Don't Take Care, Take Risks

Having lost the love of my life and feeling my world had ended, I asked God, “Lord, is this all you have for my life?” and two weeks later, Canon Andrew White, the vicar of Baghdad, asked me to ring. I didn’t know him but I rang and he asked me if I had heard of Saddam Hussein and explained that the judge who sentenced him to death, minster of justice for Iraq, Mr Raouf was coming to Spires Hospital Southampton for an operation and God told him I was to host him and his family. I thought it was windup, but I was to find out it was true…and this began a journey and friendships that are still ongoing ten years later. Read the story and find out what happened.

Drawn to the Light

Drawn to the Light is a captivating memoir that chronicles the life of an empathic child born into a loving and psychic family. From the author’s birth, readers will follow her journey of discovering spirituality and finding her place in the spiritual world.

This book is a collection of powerful experiences, ranging from psychic and spiritual to the everyday moments that shape us into who we are. Through sharing her story, the author hopes to inspire others who are also on their spiritual path.

While the author’s spiritual journey began in earnest when she joined a Spiritual Development and Meditation Group in 2001, her growth has continued to flourish in the years since then. In this book, readers will find inspiration and guidance for their own spiritual journey.

With quotes from spiritual luminaries like Neale Donald Walsh and Natasha Hoffman, Drawn to the Light offers a unique perspective on the difference between religion and spirituality, and how finding one’s own spiritual truth can unite us all. This memoir is a must-read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of their own spiritual path.

F*cking Up Adulthood

I didn’t ask for this. There’s no consent form for adulthood, you just get thrown in the deep end. One minute I’m jerking off my way through high school, the next I’m spending £5 on cheddar cheese. If you’re fed up with adulthood and its merry band of shite like me, let’s fight back against the conventions we so dearly hate. Join me on my runaway mission as I moan my way through the themes of young adulthood. Longing to be back on his feet, escaping the country to recover from what broke him. All the while dissecting the political and social landscape the world enters.

Flying Used to Be Fun

Civil aviation has changed out of all recognition over the period during which the author was involved. In many ways it is now far safer than it used to be. In the early sixties, majority of flights were conducted in piston engine aircrafts and many were tail draggers i.e. you would have entered at the back of the aircraft and then struggled uphill towards your own seat. Turbine power soon took over and planes not only became faster but could climb higher, which usually produced a smoother flight.

By the mid-sixties, jets were being introduced. They were even faster and flew still higher, once more increasing passenger comfort as more of the rougher weather was left below. Along with this, airfields were being expanded to cope with ever-increasing passenger numbers. For many years the government had no money to pay for updating navigational aids including safe landing systems. Appropriate radar coverage for air traffic controllers was hindered by lack of funds. Aircraft manufacturers improved the reliability of the aircraft they produced and engines were also being developed with far greater power to increase safety standards for both airfield performance and speed during the cruise.

This is the story of a life lived across many different eras of aviation.

Frank

Have you ever thought about the life you have lived? The person you have become and what you had to go through to get there? Well, Jarra Freehart has and it wasn’t all good. I can tell you that. Horrific might be a good description. Attempting to destroy yourself is one thing. But equally effective is destroying other people’s trust and confidence in you along the way. Fancy having to admit something like that. Self-awareness can be very elusive. Jarra had his hands on it several times. But it always slipped away. The only thing he’d ever really achieved was not dying along the way. He came close a few times. He had to write this book. While there was still time. He had to empty his head before he could develop any further and maybe become a better person. Although he would never consider himself a bad person. Just lost in a world that no one else was allowed into. His own private world. Visitors were not welcome at all. Not ever.

Jarra Freehart didn’t find this laborious task easy, you know. It was hard work. That’s for sure. But he’s so glad he eventually did it. Because now, his new life could begin. But that’s another story.

Freaks Like Me

Georgie was just a typical teenager when it happened; she was studying hard for a place at her dream university and having fun with her friends on weekends. She always knew what was coming next. She had her entire life planned, until one night and one event turned her whole world upside down. In an instant, everything had changed, and it was never to be the same again.

“Freaks Like Me” is a touching memoir about invisible illness, mental health and the prejudice that sadly comes alongside it. It’s the true story of how one girl and her loved ones finally learnt to accept the hand they had been dealt…

From a Little Neighbourhood

Nothing could be any better in the world, apart from a self-discovery of fulfilling his dream, just a young man from a little neighbourhood finally living his dream. Focus directed on embarking on the way of life past all adversity and truly finding where you belong in the world. Further sharing information to the world that would not only entertain them but also aspire them to a greater life experience and enjoy it.

From Where I Stand

When two or more people find sufficient in common to call themselves ‘us’, they will strengthen their togetherness by looking for a ‘them’ to dislike.

Indarjit’s law

It’s fashionable to talk of ‘hate crime’ as if a small minority of people are infected with a virus of hate against those they see as different. It is not like that. Prejudice and fear of difference affects us all. 

I learnt about my Sikh religion almost as an outsider looking in to find surprising teachings on justice, compassion and a need to stand up for others.

Discrimination in employment in the ’60s, normal and lawful at the time, led to my turning down a well-paid job to go to India, where writing under the pen name of Victor Pendry, I became a local hero to the Sikh community suffering majority persecution. This standing up to injustice through writing, speaking and importantly, humour, is the story of this book.

You cannot choose your battlefield

 God does that for you

 But you can plant a standard

Where  a standard never flew.

Nathalia Crane

Gardens of Deprivation

The first four decades of my life were spent in a small country that was nested in a hostile and unstable old region, Israel. I strongly felt, enjoyed, and participated in, the revival of that country and experienced the uneasy reintegration of the returning descendants of Abraham, Issac and Jacob from the four corners of the world. I have felt the pain of the less happy residents of that reviving country. In particular, I have felt the hardship of the Mizrachi Israelis – the Jewish returnees and refugees from Arab countries.

I have wished to live in a world that is not divided by religion, ethnicity and skin colour. As there is no such world, I embraced the second best – the remote, sparsely populated southern continent that has provided a home to convicts and refugees from the old world. I arrived in that continent, Australia, at almost forty years of age with an already developed strong sensitivity to ethnic-based social injustices.

My tales from my land of origin and from my land of choice record interwoven personal and national memoirs of ethnically based inequalities and injustices. I wrote those tales with a hope that they will make a contribution to the moderation of the intensity of such social problems. The colour of my tales is brown – the typical colour of the skin of the Mizrachi Israelis and the colour of many members of the minority ethnic groups that live in Australia.

Gathering Moss

An atmospheric, mainly biographical story set in the 1930s-1950s, of a British Naval Officer's determination to foil the enemy's wartime dive bombing of our fleet. Hundreds of lives were saved by his suggested adaptation of the big, anti-aircraft barrage balloons which were flown above cities and other land based targets, to be specially tailored for the defence of shipping as well.

Combined with this moving story is a colourful account of family life at that time, and it was not very long after the ending of the Second World War that Commander "Basher" Boorman began to find himself involved in certain minor skirmishes on his own home front.

Commander's daughters do not always obey orders, even if their father has the appropriate rank, and this teenager certainly had a mind of her own. Determined to pursue a career not approved by her father, Basher's daughter found herself to be out-manoeuvred. But battles sometimes resolve themselves in unexpected ways, as was eventually the way with this particular one.

'Gathering Moss' is a fast moving, evocative story which covers a variety of events, backgrounds, and human emotions.

God's Childminder

In this book, Jean Barbour Clark gives us a glimpse of the many challenges she faced when caring for children in churches from the late 1950s until 1995. The churches tended to be in disadvantaged areas and Jean shares with us the many struggles she encountered and also the tremendous personal rewards. This is a refreshing account of one woman’s desire to give children memories to treasure – golden moments that they will be able to look back on with great affection and warmth.

You will shed the odd tear when you read this engaging memoir. But don’t be surprised if you also find yourself laughing out loud as you empathise with the author’s many struggles to keep abreast of the ever-changing children’s culture.

The book is written in such a way that each story can stand on its own, the reader will find it difficult to put it down.

Hello Troj

Hello Troj is a book that took over three decades to experience and 12 years to write. It is a book about growing up as a young female arts protégé during the last decade of Communism in Eastern Europe, in a society shaped by a rapidly disintegrating censorship apparatus struggling to sustain itself, in the world of the so-called “Intelligencia” governed by middle-aged white men, many of them prone to predatory behavior and accustomed to getting their own way. It is a deeply personal and unapologetic coming-of-age story that circles around the suicide of a younger brother and trying to figure oneself out in the context of dystopia and chaos.

But this is also a book about growing up in a family of heroes and madmen, all of them insanely creative but never recognized as anything but average, invisible, “just regular folks”. There is nothing “regular” or “average” about them.