Dasha is a gift from the gods. Only she’s not very gifted. Bronze Medal, Epic Fantasy, Readers' Favorite Book Awards 2018. Finalist, Golden Book Awards 2018. Official Selection, E-Book Fantasy, New Apple Book Awards 2018. Second Place, Epic Fantasy, Virtual FantasyCon 2017. Eighteen years ago, Dasha’s mother made a bargain with the gods. She would bear a gods-touched child, one who would stand on the threshold between the worlds, human and divine. Dasha is that child, now almost ready to become a woman, and one day take her mother’s place as Empress of all of Zem’. But Dasha is shy, lonely, and one of the least magically inclined girls in the Known World. Instead she has fits and uncontrollable visions. When she sets off with her father on her first journey away from her home kremlin, she hopes she will finally find someone who can help her come into her powers. But those whom she finds only want to use her instead. What will it take for her to unlock the abilities hidden within her, and take up her proper place in the world? The sequel to the award-winning novel The Midnight Land, The Breathing Sea returns to the land of Zem’, where animals speak, trees walk, and women rule. Filled with allusions to Slavic history, literature, and fairy tales, this subversive combination of satire and high fantasy will appeal to fans of Deathless and The Bear and the Nightingale. With discussion questions at the end. Reading order for the Zemnian Series: The Zemnian Series: Slava’s Story The Midnight Land I: The Flight The Midnight Land II: The Gift The Zemnian Series: Dasha’s Story The Breathing Sea I: Burning The Breathing Sea II: Drowning The Singing Shore I: Sea and Song The Singing Shore II: Sky and Stone The Singing Shore III: Spirit and Flame The Zemnian Series: Valya’s Story The Dreaming Land I: The Challenge The Dreaming Land II: The Journey The Dreaming Land III: The Sacrifice

The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is America's most significant and authentic contribution to the history of spirituality, says Richard Rohr. He makes a case that the Twelve Steps relate well to Christian teaching and can rescue people who are drowning in addiction and may not even realize it. To survive the tidal wave of compulsive behavior and addiction, Christians must learn to breathe under water and discover God's love and compassion. In this exploration of Twelve Step spirituality, Rohr identifies the Christian principles in the Twelve Steps, connecting The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous with the gospel. He draws on talks he has given for over twenty years to people in recovery and those who counsel and live with people with addictive behavior. Rohr offers encouragement for becoming interiorly alive and inspiration for making one's life manageable for dealing with the codependence and dysfunction (sin) rampant in our society.

A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2020 Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR “A fascinating scientific, cultural, spiritual and evolutionary history of the way humans breathe—and how we’ve all been doing it wrong for a long, long time.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you’re not breathing properly. There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

A New York Times notable book and winner of The Northern California Book Award for Best Short Fiction, these nine brave, wise, and spellbinding stories make up this debut. In "When She is Old and I Am Famous" a young woman confronts the inscrutable power of her cousin's beauty. In "Note to Sixth-Grade Self" a band of popular girls exert their social power over an awkward outcast. In "Isabel Fish" fourteen-year-old Maddy learns to scuba dive in order to mend her family after a terrible accident. Alive with the victories, humiliations, and tragedies of youth, How to Breathe Underwater illuminates this powerful territory with striking grace and intelligence. "These stories are without exception clear-eyed, compassionate and deeply moving.... Even her most bitter characters have a gift, the sharp wit of envy. This, Orringer's first book, is breathtakingly good, truly felt and beautifully delivered."—The Guardian

An ode to marine life and the natural world, from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Owls This “intimate and spirited” essay collection “offers us the whale watch most of us can only dream of” as they reveal the elusive lives of whales in the Pacific Ocean—home to orcas, humpbacks, blue, gray, and sperm whales (Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus). Leigh Calvez has spent a dozen years researching, observing, and probing the lives of the giants of the deep. Here, she relates the stories of nature's most remarkable creatures, including the familial orcas in the waters of Washington State and British Columbia; the migratory humpbacks; the ancient, deep-diving blue whales, the largest animals on the planet. The lives of these whales are conveyed through the work of dedicated researchers who have spent decades tracking them along their secretive routes that extend for thousands of miles, gleaning their habits and sounds and distinguishing peculiarities. Calvez author invites the reader onto a small research catamaran maneuvering among 100-foot long blue whales off the coast of California; or to join the task of monitoring patterns of humpback whale movements at the ocean surface: tail throw, flipper slap, fluke up, or blow. To experience whales is breathtaking. To understand their lives deepens our connection with the natural world.

Within the shades of today's world, I have found Content and Freedom in words. For myself, the beauty of poetry is a very soothing Art Form and Therapy that I needed to express. I call this a purging of poetry because when I was literally allowed to finally embrace both pen and paper, I went crazy. The words exploded from me like fireworks. Once I started writing, I could not stop. The words poured from my pen like water. They were cleansing and very healing for me. Each and every word expressed released my inner spirit.With so much constriction in my past life, my writing helped bring out the inner me, the real me. Poetry became a part of my Healing Journey. Each piece contained in this book reflects all facets of my journey. Some Poems are very dark and some are very positive roads taken. I am a First Nations Cree Woman from the Samson Cree Nation in Hobbema, Alberta, Canada. Consequently, there are Poems that also reflect pride in my heritage, some which are very strong. Bottom line, I through my Poetry needed to be purged. I welcome you to take this journey with me, the journey of my release through the Poems contained within these pages.

Even as a teenager, John Beattie felt drawn to the ocean, but it was 25 years before his dream of sailing the globe in his 35-foot yacht Warrior Queen could begin to come true. His voyage began in England & continued to the South American coast & into the depths of the rainforests via uncharted tributaries. The adventure reached a stirring climax during his return voyage from Venezuela. One day at dawn, hundreds of miles from land, he spotted a man dying of thirst aboard a drifting open boat, a man given one last slender chance to live. "A riveting, powerful, more-dramatic-than-fiction, true biographical story of life & death upon the open sea." The Midwest Book Review

A collection of poems, short stories, prose,epigrams and illustrators from the members of the Pen of a Ready Writer Society. The selection of work is a taste of the talents in the group.

Yahweh's Breath is a unique Bible. In original Hebrew language it would be Yahweh's Nshamah meaning, 'Yahweh's puff or breath of divine inspiration'. It was written in the Literal form of the original languages of Hebrew and Greek and then matched with the New Strong's Exhausitve Concordance of the Bible, a thorough verbal index to the Holy Scriptures. It's one of a kind format puts the Sacred Name of our Father/Creator back into the text where it had been removed nearly 6,000 times by the scribes and translators throughout history. An outstanding feature also makes those hard to pronounce Biblical names easy as they were written in the original language of the script with the pronounciation following the name. Also, the meanings of some of the names follows the pronounciation. Using the wording from the Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible gives His Word a detailed 'come to life' picture in your mind. At times you can see the glistening green grass or smell the fragrant smoke of spices. If you listen carefully you can hear the vibrating trumpet ram's horns or taste the sticky gummy syrup of honey. You might even be able to feel with your finger the scar from the spikes in the hands and feet of the Messiah. Another feature of this version of His Word, the Bible, is that any added text by our Romanized translations that was not in the original text languages has been put back into its original form. Above all, this version makes reading and understanding His love letter to us about His Son easy and enjoyable.

I have always loved writing, but it has taken a promise to my mother before she passed away and the encouragement of my wife and several of my friends to bring me to this point. It is my hope that my poetry will be thought provoking, encouraging to some, and insightful to others. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my life, my heart, my thoughts, and my experiences. -RM Ullrich