A journalist’s profound investigation into the reality behind an intense waking vision and the search for healing after death • Details the author’s vivid waking vision of a dying German soldier in World War II and how he discovered the soldier was a real person, including his research into German military archives and meeting the man’s surviving family members • Explores synchronicities, reincarnation, and communication across the veil between life and death • Reveals how the author helped the dead soldier find forgiveness and healing While on a spiritual retreat in Peru, journalist Stéphane Allix experienced a vivid waking vision of a soldier dying on a snowy battlefield, followed by scenes from the soldier’s earlier life. He also clearly saw the man’s name, Alexander Herrmann, and felt a disturbing sense of closeness with the soldier. Obsessed by the power of this extremely real vision, Allix began an intensive investigation that revealed this individual had actually existed: a German soldier who died in World War II during the 1941 Russian campaign. As he began retracing Herrmann’s past, he found that the other images accompanying the battle scene were also of people who had truly existed and were close to the man who died. Diving deep into German military archives, meeting the man’s surviving family members, and following his own intuitive hunches, the author also discovered that the soldier was part of the Waffen S.S., the infamous Totenkopf Brigade, and his investigation broadened to explore what drove Herrmann to become part of such an organization. While Allix’s initial impression is that this German soldier was a past life, as he progresses in his rigorous investigation and his decoding of the events surrounding it, he realizes that it was actually his own work with the paranormal and his unresolved feelings over the death of his brother and his father that made him particularly sensitive to the veil between life and death, culminating in the soul of this dead soldier coming to him in search of forgiveness and healing. Allix realizes that his mission is not to bring about the rebirth of this person but to heal him--and the victims of his ignominious actions during the war. Offering a fascinating exploration of visions, synchronicities, reincarnation, and the connections between the spiritual and physical planes, When I Was Someone Else shares a powerful message of healing after death along with the profound epiphany that light needs darkness to be perceived.

A hybrid text that deals most urgently in the articulation of growth and grief. After the loss of his mother, Omar Holmon re-learns how to live by immersing himself in popular culture, becoming well-versed in using the many modes of pop culture to spell out his emotions. This book is made up of both poems and essays, drenched in both sadness and unmistakable humor. Teeming with references that are touchable, no matter what you do or don’t know, this book feels warm and inviting.

The teen-girl fascination with weddings comes to fiction in this hilarious debut, as 17-year-old Bronwen Oliver plots her escape from her family . . . by marrying into someone else's. Here Comes the Bride -- If She Can Pass Chemistry.Seventeen-yaer-old Bronwen Oliver has a secret: She's really Phoebe, the lost daughter of the loving Lilywhite family. That's the only way to explain her cold, manipulative mother, distant stepfather, and good-for-nothing brother: Bronwen must have been switched at birth, and she can't wait to get back to her real family.Then she meets Jared. He's sweet, funny, everything she wants - and he has the family Bronwen has always wanted too. When he proposes fourth months after they meet, she says yes. But as the wedding day approaches, Bronwen begins to wonder if Jared is truly what she needs. And if he's not, she has to ask: What would Phoebe Lilywhite do?

“Breathless pace. Touches effortlessly on identity, love, alcohol, and the cynicism of the business world.”—Les Echos Who hasn’t wanted to become “someone else”? Over a drink in Paris, two men give each other three years to see which one can more radically alter his life. Blin becomes a private detective. He takes on a new identity, even a surgically altered face. Gredzinski, a self-effacing corporate executive, discovers liquor that evening and rapidly yields to the sensuality and self-confidence induced by alcoholism. Things get complicated when Blin is hired by an ex-lover to find himself and when Gredzinski secretly follows his girlfriend to her home. A helter-skelter tale of humor and suspense. Winner of the literary prize RTL-Lire.

"I had a real romance with this book." —Miranda July A highly anticipated collection, from the writer Maggie Nelson has called, “bracingly good...refreshing and welcome,” that explores the myriad ways in which desire and commodification intersect. From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing. Starting with Hodson’s own work experience, which ranges from the mundane to the bizarre—including modeling and working on a NASA Mars mission— Hodson expands outward, looking at the ways in which the human will submits, whether in the marketplace or in a relationship. Both tender and jarring, this collection is relevant to anyone who’s ever searched for what the self is worth. Hodson’s accumulation within each piece is purposeful, and her prose vivid, clear, and sometimes even shocking, as she explores the wonderful and strange forms of desire. Tonight I'm Someone Else is a fresh, poetic debut from an exciting emerging voice, in which Hodson asks, “How much can a body endure?” And the resounding answer: "Almost everything."

For fans of Julie Halpern and Morgan Matson comes a summer road trip story about adventure, sisters, and finding out who you truly want to be. Anna's always idolized her older sister, Storm. So when Storm dies in a tragic car accident on the night of her high school graduation, Anna is completely lost and her family is torn apart. That is, until she finds Storm's summer bucket list and decides to honor her sister by having the best summer ever -- which includes taking an epic road trip to the coast from her sleepy Iowa town. Setting out to do everything on Storm's list along with her sisters best friend Cameron -- the boy next door -- who knew that Storm's dream summer would eventually lead to Anna's own self-discovery?

“To be someone—to be anyone—is about...not being someone else. Miller’s amused and inspired book is utterly compelling.” —Adam Phillips “A compendium of expressions of wonder over what might have been...Swept up in our real lives, we quickly forget about the unreal ones. Still, there will be moments when, for good or ill, we feel confronted by our unrealized possibilities.” —New Yorker We live one life, formed by paths taken and untaken. Choosing a job, getting married, deciding on a place to live or whether to have children—every decision precludes another. But what if you’d gone the other way? From Robert Frost to Sharon Olds, Virginia Woolf to Ian McEwan, Jane Hirshfield to Carl Dennis, storytellers of every stripe consider the roads not taken, the lives we haven’t led. What is it that compels us to identify with fictional and poetic voices tantalizing us with the shadows of what might have been? Not only poets and novelists, but psychologists and philosophers have much to say on this question. Miller finds wisdom in all of these, revealing the beauty, the allure, and the danger of sustaining or confronting our unled lives. “Miller is charming company, both humanly and intellectually. He is onto something: the theme of unled lives, and the fascinating idea that fiction intensifies the sense of provisionality that attends all lives. An extremely attractive book.” —James Wood “An expertly curated tour of regret and envy in literature...Miller’s insightful and moving book—both in his own discussion and in the tales he recounts—gently nudges us toward consolation.” —Wall Street Journal “I wish I had written this book...Examining art’s capacity to transfix, multiply, and compress, this book is itself a work of art.” —Times Higher Education