Download or read book And Yet They Were Happy written by Helen Phillips and published by Leapfrog Press. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD longlist nominee, Helen Phillips's debut novel, And Yet They Were Happy is "A gallery of marvels." A young couple comes of age in a surreal world of apocalypse, delight, longing, and tenderness. "Brilliant miniatures. . . . Like the fables of Calvino, Millhauser, or W.S. Merwin. . . . Beautifully blends short story and prose poem. . . . Mermaids, subways, floods, cucumbers, magicians. . . .The book is a gallery of marvels. Phillips guides us through the 'Hall of Nostalgia For Things We Have Never Seen, ' 'the factory where the virgins are made, ' and 'the Anne Frank School for Expectant Mothers.' A depressed Noah admits he 'didn't get them all, ' a wife guesses which of two identical men is her husband, a regime orders citizens to grow raspberries on windowsills. [Helen Phillips'] quietly elegant sentences are as clear as spring water, haunting as our own childhood memories."--Michael Dirda "A deeply interesting mind is at work in these wry, lyrical stories. Phillips exploits the duality of our nature to create a timeless and most engaging collection."--Amy Hempel "Haunted and lyrical and edible all at once."--Rivka Galchen A young couple sets out to build a life together in an unstable world haunted by monsters, plagued by disasters, full of longing--but also one of transformation, wonder, and delight, peopled by the likes of Noah, Bob Dylan, the Virgin Mary, and Anne Frank. Hovering between reality and fantasy, whimsy and darkness, these linked fables describe a universe both surreal and familiar. Helen Phillips received a 2009 Rona Jaffe Writer's Award, 2009 Meridian Editors' Prize, and 2008 Italo Calvino Fabulist Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in many literary journals and two anthologies. She holds degrees from Yale University and Brooklyn College, and teaches creative writing at Brooklyn College.

Download or read book Are We Happy Yet written by Lisa Cypers Kamen and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2017-02-17 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are We Happy Yet? Eight Keys to Unlocking a Joyful Life is an exciting fusion of science and heart, filled with successful tools and techniques for creating your personal “happiness revolution.” Lisa Cypers Kamen, an internationally recognized applied positive psychology coach and expert in life-crisis recovery, reveals her breakthrough system for cultivating sustainable happiness and well-being—regardless of life’s drama, trauma, or challenges. Her inspiring and practical tips, keys, and exercises will boost your “Happiness-Factor” to new levels and show you how to tap into the joy and peace you deserve. You’ll learn how to: • Accept the past for what it is—a reference point, not a destination • Embrace the truth that while life is tough, you can be happy • Transform your relationship with yourself from enemy to ally • Appreciate why less is often more • Focus on what’s right with your life, not what’s wrong • Control the only person you can—yourself • Invest in yourself to become more mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually fit • Use your newly discovered joy to become a more positive and productive influence in the world—and much more “As a reformed depressed person, I did not wander into my happy place. There was a personal evolution to my happiness revolution,” says Lisa of her own journey. A sought-after expert in life-crisis triage, including addiction and trauma recovery, she is acclaimed for her dynamic “H-Factor” process that makes it possible for anyone to elevate their well-being through attention, intention, and action. Lisa’s proven techniques and work as host of the popular Harvesting Happiness Talk Radio show have helped millions of people around the world generate more joy and fulfillment in their lives.

Download or read book Happy Ever After written by Paul Dolan and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-01-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Be ambitious; find everlasting love; look after your health ... There are countless stories about how we ought to live our lives. These narratives can make our lives easier, and they might sometimes make us happier too. But they can also trap us and those around us. In Happy Ever After, bestselling happiness expert Professor Paul Dolan draws on a wealth of evidence to bust the common myths about our sources of happiness and shows that there can be many unexpected paths to lasting happiness. Some of these might involve not going into higher education, choosing not to marry, rewarding acts rooted in self-interest and caring a little less about living forever. By freeing ourselves from the myth of the perfect life, we might each find a life worth living.

Download or read book Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal written by Jeanette Winterson and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heartbreaking and funny: the true story behind Jeanette's bestselling and most beloved novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. In 1985, at twenty-five, Jeanette published Oranges, the story of a girl adopted by Pentecostal parents, supposed to grow up to be a missionary. Instead, she falls in love with a woman. Disaster. Oranges became an international bestseller, inspired an award-winning BBC adaptation, and was semi-autobiographical. Mrs. Winterson, a thwarted giantess, loomed over the novel and the author's life: when Jeanette left home at sixteen because she was in love with a woman, Mrs. Winterson asked her: Why be happy when you could be normal? This is Jeanette's story--acute, fierce, celebratory--of a life's work to find happiness: a search for belonging, love, identity, a home. About a young girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night, and a mother waiting for Armageddon with two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the duster drawer; about growing up in a northern industrial town; about the Universe as a Cosmic Dustbin. She thought she had written over the painful past until it returned to haunt her and sent her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother. It is also about other people's stories, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, a life raft that supports us when we are sinking.

Download or read book This Is Happiness written by Niall Williams and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST and REAL SIMPLE A profound and enchanting new novel from Booker Prize-longlisted author Niall Williams about the loves of our lives and the joys of reminiscing. You don't see rain stop, but you sense it. You sense something has changed in the frequency you've been living and you hear the quietness you thought was silence get quieter still, and you raise your head so your eyes can make sense of what your ears have already told you, which at first is only: something has changed. The rain is stopping. Nobody in the small, forgotten village of Faha remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard was a condition of living. Now--just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of electricity--it is stopping. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is standing outside his grandparents' house shortly after the rain has stopped when he encounters Christy for the first time. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed. This is the story of all that was to follow: Christy's long-lost love and why he had come to Faha, Noel's own experiences falling in and out of love, and the endlessly postponed arrival of electricity--a development that, once complete, would leave behind a world that had not changed for centuries. Niall Williams' latest novel is an intricately observed portrait of a community, its idiosyncrasies and its traditions, its paradoxes and its inanities, its failures and its triumphs. Luminous and otherworldly, and yet anchored with deep-running roots into the earthy and the everyday, This Is Happiness is about stories as the very stuff of life: the ways they make the texture and matter of our world, and the ways they write and rewrite us.

Download or read book The Idea of You written by Robinne Lee and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now an original movie on Prime Video starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine! When Solène Marchand, the thirty-nine-year-old owner of a prestigious art gallery in Los Angeles, takes her daughter, Isabelle, to meet her favorite boy band, she does so reluctantly and at her ex-husband’s request. The last thing she expects is to make a connection with one of the members of the world-famous August Moon. But Hayes Campbell is clever, winning, confident, and posh, and the attraction is immediate. That he is all of twenty years old further complicates things. What begins as a series of clandestine trysts quickly evolves into a passionate relationship. It is a journey that spans continents as Solène and Hayes navigate each other’s disparate worlds: from stadium tours to international art fairs to secluded hideaways in Paris and Miami. And for Solène, it is as much a reclaiming of self, as it is a rediscovery of happiness and love. When their romance becomes a viral sensation, and both she and her daughter become the target of rabid fans and an insatiable media, Solène must face how her new status has impacted not only her life, but the lives of those closest to her.

Download or read book The Need written by Helen Phillips and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ***LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION*** “An extraordinary and dazzlingly original work from one of our most gifted and interesting writers” (Emily St. John Mandel, author of The Glass Hotel). The Need, which finds a mother of two young children grappling with the dualities of motherhood after confronting a masked intruder in her home, is “like nothing you’ve ever read before…in a good way” (People). When Molly, home alone with her two young children, hears footsteps in the living room, she tries to convince herself it’s the sleep deprivation. She’s been hearing things these days. Startling at loud noises. Imagining the worst-case scenario. It’s what mothers do, she knows. But then the footsteps come again, and she catches a glimpse of movement. Suddenly Molly finds herself face-to-face with an intruder who knows far too much about her and her family. As she attempts to protect those she loves most, Molly must also acknowledge her own frailty. Molly slips down an existential rabbit hole where she must confront the dualities of motherhood: the ecstasy and the dread; the languor and the ferocity; the banality and the transcendence as the book hurtles toward a mind-bending conclusion. In The Need, Helen Phillips has created a subversive, speculative thriller that comes to life through blazing, arresting prose and gorgeous, haunting imagery. “Brilliant” (Entertainment Weekly), “grotesque and lovely” (The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice), and “wildly captivating” (O, The Oprah Magazine), The Need is a glorious celebration of the bizarre and beautiful nature of our everyday lives and “showcases an extraordinary writer at her electrifying best” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Download or read book Foster written by Claire Keegan and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2022-11-01 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An international bestseller and one of The Times’ “Top 50 Novels Published in the 21st Century,” Claire Keegan’s piercing contemporary classic Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the US It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end. Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and published in an abridged version in the New Yorker, this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is now available for the first time in the US in a full, standalone edition. A story of astonishing emotional depth, Foster showcases Claire Keegan’s great talent and secures her reputation as one of our most important storytellers.

Download or read book The Sense of an Ending written by Julian Barnes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-10-05 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

Download or read book Normal People written by Sally Rooney and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOW AN EMMY-NOMINATED HULU ORIGINAL SERIES • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • “A stunning novel about the transformative power of relationships” (People) from the author of Conversations with Friends, “a master of the literary page-turner” (J. Courtney Sullivan). “[A] novel that demands to be read compulsively, in one sitting.”—The Washington Post ONE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’S TEN BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: People, Slate, The New York Public Library, Harvard Crimson Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins. A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other. Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship, and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t. WINNER: The British Book Award, The Costa Book Award, The An Post Irish Novel of the Year, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Vogue, Esquire, Glamour, Elle, Marie Claire, Vox, The Paris Review, Good Housekeeping, Town & Country

Download or read book This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage written by Ann Patchett and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'So compellingly personal you feel you're looking over her shoulder as she sits down to write' New York Times 'Electrically entertaining ... Funny, generous, spirited and kind' The Times This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is an irresistible blend of literature and memoir revealing the big experiences and little moments that shaped Ann Patchett as a daughter, wife, friend and writer. Here, Ann Patchett shares entertaining and moving stories about her tumultuous childhood, her painful early divorce, the excitement of selling her first book, driving a Winnebago from Montana to Yellowstone Park, her joyous discovery of opera, scaling a six-foot wall in order to join the Los Angeles Police Department, the gradual loss of her beloved grandmother, starting her own bookshop in Nashville, her love for her very special dog and, of course, her eventual happy marriage. This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is a memoir both wide ranging and deeply personal, overflowing with close observation and emotional wisdom, told with wit, honesty and irresistible warmth.

Download or read book Toxic Positivity written by Whitney Goodman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2024-04-02 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful guide to owning our emotions—even the difficult ones—in order to show up authentically in the world, from the popular therapist behind the Instagram account @sitwithwhit. Every day, we’re bombarded with pressure to be positive. From “good vibes only” and “life is good” memes, to endless reminders to “look on the bright side,” we’re constantly told that the key to happiness is silencing negativity wherever it crops up—in ourselves and in others. Even when faced with illness, loss, breakups, and other challenges, there’s little space for talking about our real feelings—and processing them so that we can feel better and move forward. But if non-stop positivity is the answer, why are so many of us anxious, depressed, and burned out? In this refreshingly honest guide, sought-after therapist Whitney Goodman shares the latest research along with everyday examples and client stories that reveal how damaging toxic positivity is to ourselves and our relationships, and presents simple ways to experience and work through difficult emotions. The result is more authenticity, connection, and growth—and ultimately, a path to showing up as you truly are.

Download or read book Sometimes I Lie written by Alice Feeney and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 3. Sometimes I lie. Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?

Download or read book If You re So Smart Why Aren t You Happy written by Raj Raghunathan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-04-28 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the true determinants of a happy and fulfilling life? Widely admired psychological researcher Rag Raghunathan sets out to find the answer, undertaking extensive research into the happiness of students, business people, stay-at-home-parents, lawyers, and artists, among others. From his research he reveals a crucial discovery: many of the psychological traits that lead to success ironically get in the way of happiness. Forging a new way forward, Raghunathan shows how we can transform these key traits of success, namely the need to be loved, the need for importance and the need for control, and replace them with other behaviours, goals and values to improve our life-long levels of happiness.

Download or read book All Your Perfects written by Colleen Hoover and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Starts with Us and It Ends with Us—whose writing is “emotionally wrenching and utterly original” (Sara Shepard, New York Times bestselling author of the Pretty Little Liars series)—delivers a tour de force novel about a troubled marriage and the one old forgotten promise that might be able to save it. Quinn and Graham’s perfect love is threatened by their imperfect marriage. The memories, mistakes, and secrets that they have built up over the years are now tearing them apart. The one thing that could save them might also be the very thing that pushes their marriage beyond the point of repair. All Your Perfects is a profound novel about a damaged couple whose potential future hinges on promises made in the past. This is a heartbreaking page-turner that asks: Can a resounding love with a perfect beginning survive a lifetime between two imperfect people?

Download or read book The Geography of Bliss written by Eric Weiner and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes a nation happy? Is one country's sense of happiness the same as another's? In the last two decades, psychologists and economists have learned a lot about who's happy and who isn't. The Dutch are, the Romanians aren't, and Americans are somewhere in between... After years of going to the world's least happy countries, Eric Weiner, a veteran foreign correspondent, decided to travel and evaluate each country's different sense of happiness and discover the nation that seemed happiest of all. ·He discovers the relationship between money and happiness in tiny and extremely wealthy Qatar (and it's not a good one) ·He goes to Thailand, and finds that not thinking is a contented way of life. ·He goes to the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, and discovers they have an official policy of Gross National Happiness! ·He asks himself why the British don't do happiness? In Weiner's quest to find the world's happiest places, he eats rotten Icelandic shark, meditates in Bangalore, visits strip clubs in Bangkok and drinks himself into a stupor in Reykjavik. Full of inspired moments, The Geography of Bliss accomplishes a feat few travel books dare and even fewer achieve: to make you happier.

Download or read book Some Possible Solutions written by Helen Phillips and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of short stories that "offers an idiosyncratic series of 'what-ifs' about our fragile human condition ... What if your perfect hermaphrodite match existed on another planet? What if you could suddenly see through everybody's skin to their organs? What if you knew the exact date of your death? What if your city was filled with doppelgangers of you? Forced to navigate these bizarre scenarios, Phillips' characters search for solutions to the problem of how to survive in an irrational, infinitely strange world"--