I'd prepared myself for a life without love. Lost my parents and anyone else I got close to. Nothing good ever stays for long. I'm a statistic after all. Former foster kid. Former drug addict, alcoholic. Always thought I was destined to be alone. Always felt like I wasn't worth a damn. Then Carla Evans walked into my life. One look at her in that uptight, buttoned-up outfit and I knew I had to have her. For a night, I'd indulge myself in the fantasy of a girl like her actually wanting a guy like me. Then she moved here with no job and that ridiculous bucket list. I knew she needed my help. I just didn't expect to need hers. I spent a long time letting myself believe I didn't deserve happiness. It took me a while (and a whole lot of therapy) to realize I'd had it all wrong. Now I know. And now I have to tell her. *Fighting the Odds deals with sensitive topics like drug addiction, death, foster care, homelessness, and miscarriage. But it is also an inspirational story of love, friendship, hope, and finding your inner warrior.

Interspersed is the gripping tale of the 1976 presidential campaign when Church, the "late, late candidate," upset frontrunner Jimmy Carter in several key primaries.

Finding ways to coping with everyday stressors.

This memoir is the culmination of Fiaz Rafiq's two decades of work behind the scenes as a sports journalist, gaining the trust and confidence of the best fighters in boxing and MMA. The result is a fascinating odyssey, a coming-of-age story populated by some of the most colorful characters in the world of sports and entertainment.

It had been years since I had seen any of the children with whom I had grown up. When I left the children's home, I promised myself that I would have nothing to do with them, I was sure that my only chance of living a good life would be to put the past behind me, even though that meant saying goodbye to some of the people I loved the most - as well as the ones I hated...it turned out that six of us had died, several by slow suicide in the form of heroin abuse, and at least two by faster means. When two police officers arrived out of the blue at Paul Connolly's door, he learned the shocking news that, out of the eight children with whom he shared a dormitory in care, only two were still alive. The revelation unearthed painful memories of a childhood that, until this point, Paul had tried desperately to put behind him. Abandoned at two weeks old, Paul came of age in the infamous St Leonards's Children's Home in East London. The children there were routinely abused, often over the course of many years. All were underfed and unloved and told that they would amount to nothing. Angry and frustrated, Paul channelled his rage into boxing - but when an accident shattered his ambition to turn professional, he found his true calling and became a successful trainer, even working as a consultant on the pilot of a top model's fitness video. Paul has finally found peace and fulfilment beyond anyhing he could have imagined all those years ago. He has found happiness with his wife and children and now helps to heal broken bodies, build confidence and transform lives - but he will never forget his past and the unnecessary victims of broken society...

If he's had a touch of larceny in him, he could have been the number one card sharp of ail time. Instead the author of these fabulous memoirs, born to a mother who considered gambling "the devils tool" put his extraordinary gifts to far different purposes. He has used his incredible gambling sense, his miraculously dexterous fingers (as a magician he vied with Houdini) his brilliant mathematical mind, and his fascination with carnival and gambling life, to become America's number one authority on gambling and odds. He is the greatest living practitioner and analyst of card and slight of hand ( his artistry impressed FDR as well as underworld overlords). He has been consultant to the top casinos in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Las Vegas. He was chosen by the US Army in World War II to show GI's how not to be fleeced in crooked games. He was a front page witness in 1961 before the Senate's investigation of gambling and crime. There is nothing about the international gambling world - its personalities, stories, methods - that he doesn't know. And his own colorful and knowing personality makes his autobiography one of the most fascinating documents of our day. " Illustrated with 16 pages of photographs, 537 pages.

While working for a financial consulting firm that offers insurance against catastrophic events, a young mathematician becomes increasingly obsessed with doomsday scenarios until one of his worst-case scenarios unfolds in Manhattan.