Kyle Keegan was like many teenagers: eager to fit in at school, he experimented with alcohol and drugs. Soon, his abuse of these substances surpassed experimentation and became a ruthless addiction to heroin that nearly destroyed his life.
Now in recovery, Keegan tells his remarkable story in Chasing the High. Starting with the early days of alcohol and drug use, Keegan charts his decline into crime and homelessness as his need for heroin surpassed all thoughts of family and friends, of right and wrong. He then goes on to use these experiences to offer guidance and practical advice to other young people who may be struggling with substance abuse. In straightforward, easy-to-understand language and along with the psychiatric expertise of Howard Moss, MD, Keegan discusses what is known about the neurobiology of addiction in young people, how to seek treatment, and how to get the most out of professional help. He also covers such topics as therapies which are used to combat addiction, how to talk to families and friends about substance abuse, and how to navigate risky situations. Both an absorbing memoir and a useful resource for young people.
Part of the Adolescent Mental Health Initiative series of books written specifically for teens and young adults, Chasing the High offers hope to young people who are struggling with substance abuse, helping them to overcome its challenges and to go on to lead healthy, productive lives.

Many women become Horse Crazy as girls and never lose their admiration for the beauty and dignity and the wisdom and whimsicality of these remarkable creatures. Here, fifty women offer their stories of the path of equine wisdom and the benefits of a good relationship with a loving horse, from improved confidence (and yes, even firmer thighs) to reconnecting with the world after a period of grief. Includes such stories as: A wheelchair-bound woman overcomes her physical limitations, not only learning to ride but to compete - and win! - in dressage Pregnant for the first time, a mother to be watches a brood mare deliver a colt and gains the confidence to face the arrival of her own child A stresses out executive learns that a bored cow pony can teach her a thing or two One lovelorn woman finds she can learn a lot about men from watching horses

A behind-the-scenes look at death in New York City. For almost a century, New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has presided over the dead. Over the years, the OCME has endured everything- political upheavals, ghastly murders, bloody gang wars, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and non-stop battles for power and influence-and remains the final authority in cases of sudden, unexplained, or violent death. Founded in 1918, the OCME has evolved over decades of technological triumphs and all-too human failure to its modern-day incarnation as the foremost forensics lab in the world, investigating an average caseload of over 15,000 suspicious deaths a year. This is the behind-the-scenes chronicle of public service and private vendettas, of blood in the streets and back-room bloodbaths, and of the criminal cases that made history and headlines.

How hard-living journalist Frank Robson fell under the spell of a small dog called Lucky. At eighteen months of age, Lucky, a cream-coloured terrier, was dropped off at a vet's clinic in Queensland, abandoned by his owners and suffering from ticks and other terrors. A week from being put down he was adopted by Frank Robson and his partner, Leisa. From the start, the fluffy new member of the household proved an enigma, displaying a twelve-snort vocabulary, an ability to climb trees (the better to chase parrots) and a disdain for suburbia. In this full-blooded account of a friendship between man and dog, Robson puzzles on the sentient being who trotted into his life and taught him about survival, mateship and the joys of an independent spirit.

On his 18th birthday, Ryan Knighton was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), a congenital, progressive disease marked by night-blindness, tunnel vision and, eventually, total blindness. In this penetrating, nervy memoir, which ricochets between meditation and black comedy, Knighton tells the story of his fifteen-year descent into blindness while incidentally revealing the world of the sighted in all its phenomenal peculiarity. Knighton learns to drive while unseeing; has his first significant relationship--with a deaf woman; navigates the punk rock scene and men's washrooms; learns to use a cane; and tries to pass for seeing while teaching English to children in Korea. Stumbling literally and emotionally into darkness, into love, into couch-shopping at Ikea, into adulthood, and into truce if not acceptance of his identity as a blind man, his writerly self uses his disability to provide a window onto the human condition. His experience of blindness offers unexpected insights into sight and the other senses, culture, identity, language, our fears and fantasies. Cockeyed is not a conventional confessional. Knighton is powerful and irreverent in words and thought and impatient with the preciousness we've come to expect from books on disability. Readers will find it hard to put down this wild ride around their everyday world with a wicked, smart, blind guide at the wheel.

What is the experience of being an adopted person really like? An honest look at how adoption can affect the individual, families and partners. Claire Cashin was adopted. In her youth, she experienced many personal problems because her birth mother 'gave her away'. This led her in search of her biological mother. This is a true and very honest account of adoption, search and reunion. It examines in depth how adoption can affect the individual and their loved ones. It does not shy away from the reality of what a reunion can mean and how hard it can be at times, or indeed what joy it can add to peoples lives. The story describes in fascinating detail what the reality can be like for many adopted people and what challenges their families may face as they mature and wonder about the circumstances of their adoption. It attempts to offer advice to anyone considering searching for their own answers, from someone who has gone through the process, made the mistakes, learned some lessons along the way and is still smiling. This book describes the mistakes and triumphs she made along the way and how the news of a new birth family has affected her adopted family in Cork, and changed Claire forever. It gives hope and advice to families who wish to help and understand the dynamics involved in adoption and reunion.

"My Hand on the Tiller" is an account of the author's sailing experiences over his lifetime. Gordon Findlay is a classic boat enthusiast and has sailed on many different sailing vessels, from the smallest dinghies to the largest square riggers. He has owned a variety of different boats over the years and some of these are described in the text. Gordon also describes some of his favourite places on the West Coast of Scotland, as well as his experiences in Tall Ships and at Classic Yacht Festivals in different parts of Europe This book is for sailing enthusiasts with a particular interest in traditional boats and Scottish waters. There are many photographs and a large appendix with details of yachts and tall ships as well as a comprehensive glossary and a list of useful websites.

A Walk Against the Stream is a true story of love set against a background of war in Rhodesia.

There are some things that you can't really understand until they happen to you - and divorce is one of them. In this crazy time marked by emotional and financial upheaval, even the strongest, most optimistic women need the support of those who've been there. In this book, readers get the real deal on divorce - from the real women who lived to tell about it. Readers will laugh and cry along with: Ariana, whose abusive husband never allowed her to have a job, parlays her first job in retail into designing clothes for department stores nationwide; Carla, whose lazy ex tries to take the money her hard-working parents left to her - and gets his karmic due; and Michelle, who discovers her "compulsive" spending is easy to control once she rids herself of a philandering husband. In this book, thirty-five divorced women reveal the naked truth about what went wrong, why they got divorced and how they survived the transition. Most important, they learn that they, too, can survive this tumultuous time in their lives - only to emerge stronger, wiser and happier.

From the bestselling author of Cats in the Belfry and Cats in May. The behaviour of a Siamese cat is never predictable, as all owners well know. The calm of the Tovey household is once again torn to shreds when Doreen's cat Seeley instantly loathes the new arrival, Shebalu, and she - all five inches of her - loathes him back. And then, even worse, they become firm friends, and team up to create havoc. Seeley decides to leave home, and lodges himself in a forty-foot tree when a neighbour takes up pigeon-shooting. Shebalu follows up by teaching him to dance. The characters of Cats in the Belfry return with a vengeance: Father Adams, Miss Wellington and Annabel the donkey. But Seeley and Shebalu steal the show with their loveable mischief, and their antics will bring tears of laughter.

"Blood Brothers" is M.J. Akbar's amazing story of three generations of a Muslim family - based on his own - and how they deal with the fluctuating contours of Hindu-Muslim relations. Telinipara, a small jute mill town some 30 miles north of Kolkata along the Hooghly, is a complex Rubik's Cube of migrant Bihari workers, Hindus and Muslims; Bengalis, poor and 'bhadralok'; and Sahibs who live in the safe, 'foreign' world of Victoria Jute Mill. Into this scattered inhabitation, enters a child on the verge of starvation, Prayaag, who is saved and adopted by a Muslim family, converts to Islam and takes on the name of Rahmatullah. As Rahmatullah knits Telinipara into a community, friendship, love, trust and faith are continually tested by the cancer of riots. Incidents - conversion, circumcision, the arrival of plague or electricity - and a fascinating array of characters - the ultimate Brahmin, Rahmatullah's friend Girija Maharaj, the workers' leader, Bauna Sardar, the storyteller, Talat Mian, the poet-teacher, Syed Ashfaque, the smiling mendicant, Burha Deewana, the sincere Sahib, Simon Hogg, and then the questioning, demanding third generation of the author and his friend Kamala - interlink into a narrative of social history as well as a powerful memoir. "Blood Brothers" is a chronicle of its age, its canvas as enchanting as its narrative, a personal journey through change as tensions build, stretching the bonds of a lifetime to breaking point and demanding, in the end, the greatest sacrifice. Its last chapters, written in a bare-bones, unemotional style, are the most moving as the author searches for hope amid raw wounds with a surgeon's scalpel.

Dark Dreams: Australian refugee stories is a unique anthology of essays, interviews, and stories written by children and young adults. The stories are the finest of hundreds collected through a nationwide schools competition in 2002. The essays and stories represent many different countries and themes. Some focus on survival, some on horrors, some on the experiences and alienation of a new world. This book will have a a key role to play in schools across Australia. Eva Sallis's first novel Hiam won The Australian Vogel and the Dobbie Literary Awards. She is co-founder of Australians Against Racism and is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide. 'Stories to melt the hardest heart.' - Helen Garner 'We have not been allowed to know the (recent) refugees as human beings ...These stories change all that and force a personal response from the reader.' - Phillip Adams

High-pitched childish screams explode into the air, unrelenting, shot through with blind terror. A wounded animal - A torture chamber - I know her well-oh, how well I know her I have heard her screams often. That child is me. Carolyn Bramhall grew up in what seemed to outsiders to be a normal home, with hard-working parents, surrounded by apparently caring relatives. She graduated from Bible college, married, found a job a youth worker. Then nightmares and panic attacks started to swamp her. Dhe, her husband and two small children moved to work in America, but the internal stresses grew worse - and a host of other personalities started to make their presence felt. In due course 109 separate entities, each created to carry some aspect of truly ghastly past pain, would identify themselves. What could she possibly do?

In Tales from the Scale, author Erin J. Shea - creator of the immensely popular "Lose the Buddha" weight-loss blog - puts together the best rants of some of the most prominent diet bloggers online today, creating a raw, real, and radically different look at losing weight. The Twinkie Defense: how they got fat in the first place; The Inner Fat Girl: the little voice that longs for an identity beyond her body; The Tenth Circle of Hell: Weight-in Day - facing the worst enemy: the scale; Fatty Clothes: for when you've given up

To learn more about Lily & Me or the author visit my web site at http: //home.netscape.ca/ rodgl/

By the time the zebra was skinned, darkness was fast approaching, so we selected a suitable tree in which to pass the night. Under it we built a goodly fire, made some tea, and roasted a couple of quails which I had shot early in the day and which proved simply delicious. We then betook ourselves to the branches -- at least, Mahina and I did; Moota was afraid of nothing, and said he would sleep on the ground. He was not so full of courage later on, however, for about midnight a great rhino passed our way, winded us and snorted so loudly that Moota scrambled in abject terror up our tree.

A young lad struggles through puberty, then fights hard to uphold a promise made to his father to remain a virgin until marriage which results in many humorous sexual scenarios requiring great self-discipline.

When sixteen-year-old Jess arrives on foster carer Maggie Hartley's doorstep with her newborn son Jimmy, she has nowhere else to go. Arriving straight from the hospital having just given birth, Jess is like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Scared, alone, and practically a child herself, she is overwhelmed with the responsibility of caring for a newborn without the support of a loving family or her beloved boyfriend. With social services threatening to take baby Jimmy into care, Jess knows that Maggie is her only chance of keeping her son. Maggie can see that Jess loves her boyfriend and wants to be a good mother to her son. Can Maggie help Jess learn to become a mum? Will the family ever be allowed to live together?