The Beauty Underneath The Struggle

Have you ever wondered why the words struggle and beauty ignites such opposing emotions? Some may think that without struggle, we would live a life full of bliss. This is not true. It is because of struggle that bliss exist. Niki Spears, motivational speaker and author challenges readers to grab a pencil and create their best BUS story by discovering the Beauty Underneath the Struggle. On this journey to self-discovery Niki will share strategies, personal stories, and testimonials from people just like you, who have found great opportunities hidden beneath every challenge. Once we are able to embrace our struggles in a new way, the outcomes will add new meaning to our life. Our thoughts, beliefs, and the stories we tell ourselves are the factors that shape who we are as well as our perceptions of ourselves, the people we meet, and the world around us. When you walk in purpose, you feel passionate about life, and the pages of your story will naturally evolve as you begin to see the Beauty Underneath the Struggle. Grab your pencil and join Niki on this journey to self-discovery as you create your best BUS story!

Have you ever wondered why the words struggle and beauty ignites such opposing emotions? Some may think that without struggle, we would live a life full of bliss. This is not true. It is because of struggle that bliss exist. Niki Spears, motivational speaker and author challenges readers to grab a pencil and create their best BUS story by discovering the Beauty Underneath the Struggle. On this journey to self-discovery Niki will share strategies, personal stories, and testimonials from people just like you, who have found great opportunities hidden beneath every challenge. Once we are able to embrace our struggles in a new way, the outcomes will add new meaning to our life. Our thoughts, beliefs, and the stories we tell ourselves are the factors that shape who we are as well as our perceptions of ourselves, the people we meet, and the world around us. When you walk in purpose, you feel passionate about life, and the pages of your story will naturally evolve as you begin to see the Beauty Underneath the Struggle. Grab your pencil and join Niki on this journey to self-discovery as you create your best BUS story!

It's a wonderful day, the first day for Baelor at a new school. Baelor, however, is feeling anxious. As she prepares to leave, she notices worry bubbles forming above her head: "Will people like me?" "Who will sit with me at lunch?" "Will I make friends?" The more Baelor worries about these things, the more negative thoughts seem to follow her throughout her day. She feels anxious and finds it very difficult to be in the moment. That's when her teacher approaches her with a smile. Noticing that Baelor is worried, she introduces her to the hand hug. Almost immediately, all of her worries disappear and Baelor realizes that everything will be alright. Join Baelor on her first day at school and learn how the hand hug works and how she learns to use it to feel better and even help others.

There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road. A calico cat, about to have kittens, hears the lonely howl of a chained-up hound deep in the backwaters of the bayou. She dares to find him in the forest, and the hound dares to befriend this cat, this feline, this creature he is supposed to hate. They are an unlikely pair, about to become an unlikely family. Ranger urges the cat to hide underneath the porch, to raise her kittens there because Gar-Face, the man living inside the house, will surely use them as alligator bait should he find them. But they are safe in the Underneath...as long as they stay in the Underneath. Kittens, however, are notoriously curious creatures. And one kitten’s one moment of curiosity sets off a chain of events that is astonishing, remarkable, and enormous in its meaning. For everyone who loves Sounder, Shiloh, and The Yearling, for everyone who loves the haunting beauty of writers such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Flannery O’Connor, and Carson McCullers, Kathi Appelt spins a harrowing yet keenly sweet tale about the power of love—and its opposite, hate—the fragility of happiness and the importance of making good on your promises.

Everything That’s Underneath, Kristi DeMeester’s debut powerful horror collection, is full of weird, unsettling tales that recall the styles of such accomplished storytellers as Laird Barron and Tom Piccirilli. Crawl across the earth and dig in the dirt. Feel it. Tearing at your nails, gritty between your teeth, filling your nostrils. Consume it until it has consumed you. For there you will find the voices that have called from the shadows, the ones that promise to cherish you only to rip your body to shreds. In Everything That’s Underneath, Kristi DeMeester explores the dark places most people avoid. A hole in an abandoned lot, an illness twisting your loved one into someone you don’t recognize, lust that pushes you farther and farther until no one can hear yours cry for help. In these 18 stories the characters cannot escape the evil that is haunting them. They must make a choice: accept it and become part of what terrifies them the most or allow it to consume them and live in fear forever. “Kristi DeMeester’s wonderfully disturbing Everything That’s Underneath features a cast of characters who are as emotionally raw and authentic as they are haunted. DeMeester’s mothers and daughters, struggling at the edges of a society/economy as cold and uncaring as the universe, succumb in the face of horrors made even more terrifying by their nagging sense of familiarity. A dark, intelligent, relentless collection." — Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil’s Rock “In Everything That’s Underneath, Kristi DeMeester lays out a series of evocative visions and bizarre terrors that deftly meld the gothic, religious, and darkly fantastic to tell tales of body horror and transformation. Her fiction explores the ways we are often betrayed by our flesh and led astray by our own desires. DeMeester is a rising star of weird horror, and this debut collection is evidence that her transformative visions are destined to leave their mark.” — Simon Strantzas, author of Burnt Black Suns “With these stories Kristi DeMeester conjures earthy magic out of seemingly ordinary circumstances. Her characters, through ritual and instinct, discover a rough connection to all living things, but that connection may not bring comfort. This is DeMeester’s particular brand of cosmic horror, coming from deep down in the bones, imbued with animal vitality and ingrained wisdom. She’s bringing themes of every day life, including love and domestic violence, to a much larger canvas and simultaneously taking nature at large to a deeply personal level. The effects are uncanny and unsettling. A young writer, Demeester is already established as a talent to watch in horror and weird fiction. I look forward to more of these dark, fierce, disturbing tales.” — S.P. Miskowski, author of Stag in Flight “When Kristi DeMeester weaves a tapestry of tales, there is no escaping. On every level these stories fascinate, hypnotize, threaten, and reveal. On the surface, your skin will flush; in your heart, lost desires will bubble to the surface; in your mind, these intricate mythologies will teach you what is possible; and in your soul, you are complicit—seeking dark magic to free you from what has been seen. One of my favorite authors writing today, this collection is a visceral, haunting, and stirring experience.” — Richard Thomas, author of Tribulations and Breaker “Kristi DeMeester is not afraid to peel back the skin of things. Like many of the characters in these stories learn, true horror is often inside us, threaded in the tissue and marrow so there is no escape from it. Perhaps even worse, we are horrors to one another. Carrying a Southern Gothic light into the shadows of horror and weird fiction, her prose sings in your ear as her plots reach around your throat. Everything That’s Underneath is an essential collection and shows a major new voice crawling out of the dark.” — Michael Wehunt, author of Greener Pastures TABLE OF CONTENTS Everything That’s Underneath The Wicked Shall Come Upon Him To Sleep Long, To Sleep Deep The Fleshtival The Beautiful Nature of Venom Like Feather, Like Bone Worship Only What She Bleeds (short story original to collection) The Tying of Tongues The Marking The Long Road The Lightning Bird (short story original to collection) The Dream Eater Daughters of Hecate Birthright (novelette original to collection) All That Is Refracted, Broken December Skin Split Tongues To Sleep in the Dust of the Earth

National bestseller 2017 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Finalist ABA Indies Introduce Winter / Spring 2017 Selection Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Spring 2017 Selection ALA 2018 Notable Books Selection An intimate and poignant graphic novel portraying one family’s journey from war-torn Vietnam, from debut author Thi Bui. This beautifully illustrated and emotional story is an evocative memoir about the search for a better future and a longing for the past. Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves. At the heart of Bui’s story is a universal struggle: While adjusting to life as a first-time mother, she ultimately discovers what it means to be a parent—the endless sacrifices, the unnoticed gestures, and the depths of unspoken love. Despite how impossible it seems to take on the simultaneous roles of both parent and child, Bui pushes through. With haunting, poetic writing and breathtaking art, she examines the strength of family, the importance of identity, and the meaning of home. In what Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen calls “a book to break your heart and heal it,” The Best We Could Do brings to life Thi Bui’s journey of understanding, and provides inspiration to all of those who search for a better future while longing for a simpler past.

The provocative, audacious, brilliant six-volume autobiographical novel that has unquestionably been the main event of contemporary European literature. It has earned favorable comparisons to its obvious literary forebears "A la recherche du temps perdu" and "Mein Kampf"Nbut has been celebrated as the rare magnum opus that is intensely, addictively readable.

"Beautifully evocative and romantic." - NYT bestselling author, Monica McCarty An eighty-mile trek across the rugged, stunning beauty of Scotland’s Isle of Skye isn't something I imagined myself doing. Ever. This isn’t a trail for beginners. And I’m not a hiker. But I have to finish it, even if it kills me. I have no choice. With the ever-changing weather and relentless terrain, I’m in over my head. Rory Sutherland, my guide on this adventure, knows I don’t belong here. We clash with every mile, but we recognize a shared pain. Not only is the journey a struggle, but the tension between us is taut with unsaid words. And hope. He’s broken. I’m damaged. Together, we’re about to make the perfect storm.

Sure to become a classic on female empowerment, a groundbreaking exploration of the personal, cultural, and global implications of intergenerational trauma created by patriarchy, how it is passed down from mothers to daughters, and how we can break this destructive cycle. Why do women keep themselves small and quiet? Why do they hold back professionally and personally? What fuels the uncertainty and lack of confidence so many women often feel? In this paradigm-shifting book, leading feminist thinker Bethany Webster identifies the source of women’s trauma. She calls it the Mother Wound—the systemic disenfranchisement of women by the patriarchy—and reveals how this cycle is perpetuated by wounded mothers who unconsciously pass on damaging beliefs and behaviors to their daughters. In her workshops, online courses, and talks, Webster has helped countless women re-examine their lives and their relationships with their mothers, giving them the vocabulary to voice their pain, and encouraging them to share their experiences. In this manifesto and self-help guide, she offers practical tools for identifying the manifestations of the Mother Wound in our daily life and strategies we can use to heal ourselves and prevent our daughters from enduring the same pain. In addition, she offers step-by-step advice on how to reconnect with our inner child, grieve the mother we didn’t have, stop people-pleasing, and, ultimately, transform our heartache and anger into healing and self-love. Revealing how women are affected by the Mother Wound, even if they don’t personally identify as survivors, Discovering the Inner Mother revolutionizes how we view mother-daughter relationships and gives us the inspiration and guidance we need to improve our lives and ultimately create a more equitable society for all.