The stories in Drowning Lessons engage water as both a vital and a potentially hazardous presence in our lives. "You can touch water," says Peter Selgin, "you can taste it and feel its temperature, you can even hold it in your hands. Still it remains elusive, ill-defined, shaped only by what surrounds or contains it." With empathy and wit Selgin introduces us to characters navigating the choppy waters of human relationships. In "Swimming" an avid swimmer fights the stasis in his marriage by prodding his out-of-shape but contented wife to take up the sport—with near-disastrous results. A pond is the setting of "The Wolf House," which tells of the reunion and dissolution of a group of high school friends brought together for a funeral. "The Sinking Ship Man" chronicles a day in the life of an African American caretaker in charge of the only remaining survivor of the Titanic disaster. In "El Malecón" a toothless old Dominican tries to recapture his lost dignity by "borrowing" a shiny Cadillac convertible and aiming it down the coastal highway toward his childhood village. In "The Sea Cure" two travelers in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula confront death in the form of a mysterious woman living in an abandoned beachfront apartment complex. In all thirteen tales in Drowning Lessons, Selgin exhibits a keen eye for the forces that push people toward—and sometimes beyond—their very human limits, forces as intrinsic, elemental, and elusive as the liquid that makes up two-thirds of their bodies. These stories remind us that of all bodies of water, none is deeper or more dangerous than our own.

The chilling, gripping thriller from the author of the stunning Richard and Judy Book Club bestseller Daughter 'It's our son, Sam . . . someone took him. Please help us' Emma hoped that she and her family would return from their year abroad closer, with memories to last a lifetime. Instead, they returned minus one child. A year on, Emma is haunted by their son's disappearance, and feels further than ever from her husband. Is their child still out there somewhere? Will the mystery about what happened that night ever be unravelled? And, if the truth does come to light, will Emma's family be healed - or wrenched even further apart?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this inspired follow-up to the million-copy bestseller To Heaven and Back, Dr. Mary Neal (featured in the Netflix original series Surviving Death) shares untold stories about her encounters with Jesus and powerful insights about how the reality of heaven can make each day magnificent. “If you want practical ways to bring more of Heaven into your life today, Dr. Neal shows how.”—John Burke, pastor and author of New York Times bestseller Imagine Heaven Dr. Mary Neal’s unforgettable account of the Chilean kayaking accident that took her life and sent her on a journey to heaven and back riveted millions of readers. But as she shared her story with audiences throughout the world, Dr. Neal realized she had more to tell, especially on the biggest questions, such as how does her story help others? And how does knowing that heaven is real change our lives here on Earth? In 7 Lessons from Heaven, Dr. Neal takes readers deeper into her experience, which included meeting Jesus face-to-face, encounters with angels, and a journey to a “city of light.” She digs into important findings about the physiology of drowning, and shares why—from the perspective of heaven—we can know that beauty blossoms from even our greatest losses. Then she shows how each of us can personally experience God’s presence, develop an absolute trust in the truth of God’s promises, and learn how to live joyfully every day.

In the Fall of 1970, at the start of eighth grade, Peter Selgin fell in love with the young teacher who’d arrived from Oxford wearing Frye boots, with long blond hair, and a passion for his students that was as intense as it was rebellious. The son of an emotionally remote inventor, Peter was also a twin competing for the attention and affection of his parents. He had a burning need to feel special. The new teacher supplied that need. Together they spent hours in the teacher’s carriage house, discussing books, playing chess, drinking tea, and wrestling. They were inseparable, until the teacher “resigned” from his job and left. Over the next ten years Peter and the teacher corresponded copiously and met occasionally, their last meeting ending in disaster. Only after the teacher died did Peter learn that he’d done all he could to evade his past, identifying himself first as an orphaned Rhodes Scholar, and later as a Native American. As for Peter’s father, the genius with the English accent who invented the first dollar-bill changing machine, he was the child of Italian Jews—something else Peter discovered only after his death. Paul Selgin and the teacher were both self-inventors, creatures of their own mythology, inscrutable men whose denials and deceptions betrayed the trust of the boy who looked up to them. The Inventors is the story of a man’s search for his father and a boy’s passionate relationship with his teacher, of how these two enigmas shaped that boy’s journey into manhood, filling him with a sense of his own unique destiny. It is a story of promises kept and broken as the author uncovers the truth—about both men, and about himself. For like them—like all of us—Peter Selgin, too, is his own inventor.

From the author of the breakout novel Thistlefoot: a collection of dark fairytales and fractured folklore exploring how our passions can save us—or go monstrously wrong. The stories in Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart are about the abomination that resides within us all. That churning, clawing, ravenous yearning: the hunger to be held, and seen, and known. And the terror, too: to be loved too well, or not enough, or for long enough. To be laid bare before your sweetheart, to their horror. To be recognized as the monstrous thing you are. Two teenage girls working at a sinister roadside attraction called the Eternal Staircase explore its secrets—and their own doomed summer love. A zombie rooster plays detective in a missing persons case. A woman moves into a new house with her acclaimed artist boyfriend—and finds her body slowly shifting into something specially constructed to accommodate his needs and whims. A pack of middle schoolers turn to the occult to rid themselves of a hated new classmate. And a pair of outcasts, a vampire and a goat woman, find solace in each other, even as the world's lack of understanding might bring about its own end. In these lush, strange, beautifully written stories, GennaRose Nethercott explores human longing in all its diamond-dark facets to create a collection that will redefine what you see as a beast, and make you beg to have your heart broken.

The definitive biography of emo rock band My Chemical Romance, based on hours of exclusive, unpublished interviews by the journalist who knows them best

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