Suzy Toronto puts an end to thinking you have to be, act, or look a certain way in order to fit in. Life is too short for that and, besides, it's exhausting trying to be something you're not day after day! With this light-hearted book, Suzy and her wacky characters show us that it's okay to break the rules sometimes, so long as we stay true to who we are and can learn to laugh at our mistakes. You'll be inspired to reach outside your comfort zone, embrace every moment with passion and enthusiasm, and always, always color outside the lines!
`This accomplished author demonstrates incredible insight into her AS, and how it has shaped her life. She is courageous in sharing with the reader moments clearly painful to recall, which offers parents a rare peek inside the world of their children. At times mesmerized by her poetic style, Willey is the first AS author to effectively convey the emotion and isolation experienced by these individuals.' -ASPEN Newsletter `For families living with "Aspies" and professionals working with them, this is highly recommended to further understand the challenges of Asperger Syndrome' -Joan Wheeler, CoOrdinator, Regional Services `This autobiographical narrative details the life of a woman with Aspergers Syndrome (AS), a mild form of autism. It focuses on the obstacles she confronts, her means of overcoming them, and her ultimate recognition and acceptance of her status as an "aspie"...The book will be an aid for people who have AS and it may be even more useful for those who do not have it, but who are close to someone who does.' - Disability Studies Quarterly `The book will be of great benefit to everyone concerned to help children and adults with mild Asperger's syndrome, but most of all to the people who are themselves affected.' - Child Psychology and Psychiatry `The author is a university lecturer who found that many of the puzzles of her own life fell into perspective when, after several years of knowing one of her twin daughters was different from the other, she eventually found someone who listened and explained Asperger's Syndrome. She vividly describes her own difficulties and emotions as she herself grew up with Asperger's Syndrome...Her story is told simply and through it we gain insight into what it is like to lose your way in your own home town, be assaulted by your heightened senses and attempt to unravel the mysteries of social communication. In the appendices she describes the strategies that have been of most help to her. This book is a testimony to the exceptional qualities of those who have Asperger's Syndrome.' - Therapy Weekly `Before reading this book I had some academic knowledge of the symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome which had stimulated my curiosity about what it might be like to suffer from the condition. I looked forward to reading the book to see if it would help me to understand how a person with Asperger's might think and feel. I was not disappointed. The book is well written and easy to read and I found it hard to put down. I felt the author's descriptions of her struggles to communicate with others and cope with sensory overload gave me a real insight into how Liane thinks and feels. It also gave me food for thought about conformity pressures in our society and how we treat people who seem different from the norm...This is a hopeful and optimistic book. Liane is a doctor of education and she is happily married with three children. I used the words "suffer from Asperger's syndrome" deliberately in the first paragraph as that is how I saw it. Liane has a different view - she does not minimise the difficulties she has had to face but she does not wish she was different. She challenges us to think about what we mean by the word `normal' and to be less rigid in our thinking about `normal' behaviour. I believe this is a valuable read for all counsellors and will give them much food for thought. Asperger's syndrome occurs with varying levels of severity. Hopefully, reading the book will help counsellors to work more effectively with clients who may have the syndrome to some degree and to avoid labelling them as difficult. It would also be very useful for clients where they or one of their relatives might have Asperger's Syndrome.' - Relate News `Liane's autobiography will allow others to understand the world as perceived by a person with Asperger's Syndrome ... I strongly recommend this book for teachers as it will provide the previously elusive reasons for behaviours that were considered unconventional or appeared to be abnormal. Specialists and therapists who diagnose and treat such children will find the book a treasure trove of information and insight ... [this] book will be an inspiration for thousands of people throughout the world.' - From the Foreword by Tony Attwood `This accomplished author demonstrates incredible insight into her AS, and how it has shaped her life. She is courageous in sharing with the reader moments clearly painful to recall, which offers parents a rare peek inside the world of their children. At times mesmerized by her poetic style, Willey is the first AS author to effectively convey the emotion and isolation experienced by these individuals.' - ASPEN Newsletter
For twenty-two years, Katherine Bouton had a secret that grew harder to keep every day. An editor at The New York Times, at daily editorial meetings she couldn't hear what her colleagues were saying. She had gone profoundly deaf in her left ear; her right was getting worse. As she once put it, she was "the kind of person who might have used an ear trumpet in the nineteenth century." Audiologists agree that we're experiencing a national epidemic of hearing impairment. At present, 50 million Americans suffer some degree of hearing loss—17 percent of the population. And hearing loss is not exclusively a product of growing old. The usual onset is between the ages of nineteen and forty-four, and in many cases the cause is unknown. Shouting Won't Help is a deftly written, deeply felt look at a widespread and misunderstood phenomenon. In the style of Jerome Groopman and Atul Gawande, and using her experience as a guide, Bouton examines the problem personally, psychologically, and physiologically. She speaks with doctors, audiologists, and neurobiologists, and with a variety of people afflicted with midlife hearing loss, braiding their stories with her own to illuminate the startling effects of the condition. The result is a surprisingly engaging account of what it's like to live with an invisible disability—and a robust prescription for our nation's increasing problem with deafness. A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013
The #1 New York Times bestselling (mostly true) memoir from the hilarious author of Furiously Happy. “Gaspingly funny and wonderfully inappropriate.”—O, The Oprah Magazine When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father and a morbidly eccentric childhood. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame-spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it. In the irreverent Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson’s long-suffering husband and sweet daughter help her uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments—the ones we want to pretend never happened—are the very same moments that make us the people we are today. For every intellectual misfit who thought they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud, this is a poignant and hysterical look at the dark, disturbing, yet wonderful moments of our lives. Readers Guide Inside
How the Paranormal Became Her New Normal “. . . I don’t normally talk about this to my clients. But I’ll talk about it to you, because you’re going to be writing about people who do what I do. And about what are called ‘the invisible realms’ . . .” Hearing those words during her first-ever psychic reading, Anne Newgarden had no idea how true they would one day prove to be. As a child, Anne had a deep “wonder-lust” about psychics, ESP, Ouija boards, séances, and all things metaphysical. Even as an adult, struggling to forge a career as a writer and endlessly searching for love, Anne maintained a keen curiosity about the paranormal. But it wasn’t until later in life, after suffering through a painful breakup and the death of a friend, that Anne’s wonder-lust fully ignited, and she embarked on a series of adventures, exploring the mystical and unexplained. In Adventures of a Soul: Psychics, Mediums, the Mystical, and Me, Anne takes readers along on a wild ride as she searches for the truth about psychics and mediums, reincarnation and soul mates, angels and spirit guides—and for true love. You’ll get an inside view as she meets with top psychics for in-depth readings; witnesses a friend’s struggle with newfound medium abilities; converses with the dead; discovers past lives; develops startling intuitive abilities; communicates with angels and spirit guides; and finds a soul mate who curls her toes and heals her heart. Honest, poignant, funny, and unique, Adventures of a Soul is part memoir, part self-help book, and part New Age guidebook. It is the inspiring story of one woman’s mind-blowing adventures that radically transformed her worldview and her life. If you’ve ever been curious about the paranormal, wondered what a psychic or medium reading is really like, pondered life after death (or lives before this one), or felt there might be more to reality than what meets the eye, this book is for you. Reading it might just make the paranormal your new normal too!
For this remarkable book, best-selling writer/artist Suzy Toronto focuses on one of her most popular topics: the bold spirit of women and the remarkable strength of the bonds between them. "Who are these Wonderful Wacky Women?" she asks. "You know them. They are your friends, your sisters, your mothers, and grandmothers. They are even you and me! They are the women who rise above all obstacles to turn tragedy into triumph and who answer the call to make a difference in the world." This new softcover edition of one of Suzy's most beloved works gathers poems about women, their friendships, and their various roles in life with personal essays about the wonderful wacky women in her own life--and a few recipes sprinkled in for good measure. A celebration of "ordinary women who have accomplished extraordinary things," The Sacred Sisterhood of Wonderful Wacky Women is an inspiring and empowering collection for all women who recognize greatness in the women in their lives and in themselves.
This book was written at the 'request' of four Light Beings who asked the author to record all her psychic-spiritual experiences. Despite her initial resistance, this, her second book, SPIRITUAL PATHS AND CROSSROADS is the result of this request. "You just can't say no to them." But the simple chronological listing of events they suggested proved to be meaningless without the relevant events. This book covers many CROSSROADS that bring experiences for spiritual seekers in their quest for Truth. It covers important topics such as dealing with these ups and downs, the influence of past lives on current experiences, reincarnation, the Karmic Board, dreams, reality, precognition, the ego.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.
In 2007, Dr. Martin MacNeill—a doctor, lawyer, and Mormon bishop—discovered his wife of 30 years dead in the bathtub of their Pleasant Grove, Utah home, her face bearing the scars of a facelift he persuaded her to undergo just a week prior. At first the death of 50-year-old Michele MacNeill, a former beauty queen and mother of eight, appeared natural. But days after the funeral when Dr. MacNeill moved his much younger mistress into the family home, his children grew suspicious. Conducting their own investigation into their mother's death, the MacNeill's daughters uncovered their father's multiple marital affairs, past criminal record, and falsified college transcripts he used to con his way into medical school. It would take six long years to solve the mystery of Michele's murder and secure a first-degree murder conviction against the once prominent doctor. New York Times bestselling author Shanna Hogan delves into the high-profile case, unmasking the monster beneath the doctor's carefully concocted façade.
