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Finding Me: Finding Yourself When Half Of You Is Missing
Price range: $3.99 through $8.99Finding Me chronicles the author’s journey of grief after losing her husband of 50 years. Vickie found herself alone for the first time in her life. Without a clear sense of who she was as an individual or how she would cope without Gary at her side. After sharing so many years together, her journey was difficult. With Gary, she was strong but without him, simple daily tasks seemed overwhelming. She realized that she had lost half of her identity in the loss of her husband, Gary.
Leaning on the memories of a happy marriage, and remembering the goodness of God, she found the strength and will to move forward and discover her own identity. She learned to recognize and deal with the recurring waves of grief. “You never get over the loss, but you can get through it somehow,” she affirms. Her experience leads down the path to peace and fulfillment for those who find themselves traveling alone.
At the age of 70, Vickie found that God was not finished with her yet and had an exciting plan for the next chapter of her life!
Finding Me takes you through the process of grief and finding out who you are when half of you is missing. There is hope in every chapter of life. Finding that hope is what this book is about. The author’s prayer is that reading this book will ignite joy in the “YOU” that is left and help readers discover the best is yet to come!
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Following My Dreams
Price range: $3.99 through $16.99This is a compelling true story of a young boy born and raised in poverty in Oklahoma. He struggled in school, especially in reading and math. It was his mother who helped him learn reading and math, not his teachers. Fighting in order to protect himself resulted in several “paddling’s” and other disciplinary actions at school. Facing the possibility of being sent to a delinquent home for boys, he devised a plan where he would catch a train going north with King, a dog, who he promised would never be a stray dog again. He had even practiced jumping a boxcar while the train was moving! He would miss his family, but he was not going to the place for delinquent boys. In the fifth grade, with the help of his mother, he started turning things around. He accelerated to the top of his class in all subjects. Not only was he top of his class academically, but also, he burgeoned in sports. He played on the seventh- and eighth-grade basketball and baseball teams when he was only in the fifth grade. He loved reading about medicine, rockets, math, and the universe, among other subjects.
When he told his counselor and teachers that he wanted to become a doctor, he was encouraged to go into something else. Again, it was his mother that encouraged him to follow his dreams. With his poor education, it was doubtful his dreams would come to fruition. Still, he never gave up on his dreams. Through hard work and perseverance, his dreams come true.
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Freddy B: My Last Encounter With the Law Got Me A Trip for a One Year Stay at a Department of Corrections Facility
Price range: $3.99 through $22.99I believe Freddy B will open the eyes of young men and women-“There are consequences to your actions in life.” My hope is this book will continue his ministry to others. His struggle may help parents realize, no matter how difficult, to find a way to break the wall of silence that teens frequently suffer when they think their parents do not understand.
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From Dean’s List to Dumpsters: Why I Left Harvard to Join a Cult
Price range: $3.99 through $15.99Jim Guerra was recruited during his sophomore year at Harvard College into the religious cult known as “Th e Brethren” or “Th e Garbage Eaters”. For the next decade, Jim was transformed from a happy, self-confident Christian college student to a highly controlled devout follower of Jim Roberts, a charismatic leader of a nomadic Bible-based ministry. Forsaking Harvard, family, career aspirations and all his possessions, he departed Harvard to join with a vagabond ministry that subsisted on food from supermarket dumpsters and fast-food restaurants.
This book captures the mind control processes that prolonged his departure from society, alienation from his family, his forced celibacy, and the rejection of all Christian churches outside this small ministry. Jim is careful to chronicle both the growth and the metamorphosis of his mindset as he isolates himself from society for ten-and-a-half years in order to be saved with a small remnant of end-time believers. Follow him from Harvard to the woods and finally back to his family, and experience it through his 20/400 vision. You will see why bright young people are sucked into cults, and how he eventually escaped. -
Glory Days: Tales of a North Shore Dangerboy
Price range: $3.99 through $28.99Glory Days recounts the hijinks of a North Shore Dangerboy growing up in the sixties and seventies. From childhood innocence through teenage rambunctiousness and into a fun-loving adulthood, Terrill shares exciting tales that will have you laughing one moment and crying another. An honest portrayal of a journey not dissimilar to your own.
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God Shall Wipe Away All Tears: A Mother’s Journal of Caregiving, Tragedy, and Hope
Price range: $3.99 through $27.99“God Shall Wipe Away All Tears is a fascinating look into the life of a courageous woman who suffered unimaginable personal tragedies. Readers will find insight, inspiration and strength from Colleen’s faith-based perspective on confronting difficult life problems. To those who have a loved one with an immunodeficiency, her story will show that you are not alone. Her non-sense chronology sheds light on very rare medical condition.”
–Ulrike Ziegner, M.D., PhD., Allergist/Immunologist
“Thank you for your wonderful book! Your insight into life and death, and your terrible experiences from which you have learned patience and understanding, will help us all to become better people.”
–Paula Bjornn, Registered Nurse
It was dusk as my husband and I entered the small cemetery to place flowers on the three graves-Jonathan, our firstborn son who died at eight months from a rare pneumonia; Michael, our violinist son who left us at age sixteen due to pancreatic cancer; and Seb, a loving son who trained hawks and suffered blindness and neurodegeneration after thirty years of immunodeficiency. As the sun set with crimson colors. I placed bright summer flowers on each grave. ‘Help me to do what I should do with my life,’ I said to my sons. It was clear what my path should be. I could not let their lives be lost in vain! I should write stories of struggle, love, and faith. “They are doing work now in heavenly spheres, and I must do mine while I still have time!” I said to myself. It all seemed so clear.
This powerful memoir describing Colleen Openshaw’s frequent encounters with illness and death will convey important insights when we experience these unwanted sorrows in our own lives. Losing her parents to cancer and old age, a sister in a car accident, her husband to organ failure and Alzheimer’s, as well as her three precious sons to hyper-IgM Syndrome-has given Colleen unusual understanding in facing end-of-life issues. Relying on her faith in God as well as her own grit and determination, her experience can give us a unique comprehension of how to confront these inevitable trials common to all mankind.
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GOD!!! Where were you?
Price range: $3.99 through $10.99Family is not always perfect, but tell that to a five-year-old child, whose innocence was literally snatched away. Learning to live alone, in her mind of silent cries. How do you turn off the anger against your past? While being haunted by the guilt, that you can’t change.
With love, God’s love!!
In this candid and powerful memoir, Author Angela White gives a detailed look into her life growing up in the mean streets of Newark NJ. She opens up about the heartbreak of being abandoned by her biological parents, which caused her and her siblings to be placed in foster homes and orphanages at the age of 5. Angela recalls the horror of being molested by her foster parents, which one of her foster parents was the pastor of a local church at the time. This gutsy, heartfelt, and humble memoir lets the reader look through the eyes of Ms. White, as she shares her experiences with homelessness, rape, domestic violence, drug abuse, and teenage pregnancy. Through all of her daunting setbacks in life, Angela was able to defy the odds and now she’s living out her dreams.
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Going Postal: 2nd Edition
Price range: $3.99 through $13.99Willie Roy Hargis worked for the Postal Service for 32 years. He began his Postal career as a City Letter Carrier in 1967. In January 1973, while carrying mail he enrolled at Tarrant County Junior College, attending night classes. After receiving a promotion in 1975 to Building Services Supervisor, he began working nights and enrolled at Texas Wesleyan College. He graduated from Texas Wesleyans College in December 1978, with a degree in Business Administration.
Mr. Hargis worked as a City Letter Carrier, a Carrier Technician, Building Service Supervisor, as an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Counselor, a Labor Relations Assistant, Injury Compensation Supervisor, Delivery Service Supervisor, Station Superintendent, Station Manager, Ad Hoc EEO Investigator, and Labor Relations Representative.
In 1988, the Fort Worth office became a District Office, and the Labor Relations Representative position was upgraded to Manager. Mr. Hargis remained in that position until retirement in 1999. In addition, to his Postal career, Mr. Hargis graduated from Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, NC in 1966, and served his country as an Army Special Forces, Green Beret, Paratrooper.
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Hard Way Jay
Price range: $3.99 through $22.99The title of this book tells the reader that in America the American dream could be obtained by anyone in America, even a poor farm boy born in a barn and struggled through hardships without a mentor from childhood to a good life as a nuclear weapons engineer the hard way.
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Havana 1995: English Version
Price range: $3.99 through $10.99“The work between a dream and reality, is a symbolic encounter of two individuals who represent one, the Cuban exiles, and the other the new cuban generation who developed in Castro’s Cuba. The story isa deep reflection on the future of Cuba, the fragmented identity of Cubans and their conflicts in the face of the possibility of what is becoming more and more inevitable: the freedom of Cuba.
The primary value of the book is that it will have meaning before and after the fall of the socialist’s regime. Ileana contrasts the generation of the Cubans in Cuba and those who live in exile. We must read these revealing pages, so literally beautiful and so shockingly Cuban. We all learn a lot from this magical form of this writer who now surprises us with this volume that cannot be ignored. She will prepare the mood and the attitude for the day.”
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Have You Seen My Daddy?
Price range: $3.99 through $12.99Who is your daddy? If Pastor John R. Peyton was asked this question when he was a boy, he might be ashamed to admit who his daddy was, having grown up in an abusive household with an alcoholic, womanizing father.
However, now as a faithful servant of God and pastor of a loving church, he can now say his true daddy is that of his heavenly Father God.
His new book, Have You Seen My Daddy?, is Pastor John’s detailed life story, beginning with his birth and childhood in Virginia to a strong Christian mother and an abusive, lost father. As he grew up, he witnessed hypocrisy in his home church and racism from other churches, wondering if this Jesus that was spoken of was really someone to be praised and worshipped.
He was soon drafted into the army and traveled to Central America and, all while struggling with his hatred toward white people that intensified through his involvement with the Black Panther Party. It wasn’t until the most unlikely of people witnessed to him of God’s love and Jesus’s sacrifice that Pastor John’s life turned around and because of this he was sent to Vietnam.
As Pastor John moved forward with his life, becoming a husband and father to three daughters, he began to feel God leading him down certain paths where his testimony of God taking away the hate and bringing him peace was impacting people’s lives.
Pastor John, as an agent of reconciliation for God, has been the vessel to change the lives of many, from lost lives in prison ministry to the well-to-do and various races and statuses. The hope is that readers will understand through his life story the need for God in our lives and that change for the better can only happen through Jesus.
Have you seen your Daddy? Because He’s looking for you!
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Heart of Leadersheep 2015: Protector of All Things Small
Price range: $3.99 through $25.99Cheri Magnuson is Shepherd of Coldstream Icelandic Sheep in the beautiful State of Maine. She retired from Aerospace Engineering in 2013 and purchased a small farm in Maine to follow a childhood dream. Since she was a young girl her dream was to someday own a little farm with a clear, clean rushing stream running through it. There would be a healthy woodland full of all kinds of beautiful trees. The most important part of the dream was the lovely meadows where wildflowers grow and a flock of beautiful, colorful sheep. Her dream has become a reality, the journey has been one full of both joy and sorrow. The year her first lambs were born her only son took his life. She found that writing eased the pain and gave her a more positive focus. Writing stirred up a God given gift and gave her a more meaningful existence. So now she shares her dream, the journey of life, on her farm with others. Other people who may also have a dream yet to be. Through all the tears and laughter, she shares her journey and faith in God living that childhood dream.
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Helen Gordon: the Woman Behind the Greensheet
Price range: $3.99 through $11.99In 1969, Helen Gordon moved to Houston with her new husband, Robert DeYoung. A no-nonsense, pragmatic mother of three with the heart of a musician and the soul of a painter, Helen was determined to be her own boss by owning and operating her own company. It didn’t take her long to find success. Helen started the Greensheet, a free advertising tabloid with classified ads and a list of business services, in 1970. Within eight years, she expanded it to five Texas cities without the help of bank loans. But she lived in a good of boy atmosphere, in which long lunches over dry martinis were the norm and women were generally absent from the boardroom.
Even so, Helen was undeterred. She was determined to build a company that would prosper, and prosper it did. By 2012, the Greensheet had grown to a circulation of 650,000 and appeared within four Texas cities. Today, her company is a household name and continues to be one of the most successful classified tabloids in the state.
Her irrepressible optimism, sense of humor, and vivacious personality served her well in her personal and professional life. As told by her daughter, Rebecca, Helen Gordon: Th c Woman Behind the Greensheet is Helen’s inspiring true story.
Rebecca G. Blakeley worked for the Greensheet and Gordon Flowers with her mother for more than twenty-nine years. She is currently retired and works as a volunteer in the Houston community.
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His Grace in the Midst of Tragedy
Price range: $3.99 through $11.99At this very moment you are not only holding a book; you are holding the testimony of my life and my struggle with schizophrenia.
If you should decide to read it you will take a journey through a horrific tragedy through the eyes and mind of a paranoid psychotic man, years of hospitalization; psychotropic medications with side effects that sometimes seemed worse than the schizophrenia, reconstructive surgeries and a trial that held my freedom in the balance.
You’ll read of the years of continued drug and alcohol abuse, the self defeating sabotaging of good things in my life, even when I was not aware of how I was destroying any hope of recovery. To be perfectly honest; I did not know if I wanted recovery. All I could feel was guilt and shame.
Then it happened; a supernatural experience with the Lord of all the earth. at night I received my salvation. Now I had hope! My life has not been the same since that night. Yes, there was still ups and downs and four more years of hospitalization, but this time it was different; I had a whole new outlook.
Today I am a totally free man and it is all because of Jesus.
If you decide to read this book I hope you will not be disappointed.
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How I Got Off That Tree Limb
Price range: $3.99 through $8.99How I Got Off That Tree Limb is based on an experience that I had when I was 22 years of age and a preacher that I had worked with in a revival in Little Rock, Arkansas said to me, “Get off that Limb” He explained to me that if I wanted to make an apple pie I would have to get the apples off the tree to make a delicious Apple Pie. This book shares early beginnings of my childhood. It takes you through my journey of getting off of the tree limb. I have had lots of highs and lows in my life but I have learned how to push myself forward. And today I continue to push forward to be the very best that I can be and try every day to make a positive difference in myself and others.