Contains fifty true stories of ordinary animals that have performed extraordinary feats, including rescues, acts of heroism, and interventions.

A heartwarming look at the spiritual bond between animals and humans.

Dr. Bernie Siegel has long observed how relationships with animals have helped his patients, alleviating their suffering and heartbreak. Now, he’s gathered many inspiring true stories, including delightful tales from the “Siegel Family Zoo” where “squawks, purrs, chirrups, squeaks, barks, and so on” fill the house. Other stories reveal animals as teachers and messengers, doctors and nurses, healers and miracle workers, and often as guileless clowns. Bernie writes that animals are here to show us how to be nonjudgmental and live better, healthier lives. Let these stories teach you, and apply their lessons to your daily life. If you have an animal, an appreciation for the inspirational, or simply the need for a smile, you’ll treasure this celebration of animals as a source of love, wisdom, and miracles. A portion of the publisher’s proceeds from this book will aid Ark Angel Society.

Heartwarming and Heart-Opening Stories Gathered from Decades of Medical Practice Bernie Siegel first wrote about miracles when he was a practicing surgeon and founded Exceptional Cancer Patients, a groundbreaking synthesis of group, individual, dream, and art therapy that provided patients with a “carefrontation.” Compiled during his more than thirty years of practice, speaking, and teaching, the stories in these pages are riveting, warm, and belief expanding. Their subjects include a girl whose baby brother helped her overcome anorexia, a woman whose cancer helped her heal by teaching her to stand up for herself, and a family that was saved from a burning house by bats. Without diminishing the reality of pain and hardship, the stories show real people turning crisis into blessing by responding to adversity in ways that empower and heal. They demonstrate what we are capable of and show us that we can achieve miracles as we confront life’s difficulties.

The animals who hold a cherished place in our hearts and homes offer inspiring lessons of patience, trust, compassion, healing, and love. The extraordinary true stories in this revised and updated edition of Angel Animals celebrate the spiritual truths we learn from animals, and remind us that miracles do happen. These surprising, heartwarming stories — about dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, raccoons, bears, birds, dolphins, deer, insects, and more — help us rise to life's challenges, find comfort in the face of loss, witness the hand of the Divine, and recognize the interconnectedness of all living things.

One morning in September 2011, a large crowd gathered at the shore in Huntington Beach, California. The people had come to watch dozens of surfers ride the rolling ocean waves. This wasn’t just any surfing competition, however—the surfers were dogs! With more than a thousand fans cheering the competitors on, an English bulldog named Sir Hollywood rode a long wave and was declared one of the winners. Surf dog competitions are fairly new, but dogs have been riding surfboards with their owners for fun since the 1920s. In Surf Dog Miracles, kids will meet the talented dogs that learn to balance on a surfboard, recover if they almost fall off the board, and even surf backward. Some surf dogs raise money for charity, while others can help people with disabilities ride a wave. Packed with real-life stories and full-color photos of these special animals, this book is sure to be a favorite of dog lovers everywhere.

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat. "As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain. "Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . ." Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet. "This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air." Includes an excerpt from Flight Behavior.