The Hard Truth About Sunshine


Book Description

***** 2017 Kindle Book Awards WINNER - Literary Fiction ***** New York Times bestselling author Sawyer Bennett has written her most gripping and poignant tale yet. Provocatively heart-breaking, audaciously irreverent and romantically fulfilling, The Hard Truth About Sunshine exposes just how very thin the line is between a full life and an empty existence. Despite having narrowly escaped death's clutches, Christopher Barlow is grateful for nothing. His capacity to love has been crushed. He hates everyone and everything, completely unable to see past the gray stain of misery that coats his perception of the world. It's only after he involuntarily joins a band of depressed misfits who are struggling to overcome their own problems, does Christopher start to re-evaluate his lot in life. What could they possibly learn from one another? How could they possibly help each other to heal? And the question that Christopher asks himself over and over again... can he learn to love again? He's about to find out as he embarks upon a cross country trip with a beautiful woman who is going blind, a boy with terminal cancer, and an abuse victim who can't decide whether she wants to live or die. Four people with nothing in common but their destination. They will encounter adventure, thrills, loss and love. And within their travels they will learn the greatest lesson of all. The hard truth about sunshine... Warning: This book deals with some tough issues including suicide and sexual abuse.




Sunshine


Book Description

Set in the northern Minnesota wilderness, a timeless novel about a boy and his imaginary dog explores the legacy of guilt and blame—and what really constitutes a family. Newbery Honoree Marion Dane Bauer evokes the “summer that changed everything” in the life of a boy growing up without a mother. Since as far back as Ben can remember, it’s been him, his devoted dad, and Sunshine—Ben’s little dog, who rarely leaves Ben’s side. It was Mom who did the leaving, and Ben’s about to spend a whole week with his suddenly present mother in the wilds of northern Minnesota. On the remote island she calls home, Ben will learn to canoe, weather the elements, and weigh a burning question: when will she come back to where she belongs? A must-read for dog lovers, children of divorce, and the imaginative and outdoorsy, Sunshine is a poignant, ultimately hopeful story about self-discovery, facing big realities, and finally, forgiving the things—and people—you can’t forget.




The Sun Does Shine


Book Description

"A powerful, revealing story of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading by a man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he didn't commit"--




Resurrecting Sunshine


Book Description

At seventeen, Adam Rhodes is famous, living on his own, and in a downward spiral since he lost the girl he loved. Marybeth—stage name Sunshine—was his best friend from the days they were foster kids; then she was his girlfriend and his band mate. But since her accidental death, he's been drinking to deal with the memories. Until one day, an unexpected visitor, Dr. Elloran, presents Adam with a proposition that just might save him from himself. Using breakthrough cloning and memory-implantation techniques, Dr. Elloran and the scientists at Project Orpheus want to resurrect Marybeth, and they need Adam to "donate" intimate memories of his life with her. The memory retrieval process forces Adam to relive his life with Marybeth and the devastating path that brought them both to fame. Along the way, he must confront not only the circumstances of her death but also his growing relationship with the mysterious Genevieve, daughter of Project Orpheus's founder. As the process sweeps Adam and Marybeth ever closer to reliving the tragedy that destroyed them, Adam must decide how far he'll go to save her.




Quest for Eternal Sunshine


Book Description

Quest for Eternal Sunshine chronicles the triumphant, true story of Mendek Rubin, a brilliant inventor who overcame both the trauma of the Holocaust and decades of unrelenting depression to live a life of deep peace and boundless joy. Born into a Hassidic Jewish family in Poland in 1924, Mendek grew up surrounded by extreme anti-Semitism. Armed with an ingenious mind, he survived three horrific years in Nazi slave-labor concentration camps while virtually his entire family was murdered in Auschwitz. After arriving in America in 1946—despite having no money or professional skills—his inventions helped revolutionize both the jewelry and packaged-salad industries. Remarkably, Mendek also applied his ingenuity to his own psyche, developing innovative ways to heal his heart and end his emotional suffering. After Mendek died in 2012, his daughter, Myra Goodman, found an unfinished manuscript in which he’d revealed the intimate details of his healing journey. Quest for Eternal Sunshine—the extraordinary result of a posthumous father-daughter collaboration—tells Mendek’s whole story and is filled with eye-opening revelations, effective self-healing techniques, and profound wisdom that have the power to transform the way we live our lives. An inspirational biography of a Holocaust survivor overcoming depression and PTSD. An essential new addition to Jewish Holocaust history.




Hello, Sunshine


Book Description

In the modern world, where celebrity is a careful construct, Laura Dave's compelling, enticing novel explores the devastating effect of the secrets people keep in public, and in private. This is a fresh, provocative look at a woman teetering between a scrupulously assembled life and the redemptive power of revealing the truth.




The Revelation of Light and Dark


Book Description

I always knew I was different. From a young age, my mind has been plagued with things only I could see. Some hauntingly beautiful, others completely terrifying. Never knowing if these visions were real or just hallucinations, I learned how to lock them down and ignore them. I learned to take solace in the relative anonymity of city life and find peace in the rainy days my city of Seattle is known for. But just when I think my life is getting on track and my dreams are achievable, a moment of weakness causes me to learn a hard and fast lesson. My entire existence has been a lie. Now I’m faced with a new reality that’s as implausible as it is fantastical. Filled with realms and veils, light and dark, fae and daemons, gods and angels—things I don’t understand but am forced to acknowledge. It doesn’t help that the man teaching me about my unique gifts is the gorgeously handsome Carrick Byrne, one of Seattle’s richest and most powerful men. He intimidates, annoys, and intrigues me all at the same time. I don’t trust him and yet there’s no one else to help me. No longer certain who to put my faith in, what to believe, or how I fit into it all, one revelation is clear… The world as I know it will never be the same again. The Revelation of Light and Dark is book one of the Chronicles of the Stone Veil series and is best enjoyed if read in series order.




Make Your Own Sunshine


Book Description

The New York Times bestselling author and Fox News senior meteorologist Janice Dean returns with more inspiring stories of people who know how to find light in dark times. While the news is filled with villains and villainy, we do see a few famous heroes now and again. But what about the everyday heroes? The people going out of their way bring a little love into someone else's life? They deserve a time in the spotlight to inspire us all. Life can be tough—but it helps to know other people have come through hard times with a smile on their face. In Make Your Own Sunshine, Janice Dean shares inspiring stories that will lift your spirit and touch your heart. Good people are all around us doing selfless deeds, from a firefighter who bravely battled for his colleague’s health after 9/11 to a good Samaritan who secretly pays for the coffees of everyone in line behind him. You can’t help but smile reading about the teacher who cut her hair to make her student feel better. And you may shed a tear when you hear the story of the dad who never missed writing a napkin note for his daughter, including stashing extra notes in case he lost his batter with cancer. From a young man who makes bow ties for dogs waiting to be adopted to an Uber driver who brightened a new mom’s day by helping her buy baby clothes, the heroes in this story will warm your heart and stick in your mind. Janice has made it her mission to uncover and document these good stories to inspire us and gives us a much-needed boost of optimism. All we have to do is open our minds and our hearts, to look for the light on a cloudy day. Because as she reminds us, if we don’t make our own sunshine—who will?




Pirates and Farmers


Book Description

Arguably one of Americas most unconventional art/cultural critics




The Last Pew


Book Description

The Last Pew is the story of a young, single Christian woman who for most of her life lived a pure, wholesome, spiritual, and obedient existence. Upon moving to a new city and beginning her career as an educator, on the job she encounters a young unhappily married man who also happens to be a minister at a local Baptist church. Throughout a 2 year period of the two working together, she is courted; they fall in love, and commit to a life and relationship of immorality and sin. The narrative essentially tells the love story of the two. It shows how two people who know God intimately and have been doing God's will for so long can eventually walk down a path of spiritual destruction. The story illustrates the reasons that enabled the young woman's spiritual judgment to decline in order for this relationship to even take place. Moreover, the story shows the spiritual steps that the young woman had to take in order to be freed from the affair. The story clearly shows the power of God's Grace, Mercy, Forgiveness, and the true capacity of Prayer and Fasting. The Last Pew is an important story because it is an account on adultery which certainly is a muzzled issue within the Christian community. The story is an honest, transparent and appropriate narrative written with the hopes of providing its reader with a different take of who the other woman is. It is proof that the other woman can in fact be a woman of God who got lost while on her walk with Christ. At its core, The Last Pew is a story of redemption and finding purpose after sin. The title, The Last Pew, symbolizes how far the narrator was from God's altar and His will. But the story is a reminder that God's love can always allow for any lost soul to move back to the front of His altar. The end of the book serves as a workbook for struggling women coming out of their affair. There is a chapter devoted to points and scriptures to guide women through the process of their healing. The end of the book closes with an open letter to any woman who has had to deal with infidelity within her own marriage. A riveting testimony and a biblical based workbook, TLP is a resource for all women. Though adultery is a silent story within the Church, it certainly is a reality for many Christians, making this a conversation one that needs to be had. Whether the person reading this story is a woman trying to come out of an affair, a wife trying to heal from learning about an extra-marital affair, or a man of God that is caught in the middle---this book will minister.