Fiction. MY SISTER'S CONTINENT is a contemporary retelling of Freud's infamous "Dora" case study, following a loosely parallel plot and containing similarly controversial sexual themes and layers of possibilities. Kirby is a young woman attempting to come to terms with a "failed" bout of therapy while concurrently trying to decipher the truth about her identical twin, Kendra's, life. When she is sent a skewed case study of herself by her former psychiatrist, she decides torespond by using Kendra's journals to reconstruct her final months with her sister and her brief time in therapy, finally creating her own version of the truth.

Long before there was Moneyball, a group of investors led by baseball legend Branch Rickey proposed a new economic model for baseball. Based on an innovative approach to evaluating and developing talent, the Continental League was the last serious attempt to form a third Major League. The league’s brief history affords a glimpse of any number of missed chances for America’s game. As one of the original Continental Leaguers, historian Russell D. Buhite is—literally—talking “inside baseball” when he describes what happened in 1959 and 1960. Part memoir, part history, his account of the origin, development, and eventual undoing of the Continental League explores the organization’s collective corporate structure as well as its significant role in building a thriving Minor League and forcing expansion on Major League Baseball. Buhite captures a lost era in baseball history and examines its lasting impact on the game.

Newlywed Niver was on the adventure of a lifetime. She had quit her job, rented out her condo, and was traveling around Asia. To the outside world, Niver was a woman living out her dreams of exploring ancient ruins in Cambodia and seeing orangutans in Borneo. In private, she was keeping a dark secret. But, when she found herself lying on a sidewalk in Thailand, looking up at the sky in severe pain, she knew things had to change. At age forty-seven, Niver found the courage to set course on a new life. Feeling like a failure, pushing fifty, and moving home to her parents’ house to start again from scratch, Niver started taking one tiny “brave-ish” step at a time to take her life far away from the old one and into the adventurous world of travel writing. These small hurdles led to the challenge of trying fifty new things before turning fifty. From diving into shipwrecks, swimming with sharks, bobsledding at 3 Gs, to indulging in wild escapades, Niver found herself traversing the world on a journey of reinvention, personal growth, and discovering what it actually means to be “brave.” While Brave-ish chronicles Niver’s inspiring expeditions to distant corners of the world including Myanmar, Cuba, Morocco, Kenya and Mongolia this is more than a travelogue. Niver’s story is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of perseverance. Brave-ish inspires readers to dream big, take risks, and embrace the unknown to create a life filled with wonder and excitement, even when courage seems elusive.

This fascinating book, One Family, Four Cultures and Four Continents, by Asher Elkayam, depicts the adventures of a child growing up in Morocco and goes through political and historical events which happened in his childhood and focused on a pivotal year: 1956. Mr. Elkayam writes about the beauty of childhood and the innocence thereof, the neighborhood, the nature, the education, the typical things, which happened then but may never be repeated. In an emotional way, he describes the infl uence of his parents, who were among the guardians of Jewish tradition. He describes the Moroccan Jewish population, which represented a minority, and the events which led to their survival. Having been targeted by the Nazi regime which expanded its grip on North Africa during the 1940’s, including French Morocco, that minority of Jews of North Africa was saved by the arrival of the American forces, during World War Two, who landed in Casablanca in November, 1942, the author’s city of birth. The North African Jewry, which totaled about 400,000, was thus saved from the Nazi threat while Nazi atrocities in Europe went on until 1945, thus destroying the majority of the European Jews. Consequently, a massive exodus of North African Jews took place between 1948 and 1958. The hopes and dreams, as recited in their daily prayers, to reach the Holy Land, were fi nally realized. With measured enthusiasm, Asher describes the friendly relationship between Moslems and Jews in his native Morocco. Asher wants to make sure his readers understand that there is a divide between friendship and politics. The overwhelming majority of his neighbors were friendly and unthreatening. However those in the small minority who became active in politics were behind the forces which eventually caused Asher’s family and thousands more to look for a safe exit from his native land. Whether the events which led to a massive exodus from North Africa represented a coincidental circumstance in current events or whether they were caused by some divine intervention would remain for a long time a thing historians could decide on one day.

It is 1934 in La Paz when Elsa, a charming Bolivian of Inca descent, meets Jan, a handsome Czech engineer. Three days later he proposed marriage to her. In 1938, when multitudes abandon the Old Continent, they move to Prague with two children born in Argentina. My Roots Continents Apart is an inspiring account of a family's struggle to survive and stay together during the turmoil of Second World War in Europe. The narrative unfolds across venturesome places and situations in Czechoslovakia, Rumania and the Balkans, alongside Jan's role as member of the Czech Resistance. The Nazis convicted him, yet Albert Goering, brother of Herman, saved his life. During the harsh winter of 1946 the family escapes from the Russian invaders and ultimately returns to South America's post war autocratic Argentina. Elsa Wagner started to write this story motivated by the ubiquitous "live" television coverage of warfare since the 1990's, which brought back memories of her childhood. Based on her mother's book El Frente Desarmado, published in 1952, and after further research of her roots, Elsa realized that she was creating a whole new story involving centuries of history and cultures so diverse and apart as Bolivia and Czechoslovakia.