The Monsoon Diaries


Book Description

"There are heroes among us, and Dr. Calvin Sun is one of them. Read this book." -Lisa Ling, journalist The Monsoon Diaries is the firsthand account of Dr. Calvin Sun, an emergency room doctor who worked tirelessly on the front lines in multiple hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing upon the lessons he learned from his adventures traveling to more than 190 countries in ten years, as well as from the grief he experienced as a teen when his father died, Dr. Sun shares his journey, from growing up as a young Asian American in New York to his calling first to medical school and then to the open road. He believes that the fight for a better world creates meaning when all feels meaningless, and he hopes that telling his story will help readers reframe this tragic moment in our lifetimes into possibility, with the goal of building a more empathetic society.




Diary of a Dying Woman


Book Description

Have you ever wondered what dying feels like? This is a tragic love story. It is a true story. However, more importantly, it is a story about love, commitment, and faith in God. Tim and Savannah Heller were a happy couple in the prime of their lives. The couple had raised children together, worked hard together, and had started enjoying a golden era in both their lives. Then Savannah started getting sick, and eventually she was informed that she had a terminal illness, and she only had one to two years to live. Imagine the shock. Imagine how one would take that news. Fortunately, Savannah started journaling daily throughout the disease progression. The couple decided to write a book about their experience in an effort to help those others and families going through a terminal disease. As you read her journal entries, you will gain insight of her physical decline and her emotional and mental battles she faced. The story takes you through the trials and tribulations of a couple and family dealing with a terminal illness, but more importantly, it is story of love and hope and beauty—everything Savannah was. One of the couple’s strongest beliefs was the idea that the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. If people can understand this message from this story, then Tim would feel that he has honored Savannah.




Through Your Eyes


Book Description

Genre: Young Adult Contemporary (with elements of romance). Word Count: 83380 A girl, a boy in a coma and a diary. How far would you be willing to go to save the life of a stranger? Life seems determined to throw one problem after another at sixteen-year-old Brenna. She feels like her life is disintegrating before her eyes and has no idea how to sort it out. Her best friend lives in another state, her parents are constantly arguing, her younger sister keeps prying into her things and she wants to break up with her boyfriend without it causing her more problems at school. The only person she has to talk to about everything is a boy in a coma, and she's terrified he might never wake. This story was written by an Australian author using Australian spelling. Keywords: teen/young adult, strong female character, first love, hospital setting, Australian setting, diary entries, dual point of view, family dynamics.




The Divide


Book Description

In this newest Awol hiking thriller, Karl Bergman, whose trail name is Awol, begins to thru-hike the 3,100-mile-long Continental Divide Trail at the Mexican border. By the time Awol and his dog, Blazer, reach the Colorado Rockies, he has uncovered information about a terrorist plot. Awol asks his son, a graduate student at UCLA, to give details to old friend, Detective Vincent Sacco. Awol tells his son he doesn’t want to get involved and continues his thru-hike. Awol is beyond annoyed when FBI agent, Diana Santos, finds him on the CDT and asks him to work with her and infiltrate.




More Letters of Note


Book Description

FOLLOW-UP TO THE PHENOMENAL INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER INCLUDING LETTERS FROM: Jane Austen, Richard Burton, Helen Keller, Alan Turing, Albus Dumbledore, Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry James, Sylvia Plath, John Lennon, Gerald Durrell, Janis Joplin, Mozart, Janis Joplin, Hunter S. Thompson, C. G. Jung, Katherine Mansfield, Marge Simpson, David Bowie, Dorothy Parker, Buckminster Fuller, Beatrix Potter, Che Guevara, Evelyn Waugh, Charlotte Bront� and many more. Discover Richard Burton's farewell note to Elizabeth Taylor, Helen Keller's letter to The New York Symphony Orchestra about 'hearing' their concert through her fingers, the final missives from a doomed Japan Airlines flight in 1985, David Bowie's response to his first piece of fan mail from America and even Albus Dumbledore writing to a reader applying for the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts. More Letters of Note is another rich and inspiring collection, which reminds us that much of what matters in our lives finds its way into our letters.




The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (National Book Award Winner)


Book Description

A New York Times bestseller—over one million copies sold! A National Book Award winner A Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live. With a forward by Markus Zusak, interviews with Sherman Alexie and Ellen Forney, and black-and-white interior art throughout, this edition is perfect for fans and collectors alike.




Shit, Actually


Book Description

One of the "Best Books of 2020" by NPR's Book Concierge **Your Favorite Movies, Re-Watched** New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author Lindy West was once the in-house movie critic for Seattle's alternative newsweekly The Stranger, where she covered film with brutal honesty and giddy irreverence. In Shit, Actually, Lindy returns to those roots, re-examining beloved and iconic movies from the past 40 years with an eye toward the big questions of our time: Is Twilight the horniest movie in history? Why do the zebras in The Lion King trust Mufasa-WHO IS A LION-to look out for their best interests? Why did anyone bother making any more movies after The Fugitive achieved perfection? And, my god, why don't any of the women in Love, Actually ever fucking talk?!?! From Forrest Gump, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and Bad Boys II, to Face/Off, Top Gun, and The Notebook, Lindy combines her razor-sharp wit and trademark humor with a genuine adoration for nostalgic trash to shed new critical light on some of our defining cultural touchstones-the stories we've long been telling ourselves about who we are. At once outrageously funny and piercingly incisive, Shit, Actually reminds us to pause and ask, "How does this movie hold up?", all while teaching us how to laugh at the things we love without ever letting them or ourselves off the hook. Shit, Actually is a love letter and a break-up note all in one: to the films that shaped us and the ones that ruined us. More often than not, Lindy finds, they're one and the same.




Lockdown Diary


Book Description

None of us could have imagined our lives would be struck by a global pandemic. Until it happened, and our lives suddenly changed. Everything slowly shuts down. No meetings, no parties, no movies, no sporting events, no restaurants. Fear of Covid-19 forces us to repudiate our most natural and ancestral instinct to socialise, to deny our innate desire to form strong, concrete, durable bonds with other human beings. So, when it’s impossible to satisfy such an ancient need, and we are forced to be apart from the world, what’s left? Callum Ross, in his darkest moments, discovered that communication has many faces, and one of those faces has the shape of a diary. With all the difficulties of a lockdown that lasted over a hundred days, he found the strength to face his fears and insecurity. When he couldn’t reach out to the world, he did what he could to survive: he reached out to himself. And, as he was locked inside his house, he didn’t just survive: his inner journey led him to a personal growth, to a renewal of his passion for writing, to a mature and complete consciousness of his dreams and hopes. Callum is unique but, at the same time, he is every one of us – he wants to live, to love, and be loved. By publishing his diary he proves that, even when it seems most unlikely, the will to connect and communicate with others is a powerful tool to face life’s hardships. Callum Ross lives in a small town in Fife, Scotland, with both his parents. Now in his 30’s, he has been writing since his early teens. Callum enjoys keeping a diary and has written throughout his experiences with depression and anxiety throughout lockdown. Many issues he addresses in his diary such as his father’s many trips into hospital, his crush on his work colleague Ben and the many restrictions imposed on the UK causing conflicts with friends and family. Callum became an uncle in February and strives to be the best uncle there is.




Tanking to the Top


Book Description

Enter the City of Brotherly Love and see how the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers trusted The Process–using a bold plan to get to first by becoming the worst. When a group of private equity bigwigs purchased the Philadelphia 76ers in 2011, the team was both bad and boring. Attendance was down. So were ratings. The Sixers had an aging coach, an antiquated front office, and a group of players that could best be described as mediocre. Enter Sam Hinkie—a man with a plan straight out of the PE playbook, one that violated professional sports' Golden Rule: You play to win the game. In Hinkie's view, the best way to reach first was to embrace becoming the worst—to sacrifice wins in the present in order to capture championships in the future. And to those dubious, Hinkie had a response: Trust The Process, and the results will follow. The plan, dubbed "The Process," seems to have worked. More than six years after handing Hinkie the keys, the Sixers have transformed into one of the most exciting teams in the NBA. They've emerged as a championship contender with a roster full of stars, none bigger than Joel Embiid, a captivating seven-footer known for both brutalizing opponents on the court and taunting them off of it. Beneath the surface, though, lies a different story, one of infighting, dueling egos, and competing agendas. Hinkie, pushed out less than three years into his reign by a demoralized owner, a jealous CEO, and an embarrassed NBA, was the first casualty of The Process. He'd be far from the last. Drawing from interviews with nearly 175 people, Tanking to the Top brings to life the palace intrigue incited by Hinkie's proposal, taking readers into the boardroom where the Sixers laid out their plans, and onto the courts where those plans met reality. Full of uplifting, rags-to-riches stories, backroom dealings, mysterious injuries, and burner Twitter accounts, Tanking to the Top is the definitive, inside story of the Sixers' Process and a fun and lively behind-the-scenes look at one of America's most transgressive teams. Including exclusive interviews with Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, and Coach Brett Brown, Sam Hinkie, and more.




Crisis Zone


Book Description

In March 2020, as the planet began to enter lockdown, acclaimed cartoonist Simon Hanselmann decided that what the world needed most was free, easily accessible entertainment, so he set out to make the greatest webcomic ever created! The result is also certain to be one of the most acclaimed and eagerly anticipated graphic novels of 2021. As the Covid-19 pandemic continued to escalate far beyond any reasonable expectations, Crisis Zone escalated right alongside, in real time, with daily posts on Instagram. Crisis Zone's battle mission was to amuse the masses: no matter how horrible and bleak everything seemed, at least Werewolf Jones wasn’t in your house! Over the course of 2020, Crisis Zone has amassed unprecedented amounts of new fans to the Megg and Mogg universe and is presented here, unabridged and uncensored, with a slew of added pages and scenes deleted from the webcomic, as well as an extensive “Director’s Commentary” from Hanselmann himself.