An all-star urban fantasy collection featuring short stories from #1 New York Times bestselling authors Jim Butcher, Patricia Briggs, Charlaine Harris, Kelley Armstrong, and more . . . In this short story collection of courage, adventure, and magic, heroes—ordinary people who do the right thing—bravely step forward. But running toward danger might cost them everything. . . . In #1 New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher’s “Little Things,” the pixie Toot-Toot discovers an invader unbeknownst to the wizard Harry Dresden . . . and in order to defeat it, he’ll have to team up with the dread cat Mister. In #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Briggs’s “Dating Terrors,” the werewolf Asil finds an online date might just turn into something more—if she can escape the dark magic binding her. In #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris’s “The Return of the Mage,” the Britlingen mercenaries will discover more than they’ve bargained for when they answer the call of a distress beacon on a strange and remote world. And in #1 New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong’s “Comfort Zone,” the necromancer Chloe Saunders and the werewolf Derek Souza are just trying to get through college. But they can’t refuse a ghost pleading for help. ALSO INCLUDES STORIES BY Annie Bellet * Anne Bishop * Jennifer Brozek * Kevin Hearne * Nancy Holder * Kerrie L. Hughes * Chloe Neill * R.R. Virdi
A guidebook to making life meaningful by cultivating compassion, embracing adversity, and training the mind—from one of the foremost living Buddhist nuns. Freeing ourselves from our habitual emotional patterns starts with taming the mind. Why is this so important? Because a wild mind tends to hurt rather than heal. Taming the mind helps us uncover our true nature and connect with those around us from a grounded place of self-awareness. Through caring for others you can walk the Buddhist path of bodhisattvas, becoming a spiritual hero of compassion. Based on the classic fourteenth-century mind training text of Tibetan Buddhism called the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, this guidebook shares pithy advice on how to act as bodhisattvas in our everyday lives, enabling us to possess compassion in an authentic way. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, an exemplary spiritual teacher who spent over a dozen years meditating in the Himalayas and one of the first Buddhist nuns to be ordained in the West, shares her reflections on this famous teaching and how to live a life of mindfulness and selflessness.
What does it mean to be a hero? In The Heroic Heart, Tod Lindberg traces the quality of heroic greatness from its most distant origin in human prehistory to the present day. The designation of “hero” once conjured mainly the prowess of conquerors and kings slaying their enemies on the battlefield. Heroes in the modern world come in many varieties, from teachers and mentors making a lasting impression on others by giving of themselves, to firefighters no less willing than their ancient counterparts to risk life and limb. They don’t do so to assert a claim of superiority over others, however. Rather, the modern heroic heart acts to serve others and save others. The spirit of modern heroism is generosity, what Lindberg calls “the caring will,” a primal human trait that has flourished alongside the spread of freedom and equality. Through its intimate portraits of historical and literary figures and its subtle depiction of the most difficult problems of politics, The Heroic Heart offers a startlingly original account of the passage from the ancient to the modern world and the part the heroic type has played in it. Lindberg deftly combines social criticism and moral philosophy in a work that ranks with such classics as Thomas Carlyle’s nineteenth-century On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History and Joseph Campbell’s twentieth-century The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Heroic Hearts examines how young women in nineteenth-century France, authorized by a widespread cultural discourse that privileged individual authority over domesticity and marriage, sought to change the world. Jennifer J. Popiel offers a recuperative reading of sentimental authority, especially in its relationship to religious vocabulary. Heroic Hearts uncovers the ways sentimental appeals authorized women to trust themselves as modern actors for a project of cultural restoration. With their emphasis on sacrifice and heroism, these cultural currents offered liberatory potential. Heroic Hearts examines not only general cultural currents but their adoption by particular women, each of whom was privileged with access to money and social influence. The words of three extraordinary women, Philippine Duchesne, Pauline Jaricot, and Zélie Martin, offer powerful testimony to their agency. These women's rejection of "traditional" domesticity, believed to be a formative influence for their class, demonstrates how women understood the imperative to change the world outside of their natural families. Their writings, which demonstrate the appeal of sentimental virtue, show us how women's public lives could exist not in opposition to prevailing religious and social ideals but because of them.
“Describes the physiology behind the normal function of the heart with gusto and humor . . . well informed and accessible . . . a necessary book.” —Readings In this lively and informative exploration of all aspects of the heart, Johannes Hinrich von Borstel offers a perfect mix of medical fact and amusing anecdote. A doctor, prospective cardiologist, and former paramedic—as well as a successful science-slammer—von Borstel relates his own experiences to provide a personal insight into the human side of heart medicine, while clearly explaining the science behind cardiac disease and healthcare for the heart. His many tips on how to give your ticker the best chance of enduring for as long as possible include one that will certainly be close to many people’s hearts: have more sex! Oh, and eat more vegetables. “Whether your heart is healthy or not, everyone should read this book, because the author has truly put his heart and soul into it.” —Shelf Life “While von Borstel cautions against these excesses, his youthful enthusiasm and gusto for his subject makes for a lively read.” —The Sydney Morning Herald “An eminently readable book which strikes a very good balance between information and anecdote . . . should be of interest to anyone who wants to know what goes on ‘under the hood’ as it were, regardless of your level of anatomical understanding . . . this is a marvelous book.” —Yinspire
MY DAD WAS DIAGNOSED IN the spring of 2001 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS-Lou Gehrig's disease-a fatal illness that gradually paralyzes its victim. Three days after his diagnosis, my mother died unexpectedly from complications of a bleeding ulcer. They'd been married 58 years. My father, Woody, had always been easy going, gregarious, fun to be with; qualities that perhaps fueled my mother's emotional insecurities. Insecurities that, in turn, drove her to feel threatened by his relationship with just about everyone, including me. So, after high school, I learned to stay away. And that's what would be both so sweet and heartbreaking about the months that were to follow his diagnosis-I was finally able to spend all the time I wanted with my dad, but time was something we had little of. As a result, the months we spent together presented a rarefied window, a sliver of light that flashed across the sky like the wing of a Blue Angel. I couldn't stop the spinning clock, couldn't steal more time, but I could clutch the moments we had and pull them close. Though his life was ending-with the death of my mother-it was also, it must be said, just beginning. After he moved from his house in Pahrump, Nevada, to a house in Los Angeles a few blocks from my wife and me and our two sons, Henry and Joe, his life changed dramatically: He became friends with Ted Danson, was virtually adopted by the cast and crew of Becker and he became close to a number of my friends, many of whom are gay-an entirely new experience for him. He spent Thanksgiving at Marsha Mason's house in New Mexico, had dinner with Shirley MacLaine, became an extra on J.A.G. and was the subject of an episode of Becker. For that, he was featured on Entertainment Tonight, E! Entertainment, in TV Guide and he was honored by the Muscular Dystrophy Association at a black tie dinner in Beverly Hills. Most important, he became a part of his grandsons' lives. After the move, he bought bunk beds for the middle bedroom of his house, so that they could stay at Grampa's on the weekends. Saturday and Sunday mornings they were greeted with pancakes, bacon and plenty of syrup. Then, while he still had strength in his arms and legs, he built for Henry and Joe a massive fort on stilts in his back yard. Later he cleared his living room of furniture to construct for them an incredible swooping, winding, looping slot car track. When I complained that he'd never built anything like that for me when I was little, he laughed and said, "Tough." Henry and Joe breathed light into his life; they alone stole focus from the dark horizon that he faced. To be with him, to be with a parent, while they are dying, is one of the most human of experiences. It is what we are supposed to do. And while those months were difficult in a myriad of ways, they were also the richest and most rewarding of my life. They were, as well, chockablock with humor, since-as nearly any comedy writer will tell you-in the midst of great hardship, there is always funny. Though at the time, I didn't think of the experience as an "honor," as I look back, I realize that it was an honor of the highest order.
"Heroic Hearts: Sentiment, Saints, and Authority in Modern France examines how young women, authorized by a widespread cultural discourse that privileged public action over love and marriage, sought to change the world"--
God designed men to live with risk, adventure, and danger. But today's man has no rites of passage, no elders, no map to manhood. He may physically be an adult, but still wonders, "Am I a man?" When John Sowers twin daughters were born, he felt exposed, thinking manhood was out of reach. He needed direction. Following in the steps of ordinary men and the heroes of history, legend and myth, he uncovered a new and ancient road. Walk with John on his personal quest to discover the "wild masculine" and to become all that God intended men to be. From a thrilling brush with Kodiak bears in Alaska, to a war hero who rescued his comrades in the Valley of Death, from mythic heroes of Tolkien, to the footsteps of the One, True Myth - as Jesus walked from village into the wilderness, and back again. Stunningly written, this revolutionary book calls older men out of complacency and younger men out of confusion. It calls all men into the greater Story - into a life of sacrificial love, holy defiance, and clear purpose.
