There are moments and incidents in everyone’s life that are hilarious, absurd and sometimes crazy. Incidents that could make the reader remember something similar that happened to them or simply enjoy the joke. Or else read about a time that is quite different from now. That’s the kind of memories I have been sharing in my newspaper “middles” and my Facebook postings over the years. Life is serious, sometimes worrisome and often complicated where a breather is usually welcome. I have divided the contents into three parts. Salad Days deal with incidents belonging to my school, college and university days and as a lecturer. What happened when we wanted to buy English records for our common room? Or had our letters censored by the hostel superintendent? What was my first job in college like in a small and conservative town where most people did not believe in higher studies for women? Learning to Be a Housewife speaks of the next chapter in my life where hilarious mistakes of every kind happened. How did I deal with the strange fish-seller, the vet and the prying neighbours? And That is Life has incidents and musings right up to my twilight years, many of them about a different time and place, and my final realization that Life never stops surprising you.

Rowdy, ecstatic, and sometimes stern, these teaching stories and fables reveal new and very human properties in Rumi's vision. Included here are the notorious "Latin parts" that Reynold Nicholson felt were too unseemly to appear in English in his 1920s translation. For Rumi, anything that human beings do--however compulsive--affords a glimpse into the inner life. Here are more than 40 fables or teaching stories that deal with love, laughter, death, betrayal, and the soul. The stories are exuberant, earthy, and bursting with vitality--much like a painting by Hieronymus Bosch or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The characters are guilty, lecherous, tricky, ribald, and finally possessors of opened souls. Barks writes: "These teaching stories are a kind of scrimshaw--intricately carved, busy figures, confused and threatening, and weirdly funny. This is an entertaining collection from one of the greatest spiritual poets of all time, rendered by his most popular translator. "The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along."--Rumi

“ In this book I have written about some aspects of the war which, I believe, the world must know and remember, not only as a memorial of men’s courage in tragic years, but as a warning of what will happen again—surely—if a heritage of evil and of folly is not cut out of the hearts of peoples. Here it is the reality of modern warfare not only as it appears to British soldiers, of whom I can tell, but to soldiers on all the fronts where conditions were the same. What I have written here does not cancel, nor alter, nor deny anything in my daily narratives of events on the western front as they are now- published in book form. They stand, I may claim sincerely and humbly, as a truthful, accurate, and tragic record of the battles in France and Belgium during the years of war, broadly pictured out as far as I could see and know. My duty, then, was that of a chronicler, not arguing why things should have happened so nor giving reasons why they should not happen so, but describing faithfully many of the things I saw, and narrating the facts as I found them, as far as the censorship would allow. After early, hostile days it allowed nearly all but criticism, protest, and of the figures of loss. The purpose of this book is to get deeper into the truth of this war and of all war—not by a more detailed narrative of events, but rather as the truth was revealed to the minds of men, in many aspects, out of their experience; and by a plain statement of realities, however painful, to add something to the world’s knowledge out of which men of good-will may try to shape some new system of relationship between one people and another, some new code of international morality, preventing or at least postponing another massacre of youth like that five years’ sacrifice of boys of which I was a witness.” (Sir Philip Gibbs – 1920)

'Bawden has concentrated on the careful depiction of character, feelings and behaviour' GUARDIAN 'On every page there is a shock of recognition' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Among the most perceptive and accomplished novelists writing today' P. D. JAMES It is the year of the Queen's Coronation and Joanna, Kate and Poll who are eighteen, twelve and six are living in a riverside suburb of London with their mother Ellen, and their stepfather Boyd. Accepting his wise, unstinting love in their apparently secure lives, they are incurious about their vanished natural father. But the past arrives to upset the present in the person of Aunt Hat, a gossipy old friend with a husband imprisoned for assaulting her, and who seems to bring news from a different world of chaos and drama. The real danger, however, comes not from Aunt Hat's indiscretions but the girls themselves . . . Perfectly balanced between pain and laughter, A Little Love, A Little Learning combines a touching and convincing family portrait with the lively evocation of a small community.

It is time, ripe time for a Zen manifesto. The Western intelligentsia have become acquainted with Zen, have also fallen in love with Zen, but they are still trying to approach Zen from the mind. They have not yet come to the understanding that Zen has nothing to do with mind. Its tremendous job is to get you out of the prison of mind. It is not an intellectual philosophy; it is not a philosophy at all. Nor is it a religion, because it has no fictions and no lies, no consolations. It is a lion’s roar. And the greatest thing that Zen has brought into the world is freedom from oneself. All the religions have been talking about dropping your ego – but it is a very weird phenomenon: they want you to drop your ego, and the ego is just a shadow of God. God is the ego of the universe, and the ego is your personality. Just as God is the very center of existence according to religions, your ego is the center of your mind, of your personality. They have all been talking about dropping the ego, but it cannot be dropped unless God is dropped. You cannot drop a shadow or a reflection unless the source of its manifestation is destroyed.

All that glitters isn't gold . . . sometimes it's love. In the lush, sun-bright splendor of southern California, three women, three friends, search for the courage to dream, to trust, to love. But there are dark secrets and hidden betrayals that must first be overcome. A terrible accident has stolen Allison Fitzgerald’s dreams, and it has taught her that life is too precious—and too fragile—to waste. So when she meets a man who evokes a passion in her that she has never known before, she surrenders to his love without questioning his secretive past. Gifted and beautiful actress Winter Carlyle has learned, from painful experience, that the people she loves always leave her, and that it is far too dangerous to care, and that she is only liked when she is pretending to be someone she is not. Still, she is willing to risk everything for the doctor who sees beyond the pretense . . . But is he willing to risk everything for her? Emily Rousseau only feels safe, only feels free, when she is behind the lens of her camera, safe and free from the men who want her, and want to hurt her. The portraits she takes are works of art, and there is one man, unlike any other man she has ever known, who sees not only the talent in her work, but the loveliness in her. But can she accept the love, and face the demons, that will free her from her past? Praise for the novels of Katherine Stone: “Remarkably romantic and thoroughly enchanting.”—Rendezvous on Pearl Moon “Poignant . . . Cass is an intrepid heroine, but it is Chase who wins our hearts when he refuses to allow Cass’s seeming betrayal to stop him from protecting his beloved.” —Midwest Book Review on Bed of Roses “Fairytale elements mix with those of a present day romance for . . . thoroughly enjoyable results.”—Kirkus Reviews on Rainbows “With this tightly woven, suspenseful plot, peopled with memorable characters, Stone has produced another surefire hit.”—Booklist on Imagine Love “Sweeping drama . . . Her most emotionally charged and intricate story of love yet.”—Romantic Times on Imagine Love “Alluring . . . Fascinating . . . Each page brings a new adventure, every plot twist another question begging to be answered.”—Rendezvous on Imagine Love Katherine Stone writes “in the vein of Danielle Steel and Sandra Brown”—Library Journal Katherine Stone's "high quality romance ranks right up there with Nora Roberts."—Booklist