It's inappropriate to wish for your ex-husband to be run over by a truck. The same goes for dressmakers, flower delivery people, and snotty little hotel concierges who mess up room reservations. But I don't care. I'm not too proud to admit my daughter's wedding has me stressed out. Okay, maybe I'll only wish for a very small truck to hit him. Twice. There are a thousand things that require my attention, but it's impossible to be productive when all I can think about is the boiling rage I feel every time I look at my ex and his bimbo-of-the-week. I'm trying to pull it together, but everything that can go wrong has. I just need a break and a little pick-me-up. An afternoon getting lost in the local market should do the trick. That's when a pirate's loss becomes my gain. My strange and beautiful new trinket is anything but ordinary. And suddenly everything in my life is falling into place. You know what they say about wishes? It's best to be careful when making them. If you don't know the difference between what you want and what you need, the consequences could be deadly. Or hilarious. Grab this humor-filled, page-turning, suspenseful paranormal woman’s fiction now, and escape into a world of wishes fulfilled.

Thou shalt not wish your ex-husband be run over by a truck. Nor would I wish bad things on the dressmakers, flower delivery persons, and snotty little hotel concierges who messed up room reservations and gave the suite I was supposed to have to my ex-husband and his bimbo-of-the-week. Now that I've arrived at the hotel for my daughter's week-long wedding festivities, there are a thousand or so things that require my attention. And there are the things I'm desperately trying not to focus on, like my loneliness and the angry feeling I get every time I look at my ex. But when everything that can go wrong does go wrong, I need a break, just one afternoon to pull it together. And it's at the market in town where I find exactly that. And so much more. Thanks to a pirate's lost treasure, I find a trinket, a strange and beautiful stone, that seems to be making all my wishes come true. Suddenly everything is falling into place in my life. I may, however, have to learn to be careful what I wish for because sometimes what we think we want and what we really need are too entirely different things.

Saul Bellow and American Transcendentalism explores Saul Bellow's moral and philosophical affinity with the writers of American transcendentalism, especially Emerson and Whitman. Its focus is on the «vintage» Bellow, or his «mature» novels, from Henderson the Rain King (1959) to The Dean's December (1982). In these novels, Bellow highlights a moral crisis, arising from humankind's despiritualization and dehumanization, which, he believes, is responsible for an ongoing dichotomy in the modern world. Bellow describes this as a dichotomy of the «Cleans» and the «Dirties», in the context of American culture. To rectify this dichotomy and redeem humankind from its current «death-ridden» state, Bellow and his protagonists advance a vision of life that corresponds to the transcendental vision of dialogue and «double consciousness», or coordination and balance. Like Emerson, they advocate, «The mid-world is best... A man is a golden impossibility; the line he must walk is a hair's breadth». Comparable to Whitman, they urge the individual to «knit the knot of contrariety» and act as «an arbiter of the diverse».

Published in association with North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California.

“Vastu Shastra: for a Healthy, Prosperous and Happy life” is an in-depth study of the ancient Indian Science of Vastu Shastra. This book unearths the various Vastu principles and practices of constructing houses, buildings or workplaces in such a way that there is a harmonious balance between the structure, the nature and the various energies including Cosmic and Electromagnetic forces. This book will help you to: • Create homes, buildings or any new structure in compliance with Vastu; • Make your existing homes or flats Vastu compliant including decorating the interiors of the house by ensuring placement of various things as per Vastu; • Understand ways to help working professionals to make their workplaces Vastu compliant. This book is a one stop shop as it explains in simple words the various rules and tools for the identification and correction of various Vastu defects. Comparison between Vastu and Feng Shui along with their tools have been explained in simple words for the benefit of the readers. By understanding these principles, the readers will be able to apply Vastu remedies on their own and make their lives stress free, happier, healthier and successful. Though very clearly, we want to strongly iterate that Vastu is not a replacement for hard work, it is just that one’s hard work and efforts will be fruitful and yield the desired results if one’s home and workplace are in compliance with Vastu principles.

This first English-language biography of Mikhail Tomsky illuminates how the sole worker in the top echelon of the Bolshevik Party, and the leader of the huge trade-union bureaucracy, helped shape Soviet domestic and foreign policy along generally moderate lines throughout the 1920s.

The legendary author’s essays and interviews explore how fellow writers from Milan Kundera to Edna O’Brien are influenced by time, place, and politics. Writers are often deeply influenced by the time and place in which they live and write. In Shop Talk, Philip Roth, winner of a National Book Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and numerous other literary honors, explores the intimate relationship a writer’s experience has with his or her work. In a series of essays, Roth recounts his intellectual encounters with writers, discussing with them the diverse regions from which they hail and pondering the influence of locale, politics, and history on their work. Featuring luminaries such as Milan Kundera discussing Czechoslovakia; Primo Levi talking about Auschwitz; Edna O’Brien reflecting on Ireland; Isaac Bashevis Singer tackling Warsaw; Aharon Appelfeld on Bukovina; and Ivan Klíma on Prague, Roth’s conversations touch on the conditions that inspire great art, with artists as attuned to the subtleties of their societies as they are the nuances of words. Also including a portrait of Bernard Malamud, a written exchange with Mary McCarthy about Roth’s The Counterlife, and the essay “Rereading Saul Bellow,” Shop Talk is a “fascinating [glimpse] of some of the deans of postwar literature” (Los Angeles Times Book Review).