Named one of Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2014 One of NBC News’s 10 Best Latino Books of 2014 “A West Coast version of Augusten Burroughs’s Running With Scissors...A funny, shocking, generous-hearted book” (Entertainment Weekly) about a boy, his five stepfathers, and the mother who was determined to give her son everything but the truth. When he was three years old, Brando Kelly Ulloa was abandoned by his immigrant father. His mother, Maria, dreaming of a more exciting life, saw no reason for her son to live as a Mexican American just because he was born one. With the help of Maria’s ruthless imagination and a hastily penned jailhouse correspondence, the life of “Brando Skyhorse,” the Native American son of an incarcerated political activist, was about to begin. Through a series of letters to Paul Skyhorse Johnson, a stranger in prison for armed robbery, Maria reinvents herself and her young son as American Indians in the colorful Mexican-American neighborhood of Echo Park, California, where Brando and his mother live with his acerbic grandmother and a rotating cast of surrogate fathers. It will be thirty years before Brando begins to untangle the truth, when a surprise discovery leads him to his biological father at last. From this PEN/Hemingway Award–winning novelist comes an extraordinary literary memoir capturing a mother-son story unlike any other and a boy’s single-minded search for a father, wherever he can find one.

"Alice is about to marry Mad. Alice is white. Mad is black. Alice is French; Mad, though he has studied and lived in France for years, is not. They have been friends since childhood and never been romantically involved. But now Mad is being threatened with deportation and marrying Alice strikes both friends as the best solution to their problems. On the eve of her wedding, Alice reflects on their years of friendship--from their childhood together to the first time she ever heard racial slurs being directed at her friend to the victory of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the presidential primaries in 2002"--Publishers website, viewed September 30, 2011.

With a flick of his locks and a lash of his tongue, Boy George waltzed into musical stardom in 1982 with his smash hit "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" As the quintessential pop star of the 1980s, Boy George was constantly in the public eye, with a string of platinum Culture Club hits, sensational personal appearances, camp behavior, and gender-bending dress fueling the media's infatuation. A Grammy Award for "Karma Chameleon" sealed Boy George's pop-icon status as the avant-garde star whose beguiling melodies and impertinent one-liners seduced an unsuspecting public. But after he reached the pinnacle of success, his life took a devastating turn. Culture Club went into eclipse, his hushed-up relationship with drummer Jon Moss fell apart, and Boy George found a new and dangerous obsession: drugs. In this electrifying memoir, Boy George tells the story of the crazy highs and desperate lows; the family struggles; the friends and lovers—gay, straight, and transvestite; the obsessive media infatuation; and the agony, shame, and despair of withdrawal. Filled with confession, revelation, and inspiration, Take It Like a Man is the mesmerizing account of how George achieved the nearly impossible—coming back from addiction and achieving health, sobriety, and a new horizon of musical success.

"Do You Take This Man has one of the steamiest, most addictive, most satisfyingly hard-earned happily-ever-after I’ve read in ages!"—Ali Hazelwood, New York Times bestselling author of Love on the Brain A wedding officiant who doesn't believe in love and an event planner who's been burned agree to say "I do" to being enemies with benefits. Divorce attorney RJ would never describe herself as romantic. But when she ends up officiating an unplanned wedding for a newly engaged couple in a park, her life is turned upside down. The video of the ceremony goes viral, and she finds herself in the unlikely position of being a sought-after local wedding officiant. Spending her free time overseeing “I dos” isn’t her most strategic career move, but she enjoys it, except for the type A dude-bro wedding planner she’s forced to work with. Former pro-football event manager Lear is a people person, but after his longtime girlfriend betrayed him, he isn’t looking for love. He knows how to execute events and likes being in control, so working with an opinionated and inflexible officiant who can’t stand him is not high on his list. He’s never had trouble winning people over, but RJ seems immune to his charms. Surrounded by love at every turn, their physical attraction pulls them together despite their best efforts to stay an arm’s length apart. Lear refuses to get hurt again. RJ refuses to let herself be vulnerable to anyone. But when it comes to happily ever after, their clients might not be the only ones saying “I do.”

A success-driven CEO goes on a year-long journey of self-discovery in Bali in this memoir about rediscovering what’s truly important. A hard-charging CEO of a large enterprise, Ben Feder discovers that he is losing the very things that sustained him over his years of business success. Unsettled by his insight, he becomes determined to rebuild family relationships and rejuvenate his sense of purpose. Risking his career, Feder left New York with his wife and children and set off on a self-prescribed sabbatical year. That experience transforms them all. As Feder navigates the thrills and pitfalls of his time away, he draws readers into remarkable examinations of modern values and modern life. Take Off Your Shoes is Feder’s candid and personable account of a journey across the world, and within himself.

We all tell white lies to others and, even worse, to ourselves. We do something wrong and instead of acknowledging it, learning from it, and moving on, we lie, saying it was due to circumstances outside ourselves. Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, for each one should carry his own load. Gal. 6:45 NIV Genesis 3:12 NIV, The man said, The woman you put here with meshe gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it. As long as there has been a record of man, humans have chosen to blame someone else for their wrongdoings. For you and me, it does not have to be that way. We can change and take responsibilities for our own actions.

Many erotic stories focus on the thrill of first contact - but Take This Man is thrillingly different, taking a close look at how much sexier an encounter can be when the two men involved have been together for long enough to make a commitment to each other. Formalised or not, the fact remains that when you know what turns your partner on, and vice versa, your encounters can be even hotter, especially when you factor in the emotional component.