In December 2008, my worst nightmare came true . . . How do you pick yourself up after the one thing you most feared happens to you? Alexandra Penney's revealing, spirited, and ultimately redemptive true story shows us how. Throughout her life, Alexandra Penney's worst fear was of becoming a bag lady. Even as she worked several jobs while raising a son as a single mother, wrote a bestselling advice book, and became editor in chief of Self magazine, she was haunted by the image of herself alone, bankrupt, and living on the street. She even went to therapy in an attempt to alleviate the worry that all she had worked for could crumble. And then, one day, that's exactly what happened. Penney had taken a friend's advice and invested nearly everything she had ever earned--all of her savings--with Bernie Madoff. One day she was successful and wealthy; the next she had almost nothing. Suddenly, at an age when many Americans retire, Penney saw her worst nightmares coming true. Based on her popular blog posts on The Daily Beast, this memoir chronicles Penney's struggle to cope with the devastating financial and emotional fallout of being cheated out of her life savings and illuminates her journey back to sanity, solvency, and security. "I will work harder than I ever have before--which was pretty hard indeed--and see what happens. I have the feeling something good will come of it: tough, challenging work and laserlike focus have always paid off for me. . . . Was it better to have it and then lose it? Yes, yes, yes! Even though I lived with horrible bag lady fears of losing it all, now that those financial fears have materialized, I'm in pretty good shape and looking to what's next. Experiences -- good and bad, exciting and boring, tragic and absurd -- make up a life. Not to have lived to the fullest is the saddest, most irresponsible life I can think of." --- from The Bag Lady Papers

Tired of fending off street thugs and worried about the day they can no longer take care of themselves, three elderly widows, Josie, Mabel and Mil, concoct the perfect plan for ensuring their safety, which will also guarantee them free room and board for life. As grocery bag-covered bodies begin turning up in Southern California, police and the media are stumped. Detectives assigned to the case, Paige Turner and Mark Wisneski, wonder what weird new serial killer is on the loose. The victims are mostly drug addicts and small-time crooks, but why the grocery bags? The bodies pile up until the widows invite Turner and Wisneski to tea, where they tell all. What they reveal shocks the world and could lead to the widows' master plan seriously backfiring. Life on the streets and in prison will never be the same.

This book explores a real life transformational process, using a variety of techniques, including psychology, spirituality and life's experiences. That is, any transformed grief-stricken life possesses meaning and usefulness, and can be a powerful approach to positive psychology, vision and leadership.

Everyone has a reason they are where they are. Everyone has a story and this is the story of Bag Lady, a successful woman eager to enter into the next dimension of life holding onto the baggage she picked up along the way. The question is how will she ever make it to the next dimension carrying the weight of so much and so many? Bag Lady is a short story written by author and journal creator Liela Marie Fuller.

I am going to write every single day and tell you about my life here in Spitalfields at the heart of London... Drawing comparisons with Pepys, Mayhew and Dickens, the gentle author of Spitalfields Life has gained an extraordinary following in recent years, by writing hundreds of lively pen portraits of the infinite variety of people who live and work in the East End of London.

The Bag Lady was created out of the many little stories told to me down through my career dealing with young adults who lack God in their lives. Listening and telling young people about Jesus and choices motivated me to write this book, in hopes that it would help them understand that man may let them down but God won't. The Bag Lady is filled with little stories of young, struggling women who put themselves in danger, looking for love and desperately seeking ways to get on the right path of life. This book also teaches that looking for love in the wrong places and then trying to get revenge can lead to destruction. Finally, it teaches that you must be true to yourself and have faith in God and depend on Him only to take you through the storms of life. Why settle for less, when God can give you more that you need, if only you would trust Him?