"As one of the most popular influencers on social media, Mia Bell has lived her life online for years. With her celebrity dog and gorgeous fiancé, she is planning the ultimate virtual wedding--expensive, elaborate, and entirely paid for by sponsors. But off-camera, her world is far from picture-perfect. After being jilted by her fiancé and faking her nuptials to please her sponsors, Mia finally has had enough. She heaves her phone off a cliff, ready to live--and maybe find love-- offline for a change"--Dust jacket flap.

What is a family? Rick Myers is a despondent seventeen-year-old who just lost his parents in a car wreck. His family is now the four teenage buddies he's grown up with in a run-down apartment building. Fast with their fists, flip with their mouths, and loyal to a fault, "the crew" is all he has. At least he thinks so until he meets Daisy, an intelligent, independent, self-assured blind girl. Her guts in a world where she's often painfully vulnerable intrigue Rick, and her hopeful outlook inspires him to begin believing in himself. But when the dark side of Daisy's past catches up with her, tragedy scatters the crew and severely tests Rick's resolve to build his promising future. Fortunately, his life is changed by a couple with a pay-it-forward attitude, forged out of their personal struggle with grief and loss. Their support makes all the difference to Rick and eventually to the ones he holds most dear as they face their own challenges. "The Bright Side of Darkness" is a story of redemption and the ultimate victory that comes from the determination of the human spirit.

“Anyone who has had their life completely gutted and rewired will adore this family story. Bradbury's dark humour and gloriously upbeat voice makes it the perfect antidote to a tough year. I loved it!” —Plum Johnson, author of They Left Us Everything The hilarious and moving story of how a modern woman's life can change utterly in a single year—and how, even when life whacks you in the head, you can find yourself rewarded with grace. Cathrin Bradbury's life imploded in the space of a few months. Her beloved parents died, her marriage limped to an end after twenty-five years, her heavily mortgaged house turned against her, and a promising new romance ended in crushing disappointment. But somewhere in that year, a new path, or three or four, began to open up. As Bradbury navigates the setbacks, her troubled brother makes an astounding recovery to health and sobriety. She is reunited with her closest childhood friend after a long absence, with deeply satisfying results. She and her four siblings feel their way to becoming a new kind of family without their parents. And her adult children emerge into sharper focus, each gloriously and uniquely themselves. Slowly, she discovers that the path is steep, the view obscured, but there's light ahead. Cathartic, hilarious, and profoundly moving, The Bright Side broadens the way we think and talk to each other about the ordinary experiences we all share. A master of the uncomplaining voice, Bradbury combines grace and humanity to look at the world unflinchingly and see what makes it wonderful and absurd at the same time, and to let us all in on the secret.

Spite angers and enrages us, but it also keeps us honest. In this provocative account, a psychologist examines how petty vengeance explains human thriving. Spite seems utterly useless. You don't gain anything by hurting yourself just so you can hurt someone else. So why hasn't evolution weeded out all the spiteful people? As psychologist Simon McCarthy-Jones argues, spite seems pointless because we're looking at it wrong. Spite isn't just what we feel when a car cuts us off or when a partner cheats. It's what we feel when we want to punish a bad act simply because it was bad. Spite is our fairness instinct, an innate resistance to exploitation, and it is one of the building blocks of human civilization. As McCarthy-Jones explains, some of history's most important developments—the rise of religions, governments, and even moral codes—were actually redirections of spiteful impulses. A provocative, engaging read, Spite shows that if you really want to understand what makes us human, you can't just look at noble ideas like altruism and cooperation. You need to understand our darker impulses as well.

Patient empowerment as a key component in the future of healthcare systems is the focus of this concise in-depth analysis. It begins by defining patient empowerment as a collaborative partnership linking patients, providers, and systems, and examines the roles of health literacy, provider-patient and system-patient communication, and patient-centered care in the empowerment process. Models of positive and negative empowerment identify optimum conditions when patient and provider participate in service design and delivery as well as pitfalls and risks to patient and system when goals and input are mismatched. The book also translates concepts into practice with guidelines for empowerment strategies at the provider and organization levels to improve patient outcomes and system sustainability. Included in the coverage: · Empowering healthcare organizations to empower patients · A re-design of the patient-provider partnership · Patient empowerment: a requisite for sustainability · The risks of value co-destruction in service systems · The need for enlightening and managing the dark side of patient empowerment · Disentangling the relationship between individual health literacy and patient empowerment Straightforwardly written as a call for proactive change, The Bright Side and the Dark Side of Patient Empowerment is an illuminating text for scholars interested in patient empowerment and patient engagement, policymakers and managers operating in the healthcare field, and healthcare and social care providers.

A new mother must adjust to a life she never asked for—and learns that sometimes the worst thing that can happen is exactly what you’ve been waiting for—in this spirited novel from the New York Times bestselling author of How to Walk Away and Things You Save in a Fire “Charming . . . cleverly told and uncommonly appealing.”—People Very pregnant and not quite married, Jenny Harris doesn’t mind that she and her live-in fiancé, Dean, accidentally started their family a little earlier than planned. But Dean is acting distant, and the night he runs out for cigarettes and doesn’t come back, he demotes himself from future husband to sperm donor. And the very next day, Jenny goes into labor. In the months that follow, Jenny plunges into a life she never anticipated: single motherhood. At least with the sleep deprivation, sore boobs, and fits of crying (both hers and the baby’s), there’s not much time to dwell on her broken heart. Then things start looking up: Jenny learns how to do everything one-handed, makes friends in a mommy group, and even gets to know a handsome, helpful neighbor. But Dean is never far from Jenny’s thoughts or, it turns out, her doorstep, and in the end she must choose between the old life she thought she wanted and the new life she’s been lucky to find.

"Overworked and underappreciated, single mom Amy Byler needs a break. So when the guilt-ridden husband who abandoned her shows up and offers to take care of their kids for the summer, she accepts his offer and escapes rural Pennsylvania for New York City. Usually grounded and mild mannered, Amy finally lets her hair down in the city that never sleeps. She discovers a life filled with culture, sophistication, and - with a little encouragement from her friends - a few blind dates. When one man in particular makes quick work of Amy's heart, she risks losing herself completely in the unexpected escape, and as the summer comes to an end, Amy realizes too late that she must make an impossible decision: stay in this exciting new chapter of her life, or return to the life she left behind. But before she can choose, a crisis forces the two worlds together, and Amy must stare down a future where she could lose both sides of herself, and every dream she's ever nurtured, in the beat of a heart"--Provided by publisher.