International Federation of Body Building Pro Nicole Moneer has dedicated her entire career to helping people strengthen their bodies, minds, relationship with God, and sense of self-worth and confidence using her hard gained knowledge and expertise of eating right, exercising, and inward reflection to achieve both spiritual and emotional wellness. Starting with her time as a four-year-old saving her brother's life as an only viable bone marrow donor, Nicole's existence has revolved around bettering and enriching the lives of others, a fact that she would come to realize through much pain and suffering of her own. She has not always been the pinnacle of health and fitness that countless people turn to for exercise and dietary advice though. It has been a long, uphill climb. From the day she was born up until her early 30s, Nicole has been forced to deal with various infections, physical pain and discomfort, fatigue, asthma attacks and digestive issues, keeping her in a consistent cycle of prescription drug, antibiotics and medication usage which only exacerbated her physical ailments. Her relief came after completely putting an end to her dependency on prescription drugs and instead, began to make better eating choices, curb her alcohol consumption and smoking, detox to rid her body of harmful toxins, drop harmful people and relationships, and take natural supplements with the help of her integrative physician. Nicole will be the first to tell you that you can look healthy on the outside, but be suffering on the inside. Yes, you can be "skinny fat" and even though she has grown up the daughter of a doctor and a nurse, the abusive, neglectful nature of her father and her mother's oversight of healthy eating meant that Nicole would have to come to terms with her health and turn it around on her own. And that is exactly what she did. She has been able to help so many with her focus on eating healthy, taking natural supplements instead of prescription pharmaceuticals, tailoring your exercise routine to fit you, and cutting out negative people and influences in your life, as well as opening up your heart to God and the guidance that He can provide. The ability to improve our lives is in our hands. It just takes someone like Nicole Moneer to help show us just what we can do.

This book was not written to belittle anyone or hurt anyones feelings. It was written with the hope of motivating others who have been in similar situations. It is also intending to help those who may be going through similar things now. This book gives real proof that you can overcome any situation in your life through prayer and with the help of God. Life was designed by God to be valued and never taken for granted.There is always someone willing to listen to you and to help you, if you are willing to talk. I know because I am still talking and still getting help, you can too. I am still pressing on and dealing with life, one day at a time.Some of the confessions made in this book, revealing the lowest points in my life helped me to truly get over them. The bad times are in my past. Those things have come to an end . . . all of them.

Debby Montgomery Johnson is a woman on a mission. In her book she shares her personal experience with a love that turned into betrayal and financial disaster and she removes the mask of shame and shows others how do to the same. Many of us have something, something we're hiding, something we're ashamed of, something that through no fault of our own or through our own making, something that we keep hidden and that, in turn, keeps us hidden, from each other and the world.

As part of her recovery from a devastating car accident, Grace Thomas embarks on a surprise cruise booked by her husband, Cameron. The accident still haunts Grace and she is a little anxious to be leaving her family, but excited to fulfil what has been a life-long dream of hers - cruising around the Mediterranean with some girlfriends - even if her husband's secretary, Chantelle is tagging along for the trip. Maybe this is a chance to start a fresh with this woman. But Chantelle appears to be everywhere Grace turns, and her instincts can’t all be wrong. Something is off. Not only does Chantelle resemble Grace, it soon becomes clear that she is desperate for Cameron’s attention, but at what lengths would she go to get it? Were Cameron's motives for sending Grace away on this cruise as admirable as she first thought and is her husband's relationship with the ever-present Chantelle as platonic as he claims? Grace's journey of self-discovery suddenly begins to feel rather sinister. Her friends are distant, Chantelle is incessantly playing with her mind, and Grace feels more lost and alone than ever. Then, she discovers that her husband has told the children she’s died. Grace's world is shattered. Everything she knows has been a lie and the truth has devastating consequences for everyone... Fans of T.M. Logan, C.L. Taylor and K.L. Slater won’t be able to put this one down. JA Andrews is the author of gripping twisty psychological thrillers, Mummy's Boy (2020), You Let Him In (2020) and I Let Her Go (2021). As well as writing fiction, JA Andrews enjoys reading a mix of genres, watching various reality TV and spending time with family and friends. He is a member of the Crime Writers Association.

An expert in nonverbal communication tackles the science of smiles and their extraordinary social impact. When someone smiles, the effects are often positive: a glum mood lifts; an apology is accepted; a deal is struck; a flirtation begins. But not all smiles are equally benign: a rival grins to get under your skin; a bully's smirk unsettles his mark. Who flashes more fake smiles, popular kids or unpopular kids? Is it good or bad when a bereaved person smiles? Much more than cheerful expressions, smiles are social acts with powerful consequences. Drawing on her research conducted at Yale University and Boston College as well as the latest studies in psychology, medicine, anthropology, biology, and computer science, Marianne LaFrance explores the compelling science behind the smile, revealing that this familiar expression is not as simple as it first may seem. Her groundbreaking work shows how the smile says much more than we realize—or care to admit. To read this book is to learn just how much the smile influences our lives and our relationships.

Insights and strategies for claiming victory over fear, from “one of the most remarkable and brilliant teachers of modern times” (Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart) Many of us, without even realizing it, are dominated by fear. We might be aware of some of our fears—perhaps we are afraid of public speaking, of financial hardship, or of losing a loved one. Chögyam Trungpa shows us that most of us suffer from a far more pervasive fearfulness: fear of ourselves. We feel ashamed and embarrassed to look at our feelings or acknowledge our styles of thinking and acting; we don’t want to face the reality of our moment-to-moment experience. It is this fear that keeps us trapped in cycles of suffering, despair, and distress. In Smile at Fear, Chögyam Trungpa offers us a vision of moving beyond fear to discover the innate bravery, trust, and delight in life that lies at the core of our being. Drawing on the Shambhala Buddhist teachings, he explains how we can each become a spiritual warrior—a person who faces each moment of life with openness and fearlessness.

From Bangkok to Bogotá, a hilarious behind-the-brochures tour of picture-perfect locales, dangerous destinations, and overrated hellholes from a guy who knows the truth about travel Travel writer, editor, and photographer Chuck Thompson has spent more than a decade traipsing through thirty-five (and counting) countries across the globe, and he's had enough. Enough of the half-truths demanded by magazine editors, enough of the endlessly recycled clichés regarded as good travel writing, and enough of the ugly secrets fiercely guarded by the travel industry. But mostly, he's had enough of returning home from assignments and leaving the most interesting stories and the most provocative insights on the editing-room floor. From getting swindled in Thailand to running afoul of customs inspectors in Belarus, from defusing hostile Swedish rockers backstage in Germany to a closed-door meeting with travel execs telling him why he's about to be fired once again, Thompson's no-holds-barred style is refreshing, invigorating, and all those other adjectives travel writers use to describe spa vacations where the main attraction is a daily colonic. Smile When You're Lying takes readers on an irresistible series of adventures in Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and beyond; details the effects of globalization on the casual traveler and ponders the future of travel as we know it; and offers up a treasure trove of travel-industry secrets collected throughout a decidedly speckled career.

The unsolved murder of a young activist leads to the discovery of much darker crimes in New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan’s latest compelling thriller to feaure the young, edgy detective Kara Quinn and the loner FBI agent Matt Costa. This time they work to uncover possible ties to a high-stakes cartel in the Southwest desert. Something mysterious is killing the wildlife in the mountains just south of Tucson. When a college intern turned activist sets out to collect her own evidence, she, too, ends up dead. Local law enforcement is slow to get involved. That’s when the mobile FBI unit goes undercover to infiltrate the town and its copper refinery in search of possible leads. Quinn and Costa find themselves scouring the desolate landscape, which keeps revealing clues to something much darker—greed, child trafficking and more death. As the body count adds up, it’s clear they have stumbled onto much more than they bargained for. Now they must figure out who is at the heart of this mayhem and stop them before more innocent lives are lost. Don’t miss THE MISSING WITNESS, the brand-new page-turning thriller from New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan! A Quinn & Costa Thriller Book 1: The Third to Die Book 2: Tell No Lies Book 3: The Wrong Victim Book 4: Seven Girls Gone Book 5: The Missing Witness

With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.

From the author of the Booker Prize winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, a bold, haunting novel about the uncertainty of memory and how we contend with the past. "It's his bravest novel yet; it's also, by far, his best." -- npr.org “The closest thing he’s written to a psychological thriller."– The New York Times Book Review Just moved into a new apartment, alone for the first time in years, Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly’s for a pint, a slow one. One evening his drink is interrupted. A man in shorts and a pink shirt comes over and sits down. He seems to know Victor’s name and to remember him from secondary school. His name is Fitzpatrick. Victor dislikes him on sight, dislikes, too, the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up of five years being taught by the Christian Brothers. He prompts other memories—of Rachel, his beautiful wife who became a celebrity, and of Victor’s own small claim to fame, as the man who would say the unsayable on the radio. But it’s the memories of school, and of one particular brother, that Victor cannot control and which eventually threaten to destroy his sanity. Smile has all the features for which Roddy Doyle has become famous: the razor-sharp dialogue, the humor, the superb evocation of adolescence, but this is a novel unlike any he has written before. When you finish the last page you will have been challenged to reevaluate everything you think you remember so clearly.