When a detective book can surprise, it's gold. If it can surprise you, be heartfelt, gritty, smart, and funny, you know you've found something special.
This book is about a lot of things, but ostensibly, it’s about a drug addict, Felix, who is investigating the death of his friend, Marina. But really, the book wanders, like the mind of someone clobbered by the hardships of life, of drugs, of living in Scotland in the hangover of colonialism, and of a political moment where the disadvantaged are being forgotten. The book has the heart of the wounded.
It reminded me of Your Republic is Calling You (Young-Ha Kim) in that they both speak to what wounded people have to do to get by (the lies we tell ourselves and more). I'm not Scottish, but even though this book hasn't made its way over the Atlantic, I loved its sincerity.
'An enjoyably dark and entertaining tranche of Glasgow noir . . . [A] deft, engaging thriller' Observer
Glasgow, 2015. When Valium addict Felix McAveety's best friend Marina is found murdered in the local park, he goes looking for answers to questions that he quickly forgets. In a haze of uppers, hallucinogens, and diazepam, Felix enlists the help of a brilliant but mercurial GP; a bright young trade unionist; a failing screenwriter; semi-celebrity crime novelist Jane Pickford; and his crisis fuelled downstairs neighbour Donnie.
Their investigation sends them on a bewildering expedition that takes in Scottish…
I first adopted a vegan diet for the animals and then shifted to a plant-based vegan "for my health" in my mid-20s. I felt fabulous for the next 10-15 years. Then, in my mid-30s, I suddenly developed severe and chronic GI symptoms. I was severely bloated, nauseous, and constipated, which didn't make sense given how much fiber I was eating. After diagnosis and treatment for H Pylori (a bacterial infection), I was left with a "broken belly" (severe dysbiosis). I've spent the last few years reading every book on gut health and hormones to learn how to heal myself since traditional medicine has failed me.
This book stands as a glaring reminder of how we have to advocate for ourselves and our health. This book painfully illustrates the corruption of our health"care" system. Summary: an intriguing look at how influence and reductionism play into modern science, including insight into the vitamin supplement industry and how medical science is caught up in a reductionist paradigm.
New York Times Bestseller What happens when you eat an apple? The answer is vastly more complex than you imagine. Every apple contains thousands of antioxidants whose names, beyond a few like vitamin C, are unfamiliar to us, and each of these powerful chemicals has the potential to play an important role in supporting our health. They impact thousands upon thousands of metabolic reactions inside the human body. But calculating the specific influence of each of these chemicals isn't nearly sufficient to explain the effect of the apple as a whole. Because almost every chemical can affect every other chemical,…
I’ve been a reader since childhood and books have simply become a part of my life’s tapestry. They have comforted me in times of stress. They have provided me with ripples of joy. And simply kept me up almost all night. The books that I have recommended underscore the changing cultures of the human condition all centered around three universal themes, faith, mental illness, and family. When drafting my first novel I dived into simply capturing aspects of the human condition. As a mental health clinician I see the many tides of life and how the human condition has many times been couched within family dynamics.
I absolutely enjoyed this book from cover to cover. This book carries the heart and soul of many of the ancestors. It is unapologetically spiritual, charming, heartwarming, and downright funny.
In a world of fiction and nonfiction as an author, I do believe we can mix it up. This nonfiction book will leave its reader feeling like they just ate a big bowl of gumbo. It highlights the complexities of life, family, community, and self. But, it intertwines the importance of lessons learned, value-added, and compassionate care.
Before Tabitha Brown was one of the most popular personalities in the world, sharing her delicious vegan home cooking and compassionate wisdom with millions of followers across social media, she was an aspiring actress who in 2016 began struggling with undiagnosed chronic autoimmune pain. Her condition made her believe she wouldn't live to see forty--until she started listening to what her soul and her body truly needed. Now, in this life-changing book, Tabitha shares the wisdom she gained from her…
I simply love Christmas. My mum always made big deal of Christmas when I was growing up and I’ve carried that enthusiasm with me throughout my life. I love the sense of community and warmth. I love the traditions. I love the slight cheesiness of the whole affair! And I love romantic fiction as well. I adore a Happy Ever After moment, and I absolutely believe that love is splendid and important and ought to be celebrated in all its forms. And those two feelings have led me to write four romance books set at Christmas – firstly the Christmas Kisses series (as Alison May), and now The Christmas Season.
I discovered Sophie Kinsella back in the 90s. Back then my love of romance was very much a secret love, while I publicly read what idiot-younger-me thought was more worthy serious literature. And then Sophie Kinsella and Marian Keyes came into my life and blew my mind.
The Shopaholic series is the perfect example of a fun, escapist series that absolutely has stuff to say about the world. Funny isn’t the opposite of serious. Escapist isn’t mutually exclusive with important. Sophie Kinsella is one of the authors who taught me that, and Christmas Shopaholic is the festive installment of her best-known series.
A shopaholic at Christmas – what could possibly go wrong?
Celebrate Christmas with the ultimate Shopaholic! A Sunday Times bestseller.
Longlisted for the Comedy Women In Print Prize 2020
The brilliant laugh-out-loud festive novel from the Number One bestselling author.
Becky Brandon (nee Bloomwood) adores Christmas. It's always the same - Mum and Dad hosting, carols playing, Mum pretending she made the Christmas pudding, and the next-door neighbours coming round for sherry in their terrible festive jumpers.
And now it's even easier with online bargain-shopping sites - if you spend enough you even get free delivery. Sorted!
But this year looks set to be different. Unable to resist the draw…
I was inspired and shocked that it took me this long to find this book. Both because I am beginning my own agricultural journey and because Barbara Kingsolver is an all-time favorite, I loved this book’s calendar-following content and the voice it employs. The family’s pact to eat local and seasonal food for a year is portrayed honestly with humor and joy instead of preachiness.
It speaks to the things we dive into full-bore without completely appreciating how much work it entails. With determination and intentionality, they commune with the land and find a community- truly aspirational.
"We wanted to live in a place that could feed us: where rain falls, crops grow, and drinking water bubbles up right out of the ground."
Barbara Kingsolver opens her home to us, as she and her family attempt a year of eating only local food, much of it from their own garden. Inspired by the flavours and culinary arts of a local food culture, they explore many a farmers market and diversified organic farms at home and across the country. With characteristic warmth, Kingsolver shows us how to put food back at the centre of the political and family…
I am a naturopathic therapist, teacher, and writer working mainly with plant medicine since 1989. For decades, I’ve been teaching many aspects of natural healing and have written 5 books, published in 6 languages, on various aspects of my work. One of my favourite books is DEEPLY HOLISTIC, a Guide to Intuitive Self-Care, a synthesis of much of the advice I’ve given clients over my 30 years of practice.
Forks Over Knives describes how changing your diet (forks) can be used to good effect to improve health, therefore, avoid the need for surgery (knives). This is a book about the most important advice on healthy eating – guess what? eating a whole-food, plant-based diet. It is full of inspiring success stories of people who have taken charge of their diet and transformed their health, as well as useful recipes.
The author advocates entirely plant-based, and although there is a healthy way to eat animal products, the foundational diet for everyone needs to be mostly plants, and most definitely whole foods, meaning not processed or industrially produced.
The #1 New York Times bestseller answers: What if one simple change could save you from heart disease, diabetes, and cancer?
For decades, that question has fascinated a small circle of impassioned doctors and researchers—and now, their life-changing research is making headlines in the hit documentary Forks Over Knives. Their answer? Eat a whole-foods, plant-based diet—it could save your life.
It may overturn most of the diet advice you’ve heard—but the experts behind Forks Over Knives aren’t afraid to make waves. In his book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn explained that eating meat, dairy, and oils injures…
Denise Kiernan is a multiple New York Times bestselling author of narrative nonfiction books including The Girls of Atomic City, the Last Castle, and We Gather Together. Throughout her career as a journalist and an author, she has explored underrepresented stories and characters and the impact they have had on history. These stories of the unsung offer fresh perspectives on historical tales we think we already know. At the heart of many of Kiernan’s nonfiction explorations are women from a variety of different backgrounds and time periods. She has devoted her last three books to the history of Thanksgiving and gratitude, writing separate books for all ages.
Let me be clear: You absolutely do not have to buy a gratitude journal, per se, to practice gratitude. But as a writer, I know that there’s nothing scarier than facing a blank page.
You may have heard that such a practice is important, but you’re a little nervous about where to start. This highly popular journal presents you with two pages a day for 90 days—a morning and evening reflection page. The morning page provides blanks for your daily focus, affirmations, what you’re excited and grateful about. The evening page prompts you to assess the day, spell out what went well for you, and guides you to positive thoughts before bedtime.
To make the most of a book like this, you’ll need to check in twice a day. If you don’t transition from this kind of book to a blank notebook, understand that your choice means you are committing…
Center your life around positive thoughts with this guided gratitude journal!
Celebrate each moment, big or small, and preserve important memories with everyday mindfulness. This 90-day reflection journal gives you a path to developing a habit of daily gratitude that you can carry throughout your life. Cultivating thankfulness is a potent exercise, proven to have a positive effect on a person's mental health and general well-being. Each spread of this positivity journal includes space to record expressions of gratitude, personal affirmations, memories of positive interactions, and commentary on the significance of it all.
I was once a psychoanalyst, but I found that it was almost impossible to understand another human being. Animals were easier: they could not be hypocritical, they could not lie, they could not deceive. Whoever heard of an animal with an unconscious anger problem? If they were angry they showed it, if they loved they showed it. After I got fired from the Freud Archives (that’s a whole other story) I decided I wanted to read ten good books about animal emotions. This was in 1981. But it turns out there were no books on this topic I could read, except Darwin, 1872! So I decided to write my own.
Normally the word "spirituality" in a book title would have me running for the door. Dr. Pribac is so smart, so insightful, and so different in her way of approaching everything, that I was struck with wonder. Warning: A full-throated endorsement of veganism (to my delight).
Normally I do not like academic books about animals. But this book is an exception. The author is different than ordinary academics. For one thing, she really adores her subject. For another, she writes with heart. She is also whip-smart, so just about every sentence is worth reading twice or even three times. I truly believe she will revolutionize the field with her next books. Anyone interested in animals should keep an eye on for this author.
In Enter the Animal, Teya Brooks Pribac examines academic and popular discourse on animals' experiences of grief and spirituality, which are rooted in our intrinsic capacity and propensity for connections and relations, and highlights important ethical implications of humans' treatment of other species.Praise for Enter the Animal'This path-breaking book engages a surprising range of sources to shed extraordinary clarity on aspects of animal subjectivity that make other species every bit our equal. I could not stop reading.'- Cynthia Willett, author of Interspecies Ethics'Enter the Animal is a fascinating journey into the hearts and minds of nonhuman animals and our shared…
I’ve loved animals for as long as I can remember. When I was young, girls my age were seeking out babies to admire. I was around the corner looking for puppies, frogs, or any other animal I could get my hands on. I’ve spent decades seeking out animals, and the more I learn about them, the more I realize how much they can teach us, point out what we otherwise might have missed, or offer a startlingly different (and often more helpful) perspective on things. The following books are some of my favorites that bring to light the unique and profound truths animals reveal to us.
In most stories, animals don’t exist for their own reasons—their purpose is simply to serve the needs of the main characters or the machinations of the plot. In Barn 8, however, chickens not only have agency and their own raison d’etre, but they catalyze every single major turn of events.
I love the premise—a group of unlikely activists decides to free the million-plus chickens suffering on an egg farm—and its quirky, clever style. But the best part is the chickens at the heart of the tale. Unferth gets inside their heads, showing their loyalty and love, their distinctive personalities, and their undeniable, fierce intelligence.
It's a captivating glimpse into the inner world of extraordinary animals who deserve to be the heroes of their own stories.
One disaffected administrator, one disenchanted teenager, four hundred and twenty-one vegan extremists, sixty trucks, and nine hundred thousand grumpy layer hens awaiting liberation. In barns. Six barns. No, wait, seven. No, wait ...
Two auditors for the US egg industry conceive a plot to liberate an entire egg farm's worth of animals, with catastrophic results. This wildly inventive but utterly plausible novel about a heist of a very unusual kind swirls with a rich array of voices: a farmer's daughter, hundreds of activists, a forest ranger who stumbles upon forty thousand hens, and a security guard abandoned for years on…
I first adopted a vegan diet for the animals and then shifted to a plant-based vegan "for my health" in my mid-20s. I felt fabulous for the next 10-15 years. Then, in my mid-30s, I suddenly developed severe and chronic GI symptoms. I was severely bloated, nauseous, and constipated, which didn't make sense given how much fiber I was eating. After diagnosis and treatment for H Pylori (a bacterial infection), I was left with a "broken belly" (severe dysbiosis). I've spent the last few years reading every book on gut health and hormones to learn how to heal myself since traditional medicine has failed me.
Until I read this book, I was unaware what a critical role hormones play in everything *and* how greatly food affects your hormones. Best of all, Dr. Barnard provides realistic guidelines for how to get started and is never "preachy" about anything.
He also manages to cover a broad spectrum of hormone-related issues that both men and women face in this easy-to-read book. If you struggle with infertility, mood disorders, PCOS, PMS symptoms, ED (men), hot flashes, risk of cancer/have cancer, depression, diabetes, thyroid issues, weight troubles, etc. I encourage you to read the chapter dedicated to your issue in the book and eat the foods he recommends. At the very least, be informed about exactly how all the foods you eat affect your hormones and medical issues.
This nationally bestselling book explains the shocking new science of how hormones are wreaking havoc on the body, and the delicious solution that improves health, reduces pain, and even helps to shed weight.
Hidden in everyday foods are the causes of a surprising range of health problems: infertility, menstrual cramps, weight gain, hair loss, breast and prostate cancer, hot flushes, and much more. All of these conditions have one thing in common: they are fuelled by hormones that are hiding in foods or are influenced by the foods we eat.
Your Body in Balance provides step-by-step guidance for understanding what's…
