Briefly Buddies

Being a gay teen can be difficult, but for Dustin Blanchard, it's been pretty boring, actually. In less than twenty-four hours he's going to graduate from high school. His parents and friends have always given him their full support and unconditional love. He's always had plenty of friends in school, he's attractive, always gotten good grades, and he's headed into a new chapter of life-university after his last summer of working at a local ice cream joint. His life has been...blessed. There's just one thing. He's never had a boyfriend. Never gotten laid. Never even been kissed. Well, not like that, anyway. So, life has been good, but it's been boring. When he came out, Dustin imagined his own rom-com, teenage, coming-of-age scenario playing out, finding a boyfriend in high school, and being crowned dual Kings of the Prom. Nothing ever works out the way he imagines, though, and he's getting pretty tired of it. On the night of his graduation, Dustin and his friend, Miguel, come up with a plan while sharing a few beers swiped from the neighborhood barbecue. If you can't get laid through skill and swagger of your own, you can always turn to a professional. All you need is the internet and a device. So, buzzed from the beers, Dustin logs onto Briefly Buddies to find the perfect guy to help him achieve his first real gay experience. And that's where everything really started to go wrong...

Three friends, as knights of old, rescue a baby egg from a terrible fate.

No Buddy Left Behind unveils the life-altering relationships American troops serving in the Middle East have shared with the stray dogs and cats they've rescued from the brutalities of war. Overcoming monumental obstacles, Operation Baghdad Pups' program manager Terri Crisp makes it her mission to save these wartime “buddies,” get them out of danger, and bring them home to the soldiers who love them. How exactly does someone get animals out of a country at war when normal resources are lacking and every step of a plan to transport animals could get you arrested, kidnapped, or blown apart? As Crisp soon learns, each rescue mission from first to last is a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants experience, and no animal is truly safe until its paws touch U.S. soil. Terri and her team have saved the lives of 223 dogs and forty-two cats befriended by military personnel since February 2008—and No Buddy Left Behind finally tells this story.

Have no fear, the Buddies are here! This action-packed junior novel includes color photos and is based on the latest superhero-themed puppy-filled DVD, Super Buddies, which will be released in the coming year.

For several years, Martin has been one of San Francisco's homeless and unemployed citizens, undertaking odd jobs when offered and eaking out a living selling the Street Sheet. Then, when two friends are killed -- one another homeless person and the other an apparent member of the financial community -- it's up to Martin to discover who...and why... After all, sometimes a bum just has to do what bum has to do...

In Buddy Holly, best-selling biographer Ellis Amburn brings this musical genius, this flamboyant West Texas rebel, back to life. Having interviewed over two hundred people, Ellis Amburn has written the most revealing and definitive biography of Holly's life. The result is a triumphant American work.

This book is a memoir, the description of my parents’ lives based on my remembrances, conversations with relatives, reviews of family photographs, as well as examining remaining personal documents of our family. This memoir started as a brief description, and was something I had planned for a long time. Initially, I thought it would be perhaps a few dozen pages. Instead, it grew organically and became a much more detailed recollection of my mother and father’s lives, their marriage, their approaches to life, how they raised my sister and me, and their continuing influence upon me. They came to America as immigrant children; they developed here within their cultural boundaries as Italian Americans; they struggled, thrived and pursued their personal goals. They are still with me today. It has been simultaneously an exhilarating and exhausting process as the writing expanded. This is far beyond any sort of genealogical charting or the identification of distant relatives. Rather, it provides perceptions about my feelings and beliefs regarding my parents, their positive qualities and flaws, as well as how I perceive them now that I am an older adult. This process is one that I urge other children to engage in, writing about their parents so that there will be descriptions of the roles they played. I call such writing a critical component of the collective humanity, tracing the historical journeys that would then be available to the remaining family members and their ancestors. Conceivably, such continued writings could become an endless documentation of family behaviors and interactions. It might even provide a greater clarity and understanding of one’s parents through a long-range lens.