Secrets-like war-have their own casualties. MacKenna's mother died when she was a baby, a casualty of the first Gulf War. Now seventeen, MacKenna has spent her life navigating the minefield of her dad's moods, certain of one thing: she is destined to follow in her mother's combat boots. But when she pursues an ROTC scholarship, she finds herself at war before even enlisting. Her father forbids her from joining the military, inexplicable considering he'd raised her to be a "warrior princess." MacKenna turns to her grandmother, who arms her with an ammo crate containing her mother's personal effects from the war. Hidden in the crate's false bottom is a journal, one her mom stashed there hours before her death. While MacKenna untangles the secrets of her parents' tragic love story, her own life unravels. Dad's behavior becomes erratic, her best friend grows distant and even hostile, and a boy from her past returns-with a life-threatening secret of his own. If ever a girl needed her mother, it's now. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but are a mother's words strong enough to slice through years of hidden pain? Can those words reach through the battlefields of the past to change MacKenna's future?

A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2020 Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR “A fascinating scientific, cultural, spiritual and evolutionary history of the way humans breathe—and how we’ve all been doing it wrong for a long, long time.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you’re not breathing properly. There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

On the surface, parenting seems pretty simple: a parent has to follow the path of his or her parents which produced such a wonderful gift to mankind as himself or herself. As soon as this path fails, they turn to the Internet or to the myriad shelves of books devoted to parenting in book shops. As soon as that fails, their hair turns prematurely silver or falls out, they go into mid-life crises and generally blame the lack of desired result on the corrosive influence of the other spouse. This newest addition to the literature presents something different -- smart parenting. It could have been called "thinking person's guide to parenting" as well because that is what it is. It is a book which lays out the essentials of this most perplexing, happy, sad and sometimes scary human endeavour.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE KATE O'BRIEN AWARD 2022 'A stunning debut from this new Irish talent' STELLAR _____________ A young woman comes of age in the shadow of her family's tragic past When Beth Crowe starts university, she is shadowed by the ghost of her potential as a competitive swimmer. Free to create a fresh identity for herself, she finds herself among people who adore the poetry of her grandfather, Benjamin Crowe, who died tragically before she was born. She embarks on a secret relationship - and on a quest to discover the truth about Benjamin and his widow, her beloved grandmother Lydia. The quest brings her into an archive that no scholar has ever seen, and to a person who knows things about her family that nobody else knows. Holding Her Breath is a razor-sharp, moving and seriously entertaining novel about complicated love stories, ambition and grief - and a young woman coming fully into her powers. __________ 'A beautiful coming-of-age story told with impressive skill and lightness of touch . . . I absolutely loved it' LOUISE O'NEILL 'Whip smart observations and addictive prose' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Precise, sure, engaging, and a joy to read' RODDY DOYLE 'Effortlessly weaving together a gripping, multi-layered plot, while maintaining a profoundly tender touch, Ryan has marked herself as a captivatingly original voice in Irish literature' HOT PRESS 'A moving debut with a satisfying conclusion' IRISH INDEPENDENT 'Brilliant, vivid - I enjoyed this book ENORMOUSLY' MARIAN KEYES 'Enthralling' IMAGE 'A nimble account of student life with a darkly enjoyable undercurrent of secrecy and emotional turmoil' SARA BAUME 'A truly compelling read, and one I wholeheartedly recommend' BUZZ 'Through the dark sky of our times, Eimear Ryan arrives like a comet, a bright talent scorching through every page' DOIREANN NÍ GHRÍOFA, author of A Ghost in the Throat 'Brilliantly realised, gripping, and moving . . . This is absolutely the real thing' KEVIN POWER 'Written with a wonderful clarity and insight, Holding Her Breath lingers in the imagination. Beth's unravelling and re-ravelling is drawn with great skill and empathy. A brilliant debut' DONAL RYAN

An anthology of five full-length romance novels set in the 1800s when Queen Victoria sat on the throne of England, and the rest of the western world emulated her demeanor in decorum, protocol, dress and the social graces--except for certain bold and resourceful women like those in these stories, who strayed from the fold to embrace such notions as shedding corsets and crinolines, and remaining free of a husband's control. At least that was their intention... Until love entered the picture. So slip back in time to a world of adventurous ladies who become entangled with irresistible rogues, and rugged frontiersmen, and notorious rakes, and go along with them on their bumpy rides to everlasting love. The five books included in the anthology are Colby's Child, Come Be my Love, Miss Phipps and the Cattle Baron, Perilous Pleasures and Her Master's Touch. For information on the five books included please visit www.patriciawatters.com.