Secrets. Everybody has them. We can choose to disclose them to intimate friends or we can bury them...deeply in our graves of shame; in the innermost alcoves of our consciousness, not recognizing that they have rooted themselves so far into our essence, that if unchecked, become the insidious driving force that shapes every life decision. In "My Pretty...and Its Ugly Truth" De'Vonna Bentley-Pittman reveals her very personal and raw experiences of being a very pretty girl plagued by sexual abuse, rape, unhealthy relationships and the effects of growing up in poverty. Her coming-of-age journey from a misused "product of the streets" to an empowered advocate for those, particularly young women, who feel powerless due to years of abuse, is a fascinating one. Like so many others, she grew up in a single-parent household with a mother who worked hard to provide for her children. The "streets" called her away from home, and she was led into a tangled web of promiscuity - unhealthy relationships, drugs, pregnancy, and almost selling her very soul. In spite of everything she lost, she never lost the one thing that would propel her forward -- hope. As a speaker, teacher, writer, and editor, who constantly looks for ways to inspire others, I find "My Pretty...and Its Ugly Truth" to be that kind of inspiration. I laughed, I cried, I winced, I gasped, I sighed...and now I salute De'Vonna Bentley-Pittman. She is the voice today for victims of sexual abuse careening down a desperate and confused path. She is that Moses, that Harriet Tubman of our time that can and will lead others to a promised land of hope, and to their very own beautiful truth. -Menia Buckner

The pages in the book take you on a reflective journey of your life while absorbing the words written. A controversial view on Live Identity Finance and the Emotions created during the processes of life. We are all unique and yet somehow insist on conforming to the beliefs of others. Life is about preventing yourself from waking up in someone else's dream. A guide to touch on the topics less spoken of and the introduction to a series of books to follow. Dealing with Growing up issues to marriage, parenting, separation, and grief. They will include a detailed exposé on the everyday unimaginable situation not spoken about in fear of taking away someone else's financial gains. You can begin to advocate for your own LIFE, with the right resources and confidence.

My dad's an asshole. Plain and simple.He's made it obvious that I can only ever rely on myself.Until I meet them.Caden, Tyler, Jensen, and Lukas.My new stepbrother and his best friends have suddenly become my everything.Until they aren't.They think they can break me, but they're dead wrong.They wouldn't have bet on me having someone else on my side, or in my bed.These rich boys haven't seen anything yet.Their pretty lies are nothing compared to what's coming though, and I'm going to need them to anchor me when I finally break.Death is coming to those who deserve it, and I don't care if I lose myself in the process.Did I mention the local street crew being on my side?No one will ever see me coming.My name's Rory Donovan, and I'm about to paint the walls red.

What do you do when secrets and brokenness in your marriage are being exposed and your spouse is the pastor?More and more, we are hearing of pastors and their marriages crumbling under the weight of deception stemming from betrayal and secrets kept. Once secrets are exposed, we begin to question what we believed about the pastor, the marriage, about God and the people who surrounded us. We even question our own intuition as our heart shatters. It is a season when there are more questions than answers.This is a pastor wife's candid journey through the recovery of a marriage and a ministry broken by secrets, betrayal, and pornography. You are not alone. Statistics say over 21 million women suffer from betrayal trauma linked to infidelity. And an estimated 40 million Americans regularly visit internet pornography sites on a regular basis. Pastors and their wives are not immune to this forceful lure.But hope is available. Recovery is possible. Gwen invites you into her journey of faith, personal experience and vulnerability in hopes to encourage others that God is still good. He is in your pain. And He still has a plan. The Beautiful Ugly Truth was written for pastors and their families. It was written for couples who serve in ministry and it was also written for any marriages in need of hope during betrayal.You will learn how to....Recover your lifeRebuild your identityReconnect with your spouse after betrayalOur brokenness and what seemed to be the death of our marriage was really the birthing of something new.Connect with us at reconnectinglives.org and thebeautifuluglytruth.org

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER// WINNER OF THE SABEW BEST IN BUSINESS AWARD A Book of the Year: Fortune, Foreign Affairs, The Times (London), Cosmopolitan, TechCrunch, WIRED “The ultimate takedown.” –New York Times Book Review Award-winning New York Times reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang unveil the tech story of our times in a riveting, behind-the-scenes exposé that offers the definitive account of Facebook’s fall from grace. Once one of Silicon Valley’s greatest success stories, Facebook has been under constant fire for the past five years, roiled by controversies and crises. It turns out that while the tech giant was connecting the world, they were also mishandling users’ data, spreading fake news, and amplifying dangerous, polarizing hate speech. The company, many said, had simply lost its way. But the truth is far more complex. Leadership decisions enabled, and then attempted to deflect attention from, the crises. Time after time, Facebook’s engineers were instructed to create tools that encouraged people to spend as much time on the platform as possible, even as those same tools boosted inflammatory rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and partisan filter bubbles. And while consumers and lawmakers focused their outrage on privacy breaches and misinformation, Facebook solidified its role as the world’s most voracious data-mining machine, posting record profits, and shoring up its dominance via aggressive lobbying efforts. Drawing on their unrivaled sources, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang take readers inside the complex court politics, alliances and rivalries within the company to shine a light on the fatal cracks in the architecture of the tech behemoth. Their explosive, exclusive reporting led them to a shocking conclusion: The missteps of the last five years were not an anomaly but an inevitability—this is how Facebook was built to perform. In a period of great upheaval, growth has remained the one constant under the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Both have been held up as archetypes of uniquely 21st century executives—he the tech “boy genius” turned billionaire, she the ultimate woman in business, an inspiration to millions through her books and speeches. But sealed off in tight circles of advisers and hobbled by their own ambition and hubris, each has stood by as their technology is coopted by hate-mongers, criminals and corrupt political regimes across the globe, with devastating consequences. In An Ugly Truth, they are at last held accountable.

From a USA Today–bestselling author, a psychological thriller that asks: What would cause a woman to murder her own family? Jo's idyllic life would make most people jealous. Until the day her daughter is abducted, and the only way to find her is to unravel her dark past. Ellie is a devoted wife . . . until she discovers the pain of betrayal. Now vengeance is all she can think about. Party girl Shayla knows how to hide her demons. But when she's confronted with a life-shattering choice, it will cost her everything. June knows suffering intimately, though the smile she wears keeps it hidden. Soon the lives of these four women intersect—and one of them is about to snap . . .

"'Ugly as sin', 'ugly duckling', 'rear its ugly head'. The word 'ugly' is used freely, yet it is a loaded term: from the simply plain and unsightly to the repulsive and even offensive, definitions slide all over the place. Hovering around 'feared and dreaded', ugliness both repels and fascinates. But the concept of ugliness has a lineage that has long haunted our cultural imagination. Gretchen E. Henderson explores perceptions of ugliness through history, from ancient Roman feasts to medieval grotesque gargoyles, from Mary Shelley's monster cobbled from corpses to the Nazi Exhibition of Degenerate Art. Covering literature, art, music and even Ugly dolls, Henderson reveals how ugliness has long posed a challenge to aesthetics and taste. Henderson digs into the muck of ugliness, moving beyond the traditional philosophic argument or mere opposition to beauty, and emerges with more than a selection of fascinating tidbits. Following ugly bodies and dismantling ugly senses across periods and continents, [this book] draws on a wealth of fields to cross cultures and times, delineating the changing map of ugliness as it charges the public imagination. Illustrated with a range of artefacts, this book offers a refreshing perspective that moves beyond the surface to ask what 'ugly' truly is, even as its meaning continues to shift"--