Fast Girl

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The former middle distance Olympic runner and high-end escort speaks out for the first time about her battle with mental illness, and how mania controlled and compelled her in competition, but also in life. This is a heartbreakingly honest yet hopeful memoir reminiscent of Manic, Electroboy, and An Unquiet Mind. During the 1990s, three-time Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton was the darling of American track and field. An outstanding runner, a major sports apparel spokesperson, and a happily married wife, she was the model for an active, healthy, and wholesome life. But her perfect facade masked a dark truth: manic depression and bipolar disorder that drove her obsession to perform and win. For years after leaving the track, Suzy wrestled with her condition, as well as the loss of a close friend, conflicted feelings about motherhood and her marriage, and lingering shame about her athletic career. After a misdiagnosis and a recommendation for medication that only exacerbated her mania and made her hypersexual, Suzy embarked on a new path, and assumed a new identity. Fueled by a newfound confidence, a feeling of strength and independence and a desire she couldn’t tamp down, she became a high-priced escort in Las Vegas, working as “Kelly.” But Suzy could not keep her double life a secret forever. When it was eventually exposed, it sent her into a reckless suicidal period where the only option seemed out. Finally, with the help of her devoted husband, Suzy finally got the proper medical help she needed. In this startling frank memoir, she recounts the journey to outrun her demons, revealing how a woman used to physically controlling her body learned to come to terms with her unstable mind. It is the story of a how a supreme competitor scored her most important victory of all—reclaiming her life from the ravages of an untreated mental illness. Today, thanks to diagnosis, therapy, Kelly has stepped into the shadows, but Suzy is building a better life, one day at a time. Sharing her story, Suzy is determined to raise awareness, provide understanding, and offer inspiration to others coping with their own challenges.

The next cookbook from the #1 New York Times bestselling author behind the Hungry Girl brand! Lisa Lillien is back with her fastest and easiest recipes ever -- each one is ready in 30 minutes or less! With full-color photos of every recipe, Hungry Girl Fast & Easy consists of quick and simple meals & snacks made with everyday ingredients. Get ready for... * sheet-pan recipes * one-pot recipes * stir-frys & skillet meals * salads & slaws * 10-minute power bowls * 5-minute smoothies * 2-ingredient cake mugs ... and so much more! And like all Hungry Girl recipes, the calories counts are small and the portions are large! Hungry Girl Fast & Easy is packed with delicious recipes that you’ll make again and again.

From the bestselling author of House of Shadows and The Phantom Tree comes a spellbinding tale of jealousy, greed, plotting and revenge—part history, part mystery—for fans of Kate Morton, Susanna Kearsley and Barbara Erskine London, 1765 Lady Isabella Gerard, a respectable member of Georgian society, orders her maid to take her new golden gown and destroy it, its shimmering beauty tainted by the actions of her brutal husband the night before. Three months later, Lord Gerard stands at the shoreline of the lake, looking down at a woman wearing the golden gown. As the body slowly rolls over to reveal her face, it’s clear this was not his intended victim… 250 Years Later… When a gown she stole from a historic home as a child is mysteriously returned to Fenella Brightwell, it begins to possess her in exactly the same way that it did as a girl. Soon the fragile new life Fen has created for herself away from her abusive ex-husband is threatened at its foundations by the gown’s power over her until she can't tell what is real and what is imaginary. As Fen uncovers more about the gown and Isabella’s story, she begins to see the parallels with her own life. When each piece of history is revealed, the gown—and its past—seems to possess her more and more, culminating in a dramatic revelation set to destroy her sanity.

Life in Ingrid Steffensen’s New Jersey suburb was safe, comfortable, and predictable. A college professor, wife, and mother of a preadolescent daughter, her carefully cultivated world was comprised of the usual suspects: family, work, book clubs, yoga classes, and date nights. Then, one day—thinking she’d be a good sport and maybe learn something about what made her car-crazed husband tick—she put a helmet on her head, took her Mini Cooper to the racetrack, and learned how to drive it really, really fast. Soon, what began as a whim became a full-blown obsession—and a freeing journey of self-discovery. In the eventful, exhilarating year that followed her first lesson, Steffenson dove head-first into high-performance driving. In the process, she discovered the terrifying and addictive thrill of pushing her limits, learning an entirely new set of skills, and tackling danger head-on—and found that doing so liberated her in a way that she hadn’t even known she needed. Fast-paced and fun, Fast Girl is the quirky, real-life chronicle of how one woman stepped outside her comfort zone, shrugged off the shackles of suburban conformity, and changed her entire perspective on life through the unlikeliest of means: racecar driving.

Life in Ingrid Steffensen's New Jersey suburb was safe, comfortable, and predictable. A college professor, wife, and mother of a preadolescent daughter, her carefully cultivated world was comprised of the usual suspects: family, work, book clubs, yoga classes, and date nights. Then, one day?thinking she'd be a good sport and maybe learn something about what made her car-crazed husband tick?she put a helmet on her head, took her Mini Cooper to the racetrack, and learned how to drive it really, really fast. Soon, what began as a whim became a full-blown obsession?and a freeing journey of self-discovery. In the eventful, exhilarating year that followed her first lesson, Steffenson dove head-first into high-performance driving. In the process, she discovered the terrifying and addictive thrill of pushing her limits, learning an entirely new set of skills, and tackling danger head-on?and found that doing so liberated her in a way that she hadn't even known she needed. Fast-paced and fun, Fast Girl is the quirky, real-life chronicle of how one woman stepped outside her comfort zone, shrugged off the shackles of suburban conformity, and changed her entire perspective on life through the unlikeliest of means: racecar driving.

"Randa, what's wrong with you?" "Nothing. I mean, I'm a crazy cocaine addict with a hankering for heroin, but other than that, I'm just a nice Jewish girl from the Upper East Side with Prada shoes. How could anything be wrong?" Molly Jong-Fast's Normal Girl is striking-and as funny as it as real. Inspired by her own experiences growing up in the decadent, fast-paced netherworld of New York City's jet set, Jong-Fast's debut novel is a hilarious, hard-edged walk past the velvet rope. At just nineteen, Miranda Woke seems to have it all. Her parents are famous socialites, she's already been written up on Page Six sixteen times, she's on all the right invitation lists, and drugs and alcohol are never in short supply. But while her image screams "It girl," she'd rather be a normal girl, and the A-list feels even more uncomfortable than her Manolo Blahnik shoes. In fact, she's become the "living embodiment of an awkward phase" with "more issues than Harper's Bazaar." Neither Xanax nor Deepak Chopra tapes help. And now that her junkie party has trashed her parents' house, she has to liquidate her trust fund to pay Mom's decorator for a quick fix. But worst of all, Miranda thinks she just murdered her own boyfriend. In an all-too-glamorous world where the cell phone is always ringing, Miranda sees no escape other than a downward spiral of cocaine, Valium, and heroin. It takes friends who offer more than air kisses to force Miranda to look in the mirror and get some help.

An attractive, highly successful Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer, Terri Cheney had been battling debilitating bipolar disorder for the better part of her life—and concealing a pharmacy’s worth of prescription drugs meant to stabilize her moods and make her "normal." In explosive bursts of prose that mirror the devastating mania and extreme despair of her illness, Cheney describes her roller-coaster existence with shocking honesty, giving brilliant voice to the previously unarticulated madness she endured. Brave, electrifying, poignant, and disturbing, Manic does not simply explain bipolar disorder—it takes us into its grasp and does not let go.