Déjà Moo: A Lawnmowers, Inc. Novel by P. J. Benney

Lawnmowers, Inc. is London’s biggest (read: only) cattle-powered garden maintenance corporation. But when his Holstein mascot, Lily, is kidnapped, celebrity CEO Daniel Wesley joins reclusive witch Cynthia Pannettière to uncover a conspiracy that threatens to rewrite their pasts and destroy their futures. With a detective hunting a werewolf in Camden Market, a coven of magi running London’s biggest news channel, and a reporter desperate to expose a public scandal, it’s only a matter of time before the city discovers both the fate of the bovine superstar, and the existence of magic itself…

A Complicated Kindness: A Novel by Miriam Toews

In this stunning coming-of-age novel, the award-winning author of Women Talking balances grief and hope in the voice of a witty, beleaguered teenager whose family is shattered by fundamentalist Christianity

“Half of our family, the better–looking half, is missing,” Nomi Nickel tells us at the beginning of A Complicated Kindness. Left alone with her sad, peculiar father, her days are spent piecing together why her mother and sister have disappeared and contemplating her inevitable career at Happy Family Farms, a chicken slaughterhouse on the outskirts of East Village. Not the East Village in New York City where Nomi would prefer to live, but an oppressive town founded by Mennonites on the cold, flat plains of Manitoba, Canada.

This darkly funny novel is the world according to the unforgettable Nomi, a bewildered and wry sixteen–year–old trapped in a town governed by fundamentalist religion and in the shattered remains of a family it destroyed. In Nomi’s droll, refreshing voice, we’re told the story of an eccentric, loving family that falls apart as each member lands on a collision course with the only community any of them have ever known. A work of fierce humor and tragedy by a writer who has taken the American market by storm, this searing, tender, comic testament to family love will break your heart.

Dealing With Grief: Understanding and Healing After the Loss of Someone You Love (The Grieving Guides) by James Walker

Are You Struggling With Your Grief And Anxiety Over the Loss of a Loved One?

When James Walker suffered one of the worst losses possible, his life became derailed. Grief became the dominating force that led him astray, down a spiraling path of unfocused mourning, drugs and alcohol. It took hitting rock bottom to find the will to resurface and restore balance.

Are you experiencing intense emotions that you’re not always sure how to handle?

Confused because you’re not undergoing bereavement the way you’ve heard it talked about?

Feeling like you’re all alone with this new emptiness inside?

Afraid that somehow you’re doing it “wrong” because what’s going on with you doesn’t match what people are telling you?

These are the doubts and questions that can plague our mind while we’re coping with loss. They are poison to the heart, mind and soul. But they need not be.

In this book, Walker approaches the subject without hesitation and without disrespecting the reader’s pain. He goes into what grief really is, from a personal and clinical standpoint, and the many different ways it can manifest in your own world.

You’ll uncover the myths and misconceptions about grief, and how you know that you’re on the right track with your own process.

You’ll find out how the five stages of grief really work and how you’ll know when you’re at a specific stage.

Most importantly, you’ll discover how to cope with your loss, and what you need to know to rebuild.

Mourning is a personal journey. This means everyone grieves differently. Books that approach the subject purely from a clinical perspective fail to really touch on the personal experience involved with all the pain and sorrow, filling pages with medical terms and cold analysis.

Walker cuts through all the nonsense and delivers a straight-forward, sincere explanation about the process and how to start healing.
Join James Walker as he explains just what grief is and how you can learn to keep it from taking you down a dark path.

Dream Trail by Thomas J. Prestopnik

Eric Travers never imagined taking a three-week hiking trip through the wilderness. At twenty-seven, and several months after an unexpected breakup with his girlfriend, he was comfortably cocooned in his desk job at the Crandall Insurance Agency in Binghamton, NY, biding his time, yearning for spring and waiting for his life to blossom once again.

Then the weird dreams started. Images of lush, tree-covered mountains, ghostly apparitions and shamrocks inscribed with a puzzling symbol began to invade his sleep. He encountered a mysterious trio of fellow hikers and heard a vaguely familiar song from the 1970s playing in the background while walking in long, lazy circles above the treetops. He was driving himself crazy trying to decipher his nighttime visions yet felt drawn to a trail he knew nothing about, though all the while wondering if he was simply going mad.

So, he decided that the only way to solve this mystery was to temporarily leave his job, sling on a backpack and literally follow the trail to wherever it might lead. But after meeting others along the way who shared many aspects of his unusual story, the mystery only deepened as each footstep drew them closer to their destination and to a shadowy figure that suddenly haunted their latest round of dreams while on the trail.

Though he can’t claim to be even a novice backpacker, Thomas J. Prestopnik was easily inspired by others who are and wrote this backpacking novel with a dash of mystery to fulfill his true passion, telling a story. He is also the author of several other novels including “Nicholas Raven and the Wizards’ Web”, a Tolkien-inspired epic fantasy in three volumes.