A reprint of an extraordinary collection of poems that explore loss & affirm the value of perseverance in everyday life.

At nine years old, Monica Holloway develops a fascination with the local funeral home. Small wonder, with a father who drives his Ford pick up with a Kodak movie camera sitting shotgun just in case he sees an accident, and whose home movies feature more footage of disasters than of his children. In between her father's bouts of violence and abuse, Monica becomes fast friends with Julie Kilner, whose father is the town mortician. She and Julie preferred the casket showroom to the parks and grassy backyards in her hometown of Elk Grove, Ohio, where they would take turns lying in their favourite coffins. In time, Monica and Julie get a job driving the company hearse to pick up bodies from the airport, yet even Monica's growing independence can't protect her from her parents' irresponsibility, and from the feeling that she simply does not deserve to be safe. Little does she know, as she finally strikes out on her own, that her parents' biggest betrayal has yet to be revealed...

After receiving a kidney transplant, twenty-eight-year-old Leigh Fielding, feeling like a new person and discovering surprising new interests in life, embarks on a cross-country road trip to find the family of her organ donor, along the way picking up Denise, a teenage hitchhiker with a few secrets of her own. A first novel. Original. 30,000 first printing.

Montgomery, Alabama, December 1945. War hero Nat Weary has returned to his hometown, eager to rebuild his life. His childhood friend, the famous Nat King Cole, is also home for a rare performance. During the concert, Weary plans to propose to his sweetheart, and Cole will serenade them with a song. But Weary’s dreams for the future are destroyed when a white man, armed with a pipe, rushes the stage. Leaping from the audience, the former soldier stops the assailant—an act of bravery that leads to ten years of hard labor in prison. Free at last a decade later, Weary heads to Los Angeles to work for his old friend. It is the promise of a new life removed from the violence and degradation of Jim Crow Alabama. But he discovers that even in the City of Angels, wealth, popularity, and talent cannot protect a black man from discrimination and hate. Drawn back to Montgomery to lay some unfinished business to rest, Cole and Weary discover a city in the midst of change. A woman named Rosa Parks has inspired blacks to boycott the city’s buses—a daring fight for dignity and rights that will eventually grip the entire nation. “A moving tale about bigotry and the power of friendship.” —People “Heartbreaking. . . . A bold reimagining of [the] civil rights era.” —Los Angeles Times

A raucous and surprising novel filled with wonderful details about wine, Rex Pickett's Sideways is also a thought-provoking and funny book about men, women, and human relationships. The basis for the 2004 comedy-drama road movie of the same name starring Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church. Sideways is the story of two friends-Miles and Jack-going away together for the last time to steep themselves in everything that makes it good to be young and single: pinot, putting, and prowling bars. In the week before Jack plans to marry, the pair heads out from Los Angeles to the Santa Ynez wine country. For Jack, the tasting tour is Seven Days to D-Day, his final stretch of freedom. For Miles--who has divorced his wife, is facing an uncertain career and has lost his passion for living-the trip is a week long opportunity to evaluate his past, his future and himself.

Thirty-six poems look at various aspects of driving, including passing the written driver's test, being pulled over by a cop, and having an accident, and treat them as metaphors for life.

Become a better performance driver with Speed Secrets With the promise of autonomous vehicles in our near future, and current cars equipped with all sorts of mind-boggling driver aides, many feel that the art (and science) of performance driving has been lost - or will be. But no! For every device designed to take the act of driving out of our hands, the desire to actively participate in the control of a car becomes even stronger for driving enthusiasts. One only needs to look at the number of performance cars available today to see that the desire to truly drive is still in strong demand. In Speed Secrets: The Lost Art of Performance Driving, Ross Bentley explains in plain language how you can become an even better performance-oriented driver, whether it's to enjoy a twisty mountain highway, to take that secret back-road route to work, or to participate in a track day on a racing circuit. From how best to use your car's controls, to cornering, to dealing with adverse driving conditions, this book will make you a better performance driver. Along the way, you'll learn what ABS, traction and stability control, self-braking systems, and semi-automatic transmissions do and how best to incorporate them into your driving. Speed Secrets: The Lost Art of Performance Driving will help you understand your car well and be an even better, faster driver. Most importantly, it will fuel your passion for driving!

Dr. John E. Sarno's groundbreaking research on TMS (Tension Myoneural Syndrome) reveals how stress and other psychological factors can cause back pain-and how you can be pain free without drugs, exercise, or surgery. Dr. Sarno's program has helped thousands of patients find relief from chronic back conditions. In this New York Times bestseller, Dr. Sarno teaches you how to identify stress and other psychological factors that cause back pain and demonstrates how to heal yourself--without drugs, surgery or exercise. Find out: Why self-motivated and successful people are prone to Tension Myoneural Syndrome (TMS) How anxiety and repressed anger trigger muscle spasms How people condition themselves to accept back pain as inevitable With case histories and the results of in-depth mind-body research, Dr. Sarno reveals how you can recognize the emotional roots of your TMS and sever the connections between mental and physical pain...and start recovering from back pain today.

The New York Times bestseller that gives readers a paradigm-shattering new way to think about motivation from the author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose-and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE "A brilliant literary murder mystery." —Chicago Tribune "Extraordinary. Tokarczuk's novel is funny, vivid, dangerous, and disturbing, and it raises some fierce questions about human behavior. My sincere admiration for her brilliant work." —Annie Proulx In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . . A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?