At the age of 17, David McCumber was stricken with "road fever" that irresistible call to the itinerant life of a professional gambler. Twenty-two years later, he got the chance to follow that dream-not as a player but as the "stakehorse" (financial backer) for Tony Annigoni, a non-smoking, macrobiotic-eating "Renaissance Pool Hustler," student of Eastern religion, and master of the pure green-felt poetry of the dead stroke." With $27,000 in David's pocket they took off together on an astonishing four-month odyssey across America-traveling from seedy, hole-in-the-wall billiard parlors to high-class snooker rooms to high-tension pro tourneys, from Seattle to Miami and back again-exploring a shady twilight subculture and uniquely American mythos, in search of serious money, local glory...and the perfect hustle.

Wintering is a poignant and comforting meditation on the fallow periods of life, times when we must retreat to care for and repair ourselves. Katherine May thoughtfully shows us how to come through these times with the wisdom of knowing that, like the seasons, our winters and summers are the ebb and flow of life.

A moving personal narrative interwoven with lessons from literature, mythology and the natural world, May's story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas.

Ultimately, Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season

Nadia Kamies has written a profound and moving meditation on what it meant to grow up ‘coloured’ in South Africa under apartheid. The photographs from family albums that gave rise to this project not only represent the aspirations of the families and community about whom Kamies is writing, but are also repositories of memories weighted equally with joy and sorrow. Kamies mines these images for their secrets, showing them to be a record of the past and a promise of what the future might be.

An annual collection of studies on individuals who have made major contributions to the development of geography and geographical thought. Each paper describes the geographer's education, life, work, their influence and spread of academic ideas. A bibliography of their works and chronology is also incorporated. The work includes a listed general index, and cumulative index of geographers in the volumes published to date.

An incredible, revolutionary true story and surprisingly simple guide to teaching your dog to talk from speech-language pathologist Christina Hunger, who has taught her dog, Stella, to communicate using simple paw-sized buttons associated with different words.

When speech-language pathologist Christina Hunger first came home with her puppy, Stella, it didn't take long for her to start drawing connections between her job and her new pet. During the day, she worked with toddlers with significant delays in language development and used Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices to help them communicate. At night, she wondered: If dogs can understand words we say to them, shouldn't they be able to say words to us? Can dogs use AAC to communicate with humans?

Christina decided to put her theory to the test with Stella and started using a paw-sized button programmed with her voice to say the word "outside" when clicked, whenever she took Stella out of the house. A few years later, Stella now has a bank of more than thirty word buttons, and uses them daily either individually or together to create near-complete sentences.

How Stella Learned to Talk is part memoir and part how-to guide. It chronicles the journey Christina and Stella have taken together, from the day they met, to the day Stella "spoke" her first word, and the other breakthroughs they've had since. It also reveals the techniques Christina used to teach Stella, broken down into simple stages and actionable steps any dog owner can use to start communicating with their pets.

Filled with conversations that Stella and Christina have had, as well as the attention to developmental detail that only a speech-language pathologist could know, How Stella Learned to Talk will be the indispensable dog book for the new decade.

How do you rebuild yourself when your whole world changes overnight?

Thrust onto the public stage at fifteen years old after the Taliban's brutal attack on her life, Malala quickly became an international icon known for bravery and resilience. But away from the cameras and crowds, she spent years struggling to find her place in an unfamiliar world. Now, for the first time ever, Malala takes readers beyond the headlines in Finding My Way - a vulnerable, surprising memoir that buzzes with authenticity, sharp humour and tenderness.

Finding My Way is a story of friendship and first love, of anxiety and self-discovery, of trying to stay true to yourself when everyone wants to tell you who you are. In it, Malala traces her path from high school loner to reckless college student to a young woman at peace with her past. Through candid, often messy moments like nearly failing exams, getting ghosted and meeting the love of her life, Malala reminds us that real role models aren't perfect - they're human.

In this astonishing memoir, Malala reintroduces herself to the world, sharing how she navigated life as someone whose darkest moments threatened to define her - while seeking the freedom to find out who she truly is. Finding My Way is an intimate look at the life of a young woman taking charge of her destiny - and a deeply personal testament to the strength it takes to be unapologetically yourself

This book of essays written over the last three post-apartheid decades uniquely provides profiles of 104 pan-African figures, mostly from the 1.4 billion-strong African population and its estimated 250 million-strong diaspora in the Americas, Europe and the Caribbean. It thus provides a concise profile of the most important figures of Africa and its diaspora.

The profiles also include global Western figures engaging with African issues, assessed from an African perspective. The essays cover, in a multi-disciplinary manner, diverse historical and political figures, technocrats, activists, writers, public intellectuals, musical and film artists, and sporting figures. They acknowledge the continuing legacies and impacts of the twin scourges of slavery and colonialism, but also seek to capture the zeitgeist of the post-apartheid era.

The book argues that the culmination of Africa’s liberation struggles was mirrored by similar battles in the Caribbean as well as the American civil rights movement, with all three involving citizens of global Africa.

A vivid memoir of food and family, survival and triumph, Love, Loss And What We Ate traces the arc of Padma Lakshmi's unlikely path from an immigrant childhood to a complicated life in front of the camera.

Long before Padma Lakshmi ever stepped onto a television set, she learned that how we eat is an extension of how we love, how we comfort, how we forge a sense of home-and how we taste the world as we navigate our way through it. Shuttling between continents as a child, she lived a life of dislocation that would become habit as an adult, never quite at home in the world. And yet, through all her travels, her favorite food remained the simple rice she first ate sitting on the cool floor of her grandmother's kitchen in South India. Poignant and surprising, Love, Loss And What We Ate is Lakshmi's extraordinary account of her journey from that humble kitchen, ruled by ferocious and unforgettable women, to the judges' table of Top Chef and beyond.

It chronicles the fierce devotion of the remarkable people who shaped her along the way, from her headstrong mother who flouted conservative Indian convention to make a life in New York, to her Brahmin grandfather-a brilliant engineer with an irrepressible sweet tooth-to the man seemingly wrong for her in every way who proved to be her truest ally. A memoir rich with sensual prose and punctuated with evocative recipes, it is alive with the scents, tastes, and textures of a life that spans complex geographies both internal and external.

Love, Loss And What We Ate is an intimate and unexpected story of food and family-both the ones we are born to and the ones we create-and their enduring legacies.

Parallel Summits explores the journey to the top of two steep mountains: Everest and financial freedom. It is the story of Robby, a mountaineer whose grit and perseverance led him to conquer Mount Everest after a devastating injury, and Thys, an alternative investments expert who helps others navigate the complex terrain of financial planning.

Baek Sehee could never have predicted how many people I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki would reach across the world. A runaway bestseller in South Korea, Japan, China, Indonesia and the UK, this record of conversations with her therapist demonstrated the realities of anxiety and depression in a uniquely intimate way.

But Baek's battle with dysthymia did not end there. Grappling with mental health is an everyday struggle.

In I Want to Die but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki, Baek's experiences become more complex, as she demonstrates that striving contentment is an ongoing journey.

For two months every winter, when Pacific storms make landfall, Oahu's paradisical North Shore turns into a fiery hell. Its population more than triples as mainlanders, Brazilians, Australians, and Europeans transform the normally sleepy shore into a lawless, violent, drug-addled, and adrenaline-soaked mecca where fearless men paddle into thirty-foot waves breaking over a razor-sharp reef. And when the sun goes down, the true danger comes out as drug money, fights, murder, and extortion rule the surfing underworld. The North Shore during winter is downright dangerous but also exhilarating, and Chas Smith paints a true picture of what it feels like to be in the middle of it all. Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell is both a breathtaking and wildly funny tale of beauty, wickedness, and the unyielding allure of ocean waves in all their glory.

Collette Wolfe was on holidays in Lanzarote with her husband Anthony when they got the call that all parents most dread. Their beloved daughter Leanne had died, having taken her own life. On the morning of Leanne's funeral, her diaries were uncovered by her sister, and the family awakened to a nightmare within the nightmare: to witness in written form the devastation of years of unrelenting bullying by a group of Leanne's peers, and to have been powerless to prevent it. There began a journey that brought Collette to the very edge of existence, as she contemplated taking her own life to end months of unbearable pain and suffering. Then, at her darkest moment, everything changed, and a new beginning opened up where she never imagined it was possible, one in which she would confront her own demons as a survivor of child abuse and rape, and ultimately, through the love of God, find hope and joy beyond measure. Here, for the first time, she tells her story - interwoven with extracts from Leanne's diaries - to create an unforgettable book that will be cherished by anyone who has known darkness, and seeks hope.

Fiction. Gay and Lesbian Studies. Memoir. This collection of conversations and ruminations during walks around the city was first published in 1979 by Black Star Series, San Francisco. It was immediately recognized as a core text by a group of young writers known collectively as the New Narrative school, associated with Robert Gluck's workshops and other events held at Small Press Traffic. The anecdotal stories reveal what it was like to be gay and interested in intelligent literature in 1970's San Francisco. Dennis Cooper calls it "a seminal and perfect work," and for Camille Roy it is "a founding document, and the brilliant record of an opening in writing."

My Family and Other Animals is the bewitching account of a rare and magical childhood on the island of Corfu by treasured British conservationist Gerald Durrell, beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range. 'What we all need,' said Larry, 'is sunshine...a country where we can grow.' 'Yes, dear, that would be nice,' agreed Mother, not really listening. 'I had a letter from George this morning - he says Corfu's wonderful. Why don't we pack up and go to Greece?' 'Very well, dear, if you like,' said Mother unguardedly. Escaping the ills of the British climate, the Durrell family - acne-ridden Margo, gun-toting Leslie, bookworm Lawrence and budding naturalist Gerry, along with their long-suffering mother and Roger the dog - take off for the island of Corfu. But the Durrells find that, reluctantly, they must share their various villas with a menagerie of local fauna - among them scorpions, geckos, toads, bats and butterflies. Recounted with immense humour and charm My Family and Other Animals is a wonderful account of a rare, magical childhood. 'Durrell has an uncanny knack of discovering human as well as animal eccentricities' Sunday Telegraph 'A bewitching book' Sunday Times Gerald Durrell was born in Jamshedpur, India, in 1925. He returned to England in 1928 before settling on the island of Corfu with his family. In 1945 he joined the staff of Whipsnade Park as a student keeper, and in 1947 he led his first animal-collecting expedition to the Cameroons. He later undertook numerous further expeditions, visiting Paraguay, Argentina, Sierra Leone, Mexico, Mauritius, Assam and Madagascar. His first television programme, Two in the Bush which documented his travels to New Zealand, Australia and Malaya was made in 1962; he went on to make seventy programmes about his trips around the world. In 1959 he founded the Jersey Zoological Park, and in 1964 he founded the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust. He was awarded the OBE in 1982. Encouraged to write about his life's work by his brother, Durrell published his first book, The Overloaded Ark, in 1953. It soon became a bestseller and he went on to write thirty-six other titles, including My Family and Other Animals, The Bafut Beagles, Encounters with Animals, The Drunken Forest, A Zoo in My Luggage, The Whispering Land, Menagerie Manor, The Amateur Naturalist and The Aye-Aye and I. Gerald Durrell died in 1995.