Showing results by narrator "Gabra Zackman" in All Categories

In 2008 the US Treasury put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into a life-support state known as "conservatorship" to prevent their failure - and worldwide economic chaos. The two companies, which were always controversial, have become a battleground. Today, Fannie and Freddie are profitable again but still in conservatorship. Their profits are being redirected toward reducing the federal deficit, which leaves them with no buffer should they suffer losses again.

Modern stories for modern times, Crash Diet is at once brilliant and bitter, happy and heartbreaking. In 11 stories, acclaimed novelist Jill McCorkle tells the varied tales of today's southern women, the lives they end up leading, and the loves that distract them. Sandra knows that the best revenge is her ex-husband's credit card; Ruthie is stuck owning a motel that the highway has bypassed; Anna is a widow who goes to airports and looks in on other people's lives; Bunny waits eagerly for her absent sister's postcards for advice on how to live.

Phantom Lady chronicles the untold story of Hollywood’s most powerful female writer-producer of the 1940s. In 1933 Joan Harrison was a 26-year-old former salesgirl with a dream of escaping her stodgy London suburb and the dreadful prospect of settling down with one of the local boys. A few short years later, she was Alfred Hitchcock’s confidante and the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of his first American film, Rebecca. Harrison had quickly grown from being the worst secretary Hitchcock ever had to one of his closest collaborators.

We - all of us - consistently exclude, underestimate and underutilise huge numbers of people in the workforce even as we include, overestimate and promote others, often beyond their level of competence. Not only is this immoral and unjust, it’s bad for business. Just Work is the solution. Just Work is Kim Scott’s new book, revealing a practical framework for both respecting everyone’s individuality and collaborating effectively.

Asking (and answering) the big questions can be terrifying - but it is the only way to put yourself on the path towards living your best life. Big questions can be forces of empowerment, motivation and clarification. The editors at O, The Oprah Magazine have combed through the magazine’s extensive archives to assemble O’s Little Guide to the Big Questions, a collection of stirring, motivating, thought-provoking pieces from great writers and celebrated thinkers, that offers wise guidance and inspiration to anyone feeling lost or in need of a reset.

A thoughtful collection of soul-soothing writing, O's Little Book of Calm & Comfort is the antidote to life's trying times. Featuring essays and interviews from some of the most celebrated contributors to O, the Oprah Magazine, this heartening collection offers solace, wisdom and connection. Among the highlights: Nora Ephron on the state of rapture that comes from a good book; Maeve Binchy on friends; and a conversation between Oprah and the American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron.

Noel Townsend loves the life she's built for herself with her husband Drew and her two daughters. After years of running the Keating Hollow inn, Noel finally has hired help and has more time to devote to her new farm and her family. But when her youngest daughter encounters a spirit in their farmhouse, Noel suddenly finds herself in a fight for her life. It's going to take everything she has to get out of this one, along with the love and determination of her devoted husband, Drew Baker.

Lily Easton is a witch who makes a living writing satire for an advice column in Befana Bay’s weekly newspaper. Although she pretends to be jaded in love, it turns out, she’s a romantic at heart. It’s just too bad that she’s fallen for Braxton Kirkwood, a man who’s sworn off love. Frustrated by her lack of love prospects, Lily throws herself into work. But when half-a-dozen witches in Befana Bay start taking Lily’s obviously bad advice, it soon becomes clear her pen is poisoned and is compelling the witches to stalk her favorite eligible bachelor, Braxton Kirkwood.

A former prodigy who refuses to believe her best years are behind her and a young virtuoso searching for his passion both get an unlikely shot at their dreams in this sparkling debut about second chances, unexpected joys, and the miraculous power of music.

Maddy Donaldo, homeless at twenty, lives with her dog and makeshift family in the hidden spaces of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. She thinks she knows how to survive and whom to trust until she accidentally witnesses the murder of a young man. Her world is upended as she has to face not only the killer but also the police and then the victim’s parents, who desperately want Maddy to tell them about the life their son led after he left home. And in a desire to save her since they could not save their own son, they are determined to have Maddy reunite with her own lost family.

In these wonderfully funny and poignant stories, Willett’s eccentric, complex characters think and do the unconventional. Soft, euphonic women gradually grow old; weak, unhappy men confront love and their own mortality; and abominable children desperately try to grow up with grace. With a unique voice and dry humor, Willett gives us a new insight into human existence, showing us those specific moments in relationships when life suddenly becomes visible. Critically acclaimed when it was first published, Jenny and the Jaws of Life is being brought back due to popular demand.

Paris. Tokyo. Shanghai. Seoul. Em’s Awful Good Fortune is part global romp, part dysfunctional marriage. Em is not simply married - it’s more like she’s handcuffed to her husband’s international career. Sure, they might be velvet cuffs, but still...cuffed. What else can she do but stomp her way through global capitals in search of her own identity? Part dysfunctional marriage, part global romp, this is not your typical expat story.

Several years in the future, an all-female astronaut team circumnavigates the globe once every 90 minutes aboard the International Space Station, prepared to be a powerful presence in space. When a surprise set of "everyday citizens" tags along for the ride, all protocol flies right out the proverbial...airlock.

Ruth Klein’s story is about merchants and landowners: aristocratic Polish Jews. It’s about their lives in refugee and concentration camps. About parents who survived the Holocaust but could not overcome the tragedy they had experienced, and about their children, who became indirect victims of the atrocities endured by Holocaust victims. After their liberation, Ruth’s parents were brought to the Displaced Person Camps in Germany, where they awaited departure to the United States. They were traumatized, starving, and impoverished, but they were among the survivors.

The stories in this collection reflect a fundamental truth about Santa Fe: history depends on who's telling it. Too often the story of this city has been told only by the conquerors and the tourism PR firms. Hear the stories that never make the glossy tour brochures: the working class and the underground, the decolonized and the ever-haunted; the Santa Fe only we know.... Conquered and reconquered, colonized and commodified, Santa Fe understands - from historical genocide to the murders of family members - the intimacy of violence.

The author of the acclaimed Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them) brings “her singular sensibility, her genius for language, her love of our deeply imperfect world” (Karen Karbo, author of In Praise of Difficult Women) to this insightful exploration of reality TV and the shifting definitions of truth in America.

In the novella, a married woman reads Wuthering Heights at the same time that she falls under the erotic and destructive spell of her own Heathcliff. In the stories that follow, a single photograph illuminates the intricate web of connections between friends at an Italian cafe; a forgotten act of violence in New York's Carl Schurz Park returns to haunt the present; and a woman is prompted by a flurry of mysterious emails to recall her time as a member of the infamous Rajneesh cult.

To Charles Fort, with Love is award-winning fantasist Caitlín R. Kiernan’s third collection of short fiction, a haunting parade of the terrible things which may lie beyond the boundaries of science, the minds which may exist beyond psychology, and the forbidden places which will never be located in any orthodox globe. A deceptively even dozen, this collection includes Kiernan’s celebrated stories “Onion” and “Andromeda Among the Stones”, as well as a number of more obscure pieces.

Someday Heaven provides biblically based answers on a topic that’s not always easy to explain to a young child. Touching stories of the future God promises to his children will help your child discover the answers to the wonders of God’s mysterious and glorious home.

Tales of guardian spirits and divine powers by Seanan McGuire, Ken Liu, Alethea Kontis, Laura Anne Gilman, Scott Edelman and more. Guardian spirits. Divine presences. Demonic powers. Ghosts. The concept of "genius loci" is indeed an ancient one, found in nearly every human mythology. Genius Loci is a huge anthology of 31 all-new fantasy and science fiction stories drawing on the rich tradition of place-as-person. In it, the authors present stories of sentient deserts, beneficent forests, lonely shrubs, and protective planetary spirits.