My Life Is a Soap Opera is just what the title entails. One moment I'm enjoying my teen life and boom--someone close to me dies tragically. I get married and envision living happily ever after and boom--my husband hits me so hard I fall to the floor. Moving forward I live with a man who tells me all the time how much he loves me and boom--all that time he is married. There's a song by George Strait titled "All My Exes Live in Texas"--well, all my exes are from hell! I can vividly hear the voice of the opening of the soap opera Days, as a child I was in awe looking at that hourglass while listening to the announcer say, "Like the sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives." That hourglass is me with the addition of me always having a positive attitude. This book is a collection of memories that I choose to share.

Though he has spent half of his life elsewhere, Gregory Orfalea has remained obsessed with Los Angeles. That Òbrutal, beautiful city along the Pacific seaÓ shaped him and led to a series of essays originally published in the Los Angeles Times Magazine. These deeply moving pieces are gathered here together for the first time. Populated with fascinating charactersÑthe Angelenos of OrfaleaÕs lifeÑthese essays tell the story of the authorÕs trials. He returns to Los Angeles to teach, trying to reconcile the LA of his childhood with the city he now faces. He takes on progressively more difficult and painful subjects, finally confronting the memories of the shocking tragedy that took the lives of his father and sister. With more than 400,000 Arab Americans in Los AngelesÑprobably surpassing Detroit as the largest contingent in AmericaÑOrfalea also explores his own community and its political and social concerns. He agonizes over another destruction of Lebanon and examines in searing detail a massacre of civilians in Iraq. Angeleno Days takes the memoir and personal essay to rare heights. Orfalea is a deeply human writer who reveals not only what it means to be human in America now, but also what it will take to remain human in the days to come. These essays soar, confound, reveal, and strike at our senses and sensibilities, forcing us to think and feel in new ways.

Saved! meets Tim Federle with just a dash of A.S. King in this hilarious and poignant debut about a teen stuck at Jesus camp. It’s bad enough that Nick’s sister is dead, and, in some bizarre attempt to force him to confront his grief, his parents are shipping him off to Jesus camp. But he’s also being followed around by Jack Kerouac, who’s incredibly annoying for a genius. If arguing with a dead beat poet doesn’t qualify him for antipsychotics already, Nick’s pretty sure Eden Springs is going to drive him insane. The campers ride donkeys into the desert, snap selfies with counselors dressed as disciples, and replace song lyrics with Bible verses. And somehow, only Nick seems to find this strange. Worst of all is the PC Box, into which the campers gleefully place daily prayers and confessions. With Jack nagging him to do it, Nick scribbles down his darkest secret—about his sister’s death—and drops it in the box. But then the box is stolen, with Nick’s secret inside of it. And when campers’ confessions start appearing around the camp, Nick is desperate to get the box back—before the world learns the truth about what he did. The truth he can’t even face himself. Laugh-out-loud funny, surreal, and insightful, this is an unforgettable novel about the strangeness of life, death, and grief—and the even stranger things people do to cope.

FBI agent Tilo Adams is still reeling from her involvement with the now-annihilated Mendoza Family in this gripping sequel. Left for dead, her lover, Victória Mendoza, now wants revenge on the woman that broke her family. . .and her heart. Victória is ready to avenge the deaths of her family members—especially her brother. And she's bent on destroying the woman who destroyed the Mendozas. As a new mother, she sees things a little differently; and she wants to make a good life for Moses and their daughter. But Tilo is still a complication. Private detective Moses got played by Tilo, and he wants to settle that score. But how can Victória and Moses do what's best for their new family when Tilo still stands in their way—by being alive?

In Seven to Seventy, author Lavera Goodeye chronicles her lifes journey. She begins by relating how her grandparents immigrated to homesteads on the Alberta prairie before trains provided transportation. Her parents met and married during the drought and depression of the thirties. She and her two sisters were born during World War II. Religious turmoil, mental illness and tragic loss to suicide were all part of her young life. But she persevered, grew up and eventually established a family of four sons. As an adult, she experienced loss and found herself rebuilding her life while fighting for satisfying relationships. She created a business around the skills of her troubled second husband and discovered a talent for helping others to improve their self-esteem and competency while learning to deal with loss. She hoped that another degree would allow her to do development work, only to have those hopes dashed. Even so, she found new ways to pursue her mission to help others improve their lives. Today, Goodeye continues to ponder questions about suicide, addictions and fundamentalist religion. Through Seven to Seventy, she returns to family and roots to find satisfaction in aging. She recovers mobility after major surgeries and realizes that she enjoys her home and the people who are part of her life.

A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.

Suicide would appear to be the last taboo. Even incest is now discussed freely in popular media, but the suicide of a loved one is still an act most people are unable to talk about--or even admit to their closest family or friends. This is just one of the many painful and paralyzing truths author Carla Fine discovered when her husband, a successful young physician, took his own life in December 1989. And being unable to speak openly and honestly about the cause of her pain made it all the more difficult for her to survive. With No Time to Say Goodbye, she brings suicide survival from the darkness into light, speaking frankly about the overwhelming feelings of confusion, guilt, shame, anger, and loneliness that are shared by all survivors. Fine draws on her own experience and on conversations with many other survivors--as well as on the knowledge of counselors and mental health professionals. She offers a strong helping hand and invaluable guidance to the vast numbers of family and friends who are left behind by the more than thirty thousand people who commit suicide each year, struggling to make sense of an act that seems to them senseless, and to pick up the pieces of their own shattered lives. And, perhaps most important, for the first time in any book, she allows survivors to see that they are not alone in their feelings of grief and despair.

Like everything else in this wrenching, dazzling volume, memory is mediated by wit and skepticism. These are poems of great beauty and authentic pain, as well as a wincing humor. The world in these poems comes at the reader as a mesmerizing swarm of images, which sting as much as they please. Their cumulative effect is a kind of sorrowful wonder. This is a book you will not forget. Daniel Lawless is the founder and editor of Plume: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry, the Plume anthologies and co-founder of the poetry press, Plume Editions. He now resides in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Alan Davies, a naive and vulnerable teenager, is tricked into committing an immoral and abhorrent crime. Riven by guilt and remorse he runs, but he can’t outrun his conscience. For twenty years, Alan tries to silence his conscience with alcohol and drugs as fate and chance propel him in to the dangerous world of smugglers, nationalists, guerrillas, and mercenaries. Battling alcohol and drug abuse, Alan dodges death and betrayal as life erodes his humanity and transforms him into a merciless killer until, used up and spent, he returns home. Destitute and dysfunctional, a street scuffle brings him eye-to-eye with the men responsible for his heinous crime. Harnessing skills and cruelty learned through a crime and violence-laden life Alan seeks justice for himself and his victim. But when justice has been served, Alan discovers the devastating truth about his crime, his family and himself.

Gundamentalism and Where It Is Taking America is the work of James Atwood, a retired Presbyterian pastor and an avid deer hunter for half a century who has also been in the forefront of the faith community's fight for two constitutional rights: the right to keep and bear arms and the right to live in domestic tranquility, free of gun violence. He explains why guns mystically control so many Americans and exposes the fallacies of the gun industry's spurious claim that firearms actually protect us. He argues there are no bona fide scientific studies that show defensive guns save us from harm, while there is voluminous research showing a defensive gun puts the owner and his or her family at greater risk. Atwood's book, which details his learning of a lifetime in the struggle for reasonable gun laws in America, puts dependable social and theological analysis of our unique national epidemic into your hands along with scientific data that will provoke honest reflection and discussion for the building of a safer and saner America. Questions for group discussion and suggestions for action are included.