Here is the first thing you need to know about me: I’m a barefoot girl from red-dirt Oklahoma, and all the marble floors in the world will never change that.Here is the second thing: that young woman they pulled from the Arabian shore, her hair tangled with mangrove—my husband didn’t kill her, not the way they say he did.Gin Mitchell knows a better life awaits her when she marries hometown hero Mason McPhee. Raised in a two-room shack by ...

Fans of Educated by Tara Westover are sure to fall for this "beautifully written" narrative (The New York Times Book Review) of self-discovery and personal triumph from the author of the Pulitzer Prize–nominated memoir In the Wilderness.Hereis the story of how an intelligent and passionate young woman, yearning for an understanding of the world beyond her insular family life, found her way.On the day of her 1976 high school gradua...

Poet Kim Barnes grew up in northern Idaho, in the isolated camps where her father worked as a logger and her mother made a modest but comfortable home for her husband and two children. Their lives were short on material wealth, but long on the riches of family and friendship, and the great sheltering power of the wilderness. But in the mid-1960's, as automation and a declining economy drove more and more loggers out of the wilderness and into despair, Kim's father dug in and determined to ...

A powerful novel of young love and rural isolation from the acclaimed author of In the Wilderness.Thomas Deracotte is just out of medical school, and his pregnant wife, Helen, have their whole future mapped out for them in upper-crust Connecticut. But they are dreamers, and they set out to create their own farm in rural Idaho instead. The fields are in ruins when they arrive, so they hire a farmhand named Manny to help rebuild. But the sudden, frightening birth of their da...

Kim Barnes is an award-winning memoirist, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and a poet whose works have appeared in many literary magazines. In Finding Caruso, she creates an unforgettable novel of two brothers and the complex ties that bind them. Alternately dark and violent, heartbreaking and tender, it is a coming-of-age tale that is both timeless and contemporary.

Gin Mitchell knows a better life awaits her when she marries Mason McPhee. But nothing can prepare her for the world she and Mason step into when he takes a job with the Arabian American Oil company in Saudi Arabia. In the gated compound of Abqaiq, Gin and Mason are given a home with marble floors, a houseboy to cook their meals, and a gardener to tend the sandy patch out back. Even among the veiled women and strict laws, Gin's life has become the stuff of fairy tales. B...

Why do teams settle for bad ideas or kill good ones? Popular consultant B. Kim Barnes's unique process of constructive debate shows how teams can create better ideas and outcomes by eliminating obstacles to honest discussion, creativity, and collaboration.In too many organizations, great ideas and unusual solutions can be suppressed, ignored, or attacked. Departments defend their turf, and people choose what is safe over what is better. Bad ideas move forward and g...

Kiss Tomorrow Hello brings together the experiences and reflections of women as they embark on a new stage of life. The twenty-five stellar writers gathered here explore a wide range of concerns, including keeping love and sex alive, discovering family secrets, negotiating the demands of illness and infertility, letting children go, making peace with parents, and contemplating plastic surgery. The tales are true, the confessions candid, the humor infectious.

Are you an internal consultant—a staff member who serves in a consultative role within your organization? Then you need this hands-on guidebook to help you better understand your role and improve your performance.Whether you're a change agent, trusted advisor, or someone who serves in varying capacities, it's important to design your job, develop a formal agreement, and build your practice.Consulting on the Inside provides a solid background for internal consultants and ser...

Nonfiction storytelling is at its best in this anthology of excerpts from memoirs by thirty authors—some eminent, some less well known—who grew up tough and talented in working-class America. Their stories, selected from literary memoirs published between 1982 and 2014, cover episodes from childhood to young adulthood within a spectrum of life-changing experiences. Although diverse ethnically, racially, geographically, and in sexual orientation, these writers share a youthful precocity and...

“How could ‘old age’ be a medical diagnosis when I wasn’t even forty?”—Lolly Winston“… if aging is difficult for those of us who were only sometimes cute,” she says, “just imagine how hard it must be for the aging knockouts, the living dolls.”—Rebecca McClanahan“I love sex. I love middle-age sex. I love married sex. I'm almost fifty and I've never felt sexier. But damn, it took a long time to get here.”—Ellen Sussman“And who is that woman who lo...

Change minds, guide opinions, and shape emotions with the power of effective influenceExercising Influence is your guide to accomplishing more with less effort. Demystifying the process of influencing others, this book shows you how to develop effective influence behaviors, plan an influence approach, set goals, resolve problems, and build better relationships. Revised and expanded to provide more actionable advice across industries and sectors, this third...