Paul Guest was twelve years old, racing down a hill on a too big, ancient bicycle, when he discovered he had no brakes. Steering into anything that would slow down the bike, he hit a ditch, was thrown over the handlebars, and broke his neck.One More Theory About Happiness follows a boy into manhood, from the harrowing days immediately after his accident to his adult life as a teacher, award-winning poet, and soon-to-be husband. With wit, courage, and an unstoppable drive to live a life of his own creation stemming in part from his remarkable parents, who insisted he return to school only days after arriving home from the hospital Paul makes peace with his paralysis. As he grows older, he transforms it with his art, cultivating his lifelong gift for language into a searing poetic sensibility that has earned him praise from the highest ranks of American letters ( Wonderful John Ashbery; Astonishing Jorie Graham; Fierce and unnerving Robert Hass).An unforgettable story shatteringly funny, deeply moving, and breathtakingly honest One More Theory About Happiness takes us from a body irrevocably changed to a life fiercely cherished.

Until the summer of 2007, the word Asperger's, was not a part of Shonda Schilling's vocabulary, but that summer changed everything. By then, her household was in chaos as her son Grant spiraled out of control. His acting out and refusal to listen had grown to epic proportions, but even worse was his apparent inability to relate to the people around him. None of the Schillings' other three kids ever acted like Grant; his behavior wasn't just unruly, it was irrational. Complicating matters was the fact that Shonda's husband, Curt, was constantly on the road pitching for the Boston Red Sox, so he wasn't always around to see Grant's behavior firsthand. Seemingly everyone Shonda encountered had an opinion "he's too spoiled," "he needs a good spanking," "he needs more discipline" but it was a disastrous first attempt at summer camp that told Shonda something was definitely wrong. It was then that a neurologist diagnosed Grant with Asperger's syndrome a form of high-functioning autism that, in recent years, has been found in children who at first glance appear disruptive and difficult. Now in The Best Kind of Different, Shonda details every step of her family's journey with Asperger's, offering a parent's perspective on this complicated and increasingly common condition. Looking back on Grant's early years, she describes the signals she missed in his behavior and confronts the guilt that engulfed her after she came to understand just how misguided her parenting had been before the diagnosis. In addition, she talks about the harsh judgment she's faced from people who don't buy into the diagnosis and how she's used passion and information to fight the ignorance of others.Celebrating Grant's successes and learning from his setbacks, Shonda demonstrates how Asperger's forced her and her husband to reconsider everything they thought they knew about their son and each other, but in the end, it has made their marriage and their family stronger and happier. A tribute to Grant's strength and a candid glimpse into a family coming to terms with its differences, The Best Kind of Different is an intimate portrait of two parents struggling to understand the complex beauty of their son.

For more than thirty years, Pat Benatar has been one of the most iconic women in rock music, with songs like "Heartbreaker," "Hit Me with Your Best Shot," and "Love Is a Battlefield" becoming anthems for multiple generations of fans. Now, in this intimate and uncompromising memoir, one of the bestselling female rock artists of all time shares the story of her extraordinary career, telling the truth about her life, her struggles, and how she won things her way.From her early days in the New York club scene of the 1970s to headlining sold-out arena tours, Benatar offers a fascinating account of a life spent behind the microphone. As the first female artist ever to be played on MTV, she speaks candidly about the realities of breaking into the boys' club of rock and roll at a time when people everywhere still believed a woman's only place in popular music was as a girlfriend, a groupie, or a sex symbol. And though her fiery edge and aggressive swagger produced instant success, they also led to fights over her image that would linger for years to come.Going backstage and into the studio, Benatar sets the record straight about how her music evolved, illustrating the visionary role that her guitarist, producer, and eventual husband, Neil "Spyder" Giraldo, played in combining her classically trained voice with razor-sharp guitar to create her unique hard-rock sound. Together they formed a musical and spiritual bond that would last a lifetime, helping her stay true to herself while avoiding the pitfalls and excesses of rock stardom.Written with the attitude and defiance that embodies Pat Benatar's music, Between a Heart and a Rock Place is a rock-and-roll story unlike any other, a remarkable tale of playing by your own rules, even if that means breaking a fewof theirs.

In twenty-nine provocative essays, Joyce Carol Oates maps the "rough country" that is both the treacherous geographical and psychological terrain of the writers she so cogently analyzes Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, E. L. Doctorow, and Margaret Atwood, among others and the emotional terrain of Oates's own life following the unexpected death of her husband, Raymond Smith, after forty-eight years of marriage. "As literature is a traditional solace to the bereft, so writing about literature can be a solace, as it was to me when the effort of writing fiction seemed beyond me, as if belonging to another lifetime," Oates writes. "Reading and taking notes, especially late at night when I can't sleep, has been the solace, for me, that saying the Rosary or reading The Book of Common Prayer might be for another." The results of those meditations are the essays of In Rough Country balanced and illuminating investigations that demonstrate an artist working at the top of her form.

The foremost contemporary choreographer in the history of ballet, George Balanchine extended the art form into radical new paths that came to seem inevitable under his direction. He transformed movement and dance in classical and modern ballet, on the Broadway stage, and in the cinema.George Balanchine chronicles the life and achievements of this visionary artist from his early, almost accidental career in Russia, where his lifelong collaboration with Igor Stravinsky was forged, to his extraordinary accomplishments in America. The editor and writer Robert Gottlieb, one of the most knowledgeable dance critics in America, offers a superb and loving portrait of a genius who, though married many times to many ballerinas, remained truest to his greatest love, Terpischore, the Greek Muse of dance.

On January 14, 1993, a team of scientists descended into the crater of Galeras, a restless Andean volcano in southern Colombia, for a day of field research. As the group slowly moved across the rocky moonscape of the caldera near the heart of the volcano, Galeras erupted, its crater exploding in a barrage of burning rocks and glowing shrapnel. Nine men died instantly, their bodies torn apart by the blast.While others watched helplessly from the rim, Colombian geologist Marta Calvache raced into the rumbling crater, praying to find survivors. This was Calvache's second volcanic disaster in less than a decade. In 1985 Calvache was part of a group of Colombia's brightest young scientists that had been studying activity at Nevado del Ruiz, a volcano three hundred miles north of Galeras. They had warned of the dire consequences of an eruption for months, but their fledgling coalition lacked the resources and muscle to implement a plan of action or sway public opinion. When Nevado del Ruiz erupted suddenly in November 1985, it wiped the city of Armero off the face of the earth and killed more than twenty-three thousand people -- one of the worst natural disasters of the twentieth century.No Apparent Danger links the characters and events of these two eruptions to tell a riveting story of scientific tragedy and human heroism. In the aftermath of Nevado del Ruiz, volcanologists from all over the world came to Galeras -- some to ensure that such horrors would never be repeated, some to conduct cutting-edge research, and some for personal gain. Seismologists, gas chemists, geologists, and geophysicists hoped to combine their separate areas of expertise to better understand and predict the behavior of monumental forces at work deep within the earth.And yet, despite such expertise, experience, and training, crucial data were ignored or overlooked, essential safety precautions were bypassed, and fifteen people descended into a death trap at Galeras. Incredibly, expedition leader Stanley Williams was one of five who survived, aided bravely by Marta Calvache and her colleagues. But nine others were not so lucky.Expertly detailing the turbulent history of Colombia and the geology of its snow-peaked volcanoes, Victoria Bruce weaves together the stories of the heroes, victims, survivors, and bystanders, evoking with great sensitivity what it means to live in the shadow of a volcano, a hair's-breadth away from unthinkable natural calamity, and shows how clashing cultures and scientific arrogance resulted in tragic and unnecessary loss of life.

Hundreds of books have been written on the art of writing. Here at last is a book by two professional editors to teach writers the techniques of the editing trade that turn promising manu*s into published novels and short stories.In this completely revised and updated second edition, Renni Browne and Dave King teach you, the writer, how to apply the editing techniques they have developed to your own work. Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an expert editor would go through to perfect your manu*. Each point is illustrated with examples, many drawn from the hundreds of books Browne and King have edited.

Girls to the Front is the epic, definitive history of Riot Grrrl the radical feminist uprising that exploded into the public eye in the 1990s and included incendiary punk bands Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, and Huggy Bear. A dynamic chronicle not just a movement but an era, this is the story of a group of pissed off girls with no patience for sexism and no intention of keeping quiet.

The remarkable Mary Nisbet was the Countess of Elgin in Romantic-era Scotland and the wife of the seventh Earl of Elgin. When Mary accompanied her husband to diplomatic duty in Turkey, she changed history. She helped bring the smallpox vaccine to the Middle East, struck a seemingly impossible deal with Napoleon, and arranged the removal of famous marbles from the Parthenon. But all of her accomplishments would be overshadowed, however, by her scandalous divorce. Drawing from Mary's own letters, scholar Susan Nagel tells Mary's enthralling, inspiring, and suspenseful story in vibrant detail.

It was a desperate mission that made front-page headlines and captured the attention of millions of readers around the world. In January 1998, in the dead of an Alaskan winter, a cataclysmic Arctic storm with hurricane-force winds and towering seas forced five fishermen to abandon their vessel in the Gulf of Alaska and left them adrift in thirty-eight-degree water with no lifeboat. Their would-be rescuers were 150 miles away at the Coast Guard station, with the nearby airport shut down by an avalanche.The Last Run is the epic tale of the wreck of the oldest registered fishing schooner in Alaska, a hellish Arctic tempest, and the three teams of aviators in helicopters who withstood 140-mph gusts and hovered alongside waves that were ten stories high. But what makes this more than a true-life page-turner is its portrait of untamed Alaska and the unflappable spirit of people who forge a different kind of life on America's last frontier, the "end of the roaders" who are drawn to, or flee to, Alaska to seek a final destiny.

New York Times and USA Today Bestseller!In the tradition of Kristin Hannah and Susan Wiggs, Mary McNear introduces readers to the town of Butternut Lake and to the unforgettable people who call it home.It's summer, and after ten years away, Allie Beckett has returned to her family's cabin beside tranquil Butternut Lake, where as a teenager she spent so many carefree days. She's promised her five-year-old son, Wyatt, they will be happy there. She's promised herself this is the place to begin again after her husband's death in Afghanistan. The cabin holds so many wonderful memories, but from the moment she crosses its threshold Allie is seized with doubts. Has she done the right thing uprooting her little boy from the only home he's ever known?Allie and her son are embraced by the townsfolk, and her reunions with old acquaintances—her friend Jax, now a young mother of three with one more on the way, and Caroline, the owner of the local coffee shop—are joyous ones. And then there are newcomers like Walker Ford, who mostly keeps to himself—until he takes a shine to Wyatt . . . and to Allie.Everyone knows that moving forward is never easy, and as the long, lazy days of summer take hold, Allie must learn to unlock the hidden longings of her heart, and to accept that in order to face the future she must also confront—and understand—what has come before.

An esteemed former CIA director dies off the coast of Maine. Another senior CIA officer is found dead of a "heart attack" in a posh Paris hotel. Counterspy Alex Hawke and his friend Ambrose Congreve think this could be more than coincidence. Hawke discovers that the victims are connected through one man: Spider Payne, a rogue intelligence officer whose dangerous exploits got him barred from the CIA. Now Spider believes he's been wronged and is out for vengeance—and Alex Hawke is his number-one target.Hawke's only hope is to lure his deadly enemy into a trap he can't escape—and it's a place Hawke knows better than anyone: his seaside home in Bermuda.Includes a sneak preview of Warriors, the exhilarating new novel in the Alex Hawke series.

In this final chapter in James Earl Hardy's groundbreaking B-Boy Blues series, Mitchell "Little Bit" Crawford and Raheim "Pooquie" Rivers are all grown up. Mitchell is a stay-at-home dad renovating his dream house, writing, and raising his godson and half-sister in Brooklyn's up-and-coming Fort Greene neighborhood. He's fairly happy, but he can't help feeling that something -- or someone -- is missing from his life.Fresh from rehab for a gambling addiction, Raheim has a new lease on life, but it's precarious -- his career as an actor has stalled, he hasn't seen his son in years, and the short-lived sexual trysts that punctuated his life no longer satisfy him. Hell-bent on change, Raheim has finally figured out who he wants to be with forever. But will Mitchell give Raheim the second chance he so desperately wants?

From the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Silent Girls comes another unforgettable thriller set in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, featuring Detective Sonja TestEven in a quiet Vermont town, unspeakable acts of the past can destroy the peace of the presentIn the remote, pastoral hamlet of Canaan, Vermont, a high-profile legal case shatters the town's sense of peace and community. Anger simmers. Fear and prejudice awaken. Old friends turn on each other. Violence threatens.So when a young teenage girl is savagely murdered while babysitting at the house of the lead attorney in the case, Detective Sonja Test believes the girl's murder and the divisive case must be linked.However, as the young detective digs deeper into her first murder case, she discovers sordid acts hidden for decades, and learns that behind the town's idyllic fa?ade of pristine snow lurks a capacity in some for great darkness and the betrayal of innocents. And Sonja Test, a mother of two, will do anything to protect the innocent.

At age 30, Iley Gilbert is thoroughly sick of trying to make it in the photo biz, and disenchanted after putting in stints at a Boston-area newspaper, a photography gallery, and even a pathetic frame shop. When she abruptly quits the frame shop, she's ready to give up for good, until she spots a compelling ad in the paper. A photographer who shoots high school prom photos is looking for an assistant. Not only that, He's willing to pay top dollar to someone who would give up Friday and Saturday nights to help take pre-prom pictures of high-school kids dressed in their finery and candid shots during the dance. William Jasper, Prom Photographer, is not the brand of aging, greasy wedding photographer she was expecting. Rather, He's 35, strikingly handsome, and sharp-witted. Iley is instantly attracted to him and gets the sense the feeling is mutual. But William isn't everything He's made himself out to be that is, he's not single. He's got a permanently out-of town wife-he doesn't need a girlfriend. But Iley has lost her way, and she-ll need her friends and her photos and a lot of bad proms before she can find her way back on track, away from the sleezeball, and into a life that-s a little more picture-perfect.

A poignant debut novel about the transformative powers of yoga and friendship for four women on the verge of realizing their dreamsWith beauty, brains, and a high-paying Wall Street position, Charlie was a woman who seemed to have it all—until she turned thirty and took stock of her life, or lack thereof. She left it all behind to pursue yoga, and now, two years later, she's looking to drum up business for her fledgling studio in Brooklyn. Attending her college's alumni night with fliers in tow, she reconnects with three former classmates whose post-graduation lives, like hers, haven't turned out like they'd hoped.Romance book editor Sabine still longs to write the novel that's bottled up inside her. Once an up-and-coming photographer and Upper East Side social darling, Naomi is now a single mom who hasn't picked up her camera in years. And Bess, who dreamed of being a serious investigative journalist a la Christiane Amanpour, is stuck in a rut, writing snarky captions for a gossip mag. But at a weekly yoga class at Charlie's studio, the four friends, reunited ten years after college, will forge new bonds and take new chances—as they start over, fall in love, change their lives...and come face-to-face with haunting realities.

Suze is used to trouble, but this time she's in deep: Ghostly Jesse has her heart, but Paul Slater, a real flesh—and—blood guy, is warm for her form. And mediator Paul knows how to send Jesse to the Great Beyond. For good. Paul claims he won't do anything to Jesse as long as Suze will go out with him. Fearing she'll lose Jesse forever, Suze agrees. But even if Suze can get Jesse to admit his true feelings for her, what kind of future can she have with a guy who's already dead?

Gerin, King of Khedesh, has long since accepted the mantle of Amber Wizard—the first in a millennium—with all the terrible responsibility that accompanies it. He has prevented the dread wizard-king, Asankaru, from attaining the all-powerful Words of Making, but the enemy grows stronger by the day. And now Gerin must be resolute and pursue the secret of the Words at any and all cost. For a new foe has emerged in a furious race toward a magical artifact that can awaken and command monsters long thought dead. And nothing will survive the devastation wrought by dragon fire.

Once upon a time in the city of Shangri-L.A., someone left a baby on a doorstep. She had wild, dark hair and purple eyes and looked at the world in a special way.The family that took her in called her Witch Baby and raised her as their own. But even though she tried to fit in, Witch Baby never felt as though she truly belonged.So one day she packed her bat-shaped backpack, put her black cowboy-boot roller skates, and went out into the real world to find out who she really was....

Springtime in Rambletown means one thing—another season of Rounders baseball! Old Man Winter has delivered more snow than the post office has delivered mail! The only way the Rounders are getting to first base is with a snow shovel. As the team tries to "warm up" for the upcoming season, they welcome a new center fielder: Orlando Ramirez. He's fast as a cheetah and catches everything. Only one problem: those great catches end with him smashing into the outfield wall like a crash-test dummy. With the season opener against the hated Haymakers approaching, Orlando and the Rounders will need a miracle—or a really big shovel—to put the brakes on Orlando's collision course with the wall and this never-ending cold spell.

18-year-old Brook Searcy has just begun her first year at the Air Force Academy. Abandoned by her mother and raised by a loving yet distant father, Brook has surprised her traditional East Coast family by deciding to enter a completely foreign world -- the military. At the Academy she encounters both friends and terrifying foes, and experiences both first love and terrible loss as her relationships with her fellow cadets grow. Commandant John Waller, a former fighter pilot, has made the Air Force his life for nearly twenty years. His career couldn-t be in better shape, but he finds himself drifting away from his wife and daughters. And when a new (and female) Superintendent who-s never flown a plane becomes Waller-s new boss, he worries that the institution that he-s shaped his life around might be slipping away as well.Over the course of two years, terrible scandals and heartbreaking tragedy touch both Brook and Waller-s lives -- forcing them to make wrenching decisions that will shape both their careers and their lives.