Musings of a Vegetarian Traveller is the opening story in this collection of tales told by a woman whose appetite for life and travel took her on innumerable journeys. One of the most notable—her journey from meat eater to vegetarian—provides a deeply personal and sometimes very funny look into the worlds she encountered. But as Maureen says, "The story of my transformation from a meat eating to vegetarian is not about food, but rather, it is about the interesting, diverting, amusing, distressing, provocative, and irritating things that have happened to me as a vegetarian traveller". For adventurers and armchair travellers …

When fat civil rights activist Gabby Medeiros's supersized boyfriend decides to lose weight, he unwittingly forms a fissure in their relationship. Can their relationship survive? As a fat acceptance warrior, Gabby necessarily rejects dieting as unhealthy and counterproductive. A telephone bill collector by day, she spends two evenings a week doing what she really loves: pontificating from her position at the local radio station about the evils of the diet industry and a society that shames those who don't fill out the proper dimensions. Though people sometimes snicker at the cause she holds so dear, fat acceptance is very serious …

I am a 47-year-old respectable, ordinary woman. I sold my home in Belfast at the height of the housing market boom. After taking advice from someone I thought to be financially astute, I invested most of the proceeds from the sale. This resulted in me being almost broke and homeless to boot. Consequently, I found myself moving into a hostel in Belfast. My story, in journal form, gives an insight into how this affected my life. I fell into depression, was prescribed anti-depressants, drank to excess on an almost daily basis, but eventually, slowly, began the fight to succeed. The …

The Fire Demon is part one of a four-part epic game that takes you far across the countries of Chantire and Krill on a mission for which you have trained your whole life. But the mission is far more mysterious and intriguing than you realize. Evil is everywhere, and a strange atmosphere prevails throughout the lands, a sense of being present at the borders of life and death, good and evil. The choices you make from the start will determine every outcome, as your mission hinges on every action. You must seek and kill the Fire Demon to save your …

Like Schopenhauer’s porcupines, we rush together because we are chilly and rush apart because we are prickly. It is 20 years since Wanda’s husband threw himself off the top floor landing of their house in Primrose Hill. Hers is a story of abandonment. In 1939, she lost her mother at the railway station as the family fought its way onto the last train out of Warsaw. She has spent her life determined never to let go of anything again. Her husband’s presence has been resurrected in a shrine out on the landing, with his shoes left in the same spot …

In the 1950s, Cleveland, Ohio was the number one music city in the world. It was in Cleveland that DJ Alan Freed first coined the term "ock and roll" and it was in Cleveland that the teenage Henry M. Niedzwiecki, aka The Ol’ Doowopper, grew up with a ringside seat to the birth of rock and roll or doo-wop music. Growing Up Rocking is more than just a collection of photographs and artifacts that the author has taken and amassed over the decades; it is his life story told through rock and roll music. He invites readers to relive with …

This stunning astronomy book explores Dwarf Planets and Asteroids: Minor Bodies of the Solar System. Written by a retired astronomer, the book provides a survey of dwarf planets and asteroids, giving details of the discovery, naming, orbits, and physical characteristics of hundreds of examples of known asteroids found by astronomers in the past two centuries. It also includes different groups and classes of asteroids. Those bodies that have been visited by spacecraft are singled out for extra attention, including close-up photos where available. About 200 asteroids have been found to have moons of their own, and the story of their …

This fictional autobiography of a bright, but introverted and slightly insecure Henry Lawson begins at a young age when he hears strange voices, which at first he does not recognize. He attributes one voice to Sable Shadow, a confidant of the devil, and the other to The Presence, possibly a representative of God. His life becomes a "sort of board game" for these powerful contestants. In high school, Henry is introduced to the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, and he begins to see life in existential terms, though this does not infringe on his rudimentary Christian beliefs. Upon Henry’s entry into …