A mother faith, a child courage, a doctor dedication a moving and thought-provoking tale of hope, love, and family He might be young, but Colm already recognizes the truth: that he sick and not getting better. His mother, Cathleen, fiercely believes her faith will protect her ailing son, but Colm is not so sure. With a wisdom far beyond his years, Colm has come to terms with his probable fate, but he does have one special wish. He wants to meet his father who abandoned his beloved mother before Colm was born. But the quest to find the dying boy missing parent soon becomes a powerful journey of emotional discovery a test of belief and an anxious search for proof of heaven. A magnificent debut novel, Mary Curran Hackett Proof of Heaven is a beautiful and unforgettable exploration of the power of love and the monumental questions of life, death, and the afterlife.

In one West Philadelphia neighborhood, families come together in celebration of unity and togetherness. Their block parties provide a union that serves as a backdrop for discovering the truth about themselves and the people they think they know.Best friends Neet and Shay have depended on each other for most of their lives. However, their friendship will be tested when Neet becomes pregnant by one of the corner boys and Shay arranges an abortion that goes terribly wrong.To Shay's horror, Neet is left unable to bear children and embraces her mother's esoteric yet sometimes impractical religious beliefs as punishment for her sins.Meanwhile, Shay is left to struggle with her own growing maturity, the grief of losing a cherished friendship, and the disintegration of her parents' marriage. The two girls eventually choose their own separate paths.Leaving Cecil Street invokes those things that are most important -- family, friendship, and love.

Barber Guillaume Ladoucette has always enjoyed great success in his tiny village in southwestern France, catering to the tonsorial needs of Amour-sur-Belle's thirty-three inhabitants. But times have changed. His customers have grown older—and balder. Suddenly there is no longer a call for Guillaume's particular services, and he is forced to make a drastic career change. Since love and companionship are necessary commodities at any age, he becomes Amour-sur-Belle's official matchmaker and intends to unite hearts as ably as he once cut hair. But alas, Guillaume is not nearly as accomplished an agent of amour, as the disastrous results of his initial attempts amply prove, especially when it comes to arranging his own romantic future.For every reader who adored Chocolat, Julia Stuart's The Matchmaker of Périgord is a delectable, utterly enchanting, and sinfully satisfying delight.

Sweeping across centuries and into the Aleutian Islands of Alaska's Bering Sea, And She Was begins with a decision and a broken taboo when three starving Aleut mothers decide to take their fate into their own hands. Two hundred and fifty years later, by the time Brandy, a floundering, trashy, Latin-spewing cocktail waitress, steps ashore in the 1980s, Unalaska Island has absorbed their dark secret—a secret that is both salvation and shame. In a tense interplay between past and present, And She Was explores Aleut history, mummies, conquest, survival, and the seamy side of the 1980s in a fishing boomtown at the edge of the world, where a lost woman struggles to understand the gray shades between heroism and evil, and between freedom and bondage.

Detectives Alan Banks and Annie Cabbot return in another electrifying novel from the acclaimed award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Friend of the DevilWhen the body of a man is discovered hanging from a tree in the woods near Eastvale, all signs point toward suicide. At least that's what it initially looks like to Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot. The man is soon identified as Mark Hardcastle, the set and costume designer for the local amateur theater company. Mark was successful and well liked in the community, but enough remains mysterious about his background that suicide isn't completely out of the question. But when Mark's older and wealthier lover is discovered bludgeoned to death in his home, Annie begins to think differently. Could it have been a crime of passion, or did overwhelming grief lead to a man taking his own lifeIncreasingly confounded, she calls in the vacationing Chief Inspector Alan Banks—even if it means prying him away from his new girlfriend.Once on the investigation, Banks finds himself plunged into a case where nothing is as it seems. More and more his own words about the victim's latest production, Othello, are coming back to haunt him, for "jealousy, betrayal, envy, ambition, greed, lust, revenge—all the colors of darkness" are quickly becoming his world as well.

As Egypt's young king is crowned, a vicious killer waits in the shadows. . . . Egypt's next Pharaoh, the young Tutankhamun, is ready to claim his birthright—a vast, powerful, and sophisticated empire. It should be at the height of its glory, but it is troubled by long-lasting foreign wars, public dissent, and internal struggles. With his new wife, Ankhesenamun, the daughter of Nefertiti, Tutankhamun undertakes an audacious plan to consolidate his power and return tolerance and enlightenment to his land. But not everyone wants the ambitious new Pharaoh to succeed, and soon sinister "gifts" begin appearing in the royal palace—evil objects designed to terrify the nineteen-year-old King.Rahotep, the stalwart chief detective of the Thebes division, is summoned to the palace to investigate. As he begins to piece together the clues, he realizes that the mysterious gifts have much in common with a series of sadistic murders plaguing the city. Rahotep's determination to protect the vulnerable King and Queen makes him a target, too, and he is soon enmeshed in a web of intrigue and danger that reaches from the top command of the army to the dark heart of the empire's government. What he discovers will change his life and put everything he loves at risk. In this compelling second novel, set against the dazzling splendor of the golden age of the Pharaohs, Nick Drake takes an imaginative and historically accurate look at one of the most fascinating reigns in ancient history. Drawing on the latest archaeological evidence, he crafts a sophisticated and gripping thriller that explores one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of ancient Egypt—the untimely death of young Tutankhamun.

At seven o'clock on the morning of April 14, 1865, President Lincoln came out of his bedroom, nodded to the night guard, and started down the hall to his office. At 7:22 the following morning Surgeon General Barnes pressed silver coins to his eyelids.The president's day was, as usual, crammed with meetings and appointments, but he was probably no busier than John Wilkes Booth, the man who would stand behind him at Ford's Theatre that evening. Although the plan had been long in the making, the time and place were not set until eleven that morning.The Day Lincoln Was Shot chronicles the movements of these two men minute by minute until the almost unbearable suspense is shattered with a single gunshot and a leap to the stage. From a thousand bits and scraps of information, Jim Bishop has fashioned an unforgettable tale of tragedy, more gripping than fiction, more alive than any newspaper account.

An important book of epic scope on America's first racially integrated, religiously inspired movement for changeThe civil war brought to a climax the country's bitter division. But the beginnings of slavery's denouement can be traced to a courageous band of ordinary Americans, black and white, slave and free, who joined forces to create what would come to be known as the Underground Railroad, a movement that occupies as romantic a place in the nation's imagination as the Lewis and Clark expedition. The true story of the Underground Railroad is much more morally complex and politically divisive than even the myths suggest. Against a backdrop of the country's westward expansion arose a fierce clash of values that was nothing less than a war for the country's soul. Not since the American Revolution had the country engaged in an act of such vast and profound civil disobedience that not only challenged prevailing mores but also subverted federal law.Bound for Canaan tells the stories of men and women like David Ruggles, who invented the black underground in New York City; bold Quakers like Isaac Hopper and Levi Coffin, who risked their lives to build the Underground Railroad; and the inimitable Harriet Tubman. Interweaving thrilling personal stories with the politics of slavery and abolition, Bound for Canaan shows how the Underground Railroad gave birth to this country's first racially integrated, religiously inspired movement for social change.

Best-selling author Andy Kessler ties up the loose ends from his provocative book, Running Money, with this history of breakthrough technology and the markets that funded them.Expanding on themes first raised in his tour de force, Running Money, Andy Kessler unpacks the entire history of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, from the Industrial Revolution to computers, communications, money, gold and stock markets. These stories cut (by an unscrupulous editor) from the original manu* were intended as a primer on the ways in which new technologies develop from unprofitable curiosities to essential investments. Indeed, How We Got Here is the book Kessler wishes someone had handed him on his first day as a freshman engineering student at Cornell or on the day he started on Wall Street. This book connects the dots through history to how we got to where we are today.

A rollicking memoir by one of the greatest (and most outrageous) supermodels of the 1970s. Janice Dickinson was not only the first of the supermodels, she endured a nightmarishly traumatic childhood at the hands of a sadistic, sexually and emotionally abusive father, and emerged in the early 1970s as the first lush–lipped 'exotic' brunette to break into a modelling world dominated by sunny California blondes.Janice owned the modelling world in the 1970s. Animated by a fierce desire to be recognised, a fearless spirit, and an insatiable hunger for alcohol, cocaine, sex, and fun, Dickinson appeared on every magazine cover, worked with every major designer and photographer (from Calvin Klein and Gianni Versace to Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon), was married three times, and had passionate affairs or one night stands with everyone from Warren Beatty to Jack Nicholson to Mick Jagger. Though her career waned in the 1990s, her dramatic life story did not: in recent years she has fought a hotly contested paternity suit with Sylvester Stallone, survived a near fatal car wreck during a tequila/marijuana blackout in St Bart's, and waged a raging battle with alcohol and drug addiction.

From the celebrated author of The Dance of Anger comes an extraordinary book about mothering and how it transforms us -- and all our relationships -- inside and out. Written from her dual perspective as a psychologist and a mother, Lerner brings us deeply personal tales that run the gamut from the hilarious to the heart-wrenching. From birth or adoption to the empty nest, The Mother Dance teaches the basic lessons of motherhood: that we are not in control of what happens to our children, that most of what we worry about doesn't happen, and that our children will love us with all our imperfections if we can do the same for them. Here is a gloriously witty and moving book about what it means to dance the mother dance.

In American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson delivers a moving and achingly funny memoir of living the American dream as he journeys from the mean streets of Glasgow, Scotland, to the comedic promised land of Hollywood. Along the way he stumbles through several attempts to make his mark as a punk rock musician, a construction worker, a bouncer, and, tragically, a modern dancer. To numb the pain of failure, Ferguson found comfort in drugs and alcohol, addictions that eventually led to an aborted suicide attempt. (He forgot to do it when someone offered him a glass of sherry.) But his story has a happy ending: in 1993, the washed-up Ferguson washed up in the United States. Finally sober, Ferguson landed a breakthrough part on the hit sitcom The Drew Carey Show, a success that eventually led to his role as the host of CBS's The Late Late Show. By far Ferguson's greatest triumph was his decision to become a U.S. citizen, a milestone he achieved in early 2008, just before his command performance for the president at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. In American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson talks a red, white, and blue streak about everything our Founding Fathers feared.

In June 1942, Anne Frank received a red-and-white- checked diary for her thirteenth birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding in an Amsterdam attic to escape the Nazis. For two years, with ever-increasing maturity, Anne crafted a memoir that has become one of the most compelling documents of modern history. She described life in vivid, unforgettable detail, explored apparently irreconcilable views of human nature people are good at heart but capable of unimaginable evil and grappled with the unfolding events of World War II, until the hidden attic was raided in August 1944.But Anne Frank's diary, argues Francine Prose, is as much a work of art as a historical record. Through close reading, she marvels at the teenage Frank's skillfully natural narrative voice, at her finely tuned dialogue and ability to turn living people into characters. And Prose addresses what few of the diary's millions of readers may know: this book is a deliberate work of art. During her last months in hiding, Anne Frank furiously revised and edited her work, crafting a piece of literature that she had hoped would be read by the public after the war.Read it has been. Few books have been as influential for as long, and Prose thoroughly investigates the diary's unique afterlife: the obstacles and criticism Otto Frank faced in publishing his daughter's words; the controversy surrounding the diary's Broadway and film adaptations; and the claims of conspiracy theorists who have cried fraud, along with the scientific analysis that proved them wrong. Finally, Prose, a teacher herself, considers the rewards and challenges of sharing one of the world's most read, and most banned, books with students.How has the life and death of one girl become emblematic of the lives and deaths of so many, and why do her words continue to inspireAnne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife tells the extraordinary story of the book that became a force in the world. Along the way, Francine Prose definitively establishes that Anne Frank was not an accidental author or a casual teenaged chronicler, but a writer of prodigious talent and ambition.How has the life and death of one girl become emblematic of the lives and deaths of so many, and why do her words continue to inspireAnne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife tells the extraordinary story of the book that became a force in the world. Along the way, Francine Prose definitively establishes that Anne Frank was not an accidental author or a casual teenage chronicler, but a writer of prodigious talent and ambition.

The first-ever inside look at DARPA the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency the maverick and controversial group whose futuristic work has had amazing civilian and military applications, from the Internet to GPS to driverless cars America's greatest idea factory isn't Bell Labs, Silicon Valley, or MIT's Media Lab. It's the secretive, Pentagon-led agency known as DARPA. Founded by Eisenhower in response to Sputnik and the Soviet space program, DARPA mixes military officers with sneaker-wearing scientists, seeking paradigm-shifting ideas in varied fields from energy, robotics, and rockets to peopleless operating rooms, driverless cars, and planes that can fly halfway around the world in just hours. DARPA gave birth to the Internet, GPS, and mind-controlled robotic arms. Its geniuses define future technology for the military and the rest of us.Michael Belfiore was given unprecedented access to write this first-ever popular account of DARPA. Visiting research sites across the country, he watched scientists in action and talked to the creative, fearlessly ambitious visionaries working for and with DARPA. Much of DARPA's work is classified, and this book is full of material that has barely been reported in the general media. In fact, DARPA estimates that only 2 percent of Americans know much of anything about the agency. This fascinating read demonstrates that DARPA isn't so much frightening as it is inspiring it is our future.

Dreams -- windows into an inner world of hidden emotion and desire. Only by understanding our dreams can we fully know ourselves. And by recognizing the revealing subconscious meanings of our dreams and using that information in our waking lives, we have a greater opportunity for personal growth and change.Here is the most complete and comprehensive dream dictionary available. An essential resource for, exploring the subconscious mind, it offers thousands of dream symbols and definitions, listed alphabetically. For anyone who wishes to fully realize personal potential, this invaluable guide to dream interpretation provides essential information on how to: Keep a dream journal Recognize and understand your own personal dream symbology Encourage peaceful sloop and pleasant dreams Bring positive dreams to reality Banish bad dreams and gain Insight from nightmares Invoke healing dreams Monitor your personal progress by understanding your dreams a And much, much more! Including: Illuminating exercises, dreamwork techniques, pointers for improving visualization skills, and tips from some of the world's most respected contemporary dream masters.

The secrets of the tarot at your fingertips!TAROT: One of the world's oldest and most trusted methods of psychic divination. Since the time of the ancient Egyptians, only a select few have possessed the skills necessary to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos. But now anyone can learn to read and interpret the most complex Tarot card spreads ... in minutes! This comprehensive, fun and easy-to-use guide can transform even an uninitiated beginner into an expert psychic consultant -- offering step-by-step instruction on how to: Start with one-and two-card readings Move on quickly to the more difficult spreads -- including the traditional Celtic Cross Discover the two cards that reveal your true self Learn the twenty-nine basic questions of the Tarot Understand and specifically interpret what the cards foretell Receive helpful guidance on real-life concerns -- from career and money matters to love and life goals Includes a Complete Reference Guide to the Tarot that can be used with any deck Master the tarot in minutes for a lifetime of enjoyment and enlightenment -- the future is yours.

Informed and driven by his experience as an upper-middle-class African American who lives and works in a predominately white environment, provocative author Lawrence Otis Graham offers a unique perspective on the subject of race. An uncompromising work that will challenge the mindset of every reader, Member of the Club is a searching book of essays ranging from examining life as a black Princetonian and corporate lawyer to exploring life as a black busboy at an all white country-club. From New York magazine cover stories Invisible Man and Harlem on My Mind to such new essays as "I Never Dated a White Girl" and "My Dinner with Mister Charlie: A Black Man's Undercover Guide to Dining with Dignity at Ten Top New York Restaurants," Graham challenges racial prejudice among White Americans while demanding greater accountability and self-determination from his peers in black America. "In Member of the Club. [Graham writes of] heartbreaking ironies and contradictions, indignities and betrayals in the life of an upper-class black man." --Philadelphia Inquirer "Lawrence Graham Surely knows about the pressures of being beholden to two very different groups." --Los Angeles Times Lawrence Otis Graham is a popular commentator on race and ethnicity. The author of ten other books, his work has appeared in New York magazine, the New York Times and The Best American Essays.

One in eight high school students is depressed. But depression in teenagers can be deceptive, and authorities estimate that a huge number of depressed teens are undiagnosed. Adults may mistake symptoms as "typical" teen angst, anger, or anxiety. Or the teen may mask the symptoms with high-energy activity.For parents who suspect their teen is depressed, the system often fails the family. Insurance coverage for treatment ends too soon, there's a months-long wait to see an adolescent therapist, or long-term follow-up is insufficient.This means parents must take charge of their child's health to reinforce, extend, and monitor treatment and its aftermath. The good news is they can do it because parents know their child best.Although a medical doctor, Dr. Berlinger initially missed the signs of his own son's depression. By combining his parental love with his scientific skills, he developed a set of techniques to lead his son out of depression. Now he shares his 10 Parental Partnering Strategies to help parents rescue their teen from depression based on his own experiences, nearly 100 interviews with parents of depressed teens, and interviews with mental health professionals.Increasingly, doctors are asking parents to partner with them to help children get healthy and stay healthy. Partnering has been proven effective in the treatment of other serious emotional illnesses such as anorexia nervosa.Parents can use Dr. Berlinger's strategies to help distinguish depression from moodiness; be alert to suicide risk; monitor medication effectiveness; help the teen combat negative thinking; organize activities to offset depression; and spot signs of relapse during tense times in their child's life, including exams, relationship breakups, or starting college or a job.Both a family survival story and a practical guide, this book affirms parents' unique power to help teens overcome depression.

Maurice Hilleman's mother died a day after he was born and his twin sister stillborn. As an adult, he said that he felt he had escaped an appointment with death. He made it his life's work to see that others could do the same. Born into the life of a Montana chicken farmer, Hilleman ran off to the University of Chicago to become a microbiologist, and eventually joined Merck, the pharmaceutical company, to pursue his goal of eliminating childhood disease. Chief among his accomplishments are nine vaccines that practically every child gets, rendering formerly dread diseases including often devastating ones such as mumps and rubella practically toothless and nearly forgotten; his measles vaccine alone saves several million lives every year. Vaccinated is not a biography; Hilleman's experience forms the basis for a rich and lively narrative of two hundred years of medical history, ranging across the globe and throughout time to take in a cast of hundreds, all caught up, intentionally or otherwise, in the story of vaccines. It is an inspiring and triumphant tale, but one with a cautionary aspect, as vaccines come under assault from people blaming vaccines for autism and worse. Paul Offit clearly and compellingly rebuts those arguments, and, by demonstrating how much the work of Hilleman and others has gained for humanity, shows us how much we have to lose.

Mary Karr describes herself as a black-belt sinner, and this -- her fourth collection of poems --traces her improbable journey from the inferno of a tormented childhood into a resolutely irreverent Catholicism. Not since Saint Augustine wrote "Give me chastity, Lord -- but not yet!" has anyone brought such smart-assed hilarity to a conversion story.Karr's battle is grounded in common loss (a bitter romance, friends' deaths, a teenage son's leaving home) as well as in elegies for a complicated mother. The poems disarm with the arresting humor familiar to readers of her memoirs, The Liars' Club and Cherry. An illuminating cycle of spiritual poems have roots in Karr's eight-month tutelage in Jesuit prayer practice, and as an afterword, her celebrated essay on faith weaves the tale of how the language of poetry, which relieved her suffering so young, eventually became the language of prayer. Those of us who fret that poetry denies consolation will find clear-eyed joy in this collection.

In March 2007, twenty-four hours after Mary Weiland dragged her husband Scott's pricey rock-star wardrobe onto their driveway and torched it, she was locked up in a mental hospital. Watching all this were her frightened extended family, a conflicted husband wrestling with demons of his own, and a tabloid industry gone gleeful at the "Bonfire in Toluca Lake!"To the outside world, Weiland had led what seemed to be an enviable life. A successful international model in the nineties, she married her longtime sweetheart famed lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots and, later, Velvet Revolver, Scott Weiland in 2000. Mary was the sane one, went the story it was the tempestuous, unpredictable Scott who was crazy. In her gripping memoir Fall to Pieces, Mary Weiland reveals that the truth is somewhere in between.From her earliest days in San Diego, Weiland displayed signs of trouble: a black depression that sometimes left her immobile for days, a temper that sent her into wild rages she didn't understand, an overdose. But her fierce determination to "have more" led to early success as a model. At sixteen, she fell in love at first sight with Scott Weiland, then an aspiring musician who was hired to drive her to and from modeling gigs. Slowly, her casual relationship with beer and pot grew into an affair with cocaine and heroin that rivaled her love for Scott, who was addicted as well. From rehab to rehab, from breakup to reconciliation to eventual marriage, the couple fought their way back, welcomed the babies they'd dreamed of, and hoped their struggles were behind them. Then came the bonfire breakdown and the full onset of Mary's bipolar disorder, a widely misunderstood and misdiagnosed mental illness that affects more than five million Americans and had been, in fact, stalking Mary Weiland since her teens.With refreshing candor, innate comic timing, and earned wisdom, Weiland recounts the extreme highs and lows of her life, including an unforgettable love affair with the man she always knew she'd marry, the careers and rock tours that took them around the world, and her fight to finally come to grips with the addictions that could have killed her. In her journey to understand and manage her bipolar disorder, she takes the reader on a wild ride into the dark and back into the light.