"...she drove her right fist three inches deep into my solar plexus, putting her entire 102 pounds behind the blow. I retreated a full foot but remained on my feet. I gasped, treasuring the oxygen remaining in my lungs, and knew that little more was likely to enter there for some time. I wondered how long a person could live without breathing. More so, I wondered how long I could convince my sixteen-year-old daughter that I was unfazed by her puny blow." In this hysterical, irreverent and sometimes thought-provoking collection of essays, the author takes us on a journey through everyday, real-life events that start out as uneventful, but that wind up being anything but. 'Snapshots' is a book that everyone will identify with, and that will have you holding your stomach with laughter!

More Snapshots is the cheeky sibling of its predecessor Snapshots From My Uneventful Life. Chatty, hilarious and often poignant, David I. Aboulafia takes us on a journey through every day, real-life events that start out as uneventful, but that wind up being anything but…

Two days, eighteen hours, fifty-eight minutes... The time of your life on this earth. Richard Goodman is the caretaker of a unique institution that trains disabled youth in the art of watchmaking. But he is no ordinary administrator. He possesses extra sensory powers he does not fully understand and cannot control. But an innocent outing to Coney Island results in him obtaining a more disturbing ability, along with a terrifying prophecy that he will die in less than three days. As the clock of his life counts down, a still greater threat emerges. An uncanny assassin who will destroy everyone he knows and loves. Unless he can discover who the killer is. And stop him in time.

A collection of seventeen stories written by some of the century's best women writers deals with "a single, central, and vital theme, the relationship of mothers to daughters and daughters to mothers."--Front jacket.

Autobiographical writings of Steven J. Gold, (author of Yoga and Judaism, Explorations of a Jewish Yogi; IVRI: The Essence of Hebrew Spirituality; Torah Portion Summaries, With Insights from the Perspective of Jewish Yogi; and Basic Spiritual Principles) describing his early spiritual journey in prose, poetry, art and journal entries. The material is explained and tied together by retrospective narratives.

Life Rolls On is a non-fiction work about the life of Richard P Mason, post swimming pool injury that left him paralyzed from the neck down. He takes readers through different aspects of his life; the recovery process for him immediately following his accident, travels all across the globe, sports participation, college and some of his bigger life decisions. Rick went on to be a Paralympic swimmer even after he almost drowned. He touches on his relationship with his parents, mostly his dad. Although many expect people in wheelchairs to have limitations, he pushed those limits and details some of his more thrilling adventures - flying an airplane and skydiving, among other things. Life Rolls On showcases Rick's resilience and zest for life. Designed to inform and inspire, this book is perfect for anyone who is a little lost after an accident or life-altering news, or those that love or care about those with differing abilities. Anyone and everyone should read this book.

A dark yet often funny novel narrated by a man who, for the past two months, has been a patient at a New York City mental ward. Having suffered a breakdown—due to his shattered marriage and an irrational fear of fading away as a human—he now finds himself caught between two worlds, neither of which is a place of comfort or fulfillment: the world of the ward, where abnormality and an odd sort of freedom reign, and the outside world, where convention and restrictive behavior rule. Finally on his way to becoming reasonably “normal” again, he requests and is granted a “solo pass,” which allows him to leave the (locked) ward for several hours and visit the city, with the promise that he will return to the hospital by evening. As he prepares for his excursion, we get a picture of the ward he will temporarily leave behind—the staff and the patients, notably Mandy Reid, a schizophrenic and nymphomaniac who has become his closest friend there. Solo Pass is an unsettling satire that depicts, with inverted logic, the difficulties of madness and normalcy.

Metropolis and Experience: Defoe, Dickens, Joyce offers a close reading of the major texts of Defoe, Dickens, and Joyce, in their respective historical contexts and in comparison with their intertextual companions, from seventeenth-century “character” pamphlets through Baudelaire to Calvino. In doing so, it challenges the quietist complacency of specialization prevalent in current academia to contribute to a critique of urban modernity in the tradition of Simmel, Benjamin, and Lefebvre. Taking its cue from Benjamin’s bisection of “experience” into subjective sensory Erlebnis and communal reflective Erfahrung, Metropolis and Experience uses this binary pair as a categorical guide in its analysis of the stylistic and thematic adventures of the three centerpiece authors. Whereas Defoe’s novels embody a Simmelian metropolitan mentality through its narration of lived experience in paratactic prose, Dickens strives to humanize the sprawling Victorian metropolis into an experience for communal sharing. In Joyce’s works, the colonial dejections and belatedness of the Hibernian metropolis are transformed into an exuberant excess where both Erlebnis and Erfahrung meet their joyous end. This investigation of the interconnections between the metropolis, experience, and the novel takes place in tandem with a sustained query on non-literary subtopics such as finance capitalism and urban class antagonism. This is literary criticism charged with relevance for the age of “Occupy Wall Street.”

Danny Boyle is one of contemporary filmmaking's most exciting talents. Since the early 1990s he has steadily created a body of work that crosses genres and defies easy categorisation, from black humour (Shallow Grave), gritty realism (Trainspotting), screwball comedy (A Life Less Ordinary), cult adaptations (The Beach), and horror (28 Days Later), to science fiction (Sunshine), children's drama (Millions), love stories (Slumdog Millionaire) and tales of personal redemption (127 Hours). Unlike many of his peers, Boyle seems most comfortable when working with modest budgets, relying on acting ability rather than special effects, and surrounding himself with a trusted team of writers, cinematographers and production designers. His restless energy, vitality and drive find their expression in the celebratory tone of his films – their lust for life. In this book, Mark Browning provides a rigorous but highly accessible analysis of Boyle’s work, discussing the processes by which he absorbs generic and literary influences, the way he gains powerful performances both from inexperienced casts and A-list stars, his portrayal of regional identity, his use of moral dilemmas as a narrative trigger, and the religious undercurrents that permeate his films.