Download or read book Strangers Drowning written by Larissa MacFarquhar and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to devote yourself wholly to helping others? In Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar seeks out people living lives of extreme ethical commitment and tells their deeply intimate stories; their stubborn integrity and their compromises; their bravery and their recklessness; their joys and defeats and wrenching dilemmas. A couple adopts two children in distress. But then they think: If they can change two lives, why not four? Or ten? They adopt twenty. But how do they weigh the needs of unknown children in distress against the needs of the children they already have? Another couple founds a leprosy colony in the wilderness in India, living in huts with no walls, knowing that their two small children may contract leprosy or be eaten by panthers. The children survive. But what if they hadn't? How would their parents' risk have been judged? A woman believes that if she spends money on herself, rather than donate it to buy life-saving medicine, then she's responsible for the deaths that result. She lives on a fraction of her income, but wonders: when is compromise self-indulgence and when is it essential? We honor such generosity and high ideals; but when we call people do-gooders there is skepticism in it, even hostility. Why do moral people make us uneasy? Between her stories, MacFarquhar threads a lively history of the literature, philosophy, social science, and self-help that have contributed to a deep suspicion of do-gooders in Western culture. Through its sympathetic and beautifully vivid storytelling, Strangers Drowning confronts us with fundamental questions about what it means to be human. In a world of strangers drowning in need, how much should we help, and how much can we help? Is it right to care for strangers even at the expense of those we are closest to? Moving and provocative, Strangers Drowning challenges us to think about what we value most, and why.

Download or read book Drowning Ruth written by Christina Schwarz and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2008-11-19 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deftly written and emotionally powerful, Drowning Ruth is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart, of the dangers of keeping secrets and the explosive repercussions when they are exposed. A mesmerizing and achingly beautiful debut. Winter, 1919. Amanda Starkey spends her days nursing soldiers wounded in the Great War. Finding herself suddenly overwhelmed, she flees Milwaukee and retreats to her family's farm on Nagawaukee Lake, seeking comfort with her younger sister, Mathilda, and three-year-old niece, Ruth. But very soon, Amanda comes to see that her old home is no refuge--she has carried her troubles with her. On one terrible night almost a year later, Amanda loses nearly everything that is dearest to her when her sister mysteriously disappears and is later found drowned beneath the ice that covers the lake. When Mathilda's husband comes home from the war, wounded and troubled himself, he finds that Amanda has taken charge of Ruth and the farm, assuming her responsibility with a frightening intensity. Wry and guarded, Amanda tells the story of her family in careful doses, as anxious to hide from herself as from us the secrets of her own past and of that night. Ruth, haunted by her own memory of that fateful night, grows up under the watchful eye of her prickly and possessive aunt and gradually becomes aware of the odd events of her childhood. As she tells her own story with increasing clarity, she reveals the mounting toll that her aunt's secrets exact from her family and everyone around her, until the heartrending truth is uncovered. Guiding us through the lives of the Starkey women, Christina Schwarz's first novel shows her compassion and a unique understanding of the American landscape and the people who live on it.

Download or read book Strangers Drowning written by Larissa MacFarquhar and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to devote yourself wholly to helping others? In Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar seeks out people living lives of extreme ethical commitment and tells their deeply intimate stories; their stubborn integrity and their compromises; their bravery and their recklessness; their joys and defeats and wrenching dilemmas. A couple adopts two children in distress. But then they think: If they can change two lives, why not four? Or ten? They adopt twenty. But how do they weigh the needs of unknown children in distress against the needs of the children they already have? Another couple founds a leprosy colony in the wilderness in India, living in huts with no walls, knowing that their two small children may contract leprosy or be eaten by panthers. The children survive. But what if they hadn’t? How would their parents’ risk have been judged? A woman believes that if she spends money on herself, rather than donate it to buy life-saving medicine, then she’s responsible for the deaths that result. She lives on a fraction of her income, but wonders: when is compromise self-indulgence and when is it essential? We honor such generosity and high ideals; but when we call people do-gooders there is skepticism in it, even hostility. Why do moral people make us uneasy? Between her stories, MacFarquhar threads a lively history of the literature, philosophy, social science, and self-help that have contributed to a deep suspicion of do-gooders in Western culture. Through its sympathetic and beautifully vivid storytelling, Strangers Drowning confronts us with fundamental questions about what it means to be human. In a world of strangers drowning in need, how much should we help, and how much can we help? Is it right to care for strangers even at the expense of those we are closest to? Moving and provocative, Strangers Drowning challenges us to think about what we value most, and why.

Download or read book Verity written by Colleen Hoover and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whose truth is the lie? Stay up all night reading the sensational psychological thriller that has readers obsessed, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Too Late and It Ends With Us. #1 New York Times Bestseller · USA Today Bestseller · Globe and Mail Bestseller · Publishers Weekly Bestseller Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity’s notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn’t expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity's recollection of the night her family was forever altered. Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents could devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen’s feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife’s words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue loving her.

Download or read book The Life You Can Save written by Peter Singer and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2010 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that for the first time in history we're in a position to end extreme poverty throughout the world, both because of our unprecedented wealth and advances in technology, therefore we can no longer consider ourselves good people unless we give more to the poor. Reprint.

Download or read book Talking to Strangers written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

Download or read book The Inevitable written by Katie Engelhart and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A remarkably nuanced, empathetic, and well-crafted work of journalism, [The Inevitable] explores what might be called the right-to-die underground, a world of people who wonder why a medical system that can do so much to try to extend their lives can do so little to help them end those lives in a peaceful and painless way.”—Brooke Jarvis, The New Yorker More states and countries are passing right-to-die laws that allow the sick and suffering to end their lives at pre-planned moments, with the help of physicians. But even where these laws exist, they leave many people behind. The Inevitable moves beyond margins of the law to the people who are meticulously planning their final hours—far from medical offices, legislative chambers, hospital ethics committees, and polite conversation. It also shines a light on the people who help them: loved ones and, sometimes, clandestine groups on the Internet that together form the “euthanasia underground.” Katie Engelhart, a veteran journalist, focuses on six people representing different aspects of the right to die debate. Two are doctors: a California physician who runs a boutique assisted death clinic and has written more lethal prescriptions than anyone else in the U.S.; an Australian named Philip Nitschke who lost his medical license for teaching people how to end their lives painlessly and peacefully at “DIY Death” workshops. The other four chapters belong to people who said they wanted to die because they were suffering unbearably—of old age, chronic illness, dementia, and mental anguish—and saw suicide as their only option. Spanning North America, Europe, and Australia, The Inevitable offers a deeply reported and fearless look at a morally tangled subject. It introduces readers to ordinary people who are fighting to find dignity and authenticity in the final hours of their lives.

Download or read book A COUNTRY OF STRANGERS written by Conrad Richter and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2013-07-31 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "chronicle of a white girl captive of the Indians returned against her will to her white home . . . Her reception here, her rejection and that of her Indian son by her Caucasian father and sister . . . the conflicts of her Indian upbringing with the white way are related."

Download or read book The Stranger in the Lifeboat written by Mitch Albom and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE INSTANT NO.1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The stunning new novel from the bestselling author of global phenomenon Tuesdays with Morrie 'Mitch Albom sees the magical in the ordinary' Cecelia Ahern ____________ Adrift in a raft after a terrible shipwreck, ten strangers try to survive while they wait for rescue. After three days, short on water, food and hope, they spot a man floating in the waves. They pull him on board - and the survivor claims he can save them. But should they put their trust in him? Will any of them see home again? And why did the ship really sink? The Stranger in the Lifeboat is not only a deeply moving novel about the power of love and hope in the face of danger, but also a mystery that will keep you guessing to the very end. ____________ What real readers are saying about The Stranger in the Lifeboat: 'Enthralling storytelling as always from this brilliant writer' FIVE STARS 'Just when I thought I had things figured out . . . plot twist. One that was not expected. And another and another and another. Mind. Blown . . . You just just have to read it' FIVE STARS 'Albom can always be depended on to not only write a book that is written well and entertaining, but compels the reader to look within themselves and feel something new' FIVE STARS 'A very exciting, thrilling and poignant tale of trying to survive against the odds' FIVE STARS

Download or read book Grave Reservations written by Cherie Priest and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Meet Leda Foley; Devoted friend, struggling travel agent, sometime psychic. When Leda, proprietor of Foley's Flights of Fancy, books Seattle PD Grady Merritt on a flight back from Orlando, she does not expect it to change her life. When Grady watches the plane he was set to travel on catch fire while he remains safely in the airport, he seeks out Leda, and despite her rather scattershot premonitions, he enlists her help in investigating a cold case he just can't crack. But Leda has her own reasons for helping: her fiancé Tod was murdered under mysterious circumstances several years ago. Her psychic abilities weren't good then, but now she's been honing them at her favorite bar's open-mic nights, where she draws a crowd klairvoyant karaoke-singing whatever song comes to mind after holding other patrons' personal effects. With a rag-tag group of bar patrons and friends, Leda and Grady set out to catch a killer--and find that the two cases that haunt them may have more in common than they think"--

Download or read book A Stranger s Game written by Colleen Coble and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wealthy hotel heiress Torie Bergstrom comes to Jekyll Island certain her friend Lisbeth's death wasn't an accident—but Torie gets more than she bargained for when the killer begins to play mind games with her in this gripping new novel from USA TODAY bestselling author Colleen Coble. Even though Torie Bergstrom hasn’t been back to Georgia since she was ten, she was happy to arrange a job for her best friend at one of the family properties on Jekyll Island. But when Torie learns that Lisbeth has drowned, she knows it is more than a tragic accident: Lisbeth was terrified of water and wouldn’t have gone swimming by choice. Torie goes to the hotel under an alias, desperate to find answers. When she meets Joe Abbott and his daughter while they are rescuing baby sea turtles, she can only hope they are as trustworthy as they seem. And when someone begins to play mind games with her, proving they know her real identity, Torie couldn’t be more grateful to have an ally. The more Torie and Joe dig, the more elusive the truth seems. But one thing is clear: someone will risk anything—even another murder—to keep their secrets buried. Full-length, stand-alone romantic suspense Also by Colleen Coble: Edge of Dusk, One Little Lie, Two Reasons to Run, Three Missing Days, Strands of Truth, Tidewater Inn Includes discussion questions for book clubs

Download or read book Drowning Practice written by Mike Meginnis and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profoundly moving, filled with tenderness, and brought to life by a curious, sprawling imagination, Drowning Practice is the story of a mother and daughter trying to save each other’s lives at what could be the end of the world One night, everyone on Earth has the same dream—a dream of being guided to a watery death by a loved one on November 1. When they wake up, most people agree: after Halloween, the world will end. In the wake of this haunting dream and saddled with its uncertainty, Lyd and her daughter, Mott, navigate a changed world, wrestling with how to make choices when you really don’t know what comes next. Embarking on a quixotic road trip filled with a collection of unexpected and memorable characters, Lyd and Mott are determined to live out what could be their final months as fully as possible. But how can Lyd protect Mott and help her achieve her ambitions in a world where inhibitions, desires, and motivations have become unpredictable, and where Mott’s dangerous and conniving father has his own ideas about how his estranged family should spend their last days? Formally inventive and hauntingly strange, Drowning Practice signals the arrival of a singular new voice in Mike Meginnis, who writes with generosity and precision, humor and sorrowfulness. Stirring and surprising at every turn, Drowning Practice is literary speculative fiction at its best and with a pulsing heart: a mother and daughter trying to decide how they should live out what might be the final months of their—or anyone’s—life on Earth.

Download or read book Craigslist Confessional written by Helena Dea Bala and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Touching.” —The New York Times For fans of Humans of New York and PostSecret, a collection of raw, urgent, and heartfelt stories, shared anonymously. Helena Dea Bala was an exhausted and isolated DC lobbyist, suffocating under the weight of her student loan debt, when she decided to split her lunch with a man who often panhandled near her office. They chatted effortlessly as they ate; there were no half-truths or white lies, and no fear of judgment. Helena felt connected and unburdened in a way she hadn’t in years. Inspired, she posted an ad on Craigslist promising to listen, anonymously and for free, to whatever the speaker felt he or she couldn’t tell anyone else. Emails from people desperate to connect flooded her inbox, and she listened. Within months, Helena quit her job, deferred her loans, and dove into listening full time. The forty first-person confessions in this book are vivid, intimate, and real; they range from devastating traumas, to lost loves, to reflections on hard choices. Some accounts are quotidian, like that of one increasingly estranged husband: “I want to feel that we’re not just roommates—that we’re not just waiting for the kids to grow up so that we can move on.” Others are deeply disconcerting, like that of a sex addict employed by a religious organization and several are heartening, like that of a mother who dares to hope that her daughter, born with life-threatening heart defects, will one day walk down the aisle: “Sometimes you need to have the audacity to believe that it will all be okay, that it is okay to have the same kinds of dreams as everyone else.” In its complex portrayal of the common human experience, Craigslist Confessional challenges us to explore the depths of our vulnerability and expand the borders of our empathy.

Download or read book Death By Drowning written by Abigail Keam and published by Worker Bee Press. This book was released on 2011-02-11 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: USA Book News - Best Book List Finalist Readers Favorite Gold Medal Award Winner for Best Mystery Sleuth In the second novel of the series, Death by Drowning, Josiah survives a forty-foot fall off a cliff only to discover that her nightmare is not over. O'nan's body is never found and he may be alive. Josiah puts the past behind her but it reaches out, threatening to pull her off the cliff again. Matt, her best friend, and Jake, her physical therapist, stand between Josiah and harm. Even they can't keep danger at bay. Once again, Josiah makes the rounds of quirky characters found in the lush Bluegrass horse world of Thoroughbreds, oak-cured bourbon, and mansions. If you like mysteries from Jana DeLeon, CeeCee James, Kathi Daley, Lynn Cahoon, Sally Berneathy, Tonya Kappes, Cindy Bell, Vikki Walton, Dianne Harmon, Janet Evanovich, Krista Davis, Leighann Dobbs, Heather Hoffman, Laurien Berenson, Hope Callaghan, and Leslie Langtry, you will love the Josiah Reynolds Mysteries by Abigail Keam. The Josiah Reynolds Mystery Series Death By A HoneyBee Death By Drowning Death By Bridle Death By Bourbon Death By Lotto Death by Chocolate Death by Haunting Death By Derby Death By Design Death By Malice Death By Drama Death By Stalking Death By Deceit Death By Magic Death By Shock Death By Chance Death By Poison Death By Greed Death By Theft AWARDS 2010 Gold Medal Award from Readers’ Favorite for Death By A HoneyBee 2011 Gold Medal Award from Readers' Favorite for Death By Drowning 2011 USA BOOK NEWS-Best Books List of 2011 as a Finalist for Death By Drowning 2011 USA BOOK NEWS-Best Books List of 2011 as a Finalist for Death By A HoneyBee 2017 Finalist from Readers’ Favorite for Death By Design 2019 Honorable Mention from Readers’ Favorite for Death By Stalking 2019 Top 10 Mystery Novels from Kings River Life Magazine for Murder Under A Blue Moon 2020 Imadjinn Award for Best Mystery - Death By Stalking 2022 Finalist in Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Finalist for Best Historical Category - Murder Under A Full Moon 2022 Finalist the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Historical Category - Murder Under A New Moon 2022 Death By Chance: A Josiah Reynolds Mystery Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Finalist for Best Cozy Mystery

Download or read book Stop Being Reasonable written by Eleanor Gordon-Smith and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking exploration of how people really change their minds, and how persuasion is possible. In Stop Being Reasonable, Eleanor Gordon-Smith weaves a narrative that illustrates the limits of human reason. Here, she tells the stories of people who have radically altered their beliefs--from the woman who had to reckon with her husband's terrible secret to the man who finally left the cult he had been raised in since birth. Gordon-Smith shows how we can change the course of our own lives, and asks: what made someone change course? How should their reversals affect how we think about our own beliefs? And in an increasingly divided world, what do they teach us about how we might change the minds of others? Inspiring, perceptive, and moving, Stop Being Reasonable explores why resistance to evidence is often rooted in self-preservation and fear, why we feel shame in admitting we are wrong, and why who we believe is often more important than what we believe. This fascinating book will completely change the way you look at the power of persuasion.

Download or read book A Stranger in the House of God written by John Koessler and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2009-08-30 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Growing up the son of agnostics, John Koessler saw a Catholic church on one end of the street and a Baptist on the other. In the no-man’s land between the two, this curious outside wondered about the God they worshipped—and began a lifelong search to comprehend the grace and mystery of God. A Stranger in the House of God addresses fundamental questions and struggles faced by spiritual seekers and mature believers. Like a contemporary Pilgrim’s Progress, it traces the author’s journey and explores his experiences with both charismatic and evangelical Christianity. It also describes his transformation from religious outsider to ordained pastor. John Koessler provides a poignant and often humorous window into the interior of the soul as he describes his journey from doubt and struggle with the church to personal faith

Download or read book Red Strangers written by Christine Stephanie Nicholls and published by Timewell Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kenya's forgotten history from its inception to independence in 1963.