Broken Mary

Broken Mary
Author: Kevin Matthews
Publisher: Beacon Publishing
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2016-07-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781942611684

In 2008, Kevin Matthews, a well-known ABC and CBS radio personality in Chicago, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. As the drive-time radio host for seventeen years and also the voice of his sports commentator, Jim Shorts, and other characters, Matthews entertained ten million listeners weekly, sold out every appearance in the Midwest, and performed in front of 65,000 fans at Grant Park. He traveled around the world, met the famous, had babies named after him, and helped countless charities. He entertained hundreds of thousands of people inside prisons, army bases, and backyards. His promotions included comedy jams, a band, barbeque throw downs, and golf outings. Broken Mary is Matthews' story of his early years in radio and stand-up comedy, his successful career, his struggle with MS, his awakening to the dignity of women, and, importantly, his chance encounter with a broken statue of Mary left next to a dumpster and all that happened as a result. Told with Matthews' signature good humor, this confession of the brokenness of mankind is touchingly honest, personally inspiring, and full of hope.

The House of Broken Angels

The House of Broken Angels
Author: Luis Alberto Urrea
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2018-03-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316516252

In this "raucous, moving, and necessary" story by a Pulitzer Prize finalist (San Francisco Chronicle), the De La Cruzes, a family on the Mexican-American border, celebrate two of their most beloved relatives during a joyous and bittersweet weekend. "All we do, mija, is love. Love is the answer. Nothing stops it. Not borders. Not death." In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly one hundred, dies, transforming the weekend into a farewell doubleheader. Among the guests is Big Angel's half brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of Big Angel and his mother, and recounting the many inspiring tales that have passed into family lore, the acts both ordinary and heroic that brought these citizens to a fraught and sublime country and allowed them to flourish in the land they have come to call home. Teeming with brilliance and humor, authentic at every turn, The House of Broken Angels is Luis Alberto Urrea at his best, and cements his reputation as a storyteller of the first rank. "Epic . . . Rambunctious . . . Highly entertaining." -- New York Times Book Review"Intimate and touching . . . the stuff of legend." -- San Francisco Chronicle"An immensely charming and moving tale." -- Boston GlobeNational Bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award finalistA New York Times Notable BookOne of the Best Books of the Year from National Public Radio, American Library Association, San Francisco Chronicle, BookPage, Newsday, BuzzFeed, Kirkus, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Literary Hub

Lowside of the Road

Lowside of the Road
Author: Barney Hoskyns
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 642
Release: 2010-05-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0767927095

With his trademark growl, carnival-madman persona, haunting music, and unforgettable lyrics, Tom Waits is one of the most revered and critically acclaimed singer-songwriters alive today. After beginning his career on the margins of the 1970s Los Angeles rock scene, Waits has spent the last thirty years carving out a place for himself among such greats as Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Like them, he is a chameleonic survivor who has achieved long-term success while retaining cult credibility and outsider mystique. But although his songs can seem deeply personal and somewhat autobiographical, fans still know very little about the man himself. Notoriously private, Waits has consistently and deliberately blurred the line between fact and fiction, public and private personas, until it has become impossible to delineate between truth and self-fabricated legend. Lowside of the Road is the first serious biography to cut through the myths and make sense of the life and career of this beloved icon. Barney Hoskyns has gained unprecedented access to Waits’s inner circle and also draws on interviews he has done with Waits over the years. Spanning his extraordinary forty-year career from Closing Time to Orphans, from his perilous “jazzbo” years in 1970s LA to such shape-shifting albums as Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs to the Grammy Award winners of recent years, this definitive biography charts Waits’s life and art step by step, album by album. Barney Hoskyns has written a rock biography—much like the subject himself—unlike any other. It is a unique take on one of rock’s great enigmas.

Finish Forty and Home

Finish Forty and Home
Author: Phil Scearce
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2011
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1574413163

The true story of the men and missions of the 11th Bombardment Group as it fought alone and unheralded in the South Central Pacific, while America had its eyes on the war in Europe.

'Lively' and Other Stories

'Lively' and Other Stories
Author: Boris Mozhaev
Publisher: Hodgson Press
Total Pages: 494
Release: 2008
Genre: Russia (Federation)
ISBN: 1906164010

The writing of Boris Mozhaev, available in English for the first time ever in this volume, stands out in terms of narrative style and bold sincerity amongst contemporary Russian writers. The translator provides a wealth of background information and copious notes.

Friends and Exiles

Friends and Exiles
Author: Des Alwi
Publisher: SEAP Publications
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780877277446

Des Alwi tells of his childhood on the eastern Indonesian island of Banda, where he was befriended and adopted by the two nationalist leaders, Mohammad Hatta and Sutan Sjahrir, exiled there by the Dutch colonial regime. He describes his experiences on Banda and Java during the Japanese Occupation and his involvement in the underground struggle for Independence.

Heavens on Earth

Heavens on Earth
Author: Michael Shermer
Publisher: Henry Holt
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2018-01-09
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1627798579

"In his most ambitious work yet, Shermer sets out to discover what drives humans' belief in life after death, focusing on recent scientific attempts to achieve immortality by radical life extentionists, extropians, transhumanists, cryonicists, and mind-uploaders, along with utopians who have attempted to create heaven on earth. For millennia, religions have concocted numerous manifestations of heaven and the afterlife, the place where souls go after the death of the physical body. Religious leaders have toiled to make sense of this place that a surprising 74% of Americans believe exists, but from which no one has ever returned to report what it is really like. Heavens on Earth concludes with an uplifting paean to purpose and progress and what we can do in the here-and-now, whether or not there is a hereafter" --

Mourning Has Broken

Mourning Has Broken
Author: Erin Davis
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2019-02-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1443454648

“A gift of love to others who are seeking solace.” —Olivia Newton-John On the morning of May 11, 2015, Erin Davis, one of Canada’s most beloved radio personalities, suffered a devastating blow Erin was on set in Jamaica when she received the news that her twenty-four-year-old daughter, Lauren—who had marked a joyous Mother’s Day just hours before—had failed to awaken to her baby’s cries. Thus began Erin’s journey of grieving out loud with her family, friends and listeners, and of demonstrating how to pick up and keep going after experiencing the worst loss a parent can endure. Struck with grief and unable to find the answer to why Lauren had died, Erin and her husband, Rob, started down the long road through loss, determined not only to survive but also to reclaim the joy in their lives. Inspiring and unflinching, Mourning Has Broken charts a way forward after life has dealt a crushing blow. It reminds us that we are not alone in grief, and that although life is unpredictable and unfair, we can survive and return to joy.

Broken for Good

Broken for Good
Author: Rebecca Rene Jones
Publisher: FaithWords
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2016-04-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1455538051

A daughter's narrative about life with and without her father, whose death plunges her into deep grief but gradually becomes her most compelling reason to hope. Like so many Christian women, Rebecca, her mother, and her two sisters love a man who does not walk beside them in faith. As his cancer returns after a year of remission, they face his last days. As the women in his life struggle to savor their final times together and let go, he finally reaches out to God, and tells them so. Her father's death opens the landscape of heaven and hope to her. She beautifully renders those visions as well as the underbelly of sorrow as she is finally forced to wake up to the world, to new hungers, and to a far more dangerous faith. Here is a spiritual coming of age manifesto that will take its place alongside Voskamp and Lamott as uplifting writing on loss, grief, and growing up, quick.