Written with warmth, sensitivity, and insight, Crossing Paths shows parents how to get through the worst flash points of an adolescent-induced midlife crisis and how to make this time an opportunity for positive change.

Contributors include Cheryl Strayed, Carrot Quinn, Barney "Scout" Mann, Aspen Matis, Nicholas Kristof, Heather Anderson, Will "Akuna" Robinson, and many more Shares new stories over the last decade to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the original PCT Readers Sidebars address some of the issues affecting the PCT today Includes a map of the PCT to follow along with the stories What’s it like to be a trail angel and can romance truly blossom from first meeting to marriage on the Pacific Crest Trail? How do trail names get bestowed and what does it mean when you find yourself roaring back at a mountain lion? How have climate change, technology, and the sheer number of hikers affected life on the PCT? Find the answers to all these questions, and so many more, in the diverse writings gathered in Crossing Paths, an anthology of stories and poems written by PCT hikers. Reflecting the contributors’ rich and varied individual experiences, this collection includes both ordinary and extraordinary experiences, from dodging lightning strikes on an exposed ridge south of Sonora Pass or surviving early fall snowstorms in the Cascades, to deeply personal walks-as-therapy following military service or cancer treatment. The selection represents geographic, gender, ethnic, and age diversity, and strives to reflect the totality and depth of life on the trail.

Each discussion contributes to a portrait of these three composers as musical storytellers, each in his own way simulating the structure of lived experience in works of art."--BOOK JACKET.

Merideth Bradley, a professional fundraiser, needs a job fast--the further from NYC the better. She takes a gamble on helping a British landowner keep his historic estate in private hands. Meri's concept of a cross-continental Georgian Ball pairs perfectly with the owner's fundraising plans, until the property abruptly falls to his heir, Robert. When Meri discovers Robert is the carefree climber from the local pub she's been sharing hikes and kisses with on weekends she feels betrayed. Again! And his unwillingness to take responsibility for the future of this special house and all those who depend on it incenses her. Forced to work with him while he decides the fate of the property she's come to love, she struggles against her own past mistakes, reluctant to accept Robert's effort to define what matters most to him in life. Can Meri and Robert ignore the power of their own attraction? Not when Meri's ex-lover arrives to blackmail her and a shocking catastrophe demands Robert and Meri make choices, for both the property and themselves. You can run but you can't hide.

This fascinating book will interest anyone wanting to learn more about the relationship between mathematics and the arts.

Booker Prize-winning author John Berger, one of the most widely admired writers of our time, returns us to the captivating play and narrative allure of his previous novels–G. and Pig Earth among them–with a shimmering fiction drawn from chapters of his own life. One hot afternoon in Lisbon, the narrator finds his long-dead mother seated on a park bench. “The dead don’t stay where they are buried,” she tells him. And so begins a remarkable odyssey, told in simple yet gorgeous prose, that carries us from the London Blitz in 1943, to a Polish market, to a Paleolithic cave, to the Ritz Hotel in Madrid. Here Is Where We Meet is a unique literary journey that moves freely through time and space but never loses its foothold in the sensuous present.

The crossing paths of friendship, family, love, and loss are often complicated. June Deckert and Caroline Smith sparked a friendship in college that carried them through graduation. Although they are complete opposites in every way, they have spent the last four years inseparable. That is, until now. June finds herself falling for a man who seems unattainable. As she works side by side with him on a new media campaign, their feelings for each other come alive. But when his actions start to speak louder than words, she wonders if she's missing something. Meanwhile, Caroline is fighting against her feelings for a recent acquaintance, and she decides to keep her new love interest a secret from June. Overwhelmed by these new emotions, her moods change swiftly, swinging up and down like a yo-yo. While June and Caroline try to maneuver their way through new relationships, Caroline starts lying to June to protect her from a truth that threatens to break her heart and tear them apart. In the end, Caroline's deceit will test their friendship, and June will have to decide if her chance at love is worth putting her heart on the line.

Neuropsychologist Offers Hope to Those Struggling with Depression As a board-certified neuropsychologist, Dr. Michelle Bengtson sees the devastation of depression. Early on, she practiced the most effective treatments and prescribed them for her clients. But when she experienced depression herself, she found that the treatments she had recommended were lacking. Her experience showed her the missing component in treating depression. In Hope Prevails, Dr. Bengtson writes with deep compassion, blending her training and faith, to offer readers a hope grounded in God's love and grace. She helps readers understand what depression is, how it affects them spiritually, and what, by God's grace, it cannot do. The result is an approach that offers the hope of release, not just the management of symptoms. For those who struggle with depression and those who want to help them, Hope Prevails offers hope for the future.

We slipped into this country like thieves, onto the land that once was ours. With these words, spoken by an illegal Mexican day laborer, The Madonnas of Echo Park takes us into the unseen world of Los Angeles, following the men and women who cook the meals, clean the homes, and struggle to lose their ethnic identity in the pursuit of the American dream. When a dozen or so girls and mothers gather on an Echo Park street corner to act out a scene from a Madonna music video, they find themselves caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting. In the aftermath, Aurora Esperanza grows distant from her mother, Felicia, who as a housekeeper in the Hollywood Hills establishes a unique relationship with a detached housewife. The Esperanzas’ shifting lives connect with those of various members of their neighborhood. A day laborer trolls the streets for work with men half his age and witnesses a murder that pits his morality against his illegal status; a religious hypocrite gets her comeuppance when she meets the Virgin Mary at a bus stop on Sunset Boulevard; a typical bus route turns violent when cultures and egos collide in the night, with devastating results; and Aurora goes on a journey through her gentrified childhood neighborhood in a quest to discover her own history and her place in the land that all Mexican Americans dream of, "the land that belongs to us again." Like the Academy Award–winning film Crash, The Madonnas of Echo Park follows the intersections of its characters and cultures in Los Angeles. In the footsteps of Junot Díaz and Sherman Alexie, Brando Skyhorse in his debut novel gives voice to one neighborhood in Los Angeles with an astonishing— and unforgettable—lyrical power.

“A debut story collection of the rarest kind ... you wish that every single entry could be an entire novel." —Entertainment Weekly Fresh, intimate stories of women’s lives from an extraordinary new literary voice, laying bare the unexpected beauty and irony in contemporary life A college freshman, traveling home, strikesup an odd, ephemeral friendship with the couple next to her on the plane. A mother prepares for her son’s wedding, her own life unraveling as his comes together. A long-lost stepbrother’s visit to New York prompts a family’s reckoning with its old taboos. A wife considers the secrets her marriage once contained. An office worker, exhausted by the ambitions of the men around her, emerges into a gridlocked city one afternoon to make a decision. In these eleven powerful stories, thrilling desire and melancholic yearning animate women’s lives, from the brink of adulthood to the labyrinthine path between twenty and thirty, to middle age, when certain possibilities quietly elapse. Tender, lucid, and piercingly funny, Objects of Desire is a collection pulsing with subtle drama, rich with unforgettable scenes, and alive with moments of recognition each more startling than the last—a spellbinding debut that announces a major talent.