Martinis and fantastic breasts. A wild wedding hangover. Pink angora and instructing six women / to write tercets on snow. In lesbian love-poems, conversations, intimate jokes from a hundred parties, five prisons, and three beloved bars, Jill McDonough's second book tells where we live, and how: each day fresh with the gift of it. Fierce/nose-sting of tears, quick breath out of nowhere. Often frankly autobiographical, her poems are also peopled with others’ stories. Some are familiar – Cary Grant and Charles Darwin, Sappho and Hildegard von Bingen. Others we come to know: prison inmates Julie and Andrea, friends comforting in kitchens or riotous in the yard, the little Chinese lady from the Lucky Star kiosk. McDonough is honest with them: stitches their actual words into her poems, understands their motives and her own. This poetry is vivid with reality, even where the subjects are pictures: Mary in an illuminated Annunciation suspicious / in her lapis robes, her double chin doubting, perhaps / one eyebrow raised; or a small, unseemly Venus, hair in pearls holding the dead Adonis and furious at death and grief.Above all there are poems of love and desire – I, Jill McDonough, have something to declare: je t'aime, je t'adore, Josey – ardent, funny, and erotically charged:For better or worse. For rootcanal, for laughing on the highspeed ferry to the cape. My mouthon your neck, say. My hand on youremerald-cut calf.

Despite being part of one of the most mobile societies in history, it's easy for us to feel stuck where we are. Whether because of a recent move or because we're still in the exact same place we've been for years, many of us just aren't where we thought we'd be or doing what we thought we'd be doing. Sometimes we may wonder if God knows what he's doing. How can this be part of his plan? With enthusiasm and contagious joy, Shauna Pilgreen assures readers that, yes, God does have a plan and a purpose for them--right where they are. In fact, he sent them there. She invites readers to "live sent," showing them how to see their surroundings with fresh eyes and renewed energy. Weaving her own remarkable story with biblical habits readers can incorporate into their daily routines, Pilgreen equips us to reach out into our communities with God's love, knowing that our efforts are never in vain.

With the ease and simplicity of a nursery rhyme, this lively story delivers an important message of social acceptance to young readers. Themes associated with child development and social harmony, such as friendship, acceptance, self-esteem, and diversity are promoted in simple and straightforward prose. Vivid illustrations of children's activities for all cultures, such as swimming in the ocean, hugging, catching butterflies, and eating birthday cake are also provided. This delightful picturebook offers a wonderful venue through which parents and teachers can discuss important social concepts with their children.

This fun and informational picture book follows five friends as they explore their community during a street fair. The children find adventure close to home while learning about the businesses, public spaces and people in their neighborhood. Young readers will be inspired to re-create the fun-filled day in their own communities.

In the spirit of Gretchen Rubin’s megaseller The Happiness Project and Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss, a journalist embarks on a project to discover what it takes to love where you live The average restless American will move 11.7 times in a lifetime. For Melody Warnick, it was move #6, from Austin, Texas, to Blacksburg, Virginia, that threatened to unhinge her. In the lonely aftermath of unpacking, she wondered: Aren’t we supposed to put down roots at some point? How does the place we live become the place we want to stay? This time, she had an epiphany. Rather than hold her breath and hope this new town would be her family’s perfect fit, she would figure out how to fall in love with it—no matter what. How we come to feel at home in our towns and cities is what Warnick sets out to discover in This Is Where You Belong. She dives into the body of research around place attachment—the deep sense of connection that binds some of us to our cities and increases our physical and emotional well-being—then travels to towns across America to see it in action. Inspired by a growing movement of placemaking, she examines what its practitioners are doing to create likeable locales. She also speaks with frequent movers and loyal stayers around the country to learn what draws highly mobile Americans to a new city, and what makes us stay. The best ideas she imports to her adopted hometown of Blacksburg for a series of Love Where You Live experiments designed to make her feel more locally connected. Dining with her neighbors. Shopping Small Business Saturday. Marching in the town Christmas parade. Can these efforts make a halfhearted resident happier? Will Blacksburg be the place she finally stays? What Warnick learns will inspire you to embrace your own community—and perhaps discover that the place where you live right now . . . is home.

A guide to awakening the power of learning that lies within each of us, this accessible book offers deep, research-based insights into the ideal process of learning and guides you in identifying your dominant style. --

A popular guest at many of the town's finest homes, he particularly enjoyed participating in the sombre discussions about Martha's disappearance that still came up from time to time over the dinner table. 'I could tell you about it, every little detail,' he said to himself with a self-satisfied smile as he strolled the boardwalk, exchanging pleasantries with good friends he met along the way. 'But of course I won't. That's our secret: mine and Martha's.' In the gripping new novel from the Queen of Suspense, a young woman is haunted by two murders that are closely linked - despite the one hundred and ten years that separate them. Following the acrimonious breakup of her marriage and the searing experience of being pursued by an obsessed stalker, criminal defense attorney Emily Graham accepts an offer to leave Albany and work in a major law firm in Manhattan. Feeling a need for roots, she buys her ancestral home, a restored Victorian house in the historic New Jersey seaside resort town of Spring Lake. Her family had sold the house in 1892, after one of Emily's forebears, Madeline Shapley, then still a young girl, disappeared. Now, more than a century later, as the house is being renovated and the backyard excavated for a pool, the skeleton of a young woman is found. She is identified as Martha Lawrence, who had disappeared from Spring Lake over four years ago. Within her skeletal hand is the finger bone of another woman with a ring still on it - a Shapley family heirloom. In seeking to find the link between her family's past and the recent murder, Emily becomes a threat to a devious and seductive killer, who has chosen her as his next victim.