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  What It Takes to Save a Life - A...

  Kwane Stewart

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  From Dr. Kwane Stewart, CNN's Hero of the Year for 2023. 
  Mountains Beyond Mountains meets Tattoos On the Heart in this unforgettable, powerful, and stunningly-told memoir of a struggling veterinarian saving animals and humans on the streets of California - and how he discovered what bonds all living creatures.  
  Dr. Kwane Stewart was questioning his career as a veterinarian when he saw a homeless man with a flea-infested dog outside of a convenience store. In a moment of spontaneous generosity, he offered to examine the dog and treat him for free. It was the first step in a now nine-year journey that has taken Dr. Kwane from Skid Row to San Francisco and beyond to care for pets and their humans who are living on the streets. 
  In What It Takes to Save a Life, Dr. Kwane shows how our four-legged, feathered, scaled, and swimming family members—these dogs, cats, birds, reptiles, and other animals that live side by side with us—provide more than companionship. They offer essential love, hope, and a sense of security. 
  Written with striking honesty and rich detail, Dr. Kwane looks back on his childhood, how he discovered his appreciation for animals and his calling, and offers a frank assessment of the state of veterinary medicine today, where compassion fatigue, burnout, and suicide are facts of life. Full of warm and inspiring stories of human-animal relationships, this powerful and eye-opening book is a reminder that we are all members of a wider family. It is also a clarion call for each of us to help those in need—especially our most vulnerable brothers and sisters—and the animals who are their families. Wise and warm, Dr. Stewart's story is a reminder that one life can make an immeasurable difference.

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  When Winter Came - A Country...

  Mary Beth Sartor Obermeyer

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  Mary Beth Sartor Obermeyer grew up listening to her grandfather, Dr. Pierre Sartor, describing his remarkable life, including his collaboration with Mayo Clinic, which spanned several decades. 
   
  Long after Dr. Sartor died, Beth found a handwritten memoir of his experiences caring for patients during the influenza pandemic of 1918 nestled among other family documents in a lockbox. 
   
  Thus began the journey. Beth used her skills as a journalist to discover how Dr. Sartor saved lives amid a global crisis … how he won the love of his patients throughout his career … and how he earned the respect of his colleagues, who named him Iowa’s General Practitioner of the Year. 
   
  Beth tells the story of her grandfather—a compassionate, skilled physician who does the best of things in the worst of times—with warmth and wisdom. 
   
  Medicine has changed greatly since her grandfather practiced on the Midwestern prairie, but however winter may come to each of our lives, we all want a doctor like Pierre Sartor.

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  The Saturday Night Sauvignon...

  Gill Sims

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  It’s time for a w(h)ine 
  “God, she’s funny” – Jilly Cooper 
  ‘Oh, for f*ck’s sake’ muttered Claire under her breath, as she opened the fridge to see what she could find for a no effort dinner. The children continued to fight behind her. They regarded any form of fish not encased in breadcrumbs as toxic, and were resistant enough to the delicious homemade fishfingers Claire had made for them, insisting they much preferred Captain Birdseye’s version. White wine was starting to look like quite an appealing dinner actually.  Maybe just a small glass. 
  ‘Are you having wine, Mum?  You know you’re not supposed to have wine every night.  We did about alcohol units at school.  That’s quite a big glass of wine, how many units do you think are in it?’ 
  ’Bet the bastards didn’t tell you that wine is remarkably good at cancelling out whining though, did they?’ muttered Claire. 
  Claire’s family has gone nuclear. Her precious moppets keep calling Childline when she feeds them broccoli, she’s utterly Ottolenghied out at weekends, and her darling husband is having an affair with her best friend. 
  The question isn’t whether she needs a glass of wine, but is there one big enough? 
  Enter the Sauvignon Sisterhood, a new set of friends brought together by a shared love of liquid therapy. Together they might just be able to convince Claire that, like a good bottle of red, life really can get better with age. Or at least there’s more to it than the joy of an M&S non-iron school uniform. 
  Claire's humorous and biographical journey through divorce and the trials of marriage, as told by Sunday Times bestselling author Gill Sims, is a testament to the power of friendship and the resilience of relationships. The Sauvignon Sisterhood, a group bound by their shared love for liquid therapy, proves that life, like a good bottle of red, can indeed get better with age. 
  For fans of Sophie Kinsella (What Does it Feel Like?), Freya Kennedy (The Hopes and Dreams of Libby Quinn), Kristen Bailey (Textbook Romance), Alexandra Potter (More Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up), and Jane Fallon (Getting Rid of Matthew). 
  HarperCollins 2022

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  Island Boy - Valentia Skellig...

  Des Lavelle

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  'There were twenty-five hours in my day then ... any job or challenge that the ocean or the harbour might offer was an option. I undertook them all.'
  Des Lavelle was born on Valentia Island in County Kerry in 1934, surrounded by the wild Atlantic waters. Known to the world for his passion for the nearby Skellig Islands, Des has led a fascinating and varied life, but his heart forever draws him back to Valentia. His wide-ranging memoir takes us on an extraordinary journey from an idyllic childhood on Valentia, through a short-lived 'permanent, pensionable job' with the Western Union Telegraph Company to a rich and fascinating life where the sea always offered opportunities.
  When the movie Ryan's Daughter needed marine advice in 1968, they came to Des. In 1974 a North Sea oil rig sought him out to help with a giant safety net, and a few years later his special skills came to the fore once more as Telecom Éireann laid their cables under the waves. From sea-faring on his beloved 32ft Béal Bocht to pioneering deep-sea diving, running a ferry, campaigning for his beloved island outpost, crewing with the Valentia lifeboat and travelling to far-flung places, Des Lavelle shares his ups and downs on his road to becoming a renowned author and expert on the historical and wildlife riches of Kerry's intriguing Skellig Islands.
  Island Boy is the compelling story of a man born and raised in Valentia and of a unique life that he continues to live to the full.

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  Black Heart Fades Blue - Volume Two

  Jerry A. Lang

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  If you're looking for the events that inspired the lyrics to all my songs? Those stories are in this book. If you're looking for what I did when I was younger? That's in here. What changed me, made me stop hating and hurting? It's all here. This is my story and I'm sticking to it. That's the one thing I have, the truth. 
   
   
   
  Volume two of Black Heart Fades Blue, a three-part memoir by the founder and frontman for one of punk rock's most notorious acts, Poison Idea 
   
   
   
  In 1980, Jerry A. formed Poison Idea, a Portland-based punk band that gave voice to disaffected and disenfranchised youth for over thirty years. As happened to so many punk bands, Jerry A. and Poison Idea also went all in on drugs and drinking as they toured the country, spiraling out of control and blowing both the band and their lives apart. 
   
   
   
  Black Heart Fades Blue is not an apology or a nostalgic catalog of events, but a true reckoning with one's past and present. A memoir of a time and a place and a movement, as well as a deep conversation about the memories and moments we leave behind, Black Heart Fades Blue is a deep exploration of an unconventional life.

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  Himalayan Dreams: The Story of...

  Kirsty Nancarrow

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  Discover the life of Som Tamang, a true hero of the Himalayas, and be inspired by his incredible journey of triumph against all odds. Penned by award-winning former ABC journalist Kirsty Nancarrow, Som's life is a testament to the incredible strength of the human spirit, and the enduring power of hope and a singular purpose - to protect girls in Nepal from trafficking and child marriage. Overcoming extreme poverty, child slavery, a tiger attack, a critical head injury, and civil war, Som Tamang's tenacity led him to Australia. Through hard work and a touch of serendipity, he carved out a brighter future for generations to come. 
  'No matter where you're from you have to have a dream...Som was a young man that wanted to go somewhere. Not to run away but he wanted his own adventure, his own life and ambitions...He did what he said he was going to do.' - Jason Clarke, Australian Actor, Everest 
  'You can feel his spirit immediately. He is someone who has gone through a very difficult life but out of tremendous compassion and benevolence for other people, especially for children that suffer similar fates as him, to avoid that he developed this huge courage and strength to change something in the world.' - Julius Dreyer, Founder of Happiness.com 
  'Gripping and uplifting' - Dr Kerstin Pilz, Author

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