Sidney Mason is a hard-edged espionage novelist who is as gritty and self-reliant as the great-grandmother who raised her. When Mattie Mason dies, Sidney drives herself even harder to mask her grief. Steven Wade, Sidney's literary agent, fears his top writer is headed for a mental meltdown and urges her to hire an assistant. Enter Parker Bannister, wannabe writer and house sitter, whose career as a Postal Inpector abruptly ends the day a lone assailant shoots her in a post office robbery gone awry. Parker easily adapts to Sidney's home in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Coping with Sidney Mason is another matter. She must supercharge her wits to keep up with the famous writer's demands. During the ensuing months, the two women discover just how intrisically their lives are connected. Past and present merge into reality when Grammie Mason speaks from the grave and at last reveals the true nature of a great-grandmother's legacy.

A lyrical story, based on true events, of two best friends who decide to climb Mount Everest on a childhood dare. After making plans, growing up, going to university, saving, and training, they travel to Nepal where they meet their climbing teammates at the famed Yak and Yeti hotel in Kathmandu. Flying into the world's most dangerous airport in Lukla, they embark on a two-month expedition to attempt a summit of the 29,035-foot "Mother Mountain" while trying to conquer their own deepest fears. Max and Molly discover the bonds that are formed with teammates and Sherpas through the laughter and the tears amidst the ever-present danger and risks. Climb with Max and Molly and their Sherpas on their do-or-not-die journey to their ultimate summit.. When they saw Her smiling face, Through the clouds that broke free, They knew to say grace, And be who they could be.

A lyrical story, based on true events, of two best friends who decide to climb Mount Everest on a childhood dare. After making plans, growing up, going to university, saving, and training, they travel to Nepal where they meet their climbing teammates at the famed Yak and Yeti hotel in Kathmandu. Flying into the world's most dangerous airport in Lukla, they embark on a two-month expedition to attempt a summit of the 29,035-foot "Mother Mountain" while trying to conquer their own deepest fears. Max and Molly discover the bonds that are formed with teammates and Sherpas through the laughter and the tears amidst the ever-present danger and risks. Climb with Max and Molly and their Sherpas on their do-or-not-die journey to their ultimate summit.. When they saw Her smiling face, Through the clouds that broke free, They knew to say grace, And be who they could be.

Between the Mountain and the Sky shows us the goodness that is possible when a single person--regardless of age--takes action to help another and, in the process, changes the lives of hundreds. Maggie’s story begins in suburban New Jersey, in a comfortable middle-class family that supports her decision to travel the world during a gap year before starting college. During her travels, the trajectory of her life alters when she has a surprise encounter with a Nepali girl breaking rocks in a quarry. Maggie decides to invest her life savings of five thousand dollars to buy a piece of land and open a children’s home in Nepal. That home becomes Kopila Valley Children’s Home, and eventually, the nonprofit Maggie launches, the BlinkNow Foundation, also starts the Kopila Valley School, which provides tuition-free education for more than four hundred students. Maggie and BlinkNow’s work have been recognized around the world for their innovative, sustainable work. However, this book isn’t a how-to for fledging philanthropists or nonprofit founders--it’s a coming-of-age story about a young woman suspended between two worlds, as well as the love, loss, healing, and hope she experiences along the way. And Maggie’s inspiring, intimate tale shows readers an important truth: the power to change the world exists within all of us.

Jane Harrison examines the festivals of ancient Greek religion to identify the primitive "substratum" of ritual and its persistence in the realm of classical religious observance and literature. In Harrison's preface to this remarkable book, she writes that J. G. Frazer's work had become part and parcel of her "mental furniture" and that of others studying primitive religion. Today, those who write on ancient myth or ritual are bound to say the same about Harrison. Her essential ideas, best developed and most clearly put in the Prolegomena, have never been eclipsed.

“In climbing the Seven Summits, Silvia Vasquez-Lavado did nothing less than take back her own life—one brave step at a time. She will inspire untold numbers of souls with this story, for her victory is a win on behalf of all of us.”—Elizabeth Gilbert Endless ice. Thin air. The threat of dropping into nothingness thousands of feet below. This is the climb Silvia Vasquez-Lavado braves in her page-turning, pulse-raising memoir chronicling her journey to Mount Everest. A Latina hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, privately, she was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child, she started climbing. Something about the brute force required for the ascent—the risk and spirit and sheer size of the mountains and death’s close proximity—woke her up. She then took her biggest pain as a survivor to the biggest mountain: Everest. “The Mother of the World,” as it’s known in Nepal, allows few to reach her summit, but Silvia didn’t go alone. She gathered a group of young female survivors and led them to base camp alongside her. It was never easy. At times hair-raising, nerve-racking, and always challenging, Silvia remembers the acute anxiety of leading a group of novice climbers to Everest’s base, all the while coping with her own nerves of summiting. But, there were also moments of peace, joy, and healing with the strength of her fellow survivors and community propelling her forward. In the Shadow of the Mountain is a remarkable story of heroism, one which awakens in all of us a lust for adventure, an appetite for risk, and faith in our own resilience.