Chasing Us

I was never supposed to fall in love with a married man. My best friend's brother. I'd made too many mistakes in my past. Like last night-when I married Lex Edwards impulsively. In a bid to finally find their happily ever after, Lex and Charlie find themselves on a journey of learning how to love again. They began a new future to move forward from a broken past, finally together at last. They vowed nothing would tear them apart... again. But life's cruel fate destroys their lives, and in desperate times they tear their love apart grieving over a lost loved one. Lex and Charlie find themselves on the verge of finally saying goodbye to each other, until the return of a scorned ex-fiancé who's desperate to claim back what was his.

He was my best friend's older brother. My first love, who left town without so much as a goodbye... Eight years later, I've said yes to marrying another man-the ever-so-perfect Julian Baker. I'm finally ready to let go of my past for a new future. But like all gut-wrenching love triangles, my past and future collide in a cruel twist of fate. Inside a busy restaurant, he's sitting at the table next to me wearing a jealous stare. And I'm forced to face the man who destroyed my heart in high school. Lex Edwards, now billionaire tycoon, won't back down easily. He's ruthless, cunning, and no longer the sweet and loving college graduate studying to become a doctor. Just like me, our tumultuous affair broke him. But now, he is hell-bent on winning me back. And Lex Edwards will stop at nothing to prove just how powerful our love is, even if it means we need to relive the past... A forbidden love story about fate, heartache, and second chances.

Chasing Slow models HGTV star Erin Loechner's journey to help you break out of the faster-better-stronger trap and make small changes to refresh your perspective, renew your priorities, and shift your focus to what matters most. You're here, but you want to be there. So you spend your life narrowing this divide, and you call this your race, your journey, your path. You live your days tightening your boot straps, wiping the sweat from your brow, chasing undiscovered happiness just around the bend. And on and on you run. Viral sensation and HGTV.com star Erin Loechner knows about the chase. Before turning 30, she'd earned the title "The Nicest Girl Online" as she was praised for her authentic voice and effortless style. Her HGTV web show garnered over one million fans worldwide, and her client list includes Walt Disney World, IKEA, Martha Stewart and Home Depot. The New York Times applauded her, her friends and church admired her, and her husband and baby adored her. She had arrived at the ultimate destination. So why did she feel so lost? Through a series of steep climbs--her husband's brain tumor, bankruptcy, family loss, and public criticism--Erin learns just how much strength it takes to surrender it all, and to veer right into grace. In Chasing Slow, Erin upgrades her life through downsizing--her stuff, her obligations, her fears, her personal metric of "perfect." And ultimately, her invitation becomes yours: to turn away from the fast and frenzy, and find freedom in a new-fashioned lifestyle defined by grace. Life's answers are not always hidden where they seem. It's time to venture off the beaten path to see that we’ve already been given everything we need. We've already arrived. You see? You'll see.

The United States has been epitomized as a land of opportunity, where hard work and skill can bring personal success and economic well-being. The American Dream has captured the imagination of people from all walks of life, and to many, it represents the heart and soul of the country. But there is another, darker side to the bargain that America strikes with its people -- it is the price we pay for our individual pursuit of the American Dream. That price can be found in the economic hardship present in the lives of millions of Americans. In Chasing the American Dream, leading social scientists Mark Robert Rank, Thomas A. Hirschl, and Kirk A. Foster provide a new and innovative look into a curious dynamic -- the tension between the promise of economic opportunities and rewards and the amount of turmoil that Americans encounter in their quest for those rewards. The authors explore questions such as: -What percentage of Americans achieve affluence, and how much income mobility do we actually have? -Are most Americans able to own a home, and at what age? -How is it that nearly 80 percent of us will experience significant economic insecurity at some point between ages 25 and 60? -How can access to the American Dream be increased? Combining personal interviews with dozens of Americans and a longitudinal study covering 40 years of income data, the authors tell the story of the American Dream and reveal a number of surprises. The risk of economic vulnerability has increased substantially over the past four decades, and the American Dream is becoming harder to reach and harder to keep. Yet for most Americans, the Dream lies not in wealth, but in economic security, pursuing one's passions, and looking toward the future. Chasing the American Dream provides us with a new understanding into the dynamics that shape our fortunes and a deeper insight into the importance of the American Dream for the future of the country.

A “thrilling adventure story" (San Francisco Chronicle) that brings to life the astronomers who in the 1700s embarked upon a quest to calculate the size of the solar system, and paints a vivid portrait of the collaborations, rivalries, and volatile international politics that hindered them at every turn. • From the author of Magnificent Rebels and New York Times bestseller The Invention of Nature. On June 6, 1761, the world paused to observe a momentous occasion: the first transit of Venus between the Earth and the Sun in more than a century. Through that observation, astronomers could calculate the size of the solar system—but only if they could compile data from many different points of the globe, all recorded during the short period of the transit. Overcoming incredible odds and political strife, astronomers from Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Sweden, and the American colonies set up observatories in the remotest corners of the world, only to be thwarted by unpredictable weather and warring armies. Fortunately, transits of Venus occur in pairs; eight years later, they would have another opportunity to succeed. Thanks to these scientists, neither our conception of the universe nor the nature of scientific research would ever be the same.

“[A] fascinating debut . . . documenting the lives of teenage runaways who traverse America as part of a freewheeling counterculture.” —Publishers Weekly At age twenty-two, writer Chris Urquhart left a life of middle-class comfort to document the lives of these young nomads for a magazine feature. Captivated, she followed them for three more years. In honest prose interspersed with photographs portraying the grimy beauty of nomadic life, Dirty Kids tells the story of how Urquhart lived alongside runaways, crust punks, and dropouts, hippies, Deadheads, and Rainbows in an attempt to belong in their world. But the road took its toll, and along the way, Urquhart found suffering alongside the freedom—mental health issues, substance abuse, and fears of violence marred her journey. Despite all that, the warm, welcoming family of travelers and their radically alternative culture of sharing, generosity, and non-capitalistic collaboration forever changed her outlook on life and her understanding of freedom. “An illuminating and memorable twenty-first-century journey. From this angle, Burning Man looks bourgeois.” —Ted Conover, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing “Brings readers face-to-face with the bliss of freedom, the terror of loneliness, and the hard but true realities of life on the road—and on the rails—in modern day Babylon.” —Peter Conners, author of Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead “Urquhart shows us a seldom-glimpsed slice of America with poetic flair and journalistic objectivity.” —Ken Ilgunas, award-winning author of Trespassing Across America

Chasing the Rising Sun is the story of an American musical journey told by a prize-winning writer who traced one song in its many incarnations as it was carried across the world by some of the most famous singers of the twentieth century. Most people know the song "House of the Rising Sun" as 1960s rock by the British Invasion group the Animals, a ballad about a place in New Orleans -- a whorehouse or a prison or gambling joint that's been the ruin of many poor girls or boys. Bob Dylan did a version and Frijid Pink cut a hard-rocking rendition. But that barely scratches the surface; few songs have traveled a journey as intricate as "House of the Rising Sun." The rise of the song in this country and the launch of its world travels can be traced to Georgia Turner, a poor, sixteen-year-old daughter of a miner living in Middlesboro, Kentucky, in 1937 when the young folk-music collector Alan Lomax, on a trip collecting field recordings, captured her voice singing "The Rising Sun Blues." Lomax deposited the song in the Library of Congress and included it in the 1941 book Our Singing Country. In short order, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, and Josh White learned the song and each recorded it. From there it began to move to the planet's farthest corners. Today, hundreds of artists have recorded "House of the Rising Sun," and it can be heard in the most diverse of places -- Chinese karaoke bars, Gatorade ads, and as a ring tone on cell phones. Anthony began his search in New Orleans, where he met Eric Burdon of the Animals. He traveled to the Appalachians -- to eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina -- to scour the mountains for the song's beginnings. He found Homer Callahan, who learned it in the mountains during a corn shucking; he discovered connections to Clarence "Tom" Ashley, who traveled as a performer in a 1920s medicine show. He went to Daisy, Kentucky, to visit the family of the late high-lonesome singer Roscoe Holcomb, and finally back to Bourbon Street to see if there really was a House of the Rising Sun. He interviewed scores of singers who performed the song. Through his own journey he discovered how American traditions survived and prospered -- and how a piece of culture moves through the modern world, propelled by technology and globalization and recorded sound.

I hear his words echo in my head. The voice telling me to leave her alone. The threat to end my life should I dare go near her. Julian Baker had it all. Stunning good looks, wealth, intelligence, and the girl. To everyone around him, he was Mr. Perfect. Fate was never on his side, and much like a domino effect, his life starts to spiral out of control. Behind the mask lies a broken man, haunted by his tragic past. In a bid to forget, he finds himself desperately trying to hold on to someone who is equally unattainable, Charlotte Edwards. In a last ditch effort to save himself, Julian reaches out for help, but the universe has other plans when someone completely unexpected walks into his life, and an unlikely friendship is formed. His enemy's sister-Adriana Evans.