Hijacked by Your Brain: How to Free Yourself When Stress Takes Over

Peter Herman is something of a folk hero. Marriage Is a Canoe, his legendary, decades-old book on love and relationships, has won the hearts of hope­ful romantics and desperate cynics alike. He and his beloved wife lived a relatively peaceful life in upstate New York. But now it’s 2010, and Peter’s wife has just died. Completely lost, he passes the time with a woman he admires but doesn’t love—and he begins to look back through the pages of his book and question hom­ilies such as:

A good marriage is a canoe—it needs care and isn’t meant to hold too much—no more than two adults and a few kids.

It’s advice he has famously doled out for decades. But what is it worth?

Then Peter receives a call from Stella Petrovic, an ambitious young editor who wants to celebrate the fif­tieth anniversary of Marriage Is a Canoe with a contest for struggling couples. The prize? An afternoon with Peter and a chance to save their relationship.

The contest ensnares its creator in the largely opaque politics of her publishing house while it intro­duces the reader to couples in various states of distress, including a shy thirtysomething Brooklynite and her charismatic and entrepreneurial husband, who may just be a bit too charismatic for the good of their marriage. There’s the middle-aged publisher whose im­posing manner has managed to impose loneliness on her for longer than she cares to admit. And then there is Peter, who must discover what he meant when he wrote Marriage Is a Canoe if he is going to help the contest’s winners and find a way to love again.

Taro Gold inspires and enlightens with Living Wabi Sabi: The True Beauty of Your Life. A blend of Eastern wisdom, feng shui, and the movement toward simplicity, Wabi Sabi is a Japanese expression meaning wisdom in natural simplicity. Wabi Sabi helps us to see the beauty in imperfection, to discover that our unique flaws also can lead us to our greatest strengths and treasures.

No one is perfect--in fact, we all are perfectly imperfect. That is the paradoxical first lesson shared by Taro Gold in Living Wabi Sabi: The True Beauty of Your Life. What is Wabi Sabi? A universal ideal of beauty, Wabi Sabi celebrates the basic, the unique, and the imperfect parts of our lives. Wabi Sabi is the comfortable joy you felt as a child, happily singing off key, creatively coloring outside the lines, and mispronouncing words with gusto. On a deeper level, Wabi Sabi is the profound awareness of our oneness with all life and the environment. It includes a deep awareness of the choices we make each day, the power we have to accept or reject each moment of our lives, and to find value in every experience.

Appreciate this and every moment, no matter how imperfect, for this moment is your life. When you reject this moment, you reject your life. You don't have to settle for this moment, you are free to steer a different course, but for now, this moment is yours, so be mindful to make the most of it.

Living Wabi Sabi: The True Beauty of Your Life leads us to discover the true beauty of our lives, to know true joy here and now, to reveal the most powerfully positive sides of imperfection. Illustrated with stunning yet simple watercolor art, Living Wabi Sabi: The True Beauty of Your Life is a beautiful keepsake that is sure to become a beloved resource for wisdom in the joy of living.

Sailing toward dawn, and I was perched atop the crow's nest, being the ship's eyes. We were two nights out of Sydney, and there'd been no weather to speak of so far. I was keeping watch on a dark stack of nimbus clouds off to the northwest, but we were leaving it far behind, and it looked to be smooth going all the way back to Lionsgate City. Like riding a cloud. . . .

Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on the Aurora, a huge airship that sails hundreds of feet above the ocean, ferrying wealthy passengers from city to city. It is the life Matt's always wanted; convinced he's lighter than air, he imagines himself as buoyant as the hydrium gas that powers his ship. One night he meets a dying balloonist who speaks of beautiful creatures drifting through the skies. It is only after Matt meets the balloonist's granddaughter that he realizes that the man's ravings may, in fact, have been true, and that the creatures are completely real and utterly mysterious.

In a swashbuckling adventure reminiscent of Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson, Kenneth Oppel, author of the best-selling Silverwing trilogy, creates an imagined world in which the air is populated by transcontinental voyagers, pirates, and beings never before dreamed of by the humans who sail the skies.

What is really going on behind thoseluminous feline eyes?

Affectionate yet aloof, intelligentand inquisitive yet dangerouslycareless, the more-or-lessdomesticated house catintrigues us as no other animal can.Now Barbara Holland offers cat loversa fascinating, funny, and refreshinglycandid look at their feline companions:their history, lore, and secrets, and theircomplicated relations with people andwith each other.

Secrets of the Cat is a livelyappreciation of cats as we know andlove them, with witty analysis and freshobservations about felines both high andlow. Here are Winston Churchill’s gingertom, who attended cabinet meetings;Teddy Roosevelt’s cat, Slippers, whocame to dinner; and even the author’sown George II, who was bitten by amouse and adopted by a blue jay. BarbaraHolland’s warm, vivid speculations oncats’ lives and times—on their social,psychic, and mythological legacy, and theirimpenetrable mysteries—will give readersa delightful cat’s-eye view of the world.

Pam and Nicky Lintott have sold over 250,000 books all over the world – testament to their extraordinary talent for creating great quilt designs with easy to follow instructions. Here Pam and Nicky bring you a fresh collection of 14 brand new quilt patterns, each with a beautiful variation design.

Uses a range of Moda™ pre-cuts, including the new fat eighth bundle!

With simple words, cute pictures and practice flashcards, this book is a great way to get your child started with reading. This story contains 220 words on 22 engaging illustrated pages.  Over 90% of the words in this book are either sight words or sight nouns (also known as Dolch words, Fry Words, High Frequency Words, Star Words or even Wall Words). Other words used in the book are familiar words that will be easy for your child to sound out.

Words Used in This Story:

•  Sight Words: added, all, and, are, asked, at, be, cold, did, don't, down, first, fun, go, had, he, here, his, hot, if, in, into, is, it, jump, jumped, just, know, like, little, no, not, once, play, played, right, run, said, that, the, their, they, three, to, too, walked, want, wanted, warm, was, we, why, will, would, yes, you
• Sight Nouns: baby, duck, ducks, nest, mother, water
• Other words: sat, second

Plus Flashcards! Plus, to help your child practice reading, every word used in this story is included as a separate Flashcard at the end of the book. You can use these cards to check your child’s mastery of the words contained in the book.

* Spoiler Alert: * The story is about a three little fish that get too hot, so they decide to take a swim.  But when one little duck is afraid will he ever get in the water?