems, tracing a problem to its root, explaining why DTCs may not lead to the source of the underlying problem, and ultimately resolving the problem. Contains full DTC code chart.
Description: *Winners will receive a hardcover copy!*
In this powerful, affecting, and unflinching memoir, a daughter looks back on her unconventional childhood with deaf parents in rural Texas while trying to reconcile it to her present life—one in which her father is serving a twenty-year sentence in a maximum-security prison.
As a child, Kambri Crews wished that she’d been born deaf so that she, too, could fully belong to the tight-knit Deaf community that embraced her parents. Her beautiful mother was a saint who would swiftly correct anyone’s notion that deaf equaled dumb. Her handsome father, on the other hand, was more likely to be found hanging out with the sinners. Strong, gregarious, and hardworking, he managed to turn a wild plot of land into a family homestead complete with running water and electricity. To Kambri, he was Daniel Boone, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ben Franklin, and Elvis Presley all rolled into one.
But if Kambri’s dad was Superman, then the hearing world was his kryptonite. The isolation that accompanied his deafness unlocked a fierce temper—a rage that a teenage Kambri witnessed when he attacked her mother, and that culminated fourteen years later in his conviction for another violent crime.
With a smart mix of brutal honesty and blunt humor, Kambri Crews explores her complicated bond with her father—which begins with adoration, moves to fear, and finally arrives at understanding—as she tries to forge a new connection between them while he lives behind bars. Burn Down the Ground is a brilliant portrait of living in two worlds—one hearing, the other deaf; one under the laid-back Texas sun, the other within the energetic pulse of New York City; one mired in violence, the other rife with possibility—and heralds the arrival of a captivating new voice.
Description: The cinematographers and directors who shot film in wilderness areas at the turn of the 19th century are some of the unsung heroes of documentary film-making. Apart from severe weather conditions, these men and women struggled with heavy and cumbersome equipment in some of the most unforgiving locales on the planet. This groundbreaking study examines nature, wildlife and wilderness filming from all angles. Topics covered include the beginnings of film itself, the first attempts at nature and expedition filming, technical developments of the period involving cameras and lenses, and the role film has played in wilderness preservation. The individual contributions of major figures are discussed throughout, and a filmography lists hundreds of nature films from the period.
Description: "College Success for Students With Physical Disabilities" is a college planning guide for students with physical disabilities and chronic medical conditions. Students will learn about their rights under the laws governing education and disability, self-advocacy, choosing a college, how having a physical disability affects admissions testing, the increased responsibilities in college, and how to make sure they get everything they need. The book contains forms, checklists, interviews with other students, advice from college disability services personnel, and profiles of disability-friendly colleges across the United States.
Description: In the United States, an estimated 42 million people suffer from some form of movement disorder. Common movement disorders include Parkinson's disease (PD), essential tremor (ET), and dystonia. Although medications may be helpful for these conditions, in many patients, symptoms cannot be controlled with medications alone. In such situations, their physicians may recommend a surgical procedure known as Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). DBS is a revolutionary technology using an implanted device to deliver electrical stimulation to the brain to help symptoms, alleviate suffering, and improve quality of life. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved DBS as a treatment for essential tremor in 1997, for Parkinson's disease in 2002, and dystonia in 2003.
Deep brain stimulation has dramatically changed the lives of many patients with uncontrollable tremors. Patients often can resume normal activities, such as feeding and dressing themselves, and can have active and fulfilling lives. The need for anti-tremor medications is often reduced or eliminated.
Though it's no longer considered experimental, DBS is, for now, still used as a second- or third-line treatment, reserved for patients with more advanced cases of the disease and those for whom medication alone is inadequate or can't be adjusted precisely enough to keep their tremors and writhing under control.
However the idea of this surgery being a "last resort" is an evolving concept. Ten years ago doctors were operating on only the most severe, disabled, wheelchair-dependent patients, now they are operating on patients with moderate-to-severe cases of PD, ET and Dystonia. The thought is that this trend will continue. Instead of saying "wait another five to ten years until you become more disabled" doctors are realizing that the earlier they use DBS, the more they can improve the quality of life of their patients.
Description: "Differentiating Instruction With Centers in the Gifted Classroom" provides teachers with tons of ideas and guidance for creating unique classroom centers that will challenge gifted learners and encourage high-level, independent thinking. Implementing centers in the gifted classroom gives elementary and middle school teachers the opportunity to develop in-depth learning experiences on a variety of topics. The book discusses the use of centers in each content area, with suggestions from experts in the content areas and easy-to-implement lessons that go beyond the core curriculum.
Description: Written by the best-selling author of Multiple Sclerosis: 300 Tips for Making Life Easier and Parkinson's Disease: 300 Tips for Making Life Easier, Home Accessibility: 300 Tips for Making Life Easier is designed to help people with chronic illness, physical disability, temporary or permanent (including low vision, blind, hard of hearing, the Deaf, and others), and age-related limitations make their homes safer and more accessible without costly remodeling or structural changes. Shelley Peterman Schwarz shares her unique blend of motivation, inspiration, and practical tips, techniques, and shortcuts with her readers. She has learned from personal experience, to adapt, organize, and simplify life. Shelley covers the basic concepts of Universal Design, as well as knowing what modifications one can do personally and what changes require professional attention. Chapters will cover every room of the home and outdoor living. Readers will also find suggestions for unique products, many not readily available in stores. A resource section at the end of each chapter provides information for contacting support organizations and helpful services and products.
Description: In-depth chapters on design, engine prep, and assembly show you how to develop your own big-block Chevy to its full potential. Whether your big-block is destined for life in a street car, a race car, or even a boat, the wealth of information in this book will ensure you can design, build, and crush the competition with your own.
Description: How to Design, Build and Equip Your Automotive Workshop on a Budget provides the necessary information as the hobbyist considers various tools, designs, installations, and products available for their automotive workspace. Many of the ideas presented for workbenches and storage can be implemented at low cost, or even for free if you're extra resourceful. There are step-by-step instructions for the most essential and practical procedures, including basic electrical wiring sufficient to connect up bank of lights, a compressor, a welder circuit as well as a procedure for routing power from your household electrical service panel and plumbing basic shop fixtures.
Description: Learn the most-effective way to design, install, and tune complete nitrous oxide systems. Focuses on safety and answers questions associated with the use of nitrous oxide including several complete installations.
Description: Jay-Z is one of America’s leading rappers and entrepreneurs, as well known for his music as for his business acumen. This text seeks to situate Jay-Z within his musical, intellectual and cultural context for educational study. Thirteen essays address such topics as Jay-Z’s relevance to African-American oral history, socially responsible hip hop and upward mobility in the African-American community. By observing Jay-Z through the lens of cultural studies, this study assists the teacher, student, scholar, and fan in understanding how he became such an historically significant figure. Each essay includes a set of review questions meant to spark discussion in the classroom.
Description: Mirror Mirror is a series of fast-paced vignettes that explore author Stephanie Hart’s childhood, youth, family, and ancestral background through a mix of real and imagined memories and events. Seamlessly blending past and present, she takes us from Manhattan of the 1950s to Moscow and Odessa circa 1800s, where she imaginatively renders the lives of her grandparents and great grandparents, and then takes us into the twenty-first century. Hart bares her soul by inviting readers into her world: her magical and unsettling early childhood by the sea, her years spent as the only Jewish girl in a Presbyterian boarding school, her urban high school years during which conflict with her mercurial and charismatic mother reaches a crescendo, and the weight of her father’s anger and unrealized dreams press down upon her. While acknowledging the mirror of the past, she shows us the love and friendship reflected in her current life, celebrating the generative power of each moment to transform experience.
Description: Explains how to choose the ideal heads, cams, intake, blocks and other engine build details. In addition, the author covers all other systems such as brakes, suspensions and driveline for a completely balanced package.
Otaku — nerd, über-fan, obsessive collector. Since the 1980s, the term has been used to refer to fans of Japanese anime, manga, and video games. The word appeared with no translation on the cover of the premier issue of Wired magazine in 1993.
Patrick W. Galbraith has produced a groundbreaking work of reportage that takes us beyond the stereotypes of "weird Japan" and into the private rooms of self-described otaku. Interviews and more than fifty color photos reveal a seldom seen side of these reclusive Japanese collectors. They talk frankly about their collections of blow-up dolls, comic books, military paraphernalia, anime videos, and more.
Galbraith follows the collectors to their favorite shops and shows how public space in Japan is starting to mimic the look and feel of the otaku's private room. He also interviews Japan's top cultural critics, helping to place otaku culture in wider sociological and economic contexts. Galbraith broadens his interview focus even further to include otaku from the United States and the United Kingdom, forcing those of us who live in any hyper-consumerist culture to admit that we can and do have otaku tendencies.
Description: Leaders and managers throughout the sporting world face many ethical challenges on a daily basis. Should an athletic director chastise an unruly but influential supporter? What factors should affect an athlete’s eligibility? Is competitiveness acceptable in youth sports? This text shows aspiring sports management professionals how to identify the moral issues in sports and develop principle-centered leadership practices to lead with justice, honesty, and beneficence. Among the issues addressed are the conflict between sportsmanship and gamesmanship, violence in sports, racial and gender equity, performance-enhancing drugs, academics, and commercialization. Throughout, specific examples from real-world sports situations and reflective questions encourage students to think critically.
Description: Win a free, advance copy of SOLDIER DOGS.
This book is the perfect read for anyone wondering how the dogs they see chasing cars and barking at mail carriers could possibly be related to these helicopter-jumping, explosive-seeking canine phenomenons.
Goodavage, a former USA Today reporter and author of the popular Dogster blog "For the Love of Dog," shares a detailed account based on extensive "boots on the ground" reporting (including access to the government-restricted training site for soldier dogs!).
Description: Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Judge not, that you be not judged. You cannot serve God and mammon.
Though these sayings from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount are very familiar - even to those who have never stepped inside a church or read the Bible - many people, including Christians, still do not understand Jesus' real message and its implications for everyday life.
Now in mid-life, Addison Hodges Hart returns - bringing with him his own failures, regrets, joys, and sadnesses - to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen once more to his words.
Join him as he encounters the Sermon on the Mount afresh, passage by passage, asking "How should I live the rest of my life? What does it mean to follow Jesus?"
Description: A New York Times contributor offers a radical reexamination of a hot-button issue of the mother and son relationship and advocates the end of the "mama's boy" taboo.
New York Times contributor Kate Stone Lombardi unveils the surprisingly close relationship between mothers and sons. Mother after mother confessed to Lombardi that her husband, brothers, and even female friends and family criticize the fact that she is "too close" to her sons. Many of these women are often startled by the strong connection they feel with their sons; but rarely do they talk about it because society tells them to push their little boys away and not "baby" them with too much cuddling and comforting. It is as if there were an existing playbook-based on gender preconceptions dating back to Freud, Oedipus, and beyond-that prescribes the way mothers and their sons should interact.
Lombardi's much-needed narrative is the first and only book to share truly revealing interviews with mothers who have close relationships with their sons, as well as interviews with these women's sons and husbands. Lombardi persuasively argues that the rise of the new male-one who is more emotionally intelligent and more sensitive without being less "manly"-is directly attributable to women who are rejecting the "mama's boy" taboo. Highlighting new scientific studies, The Mama's Boy Myth begins a fresh story-one that will be welcomed by mothers, fathers, and sons alike.
Description: The definitive biography of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, with fascinating findings on his life as a Civil Rights activist, an entrepreneur, and the most innovative musician of our time.
Playing 350 shows a year at his peak, with more than forty Billboard hits, James Brown was a dazzling showman who transformed American music. His life offstage was just as vibrant, but until now no biographer has delivered a complete profile. The One draws on interviews with more than 100 people who knew Brown personally or played with him professionally. Using these sources, award-winning writer RJ Smith draws a portrait of a man whose twisted and amazing life helps us to understand the music he made.
The One delves deeply into the story of a man who was raised in abject poverty in the segregated South but grew up to earn (and lose) several fortunes. Covering everything from Brown's unconventional childhood (his aunt ran a bordello), to his role in the Black Power movement, which used "Say It Loud (I'm Black and Proud)" as its anthem, to his high-profile friendships, to his complicated family life, Smith's meticulous research and sparkling prose blend biography with a cultural history of a pivotal era. At the heart of The One is Brown's musical genius, as Smith traces the legend's reinvention of funk, soul, R&B, and pop, and his evolution as an artist whose crucial influence spans at least 5 decades.
Description: Pather Panchali is the Taj Mahal of 1950's Indian cinema. Remarkably, director Satyajit Ray was self-taught; he never apprenticed or formally studied his art at a film school. This critical work examines the classic film from the perspective of a director, not simply placing it in historical and critical context, but providing commentary on Ray's technical direction. Liberally illustrated with hand-drawn sketches of frames from the film, this work is indispensable to both cinema aesthetes and aspiring directors. The book includes about 475 hand-drawn, ink-wash, black and white sketches of frames from the film; Ray's two forgotten articles from the Apu trilogy days; an unconventional bibliography recommending not only what to read on Ray but also what to avoid reading; and a foreword by Dilip K. Basu, head of Satyajit Ray Film and Study Collection, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Description: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 1.7 million patients developed healthcare acquired infections in 2010, resulting in over 100,000 deaths, adding extra days hospital stays, and costing our already broken health care system 35 to 50 billion dollars. Infections after surgery account for 20% of these healthcare acquired infections; according to CDC statistics, every year over 8,000 patients die of these infections. We also know that if you get a surgical site infection, you are five times more likely to be readmitted to the hospital after you’ve been sent home. Since most people spend only a small part of their lives in healthcare facilities, this guidebook also tells readers how to avoid picking up serious infections in day care centers, schools, business offices, and other common locations. Unlike other books, which focus on how to change the hospital systems, The Patient Survival Guide focuses on patient protection. The patient Survival Guide empowers readers with the knowledge and techniques to ensure a safer healthcare experience when the need arises to seek medical help. Since most people spend only a small part of their lives in healthcare facilities, this guidebook wouldn’t be complete without telling readers how to avoid picking up serious infections in day care centers, schools, business offices, and other common locations.
Description: What Nurses Know…HIV/AIDS provides up-to-date, reliable and practical health information for people living with HIV and their significant others. In easy-to-understand everyday language the authors give information to help individuals with HIV navigate the healthcare system, covering everything from receiving an initial HIV test to becoming an engaged member of their healthcare team, knowledgeable and actively involved in their healthcare decisions. The authors include vignettes based on their real-life experiences that speak to the individual with aids. However, they approach HIV in a holistic manner and write not for the individual with HIV, but also their friends, family, and community.
Description: A follow-up to Helterbran's popular Why Flamingos Are Pink: …and 250 other Things You Should Know, this entertaining volume identifies more of the surprising explanations for the facts, tales, and lore associated with day-to-day living and the world around us. Organized into seven categories, this book tells you why birds perched on power lines aren't electrocuted; the origins of such expressions as "swan song" and "willy nilly;" and the science behind such phenomena as ball lightning, blue glaciers, red tide, and thunder snow. More than a mere compendium of trivia, this book is a springboard for learners of all ages.
About the Author: Valeri R. Helterbran writes a weekly column for the Ligonier Echo and is Professor of Education at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She lives in Ligonier, PA.
Description: First contact isn't all fun and games.
Ariel Blum is pushing thirty and doesn't have much to show for it. His computer programming skills are producing nothing but pony-themed video games for little girls. His love life is a slow-motion train wreck, and whenever he tries to make something of his life, he finds himself back on the couch, replaying the games of his youth.
Then the aliens show up.
Out of the sky comes the Constellation: a swarm of anarchist anthropologists, exploring our seas, cataloguing our plants, editing our wikis, and eating our Twinkies. No one knows how to respond—except for nerds like Ariel who've been reading, role-playing and wargaming first-contact scenarios their entire lives. Ariel sees the aliens' computers, and he knows that wherever there are computers, there are video games.
Ariel just wants to start a business translating alien games so they can be played on human computers. But a simple cultural exchange turns up ancient secrets, government conspiracies, and unconventional anthropology techniques that threaten humanity as we know it. If Ariel wants his species to have a future, he's going to have to take the step that nothing on Earth could make him take.
He'll have to grow up.
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“It might not be the best book I read in 2011, but it’s certainly in the top 10...It goes beyond just being a witty first-contact story, too. All in all, Constellation Games is a perfect blend of aliens, video game geekiness, and modern social media.” —Wired.com
Description: Este libro pone de relieve las conexiones entre arte y ciencia y muestra cómo la precisión matemática se halla en el corazón de las obras literarias estudiadas. En todas ellas se constata la presencia de proporciones numéricas y de patrones geométricos arquetípicos que se relacionan con la dimensión espacio-temporal. La sinergia creada por las abstracciones matemáticas y por el simbolismo de los números, de las figuras geométricas y de los cuatro elementos logra un efecto multiplicador del valor estético y del significado de estas obras.
Description: 140 And Counting is a collection of the best twitter literature from the first two years of Seven by Twenty magazine, on relationships, nature, work, animals, seasons, science fiction and fantasy, and mortality: 141 clever little allotments of literature by 119 authors in 1 exquisite ebook!
Description: Format: Open, non-DRM file. Winners will be sent the URL of a webpage where they can download the eBook in ePub or Kindle format.
A Regency Romance novel from Madeleine Robins.
The last time Olivia Martingale saw Menwin it was in Brussels on the eve of Waterloo. She had loved him then, but her love was not returned. Instead she yielded to the insistent Lord John Temperer, married him, and was left a widow. Visiting John's family seemed like a good idea—but John's brother the Duke disliked her; John's mother wanted to match-make for her...and into the middle of all this walked Menwin, filling the room with his presence. Olivia felt the old attraction rising again—until Menwin looked right through her as if she was not even worth noticing.
Madeleine Robins is the author of 11 novels, including five Regency romances; the dark urban fantasy The Stone War; and three books in the Sarah Tolerance mystery series: Point of Honour, Petty Treason, and The Sleeping Partner.
Description: In No Instructions Needed: An American Boyhood in the 1950s , which was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers selection two years ago, artist Robert Hewitt gave us a fond memoir of the toys and activities of his childhood. The response to the book made him decide to take a closer look at the people with whom he shared that life. In Winnie and Gurley: The Best-Kept Family Secret he invites us to join a quest for family truth in which he unwinds the threads of deception and memory – aided by a remarkable trove of documentary materials and family memorabilia from the last century and a half. The result – involving a cast of family members as diverse as Methodist circuit riders and murderers, not to mention Nannie, the mother from hell – is fascinating, but hardly tidily conclusive. As the author himself acknowledges in his summing up:
Of what we ourselves do not observe at first hand, we acquire only glimpses, traces of rumor and hearsay, unless there is documentation or other evidence – and even that is subject to at least some interpretation. The rest is glimmers, shadows in a mirror whose silvering fades even as I look at it. Definitely a Who Do You Think You Are?> kind of story, Winnie and Gurley: The Best-Kept Family Secret is a book to be relished and thought about by anyone who's ever wondered if things were exactly as they seemed in his or her family. LOGISTICS: Sixteen chapters; 76,000 words; 130 illustrations. PLEASE NOTE:This ebook will be sent only in the Kindle or Kindle-for-your-device app format through Amazon to the email address associated with your Amazon or LibraryThing accounts. If you do not have a Kindle, to read the ebook you will need to download the free Kindle for PC or other reader app from Amazon. Because of the above, please do not request this title if you do not have a valid email address that is associated with your Amazon or LibraryThing accounts and/or do not wish to: (1) have the title delivered to your Kindle; or (2) download the Kindle reader app for your device. We regret any inconvenience. Because of restrictions relating to the manner of listing with Amazon, the title will not be distributed save through Amazon, and we do not wish to disappoint anyone who does not have access to a Kindle or one of the reader apps from Amazon. Thanks!
Description: This is book 2 of The Land of Miu Series. The series is written for younger readers and are adventure/fantasy stories. Book 1, The Land of Miu, is available as a free download through iTunes, Smashwords, and most other online book stores. The King's Riddle will be available in paperback and all popular digital formats upon its release on 25 January 2012.
Princess Alara and her guard-in-training, Siptah, have done something unthinkable. By accident, they activated the volcano deep below the tunnels in which they live. If they can’t stop the volcano from erupting the whole of Miu will be lost.
But that isn’t the only problem they have, their fathers are missing and time is running out, so it’s up to them to fix things by themselves. A clue found in the king’s chamber suggests their human friends, Kate and Emma, must come back to Manu to help them. Can the group of friends overcome their fears and frustrations and solve an ancient riddle in time to save the Land of Miu?
Description: Middle grade fiction offered in pdf format
Kansas Territory in 1855 is a difficult place to settle, particularly for a thirteen-year-old poet like Lucy Thomkins. Between the proslavery Border Ruffians and Insiders like her father who are determined to make Kansas a free state, it’s hard to be heard, no matter your age. But after Lucy makes two new friends – a local Indian boy and a girl whose family helps runaway slaves – she makes choices to prove to herself (and others) that words and poems are meaningless without action behind them. Through their struggle to help a slave girl to freedom, Lucy ultimately finds her voice. A voice for Kansas.
Description: From New York Times bestselling author Eileen Goudge comes a poignant new novel that asks the question, “What would you do if you were told you had only six months to live?” For one professional matchmaker the answer is heart-wrenching: She must find her husband’s next wife.
Camille Hart, one of Manhattan’s most sought-after matchmakers, has survived more than her fair share of hardships. Her mother died when she was a young girl, leaving her and her sister with an absentee father. Now in her forties, she has already survived cancer once, though the battle revealed just how ill-equipped her husband Edward is to be a single parent. So when doctors tell Camille that her cancer is back—and this time it’s terminal—she decides to put her matchmaking expertise to the test for one final job. Seeking stability for her children and happiness for her husband, Camille sets out to find the perfect woman to replace her when she’s gone. But what happens when a dying wish becomes a case of “be careful what you wish for”? For Edward and Camille, the stunning conclusion arrives with one last twist of fate that no one saw coming. At once deeply felt and witty, The Replacement Wife is an unforgettable story of love and family, and a refreshing look at the unexpected paths that lead us to our own happy endings.
Description: THIS IS AN EBOOK. We will send a .pdf version to the winners.Common Core Standards now challenge teachers to expose every student to complex and difficult text. Guided Highlighted Reading provides the key, text-based reading strategy that enables teachers in grades four through twelve to meet the challenge, with scaffolding for four reading purposes: comprehension, vocabulary, writer’s craft and structure, and preparation for high-stakes, multiple-choice assessments. The authors explain the easy and effective strategy, and they include reproducible reading passage samples from Appendix B of the Common Core Standards with the prompts that lead students back into the text to find evidence for the responses. This book also includes rubrics.
Description: This is an EBOOK. We will send winner a .pdf copy. In Strategies for Writing in the Social Studies Classroom, award-winning author and veteran educator Kathleen Kopp offers simple and practical writing strategies that any social studies teacher can integrate into every phase of the learning process.
Writing is a valuable learning tool that can quite effectively—and easily—help students learn and understand social studies content. Teaching it, however, can be challenging for content-area teachers now under pressure from the Common Core Standards’ refocused attention on reading and writing.
With step-by-step directions, rubrics, student examples, templates, technology tips, and ideas for differentiation, Kopp goes beyond journals or reports to show how social studies teachers can use writing to develop critical-thinking skills, improve understanding of social studies concepts, and assess students’ progress.
Her writing strategies support the Common Core Standards and, because the focus is on applying writing skills—and not teaching writing as an end in itself—social studies teachers can easily incorporate these strategies in any unit of study.
This comprehensive resource makes it easy to incorporate writing in your social studies class today—and every day!
This book is an eBook, not a physical book.
