A remarkable cat. A special gift. A life-changing journey. They thought he was just a cat. When Oscar arrived at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rhode Island he was a cute little guy with attitude. He loved to stretch out in a puddle of sunlight and chase his tail until he was dizzy. Occasionally he consented to a scratch behind the ears, but only when it suited him. In other words, he was a typical cat. Or so it seemed. It wasn't long before Oscar had created something of a stir. Apparently, this ordinary cat possesses an extraordinary gift: he knows instinctively when the end of life is near. Oscar is a welcome distraction for the residents of Steere House, many of whom are living with Alzheimer's. But he never spends much time with them -- until they are in their last hours. Then, as if this were his job, Oscar strides purposely into a patient's room, curls up on the bed, and begins his vigil. Oscar provides comfort and companionship when people need him most. And his presence lets caregivers and loved ones know that it's time to say good-bye. Oscar's gift is a tender mercy. He teaches by example: embracing moments of life that so many of us shy away from. Making Rounds with Oscar is the story of an unusual cat, the patients he serves, their caregivers, and of one doctor who learned how to listen. Heartfelt, inspiring, and full of humor and pathos, this book allows readers to take a walk into a world rarely seen from the outside, a world we often misunderstand.

An otherwise ordinary cat, Oscar has the uncanny ability to predict when people in the Steere House nursing home are about to die. Dr. Dosa tells the stories of several patients and examines end-of-life care as it exists today.

Sometimes people aren't who you think they are. Everyone knew what was going on in Ballard, Washington: developers were building a giant shopping mall, but a house belonging to a feisty octogenarian named Edith Wilson Macefield was in the way. They offered her a million dollars. She told them to take a hike. Everyone knew that Barry Martin, head of the construction project, was involved in the push to get her out of the house so that the project could proceed without further delay. Everyone was wrong. When Barry took the job as construction supervisor for the shopping mall that was being erected around Edith's little house, he determined to make things as easy for her as he could. He didn't expect that she'd ask him to drive her to a hair appointment—but he did offer to help, after all. And it was in that one small gesture that an unlikely friendship was sparked, one that changed them both forever. The story of Barry Martin and Edith Macefield is a tale of balance and compassion, of giving enough without giving too much, of helping our elderly loved ones through the tough times without taking away their dignity. In the end, Under One Roof is a tale of grace, and one from which all of us can take solace and strength. From Barry and Edith we have much to learn about love and letting go and, just possibly, about seeing through fading light to find great joy.

From the author of the much-loved memoir Cottage for Sale, Must Be Moved comes an engaging and inspiring account of a daughter who must face her mother’s premature decline. In Remembering the Music, Forgetting the Words, Kate Whouley strips away the romantic veneer of mother-daughter love to bare the toothed and tough reality of caring for a parent who is slowly losing her mind. Yet, this is not a dark or dour look at the demon of Alzheimer’s. Whouley shares the trying, the tender, and the sometimes hilarious moments in meeting the challenge also known as Mom. As her mother, Anne, falls into forgetting, Kate remembers for her. In Anne we meet a strong-minded, accidental feminist with a weakness for unreliable men. The first woman to apply for—and win—a department-head position in her school system, Anne was an innovative educator who poured her passion into her work. House-proud too, she made certain her Hummel figurines were dusted and arranged just so. But as her memory falters, so does her housekeeping. Surrounded by stacks of dirty dishes, piles of laundry, and months of unopened mail, Anne needs Kate’s help—but she doesn’t want to relinquish her hard-won independence any more than she wants to give up smoking. Time and time again, Kate must balance Anne’s often nonsensical demands with what she believes are the best decisions for her mother’s comfort and safety. This is familiar territory for anyone who has had to help a loved one in decline, but Kate finds new and different ways to approach her mother and her forgetting. Shuddering under the weight of accumulating bills and her mother’s frustrating, circular arguments, Kate realizes she must push past difficult family history to find compassion, empathy, and good humor. When the memories, the names, and then the words begin to fade, it is the music that matters most to Kate’s mother. Holding hands after a concert, a flute case slung over Kate’s shoulder, and a shared joke between them, their relationship is healed—even in the face of a dreaded and deadly diagnosis. “Memory,” Kate Whouley writes, “is overrated.”

A raucous and surprising novel filled with wonderful details about wine, Rex Pickett's Sideways is also a thought-provoking and funny book about men, women, and human relationships. The basis for the 2004 comedy-drama road movie of the same name starring Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church. Sideways is the story of two friends-Miles and Jack-going away together for the last time to steep themselves in everything that makes it good to be young and single: pinot, putting, and prowling bars. In the week before Jack plans to marry, the pair heads out from Los Angeles to the Santa Ynez wine country. For Jack, the tasting tour is Seven Days to D-Day, his final stretch of freedom. For Miles--who has divorced his wife, is facing an uncertain career and has lost his passion for living-the trip is a week long opportunity to evaluate his past, his future and himself.

Why has Facebook been so limber, evolving so successfully even after a number of stumbles, while Myspace stalled and lost ground? Why was Wal-Mart able to expand so successfully into new offerings, such as groceries, while H&R Block dramatically failed to expand into offering financial services? The answer, David Murray reveals, is that Facebook and Wal-Mart both started with business models that empowered them to effectively adapt their plans as they executed them. The failure of detailed strategic plans that have taken a great deal of time and money to develop is one of the worst problems in business, and it’s ever more urgent as the pace of change in business continues to accelerate. Murray, author of the acclaimed Wall Street Journal bestseller Borrowing Brilliance, argues that valiantly sticking to even a well-thought-out Plan A is the road to disaster. The greatest success comes to those who know how to construct and implement an adaptive Plan A that has within it the means of evolving into a superior Plan B by responding to problems confronted, discoveries made, changing market conditions, and the competition. Writing in a lively, engaging voice and using a series of specific examples drawn from companies including IBM, Intel, Facebook, American Express, and Kaiser Permanente, as well as from the art of war, including the Battle of Gettysburg and the D-Day invasion, and even from the space program, Murray presents powerful methods for constructing a plan that has the mechanisms for adaptation built in. Drawing on a wealth of research, he explains why we are fairly good at short-term predictions but why, in our ever more rapidly changing business world, even the best laid plans will eventually go astray. He then introduces the best techniques for creating an optimal original plan that takes into account our limited ability to predict, showing that vital to this process is that it be constructed so that we are alerted in time to make the right changes. In a brilliant discussion of strategy and tactics, he shows that the core of this adaptability is making sure that your strategy and tactics are well aligned with one another and that you have established the right metrics for measuring results. He then details precisely how to adapt throughout the execution process by constantly monitoring and assessing results, developing worst-case scenarios, and recognizing unanticipated opportunities. Plan B is an essential guide to harnessing the forces of change to achieve long-lasting success despite the most vexing challenges.

The fullest, most textural, most accurate—most human—account of Oscar Wilde's unique and dazzling life—based on extensive new research and newly discovered materials, from Wilde's personal letters and transcripts of his first trial to newly uncovered papers of his early romantic (and dangerous) escapades and the two-year prison term that shattered his soul and his life. "Simply the best modern biography of Wilde." —Evening Standard Drawing on material that has come to light in the past thirty years, including newly discovered letters, documents, first draft notebooks, and the full transcript of the libel trial, Matthew Sturgis meticulously portrays the key events and influences that shaped Oscar Wilde's life, returning the man "to his times, and to the facts," giving us Wilde's own experience as he experienced it. Here, fully and richly portrayed, is Wilde's Irish childhood; a dreamy, aloof boy; a stellar classicist at boarding school; a born entertainer with a talent for comedy and a need for an audience; his years at Oxford, a brilliant undergraduate punctuated by his reckless disregard for authority . . . his arrival in London, in 1878, "already noticeable everywhere" . . . his ten-year marriage to Constance Lloyd, the father of two boys; Constance unwittingly welcoming young men into the household who became Oscar's lovers, and dying in exile at the age of thirty-nine . . . Wilde's development as a playwright. . . becoming the high priest of the aesthetic movement; his successes . . . his celebrity. . . and in later years, his irresistible pull toward another—double—life, in flagrant defiance and disregard of England's strict sodomy laws ("the blackmailer's charter"); the tragic story of his fall that sent him to prison for two years at hard labor, destroying his life and shattering his soul.