O Mara S

A charming new Irish saga seriesA jilted bride to be, a woman with a secret past and a pesky red fox...Take a break you'll never forget at O'Mara's Manor House--the Georgian Guesthouse in the heart of Dublin's Fair City. Its cozy and elegant setting is where you'll fall in love with a cast of characters who'll stay with you long after you finish the book. Oh, and a full Irish breakfast is included.If Aisling O'Mara hadn't winged her way home to the Emerald Isle to take over the running of the family guesthouse she'd never have met Marcus, and her heart wouldn't have been broken. She's been trying to put her life back together since he left, but now he's back and says he's sorry. Can she trust him again?Una Brennan's booked into the guesthouse she used to walk past each morning when she was a girl full of hopes and dreams for her happy ever after. She left Dublin more than fifty years ago vowing she'd never set foot in the city again. Why did she leave and what's brought her back?Meanwhile, the little red fox who raids the bins outside O'Mara's basement kitchen door at night would like to know why the woman in Room 1, cries herself to sleep each night.Witty, sad, and insightful with a touch of romance. Come and stay at O'Mara's.

“A surprisingly fascinating scientific consideration of humanity’s most ordinary activity.” —Ron Charles, Washington Post In this “wonderful” (John Brandon, Forbes) book, neuroscientist Shane O’Mara invites us to marvel at the benefits walking confers on our bodies and brains, and to appreciate the advantages of this uniquely human skill. From walking’s evolutionary origins, traced back millions of years to life forms on the ocean floor, to new findings from cutting-edge research, he reveals how the brain and nervous system give us the ability to balance, weave through a crowded city, and run our “inner GPS” system. Walking is good for our muscles and posture;?it helps to protect and repair organs, and can slow or turn back the aging of our brains. With our minds in motion we think more creatively, our mood improves, and stress levels fall. Walking together to achieve a shared purpose is also a social glue that has contributed to our survival as a species. As our lives become increasingly sedentary, O’Mara makes the case that we must start walking again—whether it’s up a mountain, down to the park,?or simply to school and work. In Praise of Walking?illuminates the joys, health benefits, and mechanics of walking, and reminds us to get out of our chairs and discover a happier, healthier, more creative self.

One of New York Magazine's best books on Silicon Valley! The true, behind-the-scenes history of the people who built Silicon Valley and shaped Big Tech in America Long before Margaret O'Mara became one of our most consequential historians of the American-led digital revolution, she worked in the White House of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the earliest days of the commercial Internet. There she saw firsthand how deeply intertwined Silicon Valley was with the federal government--and always had been--and how shallow the common understanding of the secrets of the Valley's success actually was. Now, after almost five years of pioneering research, O'Mara has produced the definitive history of Silicon Valley for our time, the story of mavericks and visionaries, but also of powerful institutions creating the framework for innovation, from the Pentagon to Stanford University. It is also a story of a community that started off remarkably homogeneous and tight-knit and stayed that way, and whose belief in its own mythology has deepened into a collective hubris that has led to astonishing triumphs as well as devastating second-order effects. Deploying a wonderfully rich and diverse cast of protagonists, from the justly famous to the unjustly obscure, across four generations of explosive growth in the Valley, from the forties to the present, O'Mara has wrestled one of the most fateful developments in modern American history into magnificent narrative form. She is on the ground with all of the key tech companies, chronicling the evolution in their offerings through each successive era, and she has a profound fingertip feel for the politics of the sector and its relation to the larger cultural narrative about tech as it has evolved over the years. Perhaps most impressive, O'Mara has penetrated the inner kingdom of tech venture capital firms, the insular and still remarkably old-boy world that became the cockpit of American capitalism and the crucible for bringing technological innovation to market, or not. The transformation of big tech into the engine room of the American economy and the nexus of so many of our hopes and dreams--and, increasingly, our nightmares--can be understood, in Margaret O'Mara's masterful hands, as the story of one California valley. As her majestic history makes clear, its fate is the fate of us all.

Walking upright on two feet is a uniquely human skill. It defines us as a species. It enabled us to walk out of Africa and to spread as far as Alaska and Australia. It freed our hands and freed our minds. We put one foot in front of the other without thinking - yet how many of us know how we do that, or appreciate the advantages it gives us? In this hymn to walking, neuroscientist Shane O'Mara invites us to marvel at the benefits it confers on our bodies and minds. In Praise of Walking celebrates this miraculous ability. Incredibly, it is a skill that has its evolutionary origins millions of years ago, under the sea. And the latest research is only now revealing how the brain and nervous system performs the mechanical magic of balancing, navigating a crowded city, or running our inner GPS system. Walking is good for our muscles and posture; it helps to protect and repair organs, and can slow or turn back the ageing of our brains. With our minds in motion we think more creatively, our mood improves and stress levels fall. Walking together to achieve a shared purpose is also a social glue that has contributed to our survival as a species. As our lives become increasingly sedentary, we risk all this. We must start walking again, whether it's up a mountain, down to the park, or simply to school and work. We, and our societies, will be better for it.

Mammy O'Mara would cordially like to invite you to the wedding of...well now that would be telling. The date's set for the wedding of the year, Valentine's Day no less but with less than eight weeks to pull off her dream day will this anxious bridezilla make it down the aisle? Her increasing stress levels aren't being helped either by Mammy who's in charge of the guest list. This along with the seating arrangements are proving tricky thanks to an old family feud. Wedding's are all about family though and so is it time to let bygones be bygones? Or, do some wounds run too deep? Join in with all the fun, laughter and angst of an O'Mara family wedding! But first, there's the hen night to get through... Witty, sad and insightful with a touch of romance. Come and stay at O'Mara's.

Visually attractive with full color throughout, including dozens of large, vivid photographs, the book is intuitively designed to allow many different points of access, and appeal to a broad range of readers.

Filled with hundreds of mythical monsters from around the world, The Book of Beastswill take readers on an epic colouring quest through ancient lands and lore. Including creatures from Aboriginal, African, Mesoamerican, Greek, Roman, Indian, Norse, Chinese and Japanese tales.