The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

A wise little gift book filled with delightful quotations reminding us that happiness is not a place to be but more a way of traveling.

Damocles On The Couch, is about getting your life straight,and it is about stories. Throughout history humans have used stories as vehicles to communicate and pass along information. Herb Stricklin, therapist and educator, has found that stories are a tremendous tool for relaying information regarding sound principles to live one’s life by. Stories afford the listener an opportunity to take the information that they are hearing and apply it to their lives on a much deeper level than just hearing cold hard facts. Jesus used parables to relay some of his most powerful messages. Ancient Greeks and Romans used plays to both entertain and educate those witnessing the performance. Morality plays, such as The Sword Of Damocles, help us to learn life lessons and understand the human condition. In this story, Damocles finds himself placed in a chair with a sword dangling over his head suspended by a single hair. The angst and fear that he experiences is a universal experience for humans (not necessarily a sword, but we have all had things “hanging over our heads”). Stricklin uses stories such as this to paint a picture for people regarding healthy and unhealthy ways of confronting life’s many challenges.

“Funny yet bitingly realistic look at small-town life...A grim literary mystery and a hopeful family story, this genre-blending novel manages to be both charming and heartbreaking.” —Kirkus “An enthralling suspense thriller...Exquisite prose matches deep characterization. Kennedy deserves to win an Edgar.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review Sometimes, a woman has to rescue herself. Jenny Newberg, Queen of Bad Decisions, is about to make another one. In a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business, down-on-her-luck single mother Jenny is on a first-name basis with the debt collector at the bank, who is moving toward foreclosure. She is constantly apologizing to her precocious young daughter, Billie Starr, who is filling a book with her mother’s sorries, and it seems to Jenny that no apology will ever be enough. Then a pair of strangers in black suits offers her a hefty check to seduce someone known as the Candidate. Finally, something will go her way. But nothing ever goes as Jenny plans, and she is swept into the Candidate’s orbit. Surrounded by a wide universe of new ideas, she realizes how constrained her life has been by the expectations of everyone around her, and she starts to see how much more she might be capable of. And when her world is rocked to its core and Billie Starr may be in danger, Jenny is forced to do what she once thought impossible: trust in herself and her own power to make things right. Shimmering with rage and sparkling with subtle humor, Billie Starr's Book of Sorries showcases Edgar Award-nominee Deborah E. Kennedy's singular voice and shines a light on the town of Benson, Indiana, where lakes, grudges, and family rifts run deep – but so does a mother’s love.

Based on the true story of the undiscovered seventeen tons of gold that was hidden in the Four Corners area of New Mexico in the 1930s, The Ancients is a historical-fictional novel full of adventure, laughter, and horror. Old Man Lowery, a veteran treasure hunter armed with information, sets off across the mystical New Mexico desert in search of the gold. Hunting him are several closely bonded friends desperate to overtake the old man. Their intentions are not to get the gold, but rather to stop the treasure hunter from unleashing a curse that has remained dormant for many years. As teenagers, the friends had not only discovered a treasure of gold on a Navajo reservation, but also a lost civilization that mixed Christian and Navajo beliefs in terrible ways. Events they had spent a decade trying to forget they are now being forced to revisit. Explore the bonding of friends, Navajo culture, and the essence of evil in The Ancients.

After losing his beloved wife to a drunk driver, fifty-three year old Tom Walker retreats into dark clouds of depression, isolating himself from friends, family, and the things he loves. Gloomy days turn into years and just when it seems there will be no break in the clouds, a light appears, in the form of a dazzling young woman named Erika Stevens. Tom is old enough to be her father, but he refuses to let their chance encounter in a rain-soaked city parking lot go to waste, and as the two strangers move from public coffee dates to something more, they make a surprising Valentines Day pact friendship at all costs. But can men and women really be just friends? And is age really, as Erika says, just a number? Set in the vibrant (and famously rainy) city of Portland, Oregon, Tom and Erikas story serves as a potent reminder that even the seemingly endless storm clouds of life have breaks sun breaks that seem to come in the most unexpected places.

What happens when a group of school children, led by the resourceful ten-year-old Dance Violet, dare to ask those in power some hard questions? Find out in this magical novel by the bestselling Fleur Beale, stunningly illustrated by Lily Uivel. Ten-year-old orphan Dance Violet might have had a short and troubled history, but it hasn’t dampened her warrior spirit – not in the slightest. And that’s a good thing, because something is rotten in her village, and no one else has the courage to try put things right. People who ask questions disappear overnight and the village children are left to fend for themselves under the tyrannical schoolteachers Murk and Misselthwaite. There are whispers that a beautiful but wicked woman, ‘the golden-haired hellion’, appeared at a wedding ten years ago and was the start of all the trouble. Dance has some gifts that she’s only just beginning to discover, and while she knows it’s dangerous to ask questions, she is determined to find this golden-haired hellion – even if it means getting Disappeared. And when Dance finds her, the golden-haired hellion had better look out. Read all Fleur Beale's bestselling novels!