Some people spend a lifetime searching for a soul mate. Neighbours Matt and Lea just had to cross the street. To Lea, Matt was like a sudden gust of winter wind - unexpected and exhilarating. To Matt, Lea was a prayer answered. Seeing her upset on Christmas Eve, Matt reached out to Lea - it was an impulsive gesture of kindness. He did not know that he would fall hopelessly, irrevocably in love with her. But a bend in their road to happiness came as unexpectedly. When sudden illness claims his father's life, a grieving Matt initially found his strength in Lea. Then one day, without explanation, he ended the relationship. As Matt's decision tests everything he believes about love and redemption, Lea's search for answers leads her to a terrible secret, long buried. Can their love survive a haunting secret from the past? Or do some secrets cast too long a shadow to forget?

A candid and cathartic exploration of pandemic life, from family to pop culture to healthcare—and beyond At a time when so many are dealing with collective and personal grief, award-winning author and journalist Michele Weldon’s new collection of essays navigates the revelatory and upending nature of this extraordinary pandemic era through a lens of love and connection. Weldon explores pain and pleasure alike with emotional texture, empathy, wisdom, vulnerability, and humor. She interrogates moments of joy, despair, and triumph, offering readers the possibility for a richly cathartic experience. With honesty and agility, Weldon creates poignant intersections of her narrative with popular culture, history, media, news, consumerism, family traditions, and healthcare. Employing honest and daring language, Weldon examines the concepts of safety, importance of beloved objects, power of words, shift to remote relationships, concepts of feminism, betrayal of public lies, and more. Ultimately, with grace and heart, Weldon offers in these essays useful pathways toward framing this swath of time so that we might arrive at a sense of understanding, belonging, and peace with our new realities.

Our everyday routines can be so all-encompassing that we often forget to make room for anything else. With 99 simple, creative ideas of things to do when you have the time, this whimsically illustrated book is designed to help you remember what matters to you.

A New York Times bestseller in hardcover, Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker’s We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For was called “stunningly insightful” and “a book that will inspire hope” by Publishers Weekly. Drawing equally on Walker’s spiritual grounding and her progressive political convictions, each chapter concludes with a recommended meditation to teach us patience, compassion, and forgiveness. We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For takes on some of the greatest challenges of our times and in it Walker encourages readers to take faith in the fact that, despite the daunting predicaments we find ourselves in, we are uniquely prepared to create positive change. The hardcover edition of We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For included a national tour that saw standing-room–only crowds and standing ovations. Walker’s clear vision and calm meditative voice—truly “a light in darkness”—has struck a deep chord among a large and devoted readership.

The technologically tethered, iPhone-addicted figure is an image we can easily conjure. Most of us complain that there aren't enough hours in the day and too many e-mails in our thumb-accessible inboxes. This widespread perception that life is faster than it used to be is now ingrained in our culture, and smartphones and the Internet are continually being blamed. But isn't the sole purpose of the smartphone to give us such quick access to people and information that we'll be free to do other things? Isn't technology supposed to make our lives easier? In Pressed for Time, Judy Wajcman explains why we immediately interpret our experiences with digital technology as inexorably accelerating everyday life. She argues that we are not mere hostages to communication devices, and the sense of always being rushed is the result of the priorities and parameters we ourselves set rather than the machines that help us set them. Indeed, being busy and having action-packed lives has become valorized by our productivity driven culture. Wajcman offers a bracing historical perspective, exploring the commodification of clock time, and how the speed of the industrial age became identified with progress. She also delves into the ways time-use differs for diverse groups in modern societies, showing how changes in work patterns, family arrangements, and parenting all affect time stress. Bringing together empirical research on time use and theoretical debates about dramatic digital developments, this accessible and engaging book will leave readers better versed in how to use technology to navigate life's fast lane.

It's an unquestioned truth of modern life: we are starved for time. We tell ourselves we'd like to read more, get to the gym regularly, try new hobbies, and accomplish all kinds of goals. But then we give up because there just aren't enough hours to do it all. Or if we don't make excuses, we make sacrifices- taking time out from other things in order to fit it all in. There has to be a better way...and Laura Vanderkam has found one. After interviewing dozens of successful, happy people, she realized that they allocate their time differently than most of us. Instead of letting the daily grind crowd out the important stuff, they start by making sure there's time for the important stuff. When plans go wrong and they run out of time, only their lesser priorities suffer. Vanderkam shows that with a little examination and prioritizing, you'll find it is possible to sleep eight hours a night, exercise five days a week, take piano lessons, and write a novel without giving up quality time for work, family, and other things that really matter.

Kids, It's Time We Have THE TALK because doing the sex-thing or doing the drug-thing can ruin a kid's life, but NOT doing The God-thing can ruin a kid's eternity. Using teachings from John Paul II, Fulton J. Sheen, Thomas Merton, Mother Teresa, and others, John R. VanBuskirk tells his kids about God & God-stuff, Living & Dying, Heaven & hell. VanBuskirk explains the purpose of life to his twenty-something-year-old kids and the importance of getting through life rather than merely being successful in it. He challenges his kids to: - Love the world more than any other creature God has ever given life to - Possess the heart of a servant and add to what God has created as one of His co-creators and partners - Know God in ways equal to the saints and angels in Heaven - Achieve a special, personal intimacy with God - an intimacy that the angels might envy Kids, It's Time We Have THE TALK will help you keep First-Things-First. It will enable you to explain why First-Things are First-Things. It's the talk parents are obligated to have with kids. It's the talk each of us is obligated to have with ourselves.