Whose Story Is It Anyway? (Workbook) By: Bryan Veal Whose Story Is It Anyway? (Workbook) provides an opportunity for introspection and enables individuals to examine why they think and act the way they do, what stories they have been told, what stories they have made up that are controlling their lives. This workbook will provide the ability to create a new way of thinking, thus changing unwanted behaviors. You will see how you have been programmed to think a certain way by other people’s stories and society’s stories. If you feel stuck or have settled for where you are or convinced yourself that you are where you want to be, this workbook will help you move to a place that you REALLY want to be…unless you are that 1 percent of the world that is doing what they really want to do.

What's this book about? That depends on who you ask. Our humble narrator thinks he's got a great story for you, but a scallywag pirate, a ravenous dinosaur, and an alien beg to differ. Soon a whole cast of colorful characters is breaking in to take over the story. If they could all get on the same page, this might just be the best story ever.

Reinventing yourself takes humor, heart, and a TON of footnotes! Max is a good kid—but you wouldn’t know that if you met him at the boring family camp his parents dragged him to over the summer. There, for a few exciting weeks, Max reinvents himself as “Mad Max” and gains a bad-boy reputation for being daring, cool, and fearless. But when Max returns home, he finds it’s easier to be fearless with strangers than it is among friends, and he is not particularly proud of the way his behavior over the summer hurt people. Can he find a way to merge his adventurous alter ego with his true identity as a good guy? Peppered with humorous handwritten footnotes and doodles throughout, Anyway* perfectly captures the viewpoint of a young teen doing his best to find his place in the world—and an ideal balance between wise guy and wimp.

InWhose Life Is It Anyway?, psychologist Nina Brown helps readers evaluate their family ties and decide if they are so caught up in others needs that they neglect their own health and happiness. She gives readers a variety of techniques for shielding themselves from the demands of their loved ones, building strong boundaries, checking their tendency toward excessive empathy, and staying free of dominating or manipulative relationships.

Eloise Manfred just sold her soul to the wedding devil. In exchange for a free $100,000 dream wedding, she'll be featured in a trendy magazine as "Today's Modern Bride." So what if the advertisers dictate what she wears, eats and registers for? From the gown (it has yellow feathers) to the reception hall (vampire chic) to the rings (what metal is that?) to the prime rib (tofu!), Eloise knows that what really matters is the groom (cold feet?). All she has to do is keep a wedding-planning diary (heavily edited) and have her friends and family ooh and aah over her leather veil in photo shoots. Friends, Eloise has: bridesmaids Jane, Natasha, Amanda and oddball co-worker Philippa, the magazine's "Traditional (ha!) Bride." Family, she doesn't have. Eloise's mother passed away, her father took off years ago, her too-cool-for-words brother is either climbing Mount Everest or scamming a rich older woman in Beverly Hills and her fiancé's family is certifiable. So between choosing rubber bridesmaid dresses and worrying about the photo shoots, Eloise finally asks the question: Hey—whose wedding is it anyway?

“Maude Barlow is one of our planet’s greatest water defenders.” — Naomi Klein, bestselling author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine The Blue Communities Project is dedicated to three primary things: that access to clean, drinkable water is a basic human right; that municipal and community water will be held in public hands; and that single-use plastic water bottles will not be available in public spaces. With its simple, straightforward approach, the movement has been growing around the world for a decade. Today, Paris, Berlin, Bern, and Montreal are just a few of the cities that have made themselves Blue Communities. In Whose Water Is It, Anyway?, renowned water justice activist Maude Barlow recounts her own education in water issues as she and her fellow grassroots water warriors woke up to the immense pressures facing water in a warming world. Concluding with a step-by-step guide to making your own community blue, Maude Barlow’s latest book is a heartening example of how ordinary people can effect enormous change.

Following his widely acclaimed Project X and Love and Hydrogen—“Here is the effect of these two books,” wrote the Chicago Tribune: “A reader finishes them buzzing with awe”—Jim Shepard now gives us his first entirely new collection in more than a decade. Like You’d Understand, Anyway reaches from Chernobyl to Bridgeport, with a host of narrators only Shepard could bring to pitch-perfect life. Among them: a middle-aged Aeschylus taking his place at Marathon, still vying for parental approval. A maddeningly indefatigable Victorian explorer hauling his expedition, whaleboat and all, through the Great Australian Desert in midsummer. The first woman in space and her cosmonaut lover, caught in the star-crossed orbits of their joint mission. Two Texas high school football players at the top of their food chain, soliciting their fathers’ attention by leveling everything before them on the field. And the rational and compassionate chief executioner of Paris, whose occupation, during the height of the Terror, eats away at all he holds dear. Brimming with irony, compassion, and withering humor, these eleven stories are at once eerily pertinent and dazzlingly exotic, and they showcase the work of a protean, prodigiously gifted writer at the height of his form. Reading Jim Shepard, according to Michael Chabon, “is like encountering our national literature in microcosm.”