"To say that Babs has been my closest friend for sixteen years is rather like saying that Einstein was good at sums. We were blood sisters from the age of eleven (before my mother prized the razor out of Babs's hand)." But now Babs, noisy and as fun as a day at the beach, is getting married. And Natalie Miller, twenty-seven, senior press officer for the London Ballet, panics. What happens when your best friend pledges everlasting love to someone else? It doesn't help that Nat is dating a guy named Saul Bowcock. As the confetti flutters, her good-girl veneer cracks, and she falls into an alluringly unsuitable affair that spins her crazily out of control. Nat is on the rebound and allergic to the truth—about Babs's relationship, her boyfriend's ambition, her parents' divorce, and her golden-boy brother's little Australian secret. Her mother's lasagna and her roommate Andy's fuzzy slippers are also monstrous affronts. But what Nat really needs to face is the mirror—and herself . . . . Wickedly witty and refreshingly honest, Running in Heels is a hilarious look at the lies we tell ourselves—and the unwanted truths that only our best friends can tell us.

Running in five-inch stilettos is an art form. Leaving your fiancé at the altar on live television is a disaster. Lexie Kowalsky thought she was ready to get married in front of millions of people, but at the last minute she fled the set of television’s hottest reality show, Gettin’ Hitched. Wearing a poofy white dress and a pair of five-inch sparkly shoes, Lexie hopped a float plane for Sandspit, Canada. She figured no one would find her there. But she was wrong. Sharing her flight was the Seattle Chinooks biggest star, Sean Knox. Lexie wasn’t just a reality-show runaway, she was his pain in the butt coach’s daughter. She was chaos and temptation and definitely off limits, but getting her luscious body out of that wedding gown, he couldn’t resist getting her in his bed for one amazing night. Then a photo of Sean and Lexi breaks the internet—and suddenly they’re both swept up in a crazy plan to spin the whole story. But you can’t run from love. . .

Daisy Davenport has it all - stunning looks, spectacular house, seriously gorgeous boyfriend. But when her father is sent to jail for corruption, Daisy's life is shattered. Cramped into rooms above a kebab shop, she and her family have to readjust - fast. And if life isn't hard enough already, Daisy's new school is a world away from her old one. And the school bully is going to make sure she remembers it ...

"More than a memoir-this book is a promise of hope for anyone who was abandoned as a child, to anyone who woke up hungry and went to bed hungrier every day, for every wife who has loved a husband who left bruises on her heart and on her body." Somewhere between stealing cold cuts from stray cats and watching a stranger leave her mother's bed after breaking in through their bedroom window, Mary figured out that her family was dirt poor. Worse than her empty stomach, she was hungry for acceptance and love. She thought she found it when her baby sister was born and she became her "mommy," taking care of her needs as best she could at the age of seven. Then she had to say goodbye over a small white casket. Mary's grandparents, first generation immigrants from Puerto Rico, took her in and gave her a glimpse of faith and stability. For a brief, shining spell, she had a real home-until they decided that Mama needed her. They may have been right, but Mama needed more than a little girl could give and Mary lost her way again. Just out of Juvy Hall, Mary found a knight in shining armor to take her away. She became a teenage bride to a man twice her age-a man as deeply enslaved to booze as every "step-dad" she'd had as a child. She loved him anyway, even wearing the bruises he gave her, even when she tried to leave him to give their children a better life. Despite her fear and loneliness, she never imagined it would take a gunshot in the middle of the night to teach her courage. She was even more surprised when rediscovered faith paved the path to forgiveness after so many years of pain. Running in Heels is a memoir of the grit and grace that carried a young girl through the shadows of her mother's choices and on through an abusive marriage. Mary A. Perez narrates an incredible story of survival in the face of hopelessness, and learning to forgive against all odds. A story of coming of age, and coming into grace."

Kodo Nishimura rose to fame following his appearance in Queer Eye: We're in Japan. Now this celebrity make-up artist and ordained Buddhist monk shares his unique and practical guide to positivity and self-acceptance. Readers will learn from the author's path to self-love and resilience and modern take on Buddhist teachings. IT’S TIME TO BE TRUE TO YOU This book is for anyone who’s ever felt like they don’t fit in. And for all those who dare to be different. Do you show who you truly are? Do you say what you really think? Or do you hide your heart’s desire and camouflage yourself to look like others? It is too easy to limit ourselves for fear of what other people will think. The message of this book is that we can choose to love our uniqueness—and that our diversity offers hope for the world. This Monk Wears Heels is a guide to self-love, self-acceptance, and taking a Buddhist approach to life. Kodo Nishimura reveals how inclusive the Buddhist teachings really are—and that, yes, it is possible to be a Buddhist monk and do makeup and wear sparkly earrings. This book is about being who you really are, totally unapologetically and with full conviction. It will show you how to shine in your own colors and be celebrated for yourself. This is the English translation of Seisei Dodo, published in Japan in 2020 by Sunmark Publishing, Inc., Tokyo.

Best Fifteen Books of March 2019, Refinery29 Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Fetishized, demonized, celebrated, and outlawed, the high heel is central to the iconography of modern womanhood. But are high heels good? Are they feminist? What does it mean for a woman (or, for that matter, a man) to choose to wear them? Meditating on the labyrinthine nature of sexual identity and the performance of gender, High Heel moves from film to fairytale, from foot binding to feminism, and from the golden ratio to glam rock. Summer Brennan considers this most provocative of fashion accessories as a nexus of desire and struggle, sex and society, violence and self expression, setting out to understand what it means to be a woman by walking a few hundred years in her shoes. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

L.A. shoe designer, Maddie Springer, lives her life by three rules: Fashion. Fashion. Fashion. But when she stumbles upon the work of a brutal killer, her life takes an unexpected turn from Manolos to murder. And things only get worse when her boyfriend disappears - along with $20 million in embezzled funds - and her every move is suddenly under scrutiny by the LAPD's sexiest cop. With the help of her post-menopausal bridezilla of a mother, a 300 pound psychic and one seriously oversexed best friend, Maddie finds herself stepping out of her stilettos and onto the trail of a murderer. But can she catch a killer before the killer catches up to her.

A straightforward, easy-to-follow look at the anatomy, biomechanics, and nutrition of running. Dr. Cucuzzella "aims to improve the fitness and well-being of all, from the uninitiated to beginners to veterans who still have new tricks to learn" (Amby Burfoot, Boston Marathon winner, writer at large for Runner’s World magazine, and author of The Runner’s Guide to the Meaning of Life). Despite our natural ability and our human need to run, each year more than half of all runners suffer injuries. Pain and discouragement inevitably follow. Cucuzzella's book outlines the proven, practical techniques to avoid injury and reach the goal of personal fitness and overall health. With clear drawings and black-and-white photographs, the book provides illustrated exercises designed to teach healthy running, along with simple progressions and a running schedule that shows the reader how to tailor their training regimen to their individual needs and abilities.

Foot pain and injuries can thwart even the most experienced athletes. Foot expert and ultra runner John Vonhof discredits the conventional wisdom of 'no pain, no gain, ' teaching instead how the interplay of anatomy, biomechanics, and footwear can lead to happy or hurting feet. With a focus on individual and team care, the 6th edition of Fixing Your Feet covers all that any active person needs to know to find out what works now and also hundreds of miles down the road. This sixth edition has an important new chapter, Blister Prevention - A New Paradigm. It contains new information about blister formation and introduces the concept of shear, which in turn, changes the way we look at blister prevention and treatment. This comprehensive resources covers the full gamut of footwear basics, prevention, and treatments. If it can happen to a foot, it's covered in this book.

The world is a fraught place for the contemporary female. Working mothers are still expected to make their children's costumes for the school play, despite the fact that home economics was abolished in the Seventies; we're told it's not looks but brains that count, and yet if we dare to leave the house looking vaguely our age we're made to feel like failures; women's magazines run earnest articles about the evils of size 00 culture, only to feature models with hips like 10-year-old boys a few pages later; we pay the same level of taxation as men, and yet on average we earn 25% less. So, this book - a book for women who never got around to perfecting the art of domestic divinity but would quite like to be able to cook supper for six without having a nervous breakdown; who never quite mastered Cosmo's 101 ways to please your man, but don't want the embarrassment, not to say inconvenience, of him running off with a 19-year-old Russian supermodel.