Once Upon Our Childhood

The plan is simple for Lara and her best friends – make the most of their final high school year together before they part ways soon. Too bad secrets won’t let them. A slow start to the school term leads to a steep drop into a rabbit hole of secrets rearing their ugly heads – think a hidden disorder, a predatory relationship, a second family, a shock diagnosis, a resurrected marriage, and more. The anticipated drama-free year goes off the rails as past and present secrets unravel at a breathless pace. The revelations spark a chain of unprecedented reactions that send the four friends reeling as they face impossible choices. They can sacrifice their friendships to keep carefully constructed houses of cards from falling. Or maybe it is past time to rip apart the frail safety nets woven by a pervasive culture of silence. Set in the brawling, cosmopolitan city of Lagos, Nigeria, Once Upon Our Childhood examines the hydra-headed nature of abuse through the raw, insightful, and sometimes, snarky voices of four diverse characters.

A New York Times Book ReviewEditors' Choice A teacher, a scholar, a philosopher, and an eyewitness to history, Sari Nusseibeh is one of our most urgent and articulate authorities on the conflict in the Middle East. From his time teaching side by side with Israelis at the Hebrew University through his appointment by Yasir Arafat to administer the Arab Jerusalem, he has held fast to the principles of freedom and equality for all, and his story dramatizes the consequences of war, partition, and terrorism as few other books have done. This autobiography brings rare depth and compassion to the story of his country.

A little girl named Alice opens on a book on a rainy day and travels around the world through its pages.

The author of The Key to Happily Ever After—“a true gem filled with heart, laughs, and a cast of delightful characters” (Nina Bocci, USA TODAY bestselling author)—returns with a heartwarming and charming novel about a woman who travels to the Philippines to reconnect with her long-lost family…and manages to find herself along the way. Diana Gallagher-Cary is at a tipping point. As a Washington, DC, OB/GYN at a prestigious hospital, she uses her career to distract herself from her grief over her granny’s death and her breakup from her long-term boyfriend after her free-spirited mother moves in with her. But when she makes a medical decision that disparages the hospital, she is forced to go on a short sabbatical. Never one to wallow, Diana decides to use the break to put order in her life, when her mother, Margo, stumbles upon a box of letters from her grandfather, Antonio Cruz, to her grandmother from the 1940s. The two women always believed that Antonio died in World War II, but the letters reveal otherwise. When they learn that he lived through the war, and that they have surviving relatives in the Philippines, Diana becomes determined to connect with the family that she never knew existed, though Margo refuses to face her history. But Diana pushes on, and heads on a once-in-a-lifetime trip that challenges her identity, family history, and her idea of romantic love that could change her life forever. Infused with Tif Marcelo’s signature “sexy, adorable, and heartfelt” (Kate Meader, USA TODAY bestselling author) voice, Once Upon a Sunset is a moving and lyrical celebration of love, family, and second chances.

The memoirs and musings of Constantine Michael Xeros, a native of Dallas, Texas, from a family of immigrant Greeks from the Peloponnesus, educated in the public schools and the Holy Trinity Parish, WWII veteran, graduate of Texas A&M University.

Explains in simple text and illustrations the best way to train a boy to use a potty, in a book that includes a sing-along audio CD. On board pages.

Instant National Bestseller Shortlisted for the 2023 Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award "Witty, literary and very funny." —Minneapolis Star Tribune Welcome to Sotheran’s, one of the oldest bookshops in the world, with its weird and wonderful clientele, suspicious cupboards, unlabeled keys, poisoned books, and some things that aren’t even books, presided over by one deeply eccentric apprentice. Some years ago, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd (est. 1761) to apply for a job. Allured by the smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap, Darkshire was soon unteetering stacks of first editions and placating the store’s resident ghost (the late Mr. Sotheran, hit by a tram). A novice in this ancient, potentially haunted establishment, Darkshire describes Sotheran’s brushes with history (Dickens, the Titanic), its joyous disorganization, and the unspoken rules of its gleefully old-fashioned staff, whose mere glance may cause the computer to burst into flames. As Darkshire gains confidence and experience, he shares trivia about ancient editions and explores the strange space that books occupy in our lives—where old books often have strong sentimental value, but rarely a commercial one. By turns unhinged and earnest, Once Upon a Tome is the colorful story of life in one of the world’s oldest bookshops and a love letter to the benign, unruly world of antiquarian bookselling, where to be uncommon or strange is the best possible compliment.

Born in 1945 in the Assamese town of Jorhat, Temsula Ao, her father's favourite of his six daughters, remembers her childhood as a time of happiness. The sudden loss of both parents mean that the orphaned children were left to fend for themselves as best they could. Desperately poor, emotionally scarred, lonely and often hungry, the young Temsula made up for her lack of resources with courage and determination. From these unpromising beginnings, Ao went on to become one of Northeast India's best known writers and to build a distinguished teaching career, serving as Director of the Northeast Zone Cultural Centre, and finally, Dean of the School of Humanities and Education, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Temsula Ao describes her memoir as 'an attempt to exorcise my own personal ghosts from a fractured childhood that was ripped apart by a series of tragedies... [it] is about love and what it is like to be deprived of it.' For her readers, Ao’s memoir gives not only an insight into her role as a leading figure in the Northeast, but is also a moving account of a writerly life. Published by Zubaan.

This eccentric title recalls a collection of tales first told to grandchildren at bedtime. Each chapter begins with a fun-to-read farmer-boy story from the 1940s, an era before industrial farming when horses, cows, and chickens were still members of the family. These anecdotes each launch a theme that splashes down with further development in later decades of life. Diverse topics include imaginative play, construction crew humor, animal intelligence, contemplative prayer and journal writing, rural and urban farming, communal wisdom, and affordable housing, along with a few serious pranks and the prophetic mischief that follows. This memoir is also a confession in the pattern of Augustine, reflecting on God's in-breaking initiatives and the writer's emerging sense of calling in lifelong conversation with Jesus. Its stories offer a series of curiosity-driven on-ramps into eight decades of transformative experiences for curious souls to ponder an open-eyed faith and a communal way of life for the long haul.

What happens when the son-in-law of the country's prime minister collapses on your couch during a dinner you organised? What happens when a member of parliament on his deathbed instructs you how and when to treat him? How in a situation calling for innovation a surgeon finds a way of treating a child with a novel technique? What happens when a doctor sees a young life ebbing away despite his best efforts? How does desperation drive a patient to seek and accept a risky procedure? Once Upon a Heartbeat plunges right into a heart centre. It reveals the humane side of cardiac surgical practice-the operation theatre, the intensive care unit-and brings us close to doctors, nurses and patients, beautifully portraying their stories, their struggles and the eventual healing. There is innovation, intrigue, jealousy and competition to perform. Sometimes, doctors use common sense and even take a risk to deliver quality treatment for an effective outcome. Again, in stressful and dramatic moments, decisions are taken that are mostly beneficial but sometimes fatal. This is the arena where heart surgeons seek glamour and fame and commit their lives to save those suffering from heart diseases. Anecdotal, motivating and often funny, the stories in this collection are inspired from the life of a leading cardiac surgeon, revealing few truths and busting some myths and superstitions along the way.