The Possession by Annie Ernaux

Bestselling French author Ernaux has built her career on rendering almost every aspect of a woman’s experience, from the hidden contours of her marriage to the indelible loss of her mother, with unsparing honesty and insight. Her latest novella is an excruciatingly frank — and spot-on — portrait of romantic jealousy in midlife. Ernaux’s take on obsession will stay with you long after you zip through these 62 razor-sharp pages. — Dawn Raffel

The Heart of Mentoring by David Stoddard

Author David Stoddard has discovered that in mentoring, giving often involves receiving, and receiving involves giving. By sharing your life with others, you will help them develop their values and priorities–not with a rigid formula or agenda, but in the natural course of a meaningful relationship.
In The Heart of Mentoring, you will see that sharing your life with others is the most rewarding gift you can give–and the most satisfying gift you can receive.

The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things by Larry Dossey, M.D.

Holistic physician Dossey examines the potential power of 14 readily accessible sources of well-being, providing a strong case for utilizing such remedies before more extreme measures. His expansive discourse on optimism, forgetting, music, miracles, plants, risk taking and other “simple” things makes clear that, while these are hardly “simple” when fully appreciated, often they are undervalued or completely ignored by the mainstream medical community, which turns to high-tech procedures and worst-case scenarios as a first resort. According to Dossey (Reinventing Medicine), a nearly single-minded clinical focus has obscured patients’ interpretation of their own experiences, leaving out important clues about how people heal. He provides numerous examples of those who have discovered “spontaneous healing,” which most physicians discount or downplay because they defy explanation. Despite the title, this is not a step-by-step guide to accessing the healing power of home remedies. Instead, Dossey takes readers on a poetic, well-researched journey into the many paradoxes that are inherent in the human condition and how they relate to healing the body, mind and soul.

What You Can Change…and What You Can’t by Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D.

Psychologist Seligman ( Learned Optimism ) here examines common psychological disorders according to their biological and societal, or learned, components. Most enlightening are his analyses of the effectiveness of relaxation, meditation, psychoanalysis and cognitive therapies in the treatment of anxiety, which, along with depression and anger, he claims, can largely be controlled by disciplined effort. Maintaining that dieting will not help people who are overweight (”Weight is in large part genetic”), the author urges a focus on fitness and health; asserting that a child’s psyche heals faster than an adult’s, he observes that childhood trauma does not necessarily shape one’s adult life: “the rest of the tapestry is not determined by what has been woven before.” Direct, instructive and nonreductive, Seligman’s observations and theories are positive, realistic and sound. (Publisher’s Weekly)

“The Basque history of the World” is a beautiful informative book about what it is to be Basque in a world that has not been able to understand our way of life. Most countries want to expand, and to create empires. Basques did not and do not want to expand. This different point of view is not well understood by people who believe there is something strange in a group of people who have traveled all over the world, who have been among the first to go and help conquer the new world, but who have never really wanted to broaden their borders. Mark Kurlansky’s attempt to try and explain the rationale of Basque people is commendable. (from Amazon.com)

Faith, Healing and Miracles by Frederic Flach, M.D. KHS

Throughout the ages, people everywhere have prayed for miracles, witnessed miracles, and have been helped by miracles themselves. What is behind the mystery of miracles? Where do miracles come from? We all know of the miracles in the Hebrew Bible, the many miracles of Jesus Christ, and the apparitions of the Virgin Mary from Lourdes to Fatima. But do miracles still occur? Can a miracle happen to us in the here and now? We speak of the “miracles of modern medicine” but can prayer, faith and Providence heal the body as well as the soul? Now in Faith, Healing, and Miracles, a world-renowned physician and psychiatrist examines the mystery of miracles from ages long past to the new millennium. Following the questions raised in his bestselling book The Secret Strength of Angels: 7 Virtues to Live By, Dr. Frederic Flach once again will enlighten and inspire readers everywhere with this insightful look at miracles. Join him as he reflects on the history, nature and power of miracles to help and heal us in our times of need. From Moses and the parting of the Red Sea to a foxhole on Okinawa, from the raising of Lazarus to a cancer ward in New York, from a cripple cured at Lourdes to Lance Armstrong’s amazing victory, miracles have always been with us. In Faith, Healing, and Miracles, Dr. Flach shows us all how prayer, angels, trust in God, and the power of faith can help overcome helplessness and guide us to physical, mental and spiritual well-being.