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I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag
I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag
Gilbert, Jennifer
¥83.03
When Jennifer Gilbert was just a year out of college, a twenty-two-year-old fresh-faced young woman looking forward to a bright future, someone tried to cut her life short in the most violent way. But she survived, and not wanting this traumatic event to define her life, she buried it deep within and never spoke of it again. She bravely launched a fabulous career in New York as an event planner, designing lavish parties and fairy-tale weddings. Determined to help others celebrate and enjoy life's greatest moments, she was convinced she'd never again feel joy herself. Yet it was these weddings, anniversaries, and holiday parties, showered with all her love and attention through those silent, scary years, that slowly brought her back to life. Always the calm in the event-planning storm she could fix a ripped wedding dress, solve the problem of an undelivered wedding cake in the nick of time, and move a party with two days' notice when disaster struck there was no crisis that she couldn't turn into a professional triumph. Somewhere along the way, she felt a stirring in her heart and began yearning for more than just standing on the sidelines living vicariously through other people's lives. She fell in love, had her heart broken a few times, and then one day she found true love in a place so surprising that it literally knocked her out of her chair. As Gilbert learned over and over again, no one's entitled to an easy road, and some people's roads are bumpier than others. But survive each twist and turn she does sometimes with tears, sometimes with laughter, and often with both. Warm, wise, alternately painful and funny, I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag is an inspiring memoir of survival, renewal, and transformation. It's a tale about learning to let go and be happy after years of faking it, proving that while we can't always control what happens to us, we can control who we become. And instead of anticipating our present in a goodie bag at the end of an event, we realize our presence at every event is the real gift.
The Anti-Romantic Child
The Anti-Romantic Child
Gilman, Priscilla
¥83.03
Priscilla Gilman had the greatest expectations for the birth of her first child. Growing up in New York among writers and artists, Gilman experienced childhood as a whirlwind of imagination and creative play. Later, as a student and scholar of Wordsworth, she embraced the poet's romantic view of children and eagerly anticipated her son's birth, certain that he, too, would come "trailing clouds of glory." But her romantic vision would not be fulfilled in the ways she dreamed. Though Benjamin was an extraordinary child, the signs of his remarkable precocity were also manifestations of a developmental disorder that would require intensive therapies and special schooling, and would dramatically alter the course Priscilla had imagined for her family.In The Anti-Romantic Child, a memoir full of lyricism and light, Gilman explores the complexity of our hopes for our children, our families, and ourselves, and the ways in which experience can lead us to reimagine those hopes and expectations. Using Wordsworth's poetry as a touchstone, she speaks intimately of her poignant journey through crisis and disenchantment to a place of peace and resilience. Gilman illuminates the flourishing of life that occurs when we embrace the unexpected, and shows how events and situations often perceived as setbacks can actually enrich us. The Anti-Romantic Child is a courageous and inspiring synthesis of memoir and literature, one that resonates long after you finish the last page.The Anti-Romantic Child, Gilman's first book, was excerpted in Newsweek magazine and featured on the cover of its international edition in April 2011. It was an NPR Morning Edition Must-Read, Slate's Book of the Week, selected as one the Best Books of 2011 by the Leonard Lopate Show, and chosen as a Best Book of 2011 by The Chicago Tribune. The Anti-Romantic Child was one of five nominees for a Books for a Better Life Award for Best First Book.
The Astor Orphan
The Astor Orphan
Aldrich, Alexandra
¥83.03
Alexandra Aldrich, a direct descendant of the famous Astor dynasty, grew up in the servants' quarters of Rokeby, the forty-three-room Hudson Valley mansion built by her ancestors. Her childhood was one of bohemian neglect and real privation. But it was fairly stable until the summer of her tenth year, when her father took up with an alluring interloper, Giselle.Alexandra idolized her father, Rokeby's charismatic lord of misrule, who had attended elite private schools as a child but inherited only landed property, not money. To him, she says, "poverty was amusing, a delightful challenge." All of the family's resources emotional and financial went to the maintenance of the Astor house and legacy. If the family had sold the house and its 450 acres, they all would have been able to live comfortably. Instead, Alexandra and her parents lived precariously in the grand house, scavenging for the next meal. Her mother, an icy Polish artist, disguised her maternal indifference by extolling the virtues of independence. Relatives preyed on Alexandra's low status in the household. Once her father got involved with Giselle, Alexandra's only stalwart was her affectionate grandmother (whose great-great-grandfather, Nicholas Fish, was a close friend of Alexander Hamilton's and an executor of his estate). Grandma Claire held Alexandra's life together with family dinner parties, rides to violin lessons, and snacks after school. But as she grew progressively more debilitated by alcohol, she soon became too frail to provide a safe haven for her granddaughter. Determined to impose order on her anarchic world and prove her worth, Alexandra awoke promptly at six thirty each morning, adhering to a strict personal regimen of exercise, grooming, and intensive violin practice. With money borrowed from the owner of the local gas station, she did the grocery shopping, occasionally setting aside four dollars to buy herself clean white socks. The betrayal of her father's flagrant affair, however, ignited a series of familial feuds that shook her hard-won stability and set her on a path toward escaping the Astor legacy.Reaching back to the Gilded Age, when that legacy first began to come undone, Alexandra has written an unflinching, mordantly funny account of neglect and class anxiety amid the ruins of a once prominent family. More than an insider's look at a decaying American institution, The Astor Orphan is the debut of a thrilling new voice able to render the secret pains and glories of childhood afresh.
Why Suicide?
Why Suicide?
Marcus, Eric
¥83.03
According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, in our lifetimes 80 percent of us will have some up-close experience with the suicide of someone we know. And more than 20 percent of us will have a family member die by suicide. Journalist Eric Marcus knows this better than most people. In 1970, his father took his life at the age of 44. In 2008, his 49-year-old sister-in-law took her life as well.In a completely revised and updated edition of the landmark original Why Suicide ?, Eric Marcus offers thoughtful answers to scores of questions about this complex, painful issue, from how to recognize the signs of someone who is suicidal to strategies for coping in the aftermath of a loved one's death.No matter what the circumstances, those of us who are affected by suicide are left with difficult and disturbing questions: Why did they do itWas it my faultWhat should I tell people when they ask what happenedIs someone who attempts suicide likely to try againWhat should I do if I'm thinking of killing myselfDrawing from his own experience, as well as interviews with people who have been touched by suicide, Eric Marcus cuts through the veil of silence and misunderstanding to bring clarity, reassurance, and comfort to those who so desperately need it.
The Widow's Walk
The Widow's Walk
Barclay, Robert
¥83.03
A love beyond time and as deep as the sea . . .His name is Garrett Richmond and he has always wanted to live by the ocean. So when the opportunity to buy and renovate the old house known as Seaside arrived, he leapt at the chance. Never mind that his friends and family thought he was crazy, Garrett knew that he could return this lonely mansion worn by time, wind, and neglect to its former beauty. But Seaside is more than just a project; it is a spot that has called to him his entire life.And then one night he sees her . . .Her name is Constance Elizabeth Canfield and she tells him that Seaside has been her home for 170 years. But Constance is no ghost; she claims that she has been somehow magically trapped between this life and the next. Garrett has trouble believing her outlandish story. And yet there is something about Constance that seems from another time.Soon, this otherworldly woman and this flesh-and-blood man share a closeness they cannot deny. But just as their passion begins to bloom, Constance's presence starts mysteriously fading away. Is their love doomedOr is it strong enough to transcend time and even death itself?
The Wedding Bees
The Wedding Bees
Lynch, Sarah-Kate
¥83.03
Sugar Wallace did not believe in love at first sight, but her bees did. . . . Every spring Sugar Wallace coaxes her sleepy honeybee queen—presently the sixth in a long line of Queen Elizabeths—out of the hive and lets her crawl around a treasured old map. Wherever the queen stops is their next destination, and this year it's New York City. Sugar sets up her honeybees on the balcony of an East Village walk-up and then––as she's done everywhere since leaving South Carolina––she gets to know her neighbors. She is, after all, a former debutante who believes that manners make the world a better place even if they seem currently lacking in the big city. Plus, she has a knack for helping people. There's Ruby with her scrapbook of wedding announcements; single mom Lola; reclusive chef Nate; and George, a courtly ex-doorman. They may not know what to make of her bees and her politeness, but they can't deny the magic in her honey. And then there's Theo, a delightfully kind Scotsman who crosses Sugar's path as soon as she gets into town and is quickly besotted. But love is not on the menu for Sugar. She likes the strong independent woman she's become since leaving the South and there's nothing a charmer like Theo can do to change her mind . . . only her bees can do that. The Wedding Bees is a novel about finding sweetness where you least expect it and learning to love your way home.
Seven Notebooks
Seven Notebooks
McGrath, Campbell
¥83.03
An ant to the starsor stars to the ant which ismore irrelevant?Weekend Jet Skiers rude to call them idiots,yes, but facts are facts.Clamor of seabirdsas the sun falls I look upand ten years have passed." from "Dawn Notebook" Such is the expansive terrain of Seven Notebooks: the world as it is seen, known, imagined, and dreamed; our lives as they are felt, thought, desired, and lived. Written in forms that range from haiku to prose, and in a voice that veers from incantatory to deadpan, these seven poetic sequences offer diverse reflections on language and poetry, time and consciousness, civilization and art to say nothing of bureaucrats, surfboards, and blue margaritas. Taken collectively, Seven Notebooks composes a season-by-season account of a year in the life of its narrator, from spring in Chicago to summer at the Jersey Shore to winter in Miami Beach. Not a novel in verse, not a poetic journal, but a lyric chronicle, this utterly unique book reclaims territory long abandoned by American poetry, a characteristic ambition of Campbell McGrath, one of the most honored, accessible, and humanistically engaged writers of our time.
The Lessons of Love
The Lessons of Love
Beattie, Melody
¥83.03
The timeless, magical story of one woman's return to life and love when she thought she had lost it all.
Blood Relation
Blood Relation
Konigsberg, Eric
¥83.03
A New Yorker writer investigates the life and career of his hit-man great-uncle and the impact on his family.Growing up in a household as generic as Midwestern Jews get, author Eric Konigsberg always wished there was something different about his family, something exotic and mysterious, even shocking. When he was sent off to boarding school, he learned from an ex-cop security guard that there was: His great-uncle Harold, in prison in upstate New York, was a legendary Mafia enforcer, suspected by the FBI of upwards of twenty murders.Konigsberg had uncovered a shameful, long-hidden family secret. His grandfather, a Jewish Horatio Alger story who had become a respected merchant through honesty and hard work, never spoke of his baby brother. When other relatives could be coaxed into talking about him, he wasn't "Kayo" Konigsberg, the "smartest hit man" and "toughest Jew" described by cops and associates; he was Uncle Heshy, the loudmouth nogoodnik and smalltime con, long since written off as dead. Intrigued, Konigsberg ignored his family's protests and arranged a meeting, which inspired the acclaimed New Yorker piece this book is based on.In Blood Relation, Konigsberg portrays Harold as a fascinating, paradoxical character: both brutal and winning, a cold-blooded killer and a larger-than-life charmer who taught himself to read as an adult and served as his own lawyer in two major trials, to riotous effect. Functioning by turns as Kayo's pursuer, jailhouse scribe, pawn, and antagonist, Konigsberg traces his great-uncle's checkered and outlandish life and investigates his impact on his family and others who crossed his path, weaving together strands of family, Jewish identity, justice, and post-war American history.
24 Days
24 Days
Smith, Rebecca
¥83.03
This is the story of Rebecca Smith and John R. Emshwiller, the two reporters who led the Wall Street Journal's reporting on Enron and uncovered the unorthodox partnerships at the heart of the scandal through skill, luck, and relentless determination. It all started in August 2001when Emshwiller was assigned to write a supposedly simple article on the unexpected resignation of Enron CEO Jeff Skilling. During his research, Emshwiller uncovered a buried reference to an off-balance-sheet partnership called LJM. Little did he know, this was the start of a fast and furious ride through the remarkable downfall of a once highly-prized company. Written in an intense, fast paced narrative style, 24 Days tells the gripping story of the colossal collapse of what would become the world's most notorious corporation. The reader follows along as Smith and Emshwiller continue to uncover new partnerships and self-dealing among the highest levels of Enron's management. As they publish articles detailing their findings in the Journal, Wall Street and individual investors have a crisis of confidence and start selling Enron stock at unprecedented levels of volume. In the end - 24 short days later - Enron had completely collapsed, erasing 16 years of growth and losing $19 billion in market value while watching the stock drop from $33.84 to $8.41. Not only was the company destroyed, but investors and retired employees were completely wiped out-all the while Enron executives were collecting millions of dollars. Climaxing with this 24-day period, this book shows the reporter's-eye view of a David-and-Goliath battle between journalists and a giant corporation. Each day a new story uncovered another fact; each day the company issued denials. And when the investigative stories reached critical mass and momentum, the stock market cast its final vote of no confidence. In the tradition of Indecent Exposure and Barbarians at the Gate, two other gripping narratives that began as a series of Wall Street Journal stories and ended up as books that defined an era, 24 Days brings the importance of great investigative journalism to life.
The Best of Friends
The Best of Friends
James, Sara
¥83.03
From sharing secrets as children to chasing unconventional dreams as adults, network correspondent Sara James and wildlife filmmaker Ginger Mauney explore their learning curve on life through the lens of their thirty-year friendship Transplanting southern roots to southern Africa, Ginger Mauney has earned the acceptance of a troop of baboons, unraveled mysteries of life and death in an elephant herd, and raised her young son in the wilds of Namibia but has often felt the pull of the country she once called home. As a local television anchor, Sara James paid her own way to cover the war in Nicaragua, a gamble that later propelled her to NBC. At the network, James exposed slavery in Sudan and plunged to the gravesite of the Titanic, but struggled to balance her demanding career with marriage and motherhood.Though the two lead seemingly opposite lives, there is much they share: a hometown in Richmond, Virginia, an attraction to life on the razor's edge, a weakness for men with foreign passports and accents, and a past. Now, in their heartfelt memoir, Mauney and James alternately narrate the story of how, they, two women separated by thousands of miles, have found themselves bound together through temperament, circumstance, and serendipity. The Best of Friends uses the example of their lives to explore such universal questions as: When your heart is broken, how do you healHow do you realize your dreams without compromising yourselfHow do you tame ambition to make room for love and familyAnd what does it mean as an adult to be a "best" friendThe Best of Friends is James and Mauney's story, but it is also the story of so many women in their twenties, thirties, and forties who, with the help of friends, dared to reinvent their lives just when it seemed that everything was falling apart.
Spider, Spin Me A Web
Spider, Spin Me A Web
Block, Lawrence
¥83.03
The craft of writing is a lot like spinning a web: You take threads and weave them skillfully together, and only you know where this intricate network of twists and turns begin and how it will end. Now, with Lawrence Bloock's expert advice, you can learn this art of entrapping your reader in a maze of facinating fiction.Spider, Spin Me a Web is the perfect companion volume to Block's previous book on writing, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, which Sue Grafton noted "should be a permanent part of every writer's library." As helpful and supportive as always, Block shares what he's learned over the course of writing over one hundred published books: techniques to help you to write a solid piece of fiction; strategies for getting a reader (or editor) to reaad and buy your book; ideas for increasing your creativity and developing an environment that will nourish you and your craft. Spider, Spin Me a Web is a complete guide to achieving your full potential as awriter.
The Card
The Card
O'Keeffe, Michael
¥83.03
Since its limited release just after the turn of the twentieth century, this American Tobacco cigarette card has beguiled and bedeviled collectors. First identified as valuable in the 1930s, when the whole notion of card collecting was still young, the T206 Wagner has remained the big score for collectors who have scoured card shows, flea markets, estate sales, and auctions for the portrait of baseball's greatest shortstop. Only a few dozen T206 Wagners are known to still exist. Most, with their creases, stains, and dog-eared corners, look worn and tattered, like they've been around for almost a century. But one The Card appears to have defied the travails of time. Thanks to its sharp corners and its crisp portrait of Honus Wagner, The Card has become the most famous and desired baseball card in the world.Over the decades, as The Card has changed hands, its value has skyrocketed. It was initially sold for $25,000 by a small card shop in a nonde* strip mall. Years later, hockey great Wayne Gretzky bought it at the venerable Sotheby's auction house for $451,000. Then, more recently, it sold for $1.27 million on eBay. Today worth over $2 million, it has transformed a sleepy hobby into a billion-dollar industry that is at times as lawless as the Wild West. The Card has made men wealthy, certainly, but it has also poisoned lifelong friendships and is fraught with controversy from its uncertain origins and the persistent questions about its provenance to the possibility that it is not exactly as it seems. Now for the first time, award-winning investigative reporters Michael O'Keeffe and Teri Thompson follow the trail of The Card from a Florida flea market to the hands of the world's most prominent collectors. They delve into a world of counterfeiters and con men and look at the people who profit from what used to be a kids' pastime, as they bring to light ongoing investigations into sports collectibles. O'Keeffe and Thompson also examine the life of the great Honus Wagner, a ballplayer whose accomplishments have been eclipsed by his trading card, and the strange and fascinating subculture of sports memorabilia and its astonishing decline.Intriguing and eye-opening, The Card is a ground-breaking look at a uniquely American hobby.
Cracked
Cracked
Pinsky, Drew
¥83.03
Dr. Drew Pinsky is best known as the cohost of the long-running radio advice program Loveline. But his workday is spent at a major Southern California clinic, treating the severest cases of drug dependency and psychiatric breakdown. In this riveting book, Pinsky reveals the intimate and often shocking stories of his patients as they struggle with emotional trauma, sexual abuse, and a host of chemical nemeses: alcohol, marijuana, Ecstasy, heroin, speed, cocaine, and pre*ion drugs. At the center of these stories is Pinsky himself, who immerses himself passionately, almost obsessively, in his work. From the sexually compulsive model to the BMW-driving soccer mom, Cracked exposes, in fast-moving, powerful vignettes, the true scope and severity of addiction, a nationwide epidemic.
Bottom of the 33rd
Bottom of the 33rd
Barry, Dan
¥83.03
On April 18, 1981, a ball game sprang eternal. What began as a modestly attended minor-league game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings became not only the longest ever played in baseball history, but something else entirely. The first pitch was thrown after dusk on Holy Saturday, and for the next eight hours the night seemed to suspend its participants between their collective pasts and futures, between their collective sorrows and joys the ballplayers; the umpires; Pawtucket's ejected manager, peering through a hole in the backstop; the sportswriters and broadcasters; a few stalwart fans shivering in the cold.With Bottom of the 33rd, celebrated New York Times journalist Dan Barry has written a lyrical meditation on small-town lives, minor-league dreams, and the elements of time and community that conspired one fateful night to produce a baseball game seemingly without end. Bottom of the 33rd captures the sport's essence: the purity of purpose, the crazy adherence to rules, the commitment of both players and fans. This genre-bending book, a reportorial triumph, portrays the myriad lives held in the night's unrelenting grip. Consider, for instance, the team owner determined to revivify a decrepit stadium, built atop a swampy bog, or the batboy approaching manhood, nervous and earnest, or the umpire with a new family and a new home, or the wives watching or waiting up, listening to a radio broadcast slip into giddy exhaustion. Consider the small city of Pawtucket itself, its ghosts and relics, and the players, two destined for the Hall of Fame (Cal Ripken and Wade Boggs), a few to play only briefly or forgettably in the big leagues, and the many stuck in minor-league purgatory, duty bound and loyal to the game.An unforgettable portrait of ambition and endurance, Bottom of the 33rd is the rare sports book that changes the way we perceive America's pastime, and America's past.
Life in a Medieval Castle
Life in a Medieval Castle
Gies, Joseph
¥83.03
"The authors allow medieval man and woman to speak for themselves through selections from past journals, songs, even account books."--Time
The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander
The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander
Coloroso, Barbara
¥83.03
It's the deadliest combination going: bullies who terrorize, bullied kids who are afraid to tell, bystanders who watch, and adults who see the incidents as a normal part of childhood. All it takes to understand that this is a recipe for tragedy is a glance at headlines across the country. In this updated edition of The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander, which includes a new section on cyberbullying, one of the world's most trusted parenting educators gives parents, caregivers, educators and most of all, kids the tools to break the cycle of violence.Drawing on her decades of work with troubled youth, and her wide experience in the areas of conflict resolution and reconciliatory justice, Barbara Coloroso explains: The three kinds of bullying, and the differences between boy and girl bullies Four abilities that protect your child from succumbing to bullying Seven steps to take if your child is a bully How to help the bullied child heal and how to effectively discipline the bully How to evaluate a school's antibullying policy And much more This compassionate and practical guide has become the groundbreaking reference on the subject of bullying.
Don't Just Do Something, Sit There
Don't Just Do Something, Sit There
Boorstein, Sylvia
¥83.03
Get away from doing and into being with this lively, down-to-earth guide to your own meditation retreat by beloved mindfulness meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein. Presenting what Jon Kabat-Zinn has called "endearingly personal mindfulness wisdom," she offers a three-day retreat plan accompanied by timeless lessons -- always grounded in real life -- on how anyone can achieve calm, clarity and joy through meditation practices.
The Secret Life of Lobsters
The Secret Life of Lobsters
Corson, Trevor
¥83.03
In this intimate portrait of an island lobstering community and aneccentric band of renegade biologists, journalist Trevor Corson escorts the reader onto the slippery decks of fishing boats, through danger-filled scuba dives, and deep into the churning currents of the Gulf of Maine to learn about the secret undersea lives of lobsters.This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
Relationship Obits
Relationship Obits
Horan, Kathleen
¥83.03
Because We All Have a Relationship We Need to Put to Rest From your basic lying, cheating, no-good scum to those relationships that were doomed from the start (they were married to different people), to a man who faked his death, Relationship Obits is a voyeuristic romp through the unexplored underbelly of love and life. Kathleen Horan founded relationshipobit.com when a big breakup was followed two weeks later by the death of her father. Writing her father's obituary made her wonder what it would be like to write one for the end of her relationship. The Web site was born and thousands began to put their love to rest online. This collection is at times hilarious, raw, shocking, and poignant a true celebration of love in all its manifestations.
Learning to Bow
Learning to Bow
Feiler, Bruce
¥83.03
Learning to Bow has been heralded as one of the funniest, liveliest, and most insightful books ever written about the clash of cultures between America and Japan. With warmth and candor, Bruce Feiler recounts the year he spent as a teacher in a small rural town. Beginning with a ritual outdoor bath and culminating in an all-night trek to the top of Mt. Fuji, Feiler teaches his students about American culture, while they teach him everything from how to properly address an envelope to how to date a Japanese girl.