Piping brings happiness and undeniable positive value to our lives... or at least it should. Pipers of every level of experience and ability can feel incredibly frustrated and lost in the dark about an instrument they want to play well, but can't. It doesn't have to be this way. Join me as I guide you through a commonsense approach, which I call the Five Phases of Bagpipe Freedom, to liberate every aspect of your musicianship and rediscover your joy of playing the bagpipes.

Following on from the 9/11 World Trade Center terrorist attacks, the author covers the ordeal of the massive number of funerals, the importance of recovering bodies in Irish American culture and the bagpiping ritual, both traditional and modern.

It takes a heavenly dog to make a hell of a match-- Right before her untimely death, Lydia Keane made one terrible mistake--she had an affair with her best friend Amy's husband. Barred from the afterlife until she makes amends, Lydia has been ordered back to Earth for one final mission: to find Amy a new husband. But there is just one small catch: Lydia must rely on her smarts rather than her centerfold body--because she has been reincarnated as a mangy stray dog! Although Lydia was always an expert matchmaker, she never had to play Cupid while trapped in the body of a furry mutt. But if she wants a chance to rest in peace, Lydia must figure out a way to find Amy the most handsome bachelor in town--and pray that woman's best friend can spot true love.

In the late Victorian era, smoking was a male habit and tobacco was consumed mostly in pipes and cigars. By the mid-twentieth century, advertising and movies had not only made it acceptable for women to smoke but smoking had become a potent symbol of their emancipation. From mass cigarette production in 1888 to the first studies linking cigarettes to lung cancer in 1950, The Freedom to Smoke explores gender and other key issues related to smoking in Montreal, including the arrival of "big tobacco," first attempts to ban the cigarette, wartime tobacco funds, French Canadian smoking habits, rituals of manliness, and the growing respectability of women smokers - none of which have been examined by historians. Jarrett Rudy argues that while people smoked for highly personal reasons, their smoking rituals were embedded in social relations and shaped by dominant norms of taste and etiquette. The Freedom to Smoke examines the role of the tobacco industry, health experts, churches, farmers, newspapers, the military, the state, and smokers themselves. A pioneering city-based study, it weaves Western understandings of respectable smoking through Montreal's diverse social and cultural fabric. Rudy argues that etiquette gave smoking a political role, reflecting and serving to legitimize beliefs about inclusion, exclusion, and hierarchy that were at the core of a transforming liberal order.

At once an offbeat love story, a moving portrait of a family in crisis, and a darkly funny American comedy, Kyle Beachy’s arresting debut novel—written in prose that is swift, stunning, and sweet—heralds the arrival of a remarkable new voice in fiction. Potter Mays retreats immediately after college graduation to the safe house of his childhood home. Like clockwork each morning, his mother makes him eggs, lovingly fried into hollowed-out pieces of toast. His father, in the midst of a campaign to revitalize downtown St. Louis, promises to “poke around” for gainful employment for his son. Potter’s best friend, Stuart—an “Independent Thought Contractor” working out of his parents’ lavish pool house—is willing to serve as a kind of life coach, provided, of course, that Potter pays for his services all summer. However... Altogether elsewhere, Potter’s (former? future?) girlfriend, Audrey, is backpacking around Europe with her beautiful bisexual traveling companion, Carmel. Potter was not invited, and getting a good night’s sleep has recently become an issue for him. As enigmatic packages arrive from Audrey, the refuge of life at home soon proves illusory. Potter’s parents are oddly never in the same room together, the neighbor girl is looking quite adult, and Stuart’s much-needed counseling service is subcontracted to a third-party denizen of the pool house with an agenda all his own. And just what are those noises coming from the attic? Kyle Beachy has woven a uniquely affecting story of the long and hard, then quick and hard, struggle to grow up.