2012 ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award Finalist for the "Family & Relationships" category.Award Winning Finalist in the 'Self-Help: Relationships' category of the 2013 International Book Awards.My Cat Won't Bark! (A Relationship Epiphany) is about seeing things as they are in our relationships. It's stripping away any illusions we may have conjured up and removing unrealistic expectations. It is a primary and primal message of self-empowerment. Kevin Darn� delivers the all-important message that we tend to forget: Life is a personal journey. Our lives are the result of decisions and choices we have made. Each of us chooses our own friends, lovers, and spouse. We have the ability to learn from our mistakes and make better choices for ourselves in the future. When we change, our circumstances change.Darn� attacks the well-established Changing Water into Wine Myth, Communication Myth, Relationship Work Myth, Unrealistic Romantic Myth, and Monogamy Myth. My Cat Won't Bark!: reveals and defines The Three Basic Types of Cheaters, The Real Meaning of Commitment, The One: Separating Myth from Reality, The Six Common Mistakes Women Make with Online Dating, The Recipe for Relationship Happiness, Finding Your Own Way, and much, much more!My Cat Won't Bark! (A Relationship Epiphany) will forever change the way you view and choose your relationships.

Kevin Darné author of My Cat Won't Bark! (A Relationship Epiphany) has written the perfect complementary book with Online Dating: Avoid the Catfish! (How to Date Online Successfully).Avoid the Catfish! is for anyone who wants to take control of their online dating endeavors. Darné reveals the six mistakes many people make, how to dodge the friend zone, sidestep the long-distance relationship trap, and avoid the catfish; but most of all you'll learn how to have fun again when dating! It's not that online dating sucks, too many people suck at online dating!Each of us chooses our own friends, lovers, and spouse.Each of us has our own mate selection/screening process and must haves list.Each of us has our own boundaries and deal breakers.The only thing all of your failed relationships have in common is you. Nothing happens until you say yes to someone. If you want something different you have to do something different!Kevin Darné has shared his dating insights on WGN-TV Morning News Chicago, The Chicago Tribune, NBCNews.com, Match.com, Tinder, Zoosk.com, Askmen.com, ReadersDigest.com, Bravotv.com, Bustle.com, PsychologyToday.com, Bestlifeonline.com, AARP, other publishers and radio programs.Avoid the Catfish! is a must read for anyone considering using an online dating site or app!

Every Ending Is A New Beginning (The Journey from Breaking Up to Moving On) is a must read for anyone who is dealing with the pain of a breakup or contemplating ending a relationship. Discover how to cope and move on after breakups by keeping things in perspective. When it comes to love and relationships most of us fail our way to success. Very few people hit a homerun their first, second, third, or fourth time up at bat. If this were not the case, we would all be married to our high school sweethearts! With each failed relationship, heartache, or betrayal we are presented with an opportunity to either craft or refine our mate selection screening process and "must haves list" for choosing our next mate. A breakup is confirmation a mistake was made in someone's mate selection process. There is no amount of work or communication that can overcome being with someone who does not share your same values or want what you want for the relationship. No one is stuck with anyone. Suffering is optional. The goal is to have a soulmate not a cellmate. Here's what else you're going to learn inside: The three main reasons why couples break up Why you should beware of trial separations How to let go and move on Why you should enact the "no contact rule" after a breakup How to avoid romanticizing the past and focus on the future The breakup method for when you need to end a relationship New Beginnings - How to get back into the swing of dating again "Some people come into our life as blessings. Some come in your life as lessons." - Mother Teresa Kevin Darné is also the author of My Cat Won't Bark! (A Relationship Epiphany), Online Dating: Avoid the Catfish! How to Date Online Successfully, and Pump Your Brakes! How to Stop Having Bad First Dates. Kevin's dating and relationship insight has been featured on WGN-TV Morning News Chicago, The Chicago Tribune, NBCNews.com, Cosmopolitan.com, Askmen.com, ReadersDigest.com, Bravotv.com, Match.com, Zoosk.com, Tinder, PsychologyToday.com, Men'sHealth.com, Bustle.com, Babble.com, Romper.com, AARP.org, Redbookmag.com, UpJourney.com, along with many other digital publications and radio appearances.

Published in hardcover as What the dog knows: the science and wonder of working dogs by Simon & Schuster, New York, c2013.

A classic he-said-she-said romantic comedy! This updated anniversary edition offers story-behind-the-story revelations from author Wendelin Van Draanen. The first time she saw him, she flipped. The first time he saw her, he ran. That was the second grade, but not much has changed by the seventh. Juli says: “My Bryce. Still walking around with my first kiss.” He says: “It’s been six years of strategic avoidance and social discomfort.” But in the eighth grade everything gets turned upside down: just as Bryce is thinking that there’s maybe more to Juli than meets the eye, she’s thinking that he’s not quite all he seemed. This is a classic romantic comedy of errors told in alternating chapters by two fresh, funny voices. The updated anniversary edition contains 32 pages of extra backmatter: essays from Wendelin Van Draanen on her sources of inspiration, on the making of the movie of Flipped, on why she’ll never write a sequel, and a selection of the amazing fan mail she’s received. Awards and accolades for Flipped: SLJ Top 100 Children’s Novels of all time IRA-CBC Children’s Choice IRA Teacher’s Choice Honor winner, Judy Lopez Memorial Award/WNBA Winner of the California Young Reader Medal “We flipped over this fantastic book, its gutsy girl Juli and its wise, wonderful ending.” — The Chicago Tribune “Van Draanen has another winner in this eighth-grade ‘he-said, she-said’ romance. A fast, funny, egg-cellent winner.” — SLJ, Starred review “With a charismatic leading lady kids will flip over, a compelling dynamic between the two narrators and a resonant ending, this novel is a great deal larger than the sum of its parts.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred review

The #1 New York Times bestselling (mostly true) memoir from the hilarious author of Furiously Happy. “Gaspingly funny and wonderfully inappropriate.”—O, The Oprah Magazine When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father and a morbidly eccentric childhood. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame-spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it. In the irreverent Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson’s long-suffering husband and sweet daughter help her uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments—the ones we want to pretend never happened—are the very same moments that make us the people we are today. For every intellectual misfit who thought they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud, this is a poignant and hysterical look at the dark, disturbing, yet wonderful moments of our lives. Readers Guide Inside

Discover the power, joy, and love of living a present, authentic, and intentional life despite a world full of distractions. If technology is the new addiction, then multitasking is the new marching order. We check our email while cooking dinner, send a text while bathing the kids, and spend more time looking into electronic screens than into the eyes of our loved ones. With our never-ending to-do lists and jam-packed schedules, it's no wonder we're distracted. But this isn't the way it has to be. Special education teacher, New York Times bestselling author, and mother Rachel Macy Stafford says enough is enough. Tired of losing track of what matters most in life, Rachel began practicing simple strategies that enabled her to momentarily let go of largely meaningless distractions and engage in meaningful soul-to-soul connections. Finding balance doesn't mean giving up all technology forever. And it doesn't mean forgoing our jobs and responsibilities. What it does mean is seizing the little moments that life offers us to engage in real and meaningful interaction. In these pages, Rachel guides you through how to: Acknowledge the cost of your distraction Make purposeful connection with your family Give your kids the gift of your undivided attention Silence your inner critic Let go of the guilt from past mistakes And move forward with compassion and gratefulness So join Rachel and go hands-free. Discover what happens when you choose to open your heart--and your hands--to the possibilities of each God-given moment.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2024, internationally bestselling author and literary icon Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies is "beautiful, heartbreaking and alive ... a lyrical work of historical fiction based on the story of the Mirabal sisters, revolutionary heroes who had opposed and fought against Trujillo." (Concepción de León, New York Times) Alvarez’s new novel, The Cemetery of Untold Stories, is coming April 2, 2024. Pre-order now! It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. It doesn’t have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas—the Butterflies. In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all four sisters--Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and the survivor, Dedé--speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from secret crushes to gunrunning, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez’s imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human costs of political oppression. "Alvarez helped blaze the trail for Latina authors to break into the literary mainstream, with novels like In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents winning praise from critics and gracing best-seller lists across the Americas."—Francisco Cantú, The New York Times Book Review "This Julia Alvarez classic is a must-read for anyone of Latinx descent." —Popsugar.com "A gorgeous and sensitive novel . . . A compelling story of courage, patriotism and familial devotion." —People "Shimmering . . . Valuable and necessary." —Los Angeles Times "A magnificent treasure for all cultures and all time.” —St. Petersburg Times "Alvarez does a remarkable job illustrating the ruinous effect the 30-year dictatorship had on the Dominican Republic and the very real human cost it entailed."—Cosmopolitan.com

Using small-town life as a springboard to explore the loftiest of ideas, Haven Kimmel’s irresistibly smart and generous first novel is at once a romance and a haunting meditation on grief and faith. Langston Braverman returns to Haddington, Indiana (pop. 3,062) after walking out on an academic career that has equipped her for little but lording it over other people. Amos Townsend is trying to minister to a congregation that would prefer simple affirmations to his esoteric brand of theology. What draws these difficult—if not impossible—people together are two wounded little girls who call themselves Immaculata and Epiphany. They are the daughters of Langston’s childhood friend and the witnesses to her murder. And their need for love is so urgent that neither Langston nor Amos can resist it, though they do their best to resist each other. Deftly walking the tightrope between tragedy and comedy, The Solace of Leaving Early is a joyous story about finding one’s better self through accepting the shortcomings of others.

An extraordinary modern novel in the Victorian tradition, Charles Palliser has created something extraordinary—a plot within a plot within a plot of family secrets, mysterious clues, low-born birth, high-reaching immorality, and, always, always the fog-enshrouded, enigmatic character of 19th century—London itself. “So compulsively absorbing that reality disappears . . . One is swept along by those enduring emotions that defy modern art and a random universe: hunger for revenge, longing for justice and the fantasy secretly entertained by most people that the bad will be punished and the good rewarded.”—The New York Times “A virtuoso achievement . . . It is an epic, a tour de force, a staggeringly complex and tantalizingly layered tale that will keep readers engrossed in days. . . . The Quincunx will not disappoint you. It is, quite simply, superb.”—Chicago Sun-Times “A bold and vivid tale that invites the reader to get lost in the intoxicating rhythms of another world. And the invitation is irresistible.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A remarkable book . . . In mood, color, atmosphere and characters, this is Charles Dickens reincarnated . . . It is an immersing experience.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “To read the first pages is to be trapped for seven-hundred odd more: you cannot stop turning them.”—The New Yorker “Few books, at most a dozen or two in a lifetime, affect us this way. . . . For sheer intricacy and ingenuity, for skill and clarity of storytelling, it is the kind of book readers wait for, a book to get lost in.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer