When the narrator begins taking his mischievous six year-old son Ryota with him to his weekly Zen meditation meeting, it's not so much for his spirituality but to afford his mother a bit of peace and quiet. So, when Ryota suddenly announces he wants to become a Zen monk, the surprised father imagines he'll outgrow it. In this Akutagawa Prize-winning semi-autobiographical novel, author Kiyohiro Miura explores a parent's conflicting emotions: pride at the noble path his son has chosen clashes with sadness over losing a child. By exploring aspects of Zen through one modern, everyday family's experience with it, the author succeeds in providing profound but accessible insights into a mysterious Eastern philosophy.

In the first collection of Lake Wobegon monologues, Keillor tells readers more about some of the people from Lake Wobegon Days and introduces some new faces.

Leaving Home presents a method of family therapy at the stage when children are leaving home. It includes a special classification of young people with problems, and tackles family orientation, the therapist support system, the first interview, apathy, troublemaking, a heroin problem, a chronic case, and resolved and unresolved issues. Visit www.haley-therapies.com for additional resources by Jay Haley, including live videos of the pioneering therapist in action.

Leaving Home presents a method of family therapy at the stage when children are leaving home. It includes a special classification of young people with problems, and tackles family orientation, the therapist support system, the first interview, apathy, troublemaking, a heroin problem, a chronic case, and resolved and unresolved issues. Visit www.haley-therapies.com for additional resources by Jay Haley, including live videos of the pioneering therapist in action.

Anne Edwards is the author of several bestselling biographies of notable figures, including film stars Judy Garland, Vivien Leigh, and Katharine Hepburn, as well as Queen Mary and Gone with the Wind novelist Margaret Mitchell. A fastidious researcher and accomplished writer, Edwards received a Pulitzer prize nomination for her book Early Reagan: The Rise of an American Hero. In this new memoir, Edwards turns the spotlight on herself, chronicling her 20-year exile from the United States from the 1950s until the early 1970s. After working for MGM as a junior writer, Edwards sold two original screenplays and was employed as a story editor on a television program. An attack of polio left her physically compromised and struggling to make ends meet, so the divorced mother of two left her homeland to find work in Europe. After arriving in London, she was able to find writing jobs under an assumed name, along with her expatriated colleagues. Leaving Home is a personal story about a young mother and her two small children, but it is also about the many famous—and not so famous—people whose lives intertwined with theirs: Judy Garland, John Garfield, Rod Serling, Norman Mailer, Greta Garbo, and several others. This is an intimate story of a woman who refused to be subdued by her circumstances and determined to rebuild her life in the wake of McCarthyism. It is also a story about a woman who found and lost love and will appeal to any readers wanting to learn more about Hollywood history during one of its darkest periods.

Each year, more than 1.5 million American families see their children off to their first year in college. It's a momentous day in the lives of high school graduates and their parents, and during this transitional time, parents' emotions include everything from anxiety to hope, guilt to pride, fear to relief. In She's Leaving Home, author Connie Jones chronicles two years in her own life, from the days when her daughter, Cary, fielded bids from more than a hundred colleges to her first year as a student at Smith College in Massachusetts. A story of spiritual journey and growth, the intimate, journal-like essays perfectly capture one mother's love and letting go of a daughter as she transforms into an adult. She's Leaving Home is a personal memoir that parents will relate to in the same way readers responded to Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year.

"Orphaned Sam has to leave behind his affluent life in the city- his computer, his trendy clothing, and his pride, to live with his aunt in his mother s home village, a village at the back of beyond. He has to sleep on the floor in a one-roomed hut, sharing with his aunt , his cousins and other orphans. He misses his mother terribly, but she seems so very far away. How can he adjust? Where does he belong? A penetrating picture of modern Malawi is built up from the perspective of a child, in all its colour and faith and optimism. Leaving Home is a story to challenge anyone s perception of a homogeneous Africa, and the publication is timely when the issues involved AIDS, orphans and displaced children are important to many young people. The writing is subtle and evocative and the characters make a strong and lasting impact."