Not all gifts are tangible. After suffering the loss of her father while writing her bestselling debut book, Amy Hollingsworth began to search for the meaning behind his dying moments. What she found was a simple truth at the heart of overcoming the deepest grief: the dying leave gifts. With deeply moving stories of how others discovered the gifts their loved ones left behind, this book will gently encourage you to anticipate and uncover your own. Weaving together the warm intimacy of Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie and the straightforward honesty of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, Amy Hollingsworth adds her hopeful voice to the literature of life and the life beyond. The result is a collection of stories that gives the reader myriad ways to identify their own pain and healing and is an intriguing journey for any and all readers fascinated by this brief overlap of heaven and earth. From the bestselling author of The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers.

Autobiographical accounts, travel sketches, and reminiscences, many of them reprints of former magazine articles.

Writer Charlotte Painter and artist/photographer Pamela Valois have combined their impressive talents to present these intimate glimpses into the lives of thirty-two remarkable women, each of whom has discovered in maturity the opportunity of exploring new and exciting challenges. These are the Gifts of Age: the time, the freedom, and hopefully the wisdom to develop creative new images of oneself and one's place in the complexities of a long life. All of the women in this book are more than sixty-five years of age, and included are such well-known personalities as Julia Child, M.F.K. Fisher, Joan Baez Senior, and Louise M. Davies. No two have followed the same path, but each has been successful in achieving some new, frequently unanticipated distinction in her latter years. Gifts of Age is a fascinating insight into just how productive one's extended life can be, and inspiration for anyone who believes that the creative talent for living need not diminish with the passage of years.

Bobby Herrera has a simple leadership philosophy: -We all struggle. -Inside every struggle is a gift. -Leaders share their gifts with others. In The Gift of Struggle, Bobby Herrera, cofounder and CEO of Populus Group, lives that philosophy by telling the stories of his struggles, identifying the gifts he found, and sharing those gifts with you.

For generations, other religions and cultures have put their children through a rite of passage to adulthood. Many people are aware of the Jewish practice of the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, for example. The reality, however, is that many children today don’t learn how to become adults on purpose; rather, they ride the wave of adolescence toward an unknown adult future. Moms, dads, and other perfectly placed adults have the unique opportunity to guide the teenagers in their life toward adulthood. This is not a privilege to be taken lightly, but neither is it an impossible task. Jim McBride, executive producer of Fireproof and Courageous, brings wisdom, experience, and practical examples to his guidebook for leading those burgeoning adults in your life through a real-life Rite of Passage.

New York Times–bestselling author: An inspiring collection of daily lessons, prayers, and mantras for invoking the three sacred blessings of Spirit Our greatest purpose in life is to free ourselves of the limiting patterns of ego and soul that keep us chained to painful, disempowered lives so that we can fully realize the authentic and holy Spirits we are. This journey can feel overwhelming—even impossible—unless we gain access to the three sacred blessings of Spirit, made available to us from God. Without them, we fail. These sacred blessings are God’s grace, inner guidance, and personal gifts. Grace lifts us beyond our own ability, inner guidance leads the way, and personal gifts are both the inner and outer resources given to us to succeed at every step. It is up to us to ask for these sacred blessings, and we must do so now more than ever before. This inspiring book will show you how. Through the use of daily lessons, specific prayers, personal intentions, and powerful mantras, you will be showered with these blessings every day of your life. Simply open up this book and call upon your sacred blessings right now. Use it every day to keep your blessings flowing and guide your way back home.

In this moving and compassionate classic—now updated with new material from the authors—hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley share their intimate experiences with patients at the end of life, drawn from more than twenty years’ experience tending the terminally ill. Through their stories we come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feelings, and even choreograph their own final moments; we also discover the gifts—of wisdom, faith, and love—that the dying leave for the living to share. Filled with practical advice on responding to the requests of the dying and helping them prepare emotionally and spiritually for death, Final Gifts shows how we can help the dying person live fully to the very end.

In 1947, Santha Rama Rau went to Japan with her father, India’s ambassador to Tokyo. A year later, she went to China with friends, hitchhiked to remote provinces of the northwest, and traveled through Indo-China and Siam to Indonesia to live for several months in a Balinese village. East of Home is the report of a fascinating trip, full of information about the people of Asia, their customs, theater and dance. It also shows how a young Indian woman, educated in the West, encounters Asia for the first time and discovers herself as an Asian. “A first-rate and deceptively informal account of a recent journey through Asia.” —The New Yorker “An informal and pleasantly engaging book about [Santha Rama Rau’s] travels in the Far East... personal, colored by her acute consciousness of being an Asian among Asians.” — Orville Prescott, The New York Times “A travel book with timely, disturbing moral under-currents, both social and political... so enthralling, so utterly convincing and absorbing that one rebels at turning the last page.” — Boston Herald “Delightful reading... a fascinating adventure story. It also enables one to see Asia as a whole... But its main value lies in the fact that an Asian writes about Asia... an Asian who since she has lived and been educated in the West has the advantages of both points of view. In this age of an Asian renascence Miss Rama Rau’s account is both interesting and vital.” — Saturday Review

"The Gift of the Magi" is a short story by O. Henry first published in 1905. The story tells of a young husband and wife and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other with very little money. As a sentimental story with a moral lesson about gift-giving, it has been popular for adaptation, especially for presentation at Christmas time.

Winner of the 1980 Booker Prize Sailing to Australia in the early years of the nineteenth century, Edmund Talbot keeps a journal to amuse his godfather back in England. Full of wit and disdain, he records the mounting tensions on the ancient, sinking warship where officers, sailors, soldiers and emigrants jostle in the cramped spaces below decks. Then a single passenger, the obsequious Reverend Colley, attracts the animosity of the sailors, and in the seclusion of the fo'castle something happens to bring him into a "hell of degradation," where shame is a force deadlier than the sea itself. William Golding's To the Ends of the Earth trilogy is now a BBC/PBS Masterpiece miniseries staring Benedict Cumberbatch, Jared Harris and Sam Neill. To the Ends of the Earth: 1. Rites of Passage 2. Close Quarters 3. Fire Down Below