A Girl With Nine Lives

The Girl with Nine Lives is a true adventure story—a candid personal memoir describing the first eighteen years of the author’s life, which began in foster care until she was adopted by a hardworking couple of faith. The book explores the author’s experiences growing up on the farm; her struggles learning to walk, run, ride a bike, and the many scrapes (both figurative and literal!) she got into as a daredevil and a dreamer. Born with a serious balance issue, doctors said Stephanie (or Stacy, in the book) would never walk, and should be relegated to an institution. Being given up for adoption left her feeling discarded and insecure. As she is raised by a loving family, and begins to experience victories, the author learns to see her value in the world, eventually finding her calling as a teacher. Faith has a strong presence in the book; Stacy grows in her faith, and comes to realize that God has a plan for her. With a childhood so full of amusing, frightening, and unusual adventures and misadventures, it really does seem like a miracle that the author emerged in one piece. Readers will find themselves rooting for young Stacy’s success, and at times, her survival!

Chloe King was a normal sixteen-year-old girl. She did her homework and got good grades, but she wasn't afraid to ditch class sometimes to hang out with her best friends. She slept at home, but otherwise avoided all human contact with her mom. The usual stuff. Then she fell from San Francisco's highest tower, and her life changed. For starters, she died. And then, she woke up. Now Chloe's life is anything but normal: Suddenly guys are prowling around her, she's growing claws, and someone's trying to kill her. Luckily for Chloe, she still has eight lives to go.

Unwrap a Heartwarming Tale of Love, Laughter, and Furry Feline Mischief in The Nine Lives of Christmas When a guy is in trouble, he starts making deals with his Creator...and Ambrose the cat is no exception. In danger of losing his ninth and final life, Ambrose makes a desperate plea to the universe. He'll do anything—anything!—if he can just survive and enjoy a nice long, final life. His prayer is answered when a stranger comes along and saves him—and now it looks like he has to hold up his end of the bargain. The stranger turns out to be a firefighter named Zach, who's in need of some serious romantic help. If Ambrose can just bring Zach together with Merilee, the nice lady who works at Pet Palace, it's bound to earn him a healthy ninth life. Unfortunately for Ambrose, his mission is a lot harder than he ever thought. Now it's going to take all of Ambrose's feline wiles—and maybe even a good old fashioned Christmas miracle—to make them both realize that what they're looking for is right in front of their eyes.

Over the years of my life I have realized the aspects of my lifethe drug abuse, being molested, domestic violence, and rape. Each situation had to be addressed by me writing my thoughts. I started out as a diary and after a while, when it was healthy for my soul, by me writing my thoughts on what happened to me, on the things people did to me, and on how they treated me. My writing relieves some of the stress and pain. I look back on my life and as I write. I relive it over and over again. I recreated it all over the foibles of others as time went on, so I could forgive by telling my secrets and my story. Some of my most deeply hidden thoughts were pushed back to the back of my mind for years so that I could deal with it at a later time; I just went on living my life until I was able to deal with it years later. I was so ashamed to tell anyone. I was embarrassed. By writing every day, trying to work out my past events and in the conflicts, writing is a way to cleanse my soul. It is and can be an effective method of treatment emotionally and physically. Forgiving myself and others took a long time as far as the domestic violence in my life. I still live in fear every day not knowing if the man was or is ever caught. All the names have been changed to maintain their privacy. I pray my story may help and reach someone who may be in trouble and who needs to reach out. You dont have to be silent anymore. Find someone you can trust and tell them what is going on with you. There is help today.

A long time ago, a cat as black as a moonless night emerged from a magical forest and lived nine memorable lives. In one life, he is called Bottom-Pit after being rescued from the bottom of a well. In another, he joins a marauding gang of cat bandits. The Cat spends another life with an old witch who wants to use his tail in one of her magic potions. During his life at the village inn, the Cat entertains dinner guests by dancing on tabletops. He spends his next life with a writer, retelling these amazing adventures until one day the Cat is crowned king and escapes into the forest to begin his last life. What will happen during the Cat's ninth and final life as king?

Charlotte Taylor lived in the front row of history. In 1775, at the young age of twenty, she fled her English country house and boarded a ship to Jamaica with her lover, the family’s black butler. Soon after reaching shore, Charlotte’s lover died of yellow fever, leaving her alone and pregnant in Jamaica. In the sixty-six years that followed, she would find refuge with the Mi’kmaq of what is present-day New Brunswick, have three husbands, nine more children and a lifelong relationship with an aboriginal man. Using a seamless blend of fact and fiction, Charlotte Taylor's great-great-great-granddaughter, Sally Armstrong, reclaims the life of a dauntless and unusual woman and delivers living history with all the drama and sweep of a novel. Excerpt from from The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor: “Every summer of my youth, we would travel from the family cottage at Youghall Beach to visit my mother’s extended clan in Tabusintac near the Miramichi River. And at every gathering, just as much as there would be chickens to chase and newly cut hay to leap in, so there would be an ample serving of stories about Charlotte Taylor. . . She was a woman with a “past.” The potboilers about her ran like serials from summer to summer, at weddings and funerals and whenever the clan came together. She wasn’t exactly presented as a gentlewoman, although it was said that she came from an aristocratic family in England. Nor was there much that seemed genteel about the person they always referred to as “old Charlotte.” Words like “lover” and “land grabber” drifted down from the supper table to where we kids sat on the floor. There were whoops of laughter at her indiscretions, followed by sideways glances at us. But for all the stories passed around, it was clear the family still had a powerful respect for a woman long dead. We owed our very existence to her, and the anecdotes the older generation told suggested that their own fortitude and guile were family traits passed down from the ancestral matriarch. For as long as I can remember, I’ve tried to imagine the real life Charlotte Taylor lived and, more, how she ever survived.”

A Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet - then spends the rest of his life trying to atone for the violence by hand printing the best prayer flags in India. A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her best friend ritually starve herself to death. Nine people, nine lives; each one taking a different religious path, each one an unforgettable story. William Dalrymple delves deep into the heart of a nation torn between the relentless onslaught of modernity and the ancient traditions that endure to this day. LONGLISTED FOR THE BBC SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A woman who longs to avoid risk at all cost learns that men who love danger are the most exciting in this moving novel from New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel. After a carefree childhood, Mary Margaret Kelly came of age in the shadow of grief. Her father, a dashing daredevil Air Force pilot, died when she was nine. Maggie saw her mother struggle to put their lives back together. As the family moved from one city to the next, her mother warned her to beware of daredevil men and avoid risk at all cost. Following her mother’s advice, and forgoing the magic of first love with a high school boyfriend who was too wild to feel safe, Maggie instead sought out all the things her mother had lost—a predictable partner, a stable home, and a regular paycheck. She chose to marry a dependable, kind man who was a reliable husband and successful accountant. Together they had a son and found happiness in a conventional suburban life. Until tragedy struck again. Now on her own, feeling a sense of adventure for the first time, Maggie decides to face her fears, setting off on a whirlwind trip from San Francisco to Rome, Paris, and Monaco. But when her travels reconnect her with the very same irresistible, thrill-seeking man she’s spent thirty years trying to forget, Maggie becomes terrified that rushing into love and sharing his life may very well end in disaster. But ultimately, while Maggie tries to outrun her fears and painful memories of her past, fate will surprise her in the most astounding of ways, as she walks the tightrope between danger and courage, and between wisdom and love.