Running Ransom Road


Book Description

In this searing and inspiring memoir, a runner, now 13 years sober, confronts his past in a bib number and pair of running shoes, completing seven marathons in a year's time




Running Man


Book Description

"After a decade-long addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol, Charlie Engle hit rock bottom after a near-fatal six-day binge ended in a hail of bullets. Then he found running, and it has helped keep him sober, focused and alive. He began to take on the most extreme endurance races, such as the 155-mile Gobi March, and developed a reputation as an inspirational speaker. However, after he made the documentary Running the Sahara, narrated by Matt Damon, which followed him on a 4500-mile crossing of the desert and helped raise $6 million, he was sent to prison after failing to complete his mortgage application properly. It was while he was in jail that he became known as 'The Running Man' as he pounded the prison yard, and soon his fellow inmates were joining him, finding new hope through running. Now, in his brilliantly written and powerful account, Engle tells the story of his life and how running has brought him so much pleasure and peace. Like such classics as Born to Runor Running with the Kenyans, this is a book that anyone who has ever found solace in the freedom of running will enjoy"--Google Books.




November Project: The Book


Book Description

November Project: The Book is the story of how two irreverent, way-outside-the-box fitness fanatics are flipping the fitness industry on its head and literally making the world a better place, one city at a time. No facility. No machines. Just two dudes and a tribe of thousands. Welcome to November Project’s world takeover. What started 4 years ago as a simple monthlong workout pact between two former Northeastern University oarsmen in Boston has grown into an international fitness phenomenon. November Project espouses free, public, all-weather, outdoor group sweats that turn strangers into friends and connect everyone to the city in which they live. It’s been described as everything from flashmob fitness to “the fight club of running clubs” and a cult. But November Project prides itself on defying categories. In November Project: The Book, Brogan Graham (a.k.a. BG) and Bojan Mandaric, in their own spicy, big-hearted words, chronicle, along with tribe member and writer Caleb Daniloff, their fitness movement’s genesis, evolution, operations, membership, “secret sauce,” and future—and along the way, show you how you can get fit and societally engaged. The book also includes illustrated workouts; the keys to meaningful civic engagement; information on using your city as a gym; advice on starting an NP tribe; tips on growing, sustaining, and invigorating membership through social media; and thoughts on the collective power of community.




Rebel McKenzie


Book Description

Rebel McKenzie wants to spend her summer attending the Ice Age Kids' Dig and Safari, a camp where kids discover prehistoric bones, right alongside real paleontologists. But digs cost money, and Rebel is broker than four o'clock. When she finds out her annoying neighbor Bambi Lovering won five hundred dollars by playing a ukulele behind her head in a beauty contest, Rebel decides to win the Frog Level Volunteer Fire Department's beauty pageant. Rebel may not be a typical pageant contestant, but how hard can it be? Rebel's dramatic reading about life is the Pleistocene era is sure to blow away the competition. It turns out that winning a beauty pageant is harder than it looks. By the end of the summer, Rebel has learned a thing or two about her true calling that will surprise everyone -- most of all, herself.




What Addicts Know


Book Description

New York Times bestselling author Christopher Kennedy Lawford revisits addiction in his latest book, What Addicts Know, this time framing the discussion in an entirely new way—the lessons addiction and recovery offer to those of us who haven't battled addiction. For too long, society has considered addicts as an unfortunate group that faces incredible and unique challenges. The reality is that the challenges of the addict are faced—to a greater or lesser extent—by all of us. In a “more is better" society, it's indisputable that we've all experienced cravings and denied the truth about our destructive behaviors—traits shared by addicts who've successfully overcome them. What Addicts Know offers the coping and wellness skills necessary to overcome life's obstacles and self-improvement tips for everything from conquering an unhealthy consumption of junk food, to overcoming toxic relationships. These techniques are not just for addicts; they are for all of us. No one until now has related the lessons and life skills that can be drawn from the collective experience of people in recovery from addiction, particularly the ways those lessons or principles can be used by those in the broader non-recovery community. In What Addicts Know, Lawford recounts the inspiring stories and wisdom of recovering addicts, combining them with cutting-edge scientific findings to give hands-on, practical techniques for recognizing unhealthy impulses and managing them. If you're ready to change for the better your habits, your frame of mind, your relationships, your community, and your life, What Addicts Know is the resource that will educate and inspire you along the way.




Everything Harder Than Everyone Else


Book Description

A no-holds-barred, gonzo dive into the world of extreme behavior; from abstinence to ego, punishment to curiosity, obsession to reinvention, acclaimed journalist Jenny Valentish uncovers what drives those who push the limits of endurance. What do extreme eaters, MMA fighters, ultra-marathon runners, and BDSM practitioners have in common? What drives some people to push their bodies and minds to the brink, putting everything on the line to test the bounds of their capacity? When Jenny Valentish worked through her own addictions, she became fascinated by extremes in their myriad and unexpected manifestations. In the darkly funny, brash, and irresistible Everything Harder Than Everyone Else, Valentish immerses herself in the lives of sex workers, body builders, and dedicated fighters and finds that many of the people she encounters have overcome addictions and trauma to find release and community where the stakes are at their highest. Harnessing a journalistic approach that’s equal parts brazenly curious and remarkably compassionate, Valentish finds herself neck-deep in her own investigation, embroiling herself in the world of competitive Muay Thai fighting and in the dark chambers of a BDSM dungeon. At every turn she stares unflinchingly into the darker corners of culture that polite society ignores and repudiates, asking readers and herself, how far are you willing to go?




Ransom River


Book Description

From award-winning author Meg Gardiner, co-author of Michael Mann’s Heat 2 JUDGE, JURY—AND EXECUTION. Rory Mackenzie vowed to never return to her hometown of Ransom River, California. But she comes back and does her civic duty. Now she’s juror number seven on a high-profile murder case. While most of the town is focused on the tense and shocking circumstances of the trial, Rory’s return to Ransom River dredges up troubling memories from her childhood that she can no longer ignore. And in the wake of a desperate attack on the courthouse, Rory realizes exposing these dark skeletons has connected her to an old case that was never solved, and that bringing the truth to light just might destroy her. You can’t go home again—and survive—in this mesmerizing crime novel by Meg Gardiner, “a top-tier mystery writer at the top of her game” (BookPage).




The Memory of Running


Book Description

"Smithy is an American original, worthy of a place on the shelf just below your Hucks, your Holdens, your Yossarians." —Stephen King Every so often, a novel comes along that captures the public’s imagination with a story that sweeps readers up and takes them on a thrilling, unforgettable ride. Ron McLarty’s The Memory of Running is this decade’s novel. By all accounts, especially his own, Smithson "Smithy" Ide is a loser. An overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk, Smithy’s life becomes completely unhinged when he loses his parents and long-lost sister within the span of one week. Rolling down the driveway of his parents’ house in Rhode Island on his old Raleigh bicycle to escape his grief, the emotionally bereft Smithy embarks on an epic, hilarious, luminous, and extraordinary journey of discovery and redemption.




A King's Ransom


Book Description

Sharon Kay Penman follows up her acclaimed novel Lionheart with this vivid and heart-wrenching New York Times bestseller about the last event-filled years in the life of Richard I of England, Coeur de Lion. November 1192. After his bloody crusade in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Richard and his crew are overcome by a sudden storm, its fierce winds propelling the ship onto the Sicilian shore. But this misfortune is just the beginning. Forced to make a dangerous choice, Richard finds himself in enemy territory, where he is captured—in violation of the papal decree protecting all crusaders—and handed over to the Holy Roman Emperor. Imprisoned in the notorious fortress at Trifels, from which few ever leave alive, Richard, for the first time in his life, experiences pure, visceral fear—while his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, moves heaven and earth to secure his release. Amid betrayals, intrigues, infidelities, wars, and illness, Richard’s courage and intelligence will become legend.




The Law Journal Reports


Book Description