A mother's love. A daughter's battle. A family's journey. What would you do if your child stopped eating? Dancing with a Demon is the true story of a mother searching for answers through the labyrinth of her daughter's struggle with an often fatal and perpetually mysterious disease. When author Valerie Foster's teen-aged daughter, Jenna, plunges into the dark world of anorexia nervosa, Valerie has to fight against a demon that threatens her daughter's life and her own mental health. Her riveting narrative, along with Jenna's revealing journal entries, explores the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship and how this disease affects one's entire family. For psychologists, educators, teens and parents everywhere, Dancing with a Demon provides hope, understanding, and enlightenment.
Discover the beauty, strength and timeless allure of the South's crown jewel.
Foreword by New York Times Best Selling Author Mary Alice Monroe.
This is a different kind of Charleston book. It is a collection of stunning images, essays and stories written by business leaders, writers, artists, musicians and those who have their family trees deeply rooted in soil tended by generations of Charlestonians.
Travel through these page and experience Charleston as you've never seen it. The history, the events and the sheer beauty that continues to shape all who come into contact with her.
Explore the city's historical homes and cobblestone streets, listen for the rhythm of the tides, and paddle past the crash grass fora view of the city's waterfront.
Her historical past gives way to today, still growing and still awe-inspiring.
Charleston Salt and Iron is what this city is about - turn the pages and enjoy the journey.
1986…Hollywood, at the peak of the cocaine-fueled, hair-band era that swept through the ‘80s like a screeching guitar solo on a double-necked custom Gibson. Taking a gig as the first Check-In Girl at Guitar Center on the Sunset Strip, journalist Taylor Van Arsdale was given a front row seat to the parade of dreamers, druggies and misfits that came flocking to the iconic LA store. But in this world of — yes — sex drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll, lies the story of a young girl discovering herself, making mistakes, falling in and out of love, and becoming a woman. Part fiction / part memoir—Cocaine To Bain snorts and grinds its way through sexual dalliances and love triangles, through celebrity encounters and mental breakdowns and does so during the unexpected corporate handover of Guitar Center.
Antoinette Martin believed herself to be a healthy and sturdy woman—that is, until she received a Stage 1 breast cancer diagnosis. Cancer is scary enough for the brave, but for a wimp like Martin, it was downright terrifying. Martin had to swallow waves of nausea at the thought of her body being poisoned, and frequently fainted during blood draws and infusions. To add to her terror, cancer suddenly seemed to be all around her. In the months following her diagnosis, a colleague succumbed to cancer, and five of her friends were also diagnosed.
Though tempted, Martin knew she could not hide in bed for ten months. She had a devoted husband, daughters, and a tribe of friends and relations. Along with work responsibilities, there were graduations, anniversaries, and roller derby bouts to attend, not to mention a house to sell and a summer of beach-bumming to enjoy. In order to harness support without scaring herself or anyone else, she journaled her experiences and began to e-mail the people who loved her—the people she called My Everyone. She kept them informed and reminded all to 'hug everyone you know' at every opportunity. Reading the responses became her calming strategy. Ultimately, with the help of her community, Martin found the courage within herself to face cancer with perseverance and humor.
This joyful travel memoir by a couple well-beyond youth proves that age is no barrier to delicious fun, unexpected adventure, gentle wanderings and the dazzling beauty of our lovely planet Earth.
Entertaining, informative, filled with wit and wonder, this day-by-day sightseeing memoir is an easy and enjoyable read.
When Al and Sunny Lockwood registered for a 12-day Mediterranean cruise, they envisioned wandering narrow stone streets in Venice, standing on the Acropolis watching morning sun paint its marble columns gold, listening to the Muslim call to prayer chanted from Turkish minarets.
Their travel experience surpassed by far their expectations.
In 2008 Stef Smulders, his partner Nico and their dog Saar emigrated to Italy to start a new life and set up their B&B Villa I Due Padroni. They sold their home, left their friends and family behind and took a leap into the unknown. Now Stef shares his experiences in a collection of 60 witty short stories.
The book treats the trials and tribulations of an emigration: what it was like to buy and renovate a house, to import a car, to gain residency, and much more. The reader is introduced to a full range of Italian characters, from the trustworthy to the rogue, from the gentle to the shameless, flesh and blood Italians. Some are stereotype, others unexpectedly original. Yet they never fail to amuse and entertain.
Tears in My Gumbo, The Caregiver's Recipe for Resilience is a heartfelt manuscript that speaks personally and passionately to the 44 million caregivers caught up in the silver tsunami sweeping this country and for all of the people who care about the caregiver. The book inspires and supports caregivers as well as the family unit involved in the loved one s care. Through a series of caregiver stories, the book illustrates the ingredients needed for caregivers to maintain resilience and create a soul nurturing gumbo of care. Artfully written by caregiver coach and consultant, Nadine Roberts Cornish, CSA, the book shares her personal experience as a caregiver for her mother, which transformed her life as she becomes a care consultant, care manager, and caregiver coach.
A native of New Orleans, Nadine shares her rich family heritage simmered in the traditions of gumbo preparation, steeped in love and community, seasoned with wisdom, humor and healing, much like a heaping bowl of Louisiana Seafood Gumbo. This book inspires and supports caregivers as well as the family unit involved in the loved ones'care. Through a series of inspirational stories, the book illustrates the ingredients needed for caregivers to maintain resilience and create a soul nurturing gumbo of care. Each story teaches a different lesson, demonstrates varying degrees of know how and courage
What can a middle-aged woman learn from a tryst with the college kid next door? What's passion like with a mesmerizing fifty-something surfer who sleeps in the back of his van? How does a regular gal wind up sipping tea with the ringleader of a sex club?
Miss Matched at Midlife: Dating Episodes of a Middle-Aged Woman provides the perspective that only a book by a woman who has been on over 150 first dates can.
At age forty-eight, Rebecca Brockway's seventeen-year marriage ended in divorce. Instead of giving up on love, she set out looking for Mr. Right. Over the course of nine years, Rebecca went on more than 150 first dates--and she also gave several romances a whirl.
Featuring a foreword by therapist, author, and relationship expert Dr. Keith Witt, Miss Matched at Midlife is full of droll insights and scenarios that are too wild to be anything but true. In these page-turning essays, Rebecca invites us to share her journey, one filled with both triumphal successes and humbling missteps.
Treasure hunter Cephis Hall had found his share of interesting rocks and relics, but the grand prize had long eluded him. Since he was knee high to a grasshopper, he had always dreamed of finding a rare, world-class dinosaurian specimen and make his mark on the scientific world. Hall searched for a box of buried Confederate gold coins at Pine Knot Crossing where the old military trail crosses the Little River in McCurtain County, Oklahoma. Although he didn't find Confederate gold, he did find naturally occurring gold in a nearby limestone deposit, which fed into a myriad of legends already circulating around southeastern Oklahoma, including Big Foot. Hall, as a tour guide, knew the back roads and back lands of McCurtain County. When people came looking for natural phenomena of an earthly genre they turned to Cephis Hall for guidance and direction. Hall was an anachronism as a nature guide. A classic, old-timey naturalist, he entertained school children and adults with the stories, legend, and magic of the natural world. He and his partner Sid Love were vestiges of a vanishing class of American explorers, dinosaurs like the ones they sought buried in the earth. While a young boy growing up at the base of the Ouachitas, Cephis had inculcated a dream. Even as he navigated through adulthood and eclipsed the fourth decade mark, the childhood dream never left him. But Hall's American Dream was unauthorized and did not fit neatly into the status quo. Such a dream would never be accepted by the hierarchical elites. Cephis and Sid had uncovered rare and valuable natural bounties and man-made booty without hindrance. But in 1983 things started to change and troubles began. The two men would find themselves at the crossroads of science, politics, and religion. A dream, and a will to pursue it, can result in war. Their discovery would not just change them, it would also change McCurtain County.
As featured in the New York Times “Modern Love” column * a Redbook Magazine must-read * Harper's Bazaar * Yahoo! Style, InStyle, Rumpus, Hello Giggles, Bustle, and Southern Living magazine Fall book pick
Fugitives from a man as alluring as he is violent, Andrea Jarrell and her mother develop a powerful, unusual bond. Once grown, Jarrell thinks she’s put that chapter of her life behind her?until a woman she knows is murdered, and she suddenly sees that it’s her mother’s choices she’s been trying to escape all along. Without preaching or prescribing, I’m the One Who Got Away is a life-affirming story of having the courage tobecome both safe enough and vulnerable enough to love and be loved.
When your grandparents go shopping with funny money, and your dad flaunts his degree from the school of hard knocks, you grow up learning that "life ain't no got-dem picnic." These lessons are handed down to Cathy Curran by Eastern European immigrants who learned how to survive caring little for aesthetics--"if it works, who gives a got-dem what da hell it looks like." Lucky for Curran, her mother is a gentle soul with a dry wit. Lillian Low's homespun values--people come in all flavors just like ice cream--bring joy into the Low house. When restless Joe Low ditches one suburb for another because he wants a do-over, Lillian tells him, "How the hell many do you need? Don't you know that wherever you go, you've got to take yourself with you?" Along for the ride is the colorful Low clan, who turn up to celebrate the arrival of Joe and Lillian's army of kids. They eat, drink, sing, Joe gets plastered, and all too often scotch-fired arguments lead to some good old-fashioned fistfights, which are immediately forgiven with an unspoken rule--shut up and forget it, then it all gets swept under the rug. But when Curran finally pulls up the carpet, pandemonium emerges from hell with a vengeance. Through the vision of a sensitive young girl with a wickedly funny voice, "Secondhand Scotch" uncorks some harsh realities, but never ceases to warm and entertain.
While the official government story has always been that no Allied POWs were held in German concentration camps, 168 Allied airmen were beaten, experimented on, and otherwise mistreated in Buchenwald, where the famous rocket scientist Wernher von Braun obtained slave labor for his V-2 factory, the Mittelwerk.
After the war, the US Army brought von Braun and his associates to America, as part of the ultra-secret Project Paperclip. The US government concealed von Braun’s wartime activities, and promoted an alternate history that sheltered him from prosecution for war crimes. This involved suppressing information about Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, and the Mittelwerk. In the process, the records of the Buchenwald airmen were classified, and they would be inaccessible for decades. While the government was endorsing a fabricated history for von Braun, it treated the accounts of the Buchenwald airmen as delusions or attempts to obtain undeserved benefits from the VA.
The author didn’t intend to write a book about a massive government cover-up. He simply wanted to honor his father, Frederic C. Martini, an American airman who was shot down over occupied France in World War II and then imprisoned in Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Over seven years of research, an even darker picture emerged: that an unconstrained military intelligence operation disrupted the lives of American ex-POWs.
