My youngest son, Sam, hands me a DVD converted from a video recording taken years ago. Apprehensive, I slide it into a laptop and watch the scene from my past come to life. After viewing only part of it, he exits to do homework, pauses, and quips, What happened to you, Mom? Time suspends as I search for a reply. Life life happened, Sama lot of life. Like your dad dying and you and I ending up with a genetic disorder. Muscle biopsies, spinal taps, surgeries, you know. Crazy stuff happened. He looks my way only somewhat understanding. His seventeen-year-old, senior-in-high-school self tries on my explanation, but it doesnt quite fit. He cant give in so why should I? He continues up the stairs and I stand alone. Alone with the reality that the hard stuff is winning. That I caved under the pressure. That my tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed son knows who I was, compared to who I am.

Exciting fiction premiere from beloved New York Times bestselling author Beth Moore. 2017 Christy Award finalist (General Fiction category) Only God knew why Jillian Slater agreed to return to New Orleans on the news that her father had finally drunk himself to death. It’s not like they were close. She hadn’t seen him—or her grandmother, the ice queen—in almost 20 years. But when Adella Atwater, the manager of her grandmother’s apartment house, called and said Jillian’s expenses would be paid if she’d fly in for the burial, a free trip to New Orleans was too intriguing to resist. What Adella didn’t tell her was that the apartment house wasn’t a house at all and, whatever it was, bore the dead weight of a long and painful history. As soon as Jillian meets the odd assortment of renters and realizes that her grandmother had no idea she was coming, she hatches a plan to escape. But the investigation into her father’s death quickly unfolds and Jillian is drawn into the lives of the colorful collection of saints and sinners who pass through Saint Silvanus. She soon discovers there is more at stake than she ever imagined. Who is behind the baffling messages and the strange relics left on the steps? Is it possible that her family is actually cursed? Or is it just this crazy old house that holds them all under its spell? Jillian walks into a web of spiritual and personal danger borne out of her family’s broken history, and despite Adella’s wiliest efforts, only God himself can orchestrate the undoing of all that is going on at Saint Silvanus.

Author Charles Ota Heller's early childhood in Czechoslovakia was idyllic, but his safe and happy world didn't last long, Three years after his birth, Germany forced an occupation of his country; afterward, most of his young life consisted of running and hiding. His life, just like those of the other youths who lived in Europe during the late 1930s and early 1940s, was shaped forever by the dangers, horrors, and unsettling events he experienced. In this memoir, Heller, born Ota Karel Heller, narrates his family's story—a family nearly destroyed by the Nazis. Son of a mixed marriage, he was raised a Catholic and was unaware of his Jewish roots, even after his father escaped to join the British army and fifteen members of his family disappeared. Prague: My Long Journey Home tells of his Christian mother being sent to a slave labor camp and of his hiding on a farm to avoid deportation to a death camp. With the war coming to a close, Heller tells of how he picked up a revolver and shot a Nazi when he was just nine years old. Heller, now an assimilated American, left the horrors of the past—along with his birth name—behind to live the proverbial American Dream. In his memoir, he recalls how two cataclysmic events following Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution brought him face-to-face with demons of his former life. On his personal journey Heller discovered and embraced his heritage—one which he had abandoned decades earlier.

A parable is a story used to illustrate a lesson or moral. in the case of the Kryon parables, the stories are simple—even childlike—and sometimes their real meaning is only clear after repeate examination. The parables, or "journeys", in this wonderful book relate to individual human beings and how they react in specific circumstances. Kryon speaks of new gifts from God as we enter the next century. He relates good news for the future, instead of "doom and gloom" predictions that almost always accompany each millennium change. If you are already familiar with the Kryon books... or if this is your first exposure to the world of Kryon... you will find this work to be an inspiring and moving adventure that will take you to places in your mind and soul that you had only imagined up to this point!

The pages of The Diary of Jack the Ripper reveal the unimaginable - that over a century ago, the legendary serial killer at work in London's Whitechapel kept a record of his bestial mutilations of women. The writer of the horrific journal is James Maybrick, a depraved drug-taking, womanising, 49-year-old Liverpool cotton merchant with a history of domestic violence. In this analysis of his diary, investigative author Shirley Harrison explains all about the origins of the text, the rigorous scientific analysis it has endured and reveals startling new information about Maybrick's shadowy background. All this combines with a chilling confession scratched into a watch, 'I am Jack. J Maybrick,' provide powerful justification that Maybrick was Jack the Ripper. The diary itself is reproduced in full, so that you too can judge whether these are the deeply distributing words of Jack the Ripper himself, reaching out from across the abyss of more than a century.

From one of the fiercest critics writing today, Morgan Jerkins’ highly-anticipated collection of linked essays interweaves her incisive commentary on pop culture, feminism, black history, misogyny, and racism with her own experiences to confront the very real challenges of being a black woman today—perfect for fans of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists. Morgan Jerkins is only in her twenties, but she has already established herself as an insightful, brutally honest writer who isn’t afraid of tackling tough, controversial subjects. In This Will Be My Undoing, she takes on perhaps one of the most provocative contemporary topics: What does it mean to “be”—to live as, to exist as—a black woman today? This is a book about black women, but it’s necessary reading for all Americans. Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality. In This Will Be My Undoing, Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large. Whether she’s writing about Sailor Moon; Rachel Dolezal; the stigma of therapy; her complex relationship with her own physical body; the pain of dating when men say they don’t “see color”; being a black visitor in Russia; the specter of “the fast-tailed girl” and the paradox of black female sexuality; or disabled black women in the context of the “Black Girl Magic” movement, Jerkins is compelling and revelatory.

A mother learns how to cope with the death of her son while going through the challenges of helping her family and herself. The journey has its ups and downs as Carol documents the multitude of feelings that she experiences in the journals she wrote after her son committed suicide at the age of eighteen. The journals will help you realize that complete thoughts are not always possible for those dealing with such grief. Your mind wanders, and you will never be the person you were before. Whether you have gone through an unfortunate event in your life or you're struggling to help a loved one in a similar situation, Carol will let you into the feelings of a mother's pain so that you yourself can understand and/or help those around you. While the story is a horrible tragedy, suicide happens, and the loved ones left behind need to band together to cope.

The Promise I Kept is a poignant, funny, and often heartbreaking story of a daughter's journey to live up to a vow that she never put her father, Jack, into a nursing home; his greatest fear for his final days. Thirteen years later, now a single mother, the marker would be called in after her mother's passing. For the next nie years, Jackie Madden Haugh would watch over her father's care, first in his home with live-in help and finally with her. Totally unprepared for her new role, Jackie thought it would be an easy job. After all, her kids saw her as Super Mom ready to take on all of life's messes. But she quickly found her world filled with adult diapers, a pharmacy of pills, and days heavily laced in utter boredom. Cut off from friends, her children and work, she began to crumble. As the days melted together, Jackie came to understand the rocky road they traveled was not about what she was doing for him, but what her father was teaching her that would change the trajectory of how she'd continue to live her life: in constant gratitude and with a heart filled with enormous love.

The bestselling approachable guide that has inspired thousands of readers to manage or overcome depression — fully revised and updated for life in the 21st century. Depression rates around the world have skyrocketed in the 20‑plus years since Richard O'Connor first published his classic book on living with and overcoming depression. Nearly 40 million American adults suffer from the condition, which affects nearly every aspect of life, from relationships, to job performance, physical health, productivity, and, of course, overall happiness. And in an increasingly stressful and overwhelming world, it's more important than ever to understand the causes and effects of depression, and what we can do to overcome it. In this fully revised and updated edition — which includes updated information on the power of mindfulness, the relationship between depression and other diseases, the risks and side effects of medication, depression’s effect on thinking, and the benefits of exercise — Dr. O'Connor explains that, like heart disease and other physical conditions, depression is fueled by complex and interrelated factors: genetic, biochemical, environmental. But Dr. O'Connor focuses on an additional factor that is often overlooked: our own habits. Unwittingly we get good at depression. We learn how to hide it, and how to work around it. We may even achieve great things, but with constant struggle rather than satisfaction. Relying on these methods to make it through each day, we deprive ourselves of true recovery, of deep joy and healthy emotion. Undoing Depression teaches us how to replace depressive patterns with a new and more effective set of skills. We already know how to "do" depression—and we can learn how to undo it. With a truly holistic approach that synthesizes the best of the many schools of thought about this painful disease, and a critical eye toward medications, O'Connor offers new hope—and new life—for sufferers of depression.

The English explorer Henry Hudson devoted his life to the search for a water route through America, becoming the first European to navigate the Hudson River in the process. In Fatal Journey, acclaimed historian and biographer Peter C. Mancall narrates Hudson's final expedition. In the winter of 1610, after navigating dangerous fields of icebergs near the northern tip of Labrador, Hudson's small ship became trapped in winter ice. Provisions grew scarce and tensions mounted amongst the crew. Within months, the men mutinied, forcing Hudson, his teenage son, and seven other men into a skiff, which they left floating in the Hudson Bay. A story of exploration, desperation, and icebound tragedy, Fatal Journey vividly chronicles the undoing of the great explorer, not by an angry ocean, but at the hands of his own men.