There are two ways that a person can walk in this life. You can either walk into your blessing or walk into your curse. How can you do that? You can do that by doing things that are natural for you to do. Success at anything is not by chance or by luck. It is seeing things you have already been doing brought to fruition. Therefore, successful people are not surprised by their success. They actually knew it would happen before it happened. The blessing is the reward for a life of integrity and commitment to achieving goals and setting standards. What is the curse? It is all the negatives that we curse our lives with: the negative friends, the negative conversations, the negative situations. An unsuccessful person who continues to put himself or herself in those situations, in those conversations, and around those people will bring a curse to their lives that they will never be able to shake. I am grateful for the friends and the relationships that I have been blessed with in my life. They have helped me to overcome all the obstacles of life. And that is what any man needs, incarcerated or freepeople who believe in him when no one else in the world does.

Bridge has always been a bit of an oddball, but since she recovered from a serious accident, she's found fitting in with her friends increasingly hard. Tab and Em are getting cooler and better and they don't get why she insists on wearing novelty cat ears every day. Bridge just thinks they look good. It's getting harder to keep their promise of no fights, especially when they start keeping secrets from each other. Sherm wants to get to know Bridge better. But he’s hiding the anger he feels at his grandfather for walking out. And then there is another girl, who is struggling with an altogether more serious set of friendship troubles... Told from interlinked points of view, this is a bittersweet story about the trials of friendship and growing up.

Joshua Harris's first book, written when he was only 21, turned the Christian singles scene upside down...and people are still talking. More than 800,000 copies later, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, with its inspiring call to sincere love, real purity, and purposeful singleness, remains the benchmark for books on Christian dating. Now, for the first time since its release, the national #1 bestseller has been expanded with new content and updated for new readers. Honest and practical, it challenges cultural assumptions about relationships and provides solid, biblical alternatives to society's norm.Clear, stylish typeset, with user-friendly links to referenced Scripture.

The true story of a wife, her homosexual husband, and a love that transcended tragedy. Gerald Pearson had been honest with Carol Lynn about his homosexual past, but both of them had faith that marriage and devotion to their religion would change his orientation. Love would conquer all. Then, after eight years of apparent happiness and the birth of four children, Gerald was no longer able to deny what he considered to be his essential self. Carol Lynn was shattered, her self-esteem all but destroyed. Their divorce, however, could not erase a lifetime of love and mutual support. Carol Lynn courageously stood by her former husband's side. Even when he contracted AIDS - and came home to die.

Bringing together six of Turgenev's best known stories in one volume, this collection includes "First Love," "Asya," "Mumu," "The Diary of a Superfluous Man," "Song of Triumphant Love," and "King Lear of the Steppes."

PITHY STORIES FROM MOZAMBIQUE AND ZIMBABWE: The Pub Crawl, The Vengeful Matamba, Stoking the Fire, The Feast, The Totem and Dance My Love will leave you craving for more of African short stories. You will be jumping from the literary frying pan into the fire.

'the greatest short story writer who has ever lived' Raymond Carver's unequivocal verdict on Chekhov's genius has been echoed many times by writers as diverse as Katherine Mansfield, Somerset Maugham, John Cheever and Tobias Wolf. While his popularity as a playwright has sometimes overshadowed his achievements in prose, the importance of Chekhov's stories is now recognized by readers as well as by fellow authors. Their themes - alienation, the absurdity and tragedy of human existence - have as much relevance today as when they were written, and these superb new translations capture their modernist spirit. Elusive and subtle, spare and unadorned, the stories in this selection are among Chekhov's most poignant and lyrical. They include well-known pieces such as 'The Lady with the Little Dog', as well as less familiar work like 'Gusev', inspired by Chekhov's travels in the Far East, and 'Rothschild's Violin', a haunting and darkly humorous tale about death and loss. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Have you loved and lost before, yet struggled with how to recover and move forward? Are you looking for inspiration to give you strength to persevere? Have you faced the inevitable eternal rest of a parent, struggled with how to say good-bye? Have you questioned your faith and let fear take over in times of loss? In The Gift of Goodbye, Rebecca Whitehead Munn relates how she drew strength from her faith and optimism as everything she knew to be constant in her life was changing. She inspires readers through her natural writing style to believe that they too can persevere and build resilience through the seasons of loss in life. Rebecca opens her heart on each page as she walks us through her story of living through two major life transitions within a three-year span, and the resulting shift she made in the process—due to the lasting gift of love from her now-deceased mother, her courage, and the choice she made to expand into more of who she was at her core.

The third collection from this thrillingly innovative master of the lyric essay.