“A beautifully written and well-researched cultural criticism as well as an honest memoir” (Los Angeles Review of Books) from the author of the popular New York Times essay, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” explores the romantic myths we create and explains how they limit our ability to achieve and sustain intimacy. What really makes love last? Does love ever work the way we say it does in movies and books and Facebook posts? Or does obsessing over those love stories hurt our real-life relationships? When her parents divorced after a twenty-eight year marriage and her own ten-year relationship ended, those were the questions that Mandy Len Catron wanted to answer. In a series of candid, vulnerable, and wise essays that takes a closer look at what it means to love someone, be loved, and how we present our love to the world, “Catron melds science and emotion beautifully into a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation” (Bookpage). She delves back to 1944, when her grandparents met in a coal mining town in Appalachia, to her own dating life as a professor in Vancouver. She uses biologists’ research into dopamine triggers to ask whether the need to love is an innate human drive. She uses literary theory to show why we prefer certain kinds of love stories. She urges us to question the unwritten scripts we follow in relationships and looks into where those scripts come from. And she tells the story of how she decided to test an experiment that she’d read about—where the goal was to create intimacy between strangers using a list of thirty-six questions—and ended up in the surreal situation of having millions of people following her brand-new relationship. “Perfect fodder for the romantic and the cynic in all of us” (Booklist), How to Fall in Love with Anyone flips the script on love. “Clear-eyed and full of heart, it is mandatory reading for anyone coping with—or curious about—the challenges of contemporary courtship” (The Toronto Star).
It was August, and the "Blue Moon" had come around - a phenomenon wherein two full moons appear in the same month. As a seventeen-year-old, I found myself in Arashiyama, Kyoto, at my grandmother's house for a somber funeral. It was on this solemn occasion that a peculiar encounter awaited me. Under the radiant light of the first full moon, I stumbled upon a mysterious sight. There before me was a young girl, gracefully using an umbrella to scoop water from a spring, her actions illuminated by the moon's ethereal glow. She said, "I'll be here until the Blue Moon ends," and despite our same ages, she had a mysterious aura about her, as if hiding a great secret. That secret was that “I've been waiting for you in the future." This is a love story stretching across time and space, depicting two people bound by fate.
Presents a guide for dealing with grief and loss, detailing five steps of healing that can lead to a lifestyle alignment with personal values and new possibilities for a re-engaged life. --Publisher's description.
The witty, queer accidental detective of the Epitome Apartments is back. While helping to solve a community murder, she also needs to convince police that she didn’t revenge-kill the man who took everything from her The nameless amateur sleuth of The Adventures of Isabel and What’s the Matter with Mary Jane? has often said that death is too good for Lockwood Chiles — who is in prison for killing her beloved partner, Nathan, and her close friend Pris — and makes no secret that she hates the man who massacred her shot at happiness. So when Chiles ends up dead in his cell, it’s no wonder she becomes a prime suspect. Meanwhile, an aggressive band of men in military-adjacent garb turn a string of assaults against nameless’s unhoused neighbors into full-bore murder right behind the Epitome Apartments, and she rashly promises to help bring them to law. As if that’s not enough, unscrupulous parties are scheming to strip her of her inheritance, money she and Nathan had intended would address the city’s lack of harm-reduction services and low-income housing. Now it is nameless’s mission to clear her name and to hold her tattered community together, all while she’s coming apart herself.
An unlikely pair, a Sicilian immigrant, Giuseppe, and an Ozark native, Judy, are brought together by a mutual friend to discuss a writing project Giuseppe has in mind. At the meeting, Giuseppe unexpectedly invites Judy to dinner to discuss his project further. At dinner, the elderly couple finds they have much in common, and though Giuseppe soon returns to Sicily, where he has gone to live in retirement, they keep in touch. When he returns to America months later to visit family, Giuseppe and Judy know they are in love. Over the next few years, they sometimes wonder if their deep love for one can weather the serious problems they face. .
Her boyfriend cheated on her, so she married a stranger to get back at him. However, her ‘broke’ husband suddenly turned out to be one of the rising stars in A Country! It was true that he did not have a car or a house, but he did have a manor, a yacht, and a private jet. They said that Su Jianxi was a seductress who wormed her way into a rich man’s lap and even made a cuckold out of him. Later, Li Tingyao personally dispelled the rumors, saying he was the one who pursued Su Jianxi, and that the child was his!
This empowering resource for mature women who are looking for romance and companionship has been written by a relationship expert who found herself in this same situation later in life.
When Dushka Zapata comes across any perspective in life that she finds useful or that contributes to her suffering less, she writes about it. This book is a collection of those lessons she hopes prove useful to others. This book is not intended to be read cover to cover but rather in snippets of time across the day.
My cheating bitch of an ex-wife broke my heart. I’m never letting a woman fuck with it again. I’m all about the job now. Getting my work done, making money. That’s why I bought out my competitor. And found myself working with Raelyn Owens. I don’t want to be around her… But my body’s telling a different story. You could melt steel with the heat between us. A couple of late nights in the office and we’re having sex on my desk. The sparks should have set the fire alarms off! But it’s lust, not love, ok? I can’t let her get that close. Close enough to hurt. But maybe fate’s not going to give me the choice. Will it take facing the pain of losing Raelyn for good… To make me understand she’s the one? My one true valentine.