Download or read book These Precious Days written by Ann Patchett and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

Download or read book I Love Jesus But I Want to Die written by Sarah J. Robinson and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.

Download or read book Full Grown People written by Jennifer Niesslein and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology of thirty essays from the site fullgrownpeople.com.

Download or read book Ways of Living written by Gemma Seltzer and published by Influx Press. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'These are sharp, wry, playful stories of split and secret selves, alter-egos, doppelgangers – of escape routes from the very contemporary and existential crises their women find themselves in.' – Lucy Caldwell, author of Intimacies Andie can see no other way to escape a wedding than by hiding in a tree. Esther starts a new life in a King's Cross hotel with a bad-tempered ventriloquist dummy, while Gina finally leaves a group of infuriating friends – but not before providing them with a suitable replacement. Ways of Living is Gemma Seltzer's keen exploration of what it means to be a modern woman inhabiting the urban landscape. Ten stories of ordinary women going to extraordinary lengths to be understood, acting in bold and unpredictable ways as they map their identities onto London's streets. How do we speak and listen to each other? Who gets to talk? And what is the true power of quiet in a noisy world?

Download or read book The Dutch House written by Ann Patchett and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize Finalist | New York Times Bestseller | A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick | A New York Times Book Review Notable Book | TIME Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of the Year Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, The Washington Post; O: The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Good Housekeeping, Vogue, Refinery29, and Buzzfeed From Ann Patchett, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth, comes a powerful, richly moving story that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go. The Dutch House is the story of a paradise lost, a tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance, love and forgiveness, of how we want to see ourselves and of who we really are. At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures. Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.

Download or read book Guide for All Hazard Emergency Operations Planning written by Kay C. Goss and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1998-05 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meant to aid State & local emergency managers in their efforts to develop & maintain a viable all-hazard emergency operations plan. This guide clarifies the preparedness, response, & short-term recovery planning elements that warrant inclusion in emergency operations plans. It offers the best judgment & recommendations on how to deal with the entire planning process -- from forming a planning team to writing the plan. Specific topics of discussion include: preliminary considerations, the planning process, emergency operations plan format, basic plan content, functional annex content, hazard-unique planning, & linking Federal & State operations.

Download or read book Earth Church written by Jim Blackburn and published by . This book was released on 2021-09-20 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Get Me to 21 written by Gabi Lowe and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Get Me to 21: The Jenna Lowe Story is the riveting memoir by Gabi Lowe, the mother of Lead SA activist Jenna Lowe, the brilliant teenager who was the driving force behind the famous #GetMeto21 campaign. Jenna was diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension, an extremely rare illness that, after a double lung transplant, ultimately led to her untimely death, four months before her 21st birthday. In this riveting and brutally honest memoir, in all its terrible truth, pain and beauty, Gabi Lowe shares her family's extraordinary four-year battle to save Jenna's life. Despite the tragic loss of Jenna, Get Me to 21 will leave the reader deeply inspired and reminded of the capabilities and depths of the human spirit. Embracing grit, resilience and never turning her back on the hope to save her daughter's life, Gabi Lowe encourages us to believe that the ability to face darkness lives deep within us all.

Download or read book Haiku in English written by Jim Kacian and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-08-26 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology of more than 800 poems that were originally written in English by over 200 poets from around the world. This collection tells the story for the first time of Anglophone haiku, charting its evolution over the last one hundred years and placing it within its historical and literary context.

Download or read book Hard Time written by Cara McKenna and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this all-new novel from the author of After Hours and Unbound, a woman with a rocky past finds romance in the last place she’d ever expect... Annie Goodhouse doesn’t need to be warned about bad boys; good sense and an abusive ex have given her plenty of reasons to play it safe. But when she steps into her new role as outreach librarian for Cousins Correctional Facility, no amount of good sense can keep her mind—or eyes—off inmate Eric Collier. Eric doesn’t claim to be innocent of the crime that landed him in prison. In fact, he’d do it again if that’s what it took to keep his family safe. Loyalty and force are what he knows. But meeting Annie makes him want to know more. When Eric begins courting Annie through letters, they embark on a reckless, secret romance—a forbidden fantasy that neither imagines could ever be real…until early parole for Eric changes everything, and forces them both to face a past they can’t forget, and a desire they can’t deny. Praise for Cara McKenna and her novels “Cara McKenna is my go-to author for gritty, hot love stories full of honest emotion.”—Victoria Dahl, USA Today bestselling author “McKenna writes dark, lush, erotic romance.”—Heroes and Heartbreakers “Sweet, smoking hot, standout erotic romance.”—Beth Kery, New York Times bestselling author Before becoming a purveyor of smart erotic romance, Cara McKenna worked as a lousy barista, a decent designer, and an over-enthusiastic penguin handler. She loves writing sexy, character-driven stories about strong-willed men and women who keep each other on their toes…and bring one another to their knees. Cara now writes full-time and lives north of Boston with her bearded husband. When she’s not trapped in her own head, she can usually be found in the kitchen, the coffee shop, or jogging around the nearest duck-filled pond.

Download or read book Marriage in Past Present and Future Tense written by Janet Carsten and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marriage globally is undergoing profound change, provoking widespread public comment and concern. Through the close ethnographic examination of case studies drawn from Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, Marriage in Past, Present and Future Tense places new and changing forms of marriage in comparative perspective as a transforming and also transformative social institution. In conditions of widespread socio-political inequality and instability, how are the personal, the familial and the political co-produced? How do marriages encapsulate the ways in which memories of past lives, present experience and imaginaries of the future are articulated? Exploring the ways that marriage draws together and distinguishes history and biography, ritual and law, economy and politics in intimate family life, this volume examines how familial and personal relations, and the ethical judgements they enfold, inform and configure social transformation. Contexts that have been partly shaped through civil wars, cold war and colonialism – as well as other forms of violent socio-political rupture – offer especially apt opportunities for tracing the interplay between marriage and politics. But rather than taking intimate family life and gendered practice as simply responsive to wider socio-political forces, this work explores how marriage may also create social change. Contributors consider the ways in which marital practice traverses the domains of politics, economics and religion, while marking a key site where the work of linking and distinguishing those domains is undertaken.

Download or read book Earth First Direct Action Manual written by The Dam Collective and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 300+ pages of diagrams, descriptions of techniques and a comprehensive overview of the role direct action plays in resistance--from planning an action, doing a soft blockade, putting up a treesit or executing a lockdown; to legal and prisoner support, direct action trainings, fun political pranks, and more. The DAM has been compiled and updated by frontline activists from around the US to help spread the knowledge and get these skills farther out in the world.

Download or read book Uncommon Type written by Tom Hanks and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that the legendary Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. “Reading Tom Hanks's Uncommon Type is like finding out that Alice Munro is also the greatest actress of our time.” —Ann Patchett, bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Dutch House A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country's civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect game--and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he winds up ESPN's newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves. An eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant venture into America looking for acquisitions and discover a down and out motel, romance, and a bit of real life. These are just some of the tales Tom Hanks tells in this first collection of his short stories. They are surprising, intelligent, heartwarming, and, for the millions and millions of Tom Hanks fans, an absolute must-have!

Download or read book Made with Love Plants written by Tammy Fry and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2021-01-01 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a director of Meat-free Mondays in Australia and South Africa, it’s Tammy Fry’s mission to enable other to live a happier and more energetic lifestyle through plant-based eating. Through her blog (seed-blog.com) and lifestyle workshops she has become a key influencer and thought leader in the plant-based, health and wellness world of holistic nutrition. Made With Love & Plants will not only present more than 75 wholefood, plant-based recipes, all beautifully photographed and styled, but also provide detailed yet easy-to-follow guidance on living the plant-based lifestyle. Tammy particularly understands how challenging the change to such a diet can be, and is there with helpful support and tips to make the journey easier. The recipes will encompass a full range of meals from breakfast through to treats, and for family and entertaining.

Download or read book The Cracker Queen written by Lauretta Hannon and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-04-16 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A poignant memoir of life on the wrong side of the tracks-which was a SIBA bestseller in hardcover-with a colorful cast of misfits, plenty of belly laughs, and lessons for finding joy in spite of hardship Move over, Sweet Potato Queens. Thanks to Lauretta Hannon, the Cracker Queens are finally having their say. From her wildly popular NPR segments to her colorful one-woman show, Hannon is showing the world a different kind of Southern girl-a strong, authentic, fearless, flawed, resourceful, and sometimes outrageous woman-the anti-Southern Belle. The Cracker Queen takes readers from backwater Georgia to Savannah's most eccentric neighborhoods for a wild ride featuring a distinctly dysfunctional family and a lively crew of hellions, heroines, bad seeds, and renegades. Full of warmth, outrageous wit, and world-class storytelling, The Cracker Queen is a celebration of living out loud, finding humor in desperate situations, and loving life to death.

Download or read book Pentagon 9 11 written by Alfred Goldberg and published by Office of the Secretary, Historical Offi. This book was released on 2007-09-05 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most comprehensive account to date of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon and aftermath, this volume includes unprecedented details on the impact on the Pentagon building and personnel and the scope of the rescue, recovery, and caregiving effort. It features 32 pages of photographs and more than a dozen diagrams and illustrations not previously available.

Download or read book Better Brother written by Simon Gravatt and published by eBook Partnership. This book was released on 2022-03-17 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Merriweather's carefully planned life is blown off course when he receives a call to tell him that his father has cremated himself. Michael then learns from a small-town lawyer that he stands to inherit a small fortune he previously knew nothing about, but only if he sacrifices his accountancy career to take over the family funeral business with his brother, Jack, whom he despises.Sucked back into the small provincial world and the family funeral firm he has rejected, Michael can no longer avoid his loathsome sibling. Jack Merriweather has no idea what he's done to deserve his brother's hostility, but he's about to suffer the consequences. Then, when his patience finally breaks, he will exact delicious revenge.The Better Brother is a darkly comic tale of sibling rivalry laced with the power, passion, revenge and everyday friction of family business. It explores what happens when two warring brothers are forced to work together. Will Michael and Jack learn to love and respect each other? Or will their acrimony escalate? If so, who will come out on top? Who is the better brother?