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Showing 1 - 20 of 652 items
By Sarah Everett. 2023
“One of the best books I have read this year (maybe ever).” —Colby Sharp, Nerdy Book ClubNPR Books We Love…
2023 | Publishers Weekly Best of 2023 | Winner of the Governor General's Literary Awards for Young People's LiteratureA heart-wrenching middle grade debut about Kemi, an aspiring scientist who loves statistics and facts, as she navigates grief and loss at a moment when life as she knows it changes forever.Eleven-year-old Kemi Carter loves scientific facts, specifically probability. It's how she understands the world and her place in it. Kemi knows her odds of being born were 1 in 5.5 trillion and that the odds of her having the best family ever were even lower. Yet somehow, Kemi lucked out.But everything Kemi thought she knew changes when she sees an asteroid hover in the sky, casting a purple haze over her world. Amplus-68 has an 84.7% chance of colliding with earth in four days, and with that collision, Kemi’s life as she knows it will end.But over the course of the four days, even facts don’t feel true to Kemi anymore. The new town she moved to that was supposed to be “better for her family” isn’t very welcoming. And Amplus-68 is taking over her life, but others are still going to school and eating at their favorite diner like nothing has changed. Is Kemi the only one who feels like the world is ending?With the days numbered, Kemi decides to put together a time capsule that will capture her family’s truth: how creative her mother is, how inquisitive her little sister can be, and how much Kemi's whole world revolves around her father. But no time capsule can change the truth behind all of it, that Kemi must face the most inevitable and hardest part of life: saying goodbye."My heart hurt as I raced through the last chapters of this unique book that shines a light on family, friends, grief, and love." —Lisa Yee, author of Maizy Chen's Last ChanceBy Robert Hubbard. 2023
A celebration and an elegy, Scenes with My Son sensitively renders the terrible privilege of grief in the wake of suicide.After years…
of battling clinical depression exacerbated by autism, Auggie Hubbard died by suicide at the age of 19. In this poignant tribute to his son, Robert Hubbard—a theatre scholar and actor—stages Auggie&’s life in a series of vivid and tender scenes: Auggie&’s insatiable hunger for Accelerated Reader points. His tireless lightsaber practice in the local park. His sonorous tuba practice in the ward of his inpatient program. Through these anecdotes of Auggie&’s life and the days following his death, readers journey with a family shaken by mental illness and share in their hard-won joys in defiance of depression.Refusing easy answers and clichés about &“God&’s plan,&” Hubbard unflinchingly asks: Does faith matter amid such tragedy? What do you do when awareness isn&’t enough? When you&’ve tried so hard to keep your child safe, but your efforts fail? His honesty and vulnerability—and his tender portrait of Auggie—are gifts to all who live with their own questions in the wake of a loved one&’s death.Grief Memoirs: Cultural, Supportive, and Therapeutic Significance bridges literary studies and psychology to evaluate contemporary grief memoirs for use by…
bereaved and non-bereaved individuals. This volume positions the grief memoir within life writing and bereavement studies through examination of the genre’s characteristics, definitions, and functions. The book presents the views of memoirists, helping professionals, community members, and university students on writing and reading as self-expressive, self-searching, and grief-witnessing acts after the loss of a loved one. Utilizing new data from surveys assessing grief support and bibliotherapy, this text discusses the compatibility of grief memoirs with contemporary grief theories and the role of interdisciplinary methods in assisting the bereaved. Grief Memoirs: Cultural, Supportive, and Therapeutic Significance will help educators advance the understanding and interpretation of loss within psychology, literature, and medical humanities classrooms.By Helen Besemeres. 2024
The groundbreaking contribution made by this unique book draws on the experiences recorded by five people who are facing death –…
Jenny Diski, Philip Gould, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Mayne and Cory Taylor. Analysing the key themes that emerge from a psychodynamic perspective, the book describes how the memoirists respond to the first shock of receiving a terminal diagnosis, how they meet the challenge of continuing an active life when the illusion of an open-ended future has gone, and finally, how they struggle with accepting death as it overtakes them. The author argues that the ability to accept personal death is the key to resolving the paradox of our need to survive at all costs, while at the same time, however much we might deny it, we know that we must die. In a society where death and dying occur largely out of sight, this book provides information about what it is like to die – physically, psychologically and emotionally – and invites us to think about coming to terms with death. Exploring End of Life Experience is an important contribution to the interdisciplinary literature on death and dying, relevant to scholars and practitioners in medicine, nursing, psychology, and the wider medical humanities.By Cierra Block. 2022
For anyone who loves London – whether you're visiting for the weekend or are a die-hard local – this is…
the book for you.Artist Cierra Block loves to create maps, and this compilation will have you uncovering the best things London has on offer. Featuring the most notable places to eat, what to see, where to walk and what to do, this is a guide like no other. Vibrantly illustrated, Cierra lists all the top addresses and areas to explore. Find out where to indulge in the best afternoon tea and festive mince pies; jump on a bike and take a spin around Shoreditch or Hampstead like a local; or follow in the footsteps of the Suffragettes. From haunted spots for true-crime lovers, to the best bookshops, romantic strolls and coffee pit-stops, London, Block by Block will make your next visit to London the most memorable one yet.A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people—morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners—who work in it…
and what led them there.We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we’re so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.Through Campbell’s incisive and candid interviews with these people who see death every day, she asks: Why would someone choose this kind of life? Does it change you as a person? And are we missing something vital by letting death remain hidden? A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer readers a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.By David Long. 2021
Step back in time to Ancient Rome and meet some of the many people who lived, worked, and played during…
that time."The illustrations are strikingly colorful, highly detailed, and immensely informative. Through these pages, readers will discover a fuller understanding of Ancient Roman culture....As this book follows a narrative format, readers will be challenged to think critically and draw connections between the various societal roles featured rather than simply absorb facts presented via informational text....Recommended."—School Library Connection From a young slave boy to a fierce gladiator, a washerwoman to a wealthy lady, and a mosaic artist to the emperor himself - each one will share with you the story of their own daily life. Together, they are the Romans.Featuring 19 different characters from Roman times, as well as an introduction to the Roman world, a map of the empire and a timeline of key events, this book provides a new angle on a classic subject, bringing the ancient world to life.By Sandro Veronesi. 2023
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE HUMMINGBIRD'The dawn will still be far away, and you will lift your eyes to…
the sky, and the sky will be as black as sackcloth and ashes'Addressed to a 'you' that encompasses the author, the reader and all of us at once, narrated in the future tense of apocalyptic texts and inspired by Sandro Veronesi's own experience of caring for his elderly parents, Prophecy is a powerful and unforgettable story of immense grief and infinite love.A visionary take on life by one of today's most remarkable writers.PRAISE FOR SANDRO VERONESI'S THE HUMMINGBIRDWinner of the Premio Strega | A Guardian and Spectator Book of the Year'Magnificent'GUARDIAN'A towering achievement'FINANCIAL TIMES'Inventive, bold, unexpected'SUNDAY TIMES'Masterly'IAN MCEWAN'Extraordinary'HOWARD JACOBSON'A real masterpiece'LEILA SLIMANIBy John Dickie. 2008
'If only we could all write as brilliantly on Italy and its food as John Dickie does. He may well…
know Italy and Italians better than they know themselves' Stanley TucciThe new edition of the much-loved classic, with a fresh chapter that brings the surprising and moreish tale of the Italian way of eating right up to the present.Delizia! takes the reader on a revelatory historical journey through the flavours of the cities that shaped the Italian love for good eating. From the bustle of Medieval Milan, to the bombast of Fascist Rome; from the pleasure gardens of Renaissance Ferrara, to the putrid alleyways of nineteenth-century Naples. In rich slices of Italian life, Delizia! shows how violence and intrigue, as well as taste and creativity, went to make the world's favourite cuisine. With its mix of vivid story-telling, ground-breaking research and shrewd analysis, John Dickie's Delizia! is as appetising as the dishes it describes.From New York Times bestselling author Kris Carr, comes a transformational book about love, loss, and all the life-changing insights…
we receive when we embrace them.A few years ago, Kris Carr&’s world was falling apart. Her father was dying, she had to pivot her business because of the pandemic, and she was on the verge of reaching her twenty-year milestone of living with an incurable Stage IV cancer diagnosis.While sitting in a CVS parking lot, she broke down, finally allowing herself to feel the massive stress and sadness she had been suppressing in order to seem strong for those around her, and for herself.And then she asked herself, &“If embracing my intense emotions helped me feel even the slightest bit better, why was I so determined to avoid them? And given how all-encompassing this hint of catharsis felt, where else in my life have I been avoiding grief?&”In this book, Kris shares her (embarrassing, painful, helpful, hilarious, and sometimes inappropriate) stories and observations about what to expect when you&’re not expecting your world to fall apart.If your life has been turned upside down—whether it be the dissolving of a relationship or marriage, the end of a job or career, any other number of significant unexpected transitions. . . or, like Kris, you are wrestling with the pain that comes from an illness or the death of a loved one, this book is filled with real-life experiences, practices, and insights that can help you feel better—not cured—but better.It will provide comfort and community as you learn that these big messy emotions can be a catalyst to take inventory of your life, figure out what matters most, and reset. . . because as Kris says, &“when we&’re brave enough to tend to our hearts: Our messy emotions can teach us how to be free––not free from pain, but free from the fear of pain and the barrier it creates to fully living.&”By Marcel Prins, Peter Henk Steenhuis. 2011
For readers of The Boy Who Dared and Prisoner B-3087, a collection of unforgettable true stories of children hidden away…
during World War II.Jaap Sitters was only eight years old when his mother cut the yellow stars off his clothes and sent him, alone, on a fifteen-mile walk to hide with relatives. It was a terrifying night, one he would never forget. Before the end of the war, he would hide in secret rooms and behind walls. He would suffer from hunger, sickness, and the looming threat of Nazi raids. But he would live.This is just one of the true stories told in Hidden Like Anne Frank, a collection of eye-opening first-person accounts that share the experience of going into hiding to escape the Holocaust. Some were just toddlers when they were hidden; some were teenagers. Some hid with neighbors or family, while many were with complete strangers. But all know the pain of losing their homes, their families, even their own names. They describe the secret network that kept them safe. And they share the coincidences and close calls that made all the difference.By Not For Tourists. 2023
With details on everything from Big Ben to Brick Lane, this is the only guide a native or traveler needs.…
Whether you&’ve called London your home for decades or just arrived last night, there&’s information in the Not For TouristsGuide to London that you need to know. This map-based, neighborhood-by-neighborhood guide will help you master this amazing city like an expert. Packed with more than 150 maps and thousands of listings for restaurants, shops, theaters, and under-the-radar spots, you won&’t find a better guide to London. Want to score tickets to a big Arsenal or Chelsea football match? NFT has you covered. How about royal sightseeing at Buckingham Palace? We&’ve got that, too. The best Indian restaurant, theater experience, bookstore, or cultural site—whatever you need—NFT puts it at your fingertips. This light and portable guide also features: An invaluable street index Profiles of more than one hundred neighborhoods Listings for museums, landmarks, the best shopping, and more You don&’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to solve the mysteries of London; NFT has all the answers!By Kelly Cervantes. 2023
None of us make it through life without experiencing loss that leaves us feeling broken. That&’s what makes grief so…
normal.In Normal Broken, Kelly Cervantes isn&’t trying to tell you what to do, how to feel, or the right way to heal. She&’s also not flinging sunny thoughts, vibes, and prayers at you. After losing her daughter to epilepsy, she knows that grief is many things. It&’s weird. It sucks. It&’s all-encompassing. Something everyone will have to deal with. But never linear. Just as what we are grieving varies, so do our journeys to process it.Normal Broken was born out of this desire to meet people where they are in their grief journeys, to lend a hand, or maybe to just sit in the dark with them. To acknowledge your brokenness and to feel broken together—never pressured to &“move on&” or &“think positive.&”With chapters that can be read in any order, Normal Broken is divided into &“moments&” of grief that will allow you to choose what you need at any given time—such as:When you&’re not sure if you want to heal When your greatest fear is socializingWhen you&’re facing anniversaries and other meaningful datesWhen you&’re ready to be okay Kelly also shares stories from her ongoing journey, along with advice she wishes someone had given her, and simple exercises to help you reflect on where you are. Normal Broken is designed to serve as a companion through your own grief journey, whether you are mourning the loss of a child, a friend, a family member, or anyone special in your life.By Bernard Ollivier, Bénédicte Flatet. 2016
After trekking nearly 7,500 miles, from Istanbul, Turkey to Xi&’an, China, French travel writer Bernard Ollivier thought he had put…
the Silk Road behind him—enough for a retiree to rest on his laurels! But that was before meeting his now-partner-in-life Bénédicte Flatet. Why, she asked, hadn&’t he set out from France? After all, the city of Lyon was once Europe&’s silk capital. Now, at seventy-five years old, Ollivier decides to lace up his walking boots and head out to complete his Silk-Road journey, once and for all: 1,900 miles, from Lyon to Istanbul. Only this time, he won&’t be alone. Flatet has long yearned to hike side-by-side with Ollivier, so the couple sets out together . . . This unexpected fourth volume in Ollivier&’s Silk Road series (Out of Istanbul, Walking to Samarkand, and Winds of the Steppe) is a wonderful bonus for the author&’s fans: not only is it the enthralling continuation of his long walk across Asia, it&’s a new journey unto itself, across Europe, full of delightful firsts, such as the inclusion of short chronicles by Flatet. Through ten countries—from familiar France and Italy to the more mysterious Balkans—the intrepid pair invites us to discover the sometimes happy, sometimes tragic history of those they encounter, and to share in their daily lives. Back to Istanbul is both a fervent appeal for greater understanding among peoples, and a magnificent declaration of love.By James G. Robinson. 2023
&“No matter how much I enjoyed parenthood, I found myself having to accept its fundamental truth: that nothing ever turns…
out quite as you&’d expect.&”It was a journey that most parents would hope to avoid: a son born with a congenital heart defect, a fateful decision to take a family trip abroad, and an emergency hospitalization that left them stranded on the other side of the world with no obvious way home. Despite these difficult circumstances, More Than We Expected is not a tragedy. Instead, this memoir offers valuable lessons about the privilege of parenthood and the practice of medicine: the mysterious ways in which the body forms and grows, giving life; how we find the faith to live with our decisions, even if the consequences are beyond our control; and a family&’s extraordinary capacity—when something goes wrong—to compensate and heal. More Than We Expected is a story of finding strength in the most unexpected places. Our children have a special ability to reveal the goodness in the world—their eyes a window to a life full of wonder. Like them, this book is a vivid reminder of what it means to be human—a miraculous, inexplicable gift, however fleeting.By Shannon Lee Dawdy. 2021
A mesmerizing trip across America to investigate the changing face of death in contemporary lifeDeath in the United States is…
undergoing a quiet revolution. You can have your body frozen, dissected, composted, dissolved, or tanned. Your family can incorporate your remains into jewelry, shotgun shells, paperweights, and artwork. Cremations have more than doubled, and DIY home funerals and green burials are on the rise. American Afterlives is Shannon Lee Dawdy’s lyrical and compassionate account of changing death practices in America as people face their own mortality and search for a different kind of afterlife.As an anthropologist and archaeologist, Dawdy knows that how a society treats its dead yields powerful clues about its beliefs and values. As someone who has experienced loss herself, she knows there is no way to tell this story without also reexamining her own views about death and dying. In this meditative and gently humorous book, Dawdy embarks on a transformative journey across the United States, talking to funeral directors, death-care entrepreneurs, designers, cemetery owners, death doulas, and ordinary people from all walks of life. What she discovers is that, by reinventing death, Americans are reworking their ideas about personhood, ritual, and connection across generations. She also confronts the seeming contradiction that American death is becoming at the same time more materialistic and more spiritual.Written in conjunction with a documentary film project, American Afterlives features images by cinematographer Daniel Zox that provide their own testament to our rapidly changing attitudes toward death and the afterlife.By James D. Fair. 2019
&“From flowers to sharks, with birds, butterflies and bats in between, this book is the perfect companion when planning a…
trip in the UK.&” —Random Things Through My Letterbox There are many guides to the world&’s great wildlife experiences, but the UK is neglected and this book sets out to remedy this. 100 Great Wildlife Experiences really takes in all the amazing things to see and do in the UK, in all seasons—because winter, of course, can be just as good as summer or spring. The 100 experiences to be had here in the UK are placed in categories such as &“Best for Families,&” &“Best for Couples,&” &“Best on a Budget&” and so on. Covering every county in the country, this book is useful for people who want to explore their local area and surrounding counties, and for those in need of an insightful guide to take on their travels. &“Natural history writer James Fair takes us on a journey around the British Isles, showing us glorious places to visit and sights to see . . . from nightjars in Suffolk to wildcats in Scotland.&” —WI Life &“This beautiful book lists and illustrates the brilliant wildlife parks in the UK, with fantastic photos and summaries of the rich and varied variety of places to visit in order to enjoy the wide variety of wildlife native to our country, as well as the summer and winter visitors. A thoroughly superb book showcasing our national places of interest.&” —Books MonthlyOne of Vanity Fair’s Best Books of 2022 “Milton Gendel had the good fortune to live a wildly entertaining life…
in Rome—a charmed, romantic period he captured in diaries and photos. Milton had the further good fortune to have Cullen Murphy bring this vanished dolce vita to life.” —Graydon Carter, coeditor of Air MailA never-before-seen treasure trove of photos and diary entries from the celebrated photographer Milton Gendel that bring Rome’s midcentury heyday to life.“I’m just passing through,” Milton Gendel liked to say whenever anybody asked him what he was doing in Rome. Even after seven decades in the Eternal City, from his arrival as a Fulbright Scholar in 1949 until his death in 2018 at the age of ninety-nine, he refused to be pigeonholed. He was always an American—never an “expat,” never an émigré—but he couldn’t leave, so deep were his ties, and this dual bond left an indelible imprint on his life and art.Born in New York City to Russian immigrants, Gendel first made his way to Meyer Schapiro’s classroom at Columbia University and then to Greenwich Village, where he and his friend Robert Motherwell joined the circle of surrealists around Peggy Guggenheim and André Breton. But it was Rome that earned his enduring fascination—the city supplied him with endless outlets for his curiosity, a series of dazzling apartments in palazzi, the great loves of his life, and the scores of friendships that made his story inextricably part of the city’s own.Gendel did much more than just pass through, instead becoming one of Rome’s foremost documentarians. He spoke Italian fluently, worked for the industrialist Adriano Olivetti, and sampled the latest currents of Italian art as a correspondent for ARTnews. And he was an artist in his own right, capturing the lives of Sicilian peasants and British royals alike on film and showing his photographs at the Roman outpost of the Marlborough Gallery. Then there were his diaries, a casement window thrown open onto a who’s who of artists, writers, and socialites sojourning in the city that remained, for Gendel, the Caput Mundi: Mark Rothko, Princess Margaret, Alexander Calder, Anaïs Nin, Gore Vidal, Martha Gellhorn, Muriel Spark. His longtime home on the Isola Tiberina was the nerve center of the dolce vita generation, whose comings and goings and doings he immortalized in both words and images.Here, for the first time in print, are Gendel’s diaries, together with his photographs, selected and edited by Cullen Murphy. Just Passing Through brings together the most striking artifacts of one of the past century’s richest and most expansive lives, salted with wit and insight into the figures who defined an era.Includes black-and-white photographsBy Elly Griffiths. 2023
A stunning companion to Elly Griffiths' beloved crime series, the Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries, and a photographic journey through magical…
Norfolk.Norfolk, a land of peaceful broads, marshy fens, sprawling coastline and shady brecks, is the home of Dr Ruth Galloway, forensic archaeologist. A place steeped in folklore and history, visibly shaped by the lives of those who have come before, it has become an integral character in Elly Griffiths' bestselling crime series.In this book Elly takes us through a year in the Norfolk landscape, featuring the fascinating locations that have inspired her series and her writing. From seascapes to farmlands, wetlands to woodlands, churches to cottages, this beautiful book captures Norfolk in all its glorious variety and is the perfect gift for any Elly Griffiths fan.By Cynthia Thayer. 2023
They were an unlikely pair: a “fast and frantic” woman and a steady, “pickin’ at it” man. And even though…
both had been raised in cities and knew nothing about farming, Bill and Cynthia Thayer moved to Maine, started an organic farm, and made it work for more than forty years. Then a mysterious disaster strikes and Bill is found lying in the road. In We’re Going Home, Cynthia relates the aftermath of the accident, interspersed with recollections of her life with her beloved “Farmer Bill,” from their first meeting to their final goodbye—and her life beyond.