Butch was an interesting cat when he was alive. Now that he's dead he's even more so. In his feline-humanoid form-he plays the guitar and often talks to his former mistress, the writer he calls Sweet Lady. He also takes her and Ginger, the channel, on the most amazing adventures in dimensions beyond normal sight-but no less real for all of that. Once incarnated on earth to study humans, Butch is now back on "the other side" at his own "pad" as he calls it (Butch is definitely something of a Beatnik). Over there, he is recognized as a Bhagawan or spiritual Master. Sweet Lady has chronicled her dream time travels with Butch-with edits from Ginger who perches atop her monitor when she writes. She introduces us to fascinating people, shares the deeper meaning of life she discovers, and whisks us along through the wonderful realms of her imagination. But why does it seem so real? Could it be that it is the true reality she describes? "We-e-l-l-l," Bhagawan Butch would say, "that's what you gotta decide." -Laren Bright Laren Bright is an Emmy nominated and award winning writer who has spent years in helping business, authors and self-published authors provide sparkling promotional text.

Who Is Patsy? ...and how does he know so much about everyone? How does he always manage to be in the right place at the right time...even though he's in a wheelchair? Patsy's an enigma for sure, but the answer to the mystery of who...or what...he is may be right in front of you--if only you know how to see it. That's what Patsy is all about: Seeing life for what it really is. And what it really is just might surprise and delight you. Mildred Marshall Maiorino takes you on an amazing journey of discovery, into realms of reality that are only slightly beyond the horizon or as close as the flicker at the corner of your eye. Learn Patsy's secret, and in doing so, maybe learn a little (or a lot) about yourself. --Laren Bright Laren Bright is an Emmy nominated and award winning writer who has spent years in helping businesses, authors and self-published authors provide sparkling promotional text.

Nine-year-old Meena can’t wait to grow up and break free from her parents. But, as the daughter of the only Punjabi family in the mining village of Tollington, her struggle for independence is different from most.

What's wrong with the world today and how might it become better (or worse)? These are the questions pursued in this book, which explores the hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares of the 21st century. Through architecture, fiction, theory, film and experiments with everyday life, Sargisson explores contemporary hopes and fears about the future.

It is time, ripe time for a Zen manifesto. The Western intelligentsia have become acquainted with Zen, have also fallen in love with Zen, but they are still trying to approach Zen from the mind. They have not yet come to the understanding that Zen has nothing to do with mind. Its tremendous job is to get you out of the prison of mind. It is not an intellectual philosophy; it is not a philosophy at all. Nor is it a religion, because it has no fictions and no lies, no consolations. It is a lion’s roar. And the greatest thing that Zen has brought into the world is freedom from oneself. All the religions have been talking about dropping your ego – but it is a very weird phenomenon: they want you to drop your ego, and the ego is just a shadow of God. God is the ego of the universe, and the ego is your personality. Just as God is the very center of existence according to religions, your ego is the center of your mind, of your personality. They have all been talking about dropping the ego, but it cannot be dropped unless God is dropped. You cannot drop a shadow or a reflection unless the source of its manifestation is destroyed.

At the height of her journalism career, more than one million households across the country knew her name and her face. Her reportage on human suffering and triumph captivated viewers, and with it Vanessa Govender shot to fame as one of the first female Indian television news reporters in South Africa. Always chasing the human angle of any news story, Govender made a name for herself by highlighting stories that included the grief of a mother clutching a packet filled with the fragments of the broken bones of her children after they'd been hacked to death by their own father, and another story where she celebrated the feisty spirit of a little girl who was dying of old age, while holding onto dreams that would never be realised. Yet Govender, a champion for society's downtrodden, was hiding a shocking story of her own. In Beaten But Not Broken, she finally opens up about her deepest secret - one that so nearly ended her career in broadcast journalism before it had barely kicked off. She was a rookie reporter at the SABC in 1999. He was a popular radio disc jockey, the darling of the SABC's Lotus FM, a radio station catering to nearly half a million Indian people across South Africa. They were the perfect pair, or so it seemed. And if anyone suspected the nature of the abusive relationship, Govender says, she doesn't believe they knew the full extent of the horror that the popular DJ was inflicting on this intrepid journalist. The bruising punches, the cracking slaps, and the relentless episodes filled with beatings, kicking and strangling were as ferocious as the emotional and verbal abuse he hurled at her. No one would know the brutal and graphic details of Govender's story ... until now. In Beaten But Not Broken, this Indian woman does the unthinkable, maybe even the unforgiveable, in breaking the ranks of a close-knit conservative community to speak out about her five-year-long hell in this abusive relationship. Her story also lays bare her heart-breaking experiences as a victim of childhood bullying and being ostracised by some in her community for being a dark-skinned Indian girl. Govender tells a graphic story of extreme abuse, living with the pain, and ultimately of how she was saved by her own relentless fighting spirit to find purpose and love. This is a story of possibilities and hope; it is a story of a true survivor.

"When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name . . . . It is perhaps only in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake of the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price. I offer this book, then, as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery. Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer."—Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead All proceeds from My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead will go directly to fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago. 826 Chicago is part of the network of seven writing centers across the United States affiliated with 826 National, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.