Based on true events, James Roberts' debut novel, Enjoy My Misery, is a story within a story - beginning with the seemingly endless struggles faced by Maria Michaels while growing up and then shifting narrative focus to the hardships of her sons, James and Jared. Readers are given the Michaels family history through the lens of both Maria and James, which brings their mother-son relationship to life on the pages. The book's duel perspective allows for an in-depth journey through one family's battles with depression, divorce, drug use, and death. Enjoy My Misery is just how it sounds - a series of unfortunate scenarios that entertain to the end, and underline that even when all else is lost, love and family ties can hold us together and keep us from losing sight of what matters most. Roberts' work of fiction is a must-read coming-of-age story, and what makes this Bildungsroman unique is its scope - by including two points of view, Enjoy My Misery reads at times like a diary full of dark family secrets and at times like a conversation with a trusted friend. Roberts completely immerses his audience in such events as police chases, cocaine binges, emergency room visits, and high school basketball tryouts. Enjoy My Misery will have you laughing, crying, and probably wanting to call your mom to tell her you love her. This work reflects, as Stephen Chbosky wrote in his The Perks of Being a Wallflower, "Even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them."

In How to Be Miserable, psychologist Randy Paterson outlines 40 specific behaviors and habits, which—if followed—are sure to lead to a lifetime of unhappiness. On the other hand, if you do the opposite, you may yet join the ranks of happy people everywhere! There are stacks upon stacks of self-help books that will promise you love, happiness, and a fabulous life. But how can you pinpoint the exact behaviors that cause you to be miserable in the first place? Sometimes when we’re depressed, or just sad or unhappy, our instincts tell us to do the opposite of what we should—such as focusing on the negative, dwelling on what we can’t change, isolating ourselves from friends and loved ones, eating junk food, or overindulging in alcohol. Sound familiar? This tongue-in-cheek guide will help you identify the behaviors that make you unhappy and discover how you—and only you—are holding yourself back from a life of contentment. You’ll learn to spot the tried-and-true traps that increase feelings of dissatisfaction, foster a lack of motivation, and detract from our quality of life—as well as ways to avoid them. So, get ready to live the life you want (or not?) This fun, irreverent guide will light the way.

Tackling relationships, career, and family issues, John Kim, LMFT, thinks of himself as a life-styledesigner, not a therapist. His radical new approach, that he sometimes calls “self-help in a shot glass” is easy, real, and to the point. He helps people make changes to their lives so that personal growth happens organically, just by living. Let’s face it, therapy is a luxury. Few of us have the time or money to devote to going to an office every week. With anecdotes illustrating principles in action (in relatable and sometimes irreverent fashion) and stand-alone practices and exercises, Kim gives readers the tools and directions to focus on what's right with them instead of what's wrong. When John Kim was going through the end of a relationship, he began blogging as The Angry Therapist, documenting his personal journey post-divorce. Traditional therapists avoid transparency, but Kim preferred the language of "me too" as opposed to "you should." He blogged about his own shortcomings, revelations, views on relationships, and the world. He spoke a different therapeutic language —open, raw, and at times subversive — and people responded. The Angry Therapist blog, that inspired this book, has been featured in The Atlantic Monthly and on NPR.

Don’t tell me it’s terrifying. Terrify me. Filled with grief, Jules Belleno rarely leaves the house since her husband’s death while on duty as a police officer. Other than the reviews Jules writes on her blog, she has little contact with the outside world. But one day when she ventures out to the local grocery store, Jules bumps into a fellow customer . . . and recognizes him as her favorite author, Patrick Reagan. Jules gushes and thoroughly embarrasses herself before Regan graciously talks with her. And that’s the last thing she remembers—until she wakes up in a strange room with a splitting headache. She’s been kidnapped. And what she discovers will change everything she believed about her husband’s death . . . her career . . . and her faith.

In Changepower! 37 Secrets to Habit Change Success, author Meg Selig guides readers through a step-by-step process that will help them achieve any habit change goal. Whether the reader wants to break a hurtful habit like smoking or overeating, or build a healthy habit like exercising or speaking up, Changepower! provides a springboard for change. Selig helps habit-changers move beyond willpower and succeed with changepower - the synergy that comes from combining willpower with other resources, useful outside supports, and wise strategies. In Changepower!, she shows habit-changers how to beef up both their willpower and their changepower to achieve habit change success. The key is revving up motivation. Selig reveals the most powerful motivators for change - pain motivators, the Eight Great Motivators, and even not-so-noble motivators. Research has shown that most changes take place in stages rather than overnight. Selig provides a step-by-step plan for each stage, leaving plenty of room for flexibility depending on each person’s needs. First-person stories, pithy quotes, and how-to exercises provide inspiration, humor, and encouragement as readers embark on their habit change journeys.

You can acquire the wisdom to solve every problem you face. If you study this book, you can learn for yourself what wise men and women all across the ages have discovered while seeking lives of prosperity and happiness. WHAT HAVE THEY DISCOVERED? They have discovered that Principles are the keys to wisdom - and wisdom is the key to solving problems. Through decades of studying history's great masters and applying their teachings, Eldon Grant has acquired an unconventional wisdom through which he turned his own life of shortcomings, failures and misery into one of fulfillment, prosperity and happiness. How do you acquire wisdom? As a society, we believe our technological advances and vast stores of knowledge make us wise; yet today we are no wiser than people of the past. Obstacles we could be drawing power from are crushing us instead. It is only through a return to core principles founded on right character that will enable you to acquire the wisdom you need to solve problems so they never return. YOU WILL DISCOVER: 1.How principles lead to wisdom and enable you to harness the laws of creation 2.The one powerful principle that defines who you truly are and multiplies your potential 3.The two most powerful forces on earth - how to harness them instead of being enslaved by them 4.The most powerful, least-practiced, least understood yet oldest leadership principles on earth 5.How knowledge is actually the most delusionary and debilitating roadblock to wisdom 6.The secrets to relationships that not only last but grow stronger forever 7.Three secrets to fostering honesty, integrity and loyalty in others 8.How to make correct decisions and stand true when facing difficulties 9.Almost everything you've been taught about success is dead wrong! Here's how to fix it. 10.They told you that you didn't come with an owner's manual. You actually have 5 of them 11.How conventional wisdom creates problems and only unconventional wisdom solves them 12.The truth about the truth 13.Five principles most experts tell you to avoid that you must embrace if you expect lasting success: 14.How to achieve everything you want and never fail again - seriously! 15.The secrets to finding breakthrough shortcuts without ever cutting corners 16.Seven counter-intuitive principles that can solve every problem you have with others 17.The one and only thing in your life and business that you have direct control over and that determines everything about your future 18."Cowboy up (Cowgirl up)" how to live every day with courage and passion This isn't common knowledge. Read this book to learn how you can acquire the wisdom and access the power to unlock the forces behind these secret, ancient principles and step into the future you desire.

Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, The Body in Pain is a profoundly original study that has already stirred excitement in a wide range of intellectual circles. The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate.

Cutting-edge science and spirituality tell us that what we believe, think, and feel actually determine the makeup of our body at the cellular level. In Zen and the Art of Happiness, you will learn how to think and feel so that what you think and feel creates happiness and vibrancy in your life rather than gloominess or depression. You’ll learn how to adapt to life’s inevitable changes, how to deal with stress in a healthy way, and how to nurture a mindful happiness in your daily life. Most importantly, the gentle wisdom of Zen and the Art of Happiness will show you how to invite magnificent experiences into your life and create a personal philosophy that will sustain you through anything. A timeless work about the art of happiness, the way of happiness, the inner game of happiness.

Charlize "Charlie" Edwards finally has it all: a house in Silverlake, L.A.'s hippest neighborhood, two fabulous best friends who always have her back, and a great (though hectic) job as the personal assistant to Hollywood's hottest movie star, Drew Stanton. But best of all, Charlie has a newly feathered love nest with Jordan, the sexy photographer she recently started dating. Maybe Charlie's journal of smart-alecky life advice--which she's always been better at writing than following--has finally helped put her on the right track. Unfortunately for Charlie, Drew is causing complete havoc on his new movie set, her eccentric family is descending upon L.A. for the upcoming holiday season, and her love life may be back to square one. Jordan has left L.A. to work on a film shooting in Paris, where the women are gorgeous, sophisticated, and possibly after her man. And Drew's handsome new producer, Liam, is an old crush who has reappeared to tug at Charlie's heartstrings. Charlie's torn between the misery of waiting for Jordan and the tingly feelings she has for Liam. But there's nothing misery--or seduction--loves better than a great glass of cabernet.

From the Laws of Mount Misery: There are no laws in psychiatry. Now, from the author of the riotous, moving, bestselling classic, The House of God, comes a lacerating and brilliant novel of doctors and patients in a psychiatric hospital. Mount Misery is a prestigious facility set in the rolling green hills of New England, its country club atmosphere maintained by generous corporate contributions. Dr. Roy Basch (hero of The House of God) is lucky enough to train there *only to discover doctors caught up in the circus of competing psychiatric theories, and patients who are often there for one main reason: they've got good insurance. From the Laws of Mount Misery: Your colleagues will hurt you more than your patients. On rounds at Mount Misery, it's not always easy for Basch to tell the patients from the doctors: Errol Cabot, the drug cowboy whose practice provides him with guinea pigs for his imaginative prescription cocktails . . . Blair Heiler, the world expert on borderlines (a diagnosis that applies to just about everybody) . . . A. K. Lowell, née Aliyah K. Lowenschteiner, whose Freudian analytic technique is so razor sharp it prohibits her from actually speaking to patients . . . And Schlomo Dove, the loony, outlandish shrink accused of having sex with a beautiful, well-to-do female patient. From the Laws of Mount Misery: Psychiatrists specialize in their defects. For Basch the practice of psychiatry soon becomes a nightmare in which psychiatrists compete with one another to find the best ways to reduce human beings to blubbering drug-addled pods, or incite them to an extreme where excessive rage is the only rational response, or tie them up in Freudian knots. And all the while, the doctors seem less interested in their patients' mental health than in a host of other things *managed care insurance money, drug company research grants and kickbacks, and their own professional advancement. From the Laws of Mount Misery: In psychiatry, first comes treatment, then comes diagnosis. What The House of God did for doctoring the body, Mount Misery does for doctoring the mind. A practicing psychiatrist, Samuel Shem brings vivid authenticity and extraordinary storytelling gifts to this long-awaited sequel, to create a novel that is laugh-out-loud hilarious, terrifying, and provocative. Filled with biting irony and a wonderful sense of the absurd, Mount Misery tells you everything you'll never learn in therapy. And it's a hell of a lot funnier.