Higher Life

Summer has begun, the beach beckons - and Francesca Schnell is going nowhere. Four years ago, Francesca's little brother, Simon, drowned, and Francesca's the one who should have been watching. Now Francesca is about to turn 16, but guilt keeps her stuck in the past. Meanwhile, her best friend, Lisette, is moving on, most recently with the boy Francesca wants but can't have. At loose ends, Francesca trails her father, who may be having an affair, to the local country club. There she meets four-year-old Frankie Sky, a little boy who bears an almost eerie resemblance to Simon.

Have you ever had the thought that you might need to change or tweak them a little to get what you want from life? In this book you will discover how to get on to the right track by applying simple, everyday habits, proven strategies and tactics to achieve success in your life! We all have our own habits. Each individual differs in their habits. A famous line has said that all men are the same in nature but only differ in the habits that they are doing in life. If your habits tend to push you off track from the right way, then it’s probably best to change them as soon as you can.

Renowned as a printer, scientist, and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin also published more works on religious topics than any other 18th-century American layperson. Born to Boston Puritans, by his teenage years Franklin had abandoned the exclusive Christian faith of his family and embraced deism. But Franklin, as a man of faith, was far more complex than the "thorough deist" who emerges in his autobiography.

In What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life, Phil Zuckerman argues that morality does not come from God. Rather, it comes from us: our brains, our evolutionary past, our ongoing cultural development, our social experiences, and our ability to reason, reflect, and be sensitive to the suffering of others.

The Powell brothers - Muir and Moody - are as different as Cain and Abel. Muir is an innocent, a shy young man with big dreams. Moody, the older and wilder brother - embittered by the death of his father, by years of fighting his mother, and by his jealousy of Muir's place in the family - takes to moonshine and gambling and turns his anger on his brother. Muir escapes by wandering, making his way around the country in attempts to find something - an occupation, a calling - to match his ambition.

Louis Bromfield was a World War I ambulance driver, a Paris expat, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist as famous in the 1920s as Hemingway or Fitzgerald. But he cashed in his literary success to finance a wild agrarian dream in his native Ohio. The ideas he planted at his utopian experimental farm, Malabar, would inspire America's first generation of organic farmers and popularize the tenets of environmentalism years before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

On a bright June day in 1965, a dozen girls - classmates at a Blue Ridge women's college - launch a ramshackle raft on a trip down the Mississippi. Their journey, inspired by Huckleberry Finn, is duly reported in the Paducah, Kentucky newspaper. 35 years later, four of the "girls" reunite to cruise the river again. This time, it's on the luxury steamboat The Belle of Natchez. This time, when they reach New Orleans, they'll give the River the ashes of a fifth rafter: Margaret ("Baby") Ballou.

At night, in Huda's fragrant garden, a breeze sweeps in from the desert encircling Baghdad, rustling the leaves of her apricot trees and carrying warning of visitors at her gate. Huda, a secretary at the Australian embassy, lives in fear of the Mukhabarat - the secret police who watch and listen for any scrap of information that can be used against America and its allies. They have ordered her to befriend Ally Wilson, the deputy ambassador's wife. Huda has no wish to be an informant, but fears for her teenage son, who may be forced to join a deadly militia.

You are with the author when he ejects from his burning Navy jet onto a karst ridge near Hanoi. What follows in this meticulously researched memoir is an account of one of the most implausible and heroic rescues of the air-war - and the aftermath. The events immediately following his rescue carry the author to a secret base in Laos and then to a makeshift hospital in Saigon. The larger story, however, is of the author’s complex relationship with Vietnam. It begins in Saigon, where he completes high school and comes to love the Vietnamese people.

Of all the creatures of the deep blue, none is as captivating as the octopus. In Many Things Under a Rock, marine biologist David Scheel investigates four major mysteries about these elusive beings. How can we study an animal with perfect camouflage and secretive habitats? How does a soft and boneless creature defeat sharks and eels, while thriving as a predator of the most heavily armored animals in the sea? How do octopus bodies work? And how does a solitary animal form friendships, entice mates, and outwit rivals?

Author Gary Jansen knows how difficult it can be to create significant, sustainable change in our lives. Sometimes we feel too overwhelmed to even start, and in other cases this self-work seems like one more burden. In his new book he offers an answer that he calls "microshifting" - small, incremental adjustments that gradually reshape our deeply rooted patterns. With a blend of masterful storytelling and dozens of practical tips, MicroShifts suggests simple, small changes across many aspects of our lives-everything from how we greet others to how we try to talk to God - to generate big results physically, mentally, and spiritually.

In her career as a science reporter, Nell Greenfieldboyce has reported from inside a space shuttle, the bottom of a coal mine, and the control room of a particle collider; she's presented news on the color of dinosaur eggs, ice worms that live on mountaintop glaciers, and signs of life on Venus. In this, her debut book, she delivers a wholly original collection of powerful, emotionally raw, and unforgettable personal essays that probe the places where science touches our lives most intimately.

Sensitive, big-hearted, and achingly self-conscious, 40-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confines of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast. After 20 years under the Pygmalion-like direction of his older partner, Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to stop letting life happen to him and to take control of his own fate.

New Freshman in Town Jane Grey knows how important the right impression on the first day of high school is. She's staking her rep on her totally awesome outfit and her mind-blowing math skills... Yep. She's screwed. She didn't factor in snarky shoe-related comments from an upperclassman, and she sure didn't count on stepping on the toes of the class bully. So much for first period. How's a math genius gonna solve the problem of the remaining 4 years? Endearing and unconventional, fans of Bridget Jones, The Rosie Project, and John Hughes films will alternately laugh and cringe along with ...

Centered around multi-million dollar stakes and a series of nationally televised poker tournaments, Fading Hearts on the River offers a story of odds - the odds of a newborn surviving severe jaundice, the odds of Congress passing a law that renders one's online gambling income inaccessible, the odds of drawing the right card on the turn or the river.

Seventeen-year-old Riggle is living in rural Indiana with his uncle and uncle's girlfriend after the death of both of his parents. Now his uncle has gone missing, probably on a drug binge. It's Monday, and $800 in rent is due Friday. Riggle, who's been suspended from school, has to either find his uncle or get the money together himself. His mission exposes him to a motley group of Opioid locals - encounters by turns perplexing, harrowing, and heartening. Meanwhile, Riggle marks each day by remembering the mythology his late mother invented for him about how the days got their names.

Perfect Gift for Boys and Girls! Unlock the Secrets to a Successful College Experience! Get Ready for an Unforgettable Journey of Growth and Achievement with This Game-Changing Guide! Are you feeling overwhelmed by the transition to college? Are you struggling to excel academically and manage your time effectively? Do you want to make meaningful connections and experience a personal growth during your college years? Embarking on your college journey is both exhilarating and nerve-wracking. With "College Freshman Year Essentials", you can win challenges,get used to college lfe and set ...

What if you could attract the right man—without playing games or losing yourself in the process? Dating doesn’t have to be a frustrating guessing game. Magnetic Dating is the ultimate self-help book for women who want to break free from the chaos of modern dating and understand the psychology behind what truly makes a man fall—and stay—in love. With a blend of real-world insights and relationship psychology, this book takes you step by step through the secrets of becoming irresistibly magnetic while staying true to yourself. Forget cheesy dating “rules” and manipulative tactics...

You can train your brain to pay attention more effectively. Acclaimed neuroscientist Dr Amishi Jha has dedicated her life's work to understanding the science of attention at every level - from brain-imaging studies in the lab to field testing soldiers, firefighters and athletes. Her mission has been to scientifically determine how we can harness the full power of our attention to better meet all that life demands.

For many believers, the fight has disappeared from their faith. Faith and fighting go hand in hand and cannot be separated. To separate the fight from faith, or faith from the fight, causes both ones faith and ones fight to be ineffective and powerless. In order to war, one must have faith. When a believer moves, lives and works by faith it is inevitable that he/she will encounter opposition and war. There is a war going on. Unless we fight and overcome this war, we will be overcome. Unless God's people stand up, pick up the whole armor of God, and make a bold stand for Truth the church ...