Ripples

How might a small decision you make, an action you take, a phone call you initiate change your path? Impact other lives? Months after spying a bottle wedged into a fallen cottonwood snag in the Columbia River, Ernest pulls it from the river. The bottle's note connects Ernest, an old man living in a tiny Oregon town, to teenage Annie, provoking a mysterious and sudden friendship between Ernest's daughter Amelia with Sarah, the daughter of the most recent resident of the home Annie once occupied. The two middle-aged women's quest to learn more about Annie and her secret introduces readers to stories about family members through backstory, and introduces new characters, all connected through the finding of the bottle. Together, Amelia and Sarah explore their unfinished business with their mothers, intimate relationships, and regrets over life choices as they embark on their personal searches for something bigger in their very different lives.

Ask a random American what springs to mind about Sedona, Arizona, and they will almost certainly mention New Age spirituality. Nestled among stunning sandstone formations, Sedona has built an identity completely intertwined with that of the permanent residents and throngs of visitors who insist it is home to powerful vortexes—sites of spiraling energy where meditation, clairvoyance, and channeling are enhanced. It is in this uniquely American town that Susannah Crockford took up residence for two years to make sense of spirituality, religion, race, and class. Many people move to Sedona because, they claim, they are called there by its special energy. But they are also often escaping job loss, family breakdown, or foreclosure. Spirituality, Crockford shows, offers a way for people to distance themselves from and critique current political and economic norms in America. Yet they still find themselves monetizing their spiritual practice as a way to both “raise their vibration” and meet their basic needs. Through an analysis of spirituality in Sedona, Crockford gives shape to the failures and frustrations of middle- and working-class people living in contemporary America, describing how spirituality infuses their everyday lives. Exploring millenarianism, conversion, nature, food, and conspiracy theories, Ripples of the Universe combines captivating vignettes with astute analysis to produce a unique take on the myriad ways class and spirituality are linked in contemporary America.

A spacetime appetizer -- Relatively speaking -- Einstein on trial -- Wave talk and bar fights -- The lives of stars -- Clockwork precision -- Laser quest -- The path to perfection -- Creation stories -- Cold case -- Gotcha -- Black magic -- Nanoscience -- Follow-up questions -- Space invaders -- Surf's up for Einstein wave astronomy

This dream-like work dwells on memory and family, and follows ambiguous figures that stride through the snowy lands adjacent to the realm of the dead. Hagiwara Rei explores the processing of grief, and how cyclical mechanisms of human emotion map out a geography of memory inextricably intertwined with the natural world from which we spring. Prepare to be absorbed in a work unlike any other coming out now.

How do you get people who work in pig abattoirs to wash their hands? How does painting the walls of a canteen pink make construction workers behave more safely? And how can baby faces spray painted onto shop shutters reduce anti-social behaviour? Ripple is about how small behaviour changes can have wide-reaching effects in the real world. By applying behavioural science in your working life, you can have positive ripple effects on the world around you. While nudging is now commonplace in politics, most of our daily interactions with companies, products, and services have not yet been transformed with behavioural science. Doing so is often a messy process but, armed with this book, you’ll have the practical toolkit to get started. Through storytelling and practical tips, Ripple takes you on a journey across the globe which will leave you inspired to start applying behavioural science to improve the world around you. www.ripple-book.com

Drop the Rock—The Ripple Effect provides multiple perspectives from people successfully working a Twelve Step Program, showing Step 10 as a key to a sober life free of fear and resentment and filled with serenity and gratitude. When Drop the Rock: Removing Character Defects was first published in 1999, it quickly became the standard resource for working Steps 6 and 7, two of the most challenging of the Twelve Steps for many people in recovery. Learning what it means to fully surrender character defects frees you to make amends with Steps 8 and 9, realize the Big Book’s “Promises,” and move on to Step 10. In this new follow-up resource, Fred H. explores what he calls “the ripple effect” that can be created by using Step 10 to practice Steps 6 and 7 every day and avoid picking up “the rock” again. Drawing on his years of lecturing on the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, he reveals Step 10 as the natural culmination of working the previous Steps.

“Riveting... a personal and highly original work of true-crime storytelling.” — John Douglas, former FBI criminal profiling pioneer and co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Mindhunter A chilling investigation into the unsolved “boy in the woods” murder; journalist Jim Cosgrove chronicles his decades-long struggle to uncover the truth of a family friend’s disappearance and death — perfect for fans of I'll be Gone in the Dark and Memorial Drive. For nine years, South Carolina officials struggled to identify “the boy in the woods,” a young man whose body had been discovered just south of Myrtle Beach in a fishing village called Murrells Inlet. Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away in Kansas City, Missouri, Frank McGonigle's family searched for him at Grateful Dead concerts and in the face of every long-haired hitchhiker they passed. Consumed by guilt for how they'd treated him, Frank's eight siblings slowly came to understand that — like Jerry Garcia sang — he's gone and nothin's gonna bring him back. Frank McGonigle was finally found — and identified as “the boy in the woods.” Four years later, the case still unsolved, Jim Cosgrove, a McGonigle family friend and investigative journalist, picked up the trail of Frank’s cold case and began uncovering connections to a ruthless local crime boss and blunders by the threadbare sheriff’s department. When his research began to stall, a chance meeting with the soft-hearted, straight-talking “energy reader” Carol Williams provided a metaphysical spark that reignited Jim's resolve. Although his work as a journalist trained him to be skeptical, Cosgrove found himself starting to become a believer when Carol provided details about Frank’s murder that turned out to be freakishly accurate. In 2019, Cosgrove returned to Murrells Inlet with one of Frank’s brothers to dredge up some old leads and settle Frank’s case once and for all…

The residents of an aquarium learn that often a smile can turn a bully into a friend.

The first large format book on the house of Mina Perhonen, one of the most profoundly Japanese of the women's lines to come out of the Tokyo in the last three decades. A unique blend of Scandinavian sensibility and Japanese, Mina Perhonen is characterized by a tenacious individuality that often contradicts the prevailing trends in Japanese high fashion with its emphasis on unmistakably feminine silhouettes and bright, minimalistic prints that have as much in common with the work of Alvar Aalto and Marimekko as they do with traditional Japanese design. This thoughtfully designed volume gathers the most iconic work outputted by the fashion house in the last twenty years, highlighting the rich and witty world of Mina Perhonen. A combination of new and archival photography as well as a collection of the illustrations showcase Minagawa's subtle approach to design while critical essays by Issey Miyake and Susan Brown offer insightful commentary about Minagawa's work.