Breast Cancer Smiles

On a cold day in February, 2018, Shazia goes from a tennis court in the morning to a hospital in the afternoon where she is diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. As her journey unfolds, humour becomes her crutch, writing becomes her tool and a powerful connection to her South Asian roots becomes her purpose.

This isn’t a tale of cancer and the devastation it undoubtedly brings. It’s the story of a life-altering journey enriched by time. Shazia tells a tale of re-birth swathed in love, humour and pain. She unveils the shame of breast cancer in her birth culture that is killing women before their time. In her birthplace, Pakistan, cancer is casually known as ‘the kiss of death’.

For Shazia, it is quite the opposite. This is life through a different lens and a questioning of the status quo. Her musings provoke debate and challenge existing beliefs, holding up a different mirror to society. These chronicles are written during 18 months of chemotherapy, sepsis, surgery and radiotherapy. They are written with hope and an intermittent smile.

Brett Polar

Brett Polar is an intoxicating rollercoaster ride that will leave you as much elated as devastated. It is engaging, empowering, educational and ultimately gives hope to people living with bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses.

Brett’s story involves a mental health sojourn that spans twenty years from 2000 to 2020. Prepare to ride alongside him as he goes through the bipolar motions of extreme highs, devastating lows and all the semi-stable moments in between.

His story is proof that if a diagnosis is accepted and the right support embraced, then an individual living with mental illness can not only survive but thrive!

Jump on in to find out more.

Bridge for Beginners

Bridge is a wonderful game. It is interesting, challenging and frustrating all at the same time. It keeps your brain active and alert and it gives you an opportunity to create new and lasting friendships with like-minded people.

“It is rare to find a bridge book that combines simplicity with comprehensive cover of all the basic rules of bridge, and yet this book does exactly that. George builds a solid foundation for the beginner by going through the bidding sequences step by step in a logical and orderly fashion and then presenting examples to show how those steps actually work. I can highly recommend this for those who want to learn the basics. It is also ideal for those who have played and now want to rekindle and update their skills. The book will also work nicely as a manual for teachers who teach beginners.”

— Marty Bergen

Broken Roads Lead Me Here

Broken Roads Lead Me Here tells the true-life story of a boy born into unimaginable abuse in Glasgow in the sixties. By the age of eight, Colin had been abandoned by his mother and continued to be sexually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually traumatised by the man she left him with. Blunted by severe trauma, Colin went through one unimaginable nightmare after another, each more traumatising and soul shattering than the last, with no one to tell and no way to understand why. He wondered as he drifted through life, what was to really become of him? Or his half-sisters? All the while, deep down, sensing that one day it could be his last.

At fifteen, he was thrown out of school, and at sixteen he was sent to prison. Colin survived rejection, abandonment, homelessness, gang wars, addiction, mental illness, overdoses, suicide attempts, and abusive adult relationships. But it always seemed as if he was living on borrowed time…

Even as he started writing his memoir, Colin had suffered a stroke, and near his recovery’s conclusion was then diagnosed with what was initially suspected as pancreatic cancer. While Colin’s diagnosis was eventually re-assessed as not immediately life threatening, it did leave him with a series of conditions which would continue to limit the quality of his day-to-day life. His illnesses and his experience of this instead of instilling a sense of profound hopelessness surprisingly led him to a profound sense of inner peace, clarity, and re-awakened purpose through his renewed faith in the real presence, love, forgiveness, and grace of God. His is a miraculous story of faith and redemption.

Colin Mackell is a husband, father, and grandfather. In his professional life as Psychotherapist, he has helped people who struggle to overcome drug and alcohol addiction, and helps them find new meaning, and explore new life paths. He is also the founder of Chrysalis Supported Association & Group CEO of Chrysalis Group Services, providing homes and support to some of life’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged people.

Budapest: A History of Grandeur and Catastrophe

Budapest today is a palimpsest of its history and partially crystallized present. Its earlier history is best seen on the Castle Hill of Buda, the seat of Hungarian royal power since the beginning in the 13th Century. This peaked in the glory years of King Matthias' reign in the second half of the 15th Century, when Buda was one of the largest and wealthiest cities of Europe. The Ottoman conquest that followed a generation later was a catastrophe whose effect would last two centuries. However when the new Castle Hill of Buda arose, it became a version of Baroque central Europe, controlled by Imperial Vienna. Pest, on the opposite banks of the Danube, is a symbol of the grandeur of the late 19th Century metropolis. Elaborate, historicist buildings and monuments first inhabited by the members of the rising bourgeoisie that had achieved prosperity in the booming Budapest around the year 1900. This era still largely defines the visual appearance of the central city. Nearly half a century later Fascism, and then forty years of Communism, again produced economic dislocation and social tumult in the lives of the people. This is best shown through descriptions of the fate of individual families in Budapest. Since 1990 the metropolis and its people have gone through a frenzied transition for which there was no template: authoritarian socialist economy to volatile capitalism and democracy. The story of the key players and groups in this transition make this tumultuous process particularly vivid. Today Budapest is a city whose role in Europe is still being crystallized. However, inventive entrepreneurs and creative artists are making the city a more and more vibrant home for its citizens and a favoured destination for a rapidly increasing flow of visitors.

Bugnificent!

Mini-Beasts are amazing; we need them to survive,

without their important roles, the world would not thrive.

They pollinate, provide food, they also decompose,

controlling pests, engineering soil, with oh so many pros.

They can be found under logs, rocks and bark,

some are diurnal and some come out after dark.

We must protect these creatures, not just the pretty ones,

all mini-beasts are needed, so treat them like your chums.

Please look after our bugs; I know I sound direct,

but all creatures have a job to do, so treat them with respect!

Building Resilient Futures

Whether a community struggling to keep its members buoyant, a business trying to stay solvent, or a nation fighting to protect its citizens, adversity and crisis impact us all. The resilient are able to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and not only bounce back but also bounce forward.

This book looks at what resilience means at times of crises as well as the in-between periods. It examines the various types of resilience, such as emotional, organisational and societal, and offers valuable insights on how to manage the consequences of upheaval and trauma.

The author brings together contributors to deliver a real mix of theory, case-study evidence and anecdote in a way that is both approachable and thought provoking. It is a timely and necessary addition to a crucial topic. Very simply, professionals, practitioners, students, government ministers, and business leaders should read this now. It might be a safer, better world if people read the book and acted on it.  

Bullying and Mobbing in Schools and Workplaces

Considering the fact that bullying and mobbing in schools and workplaces has become a worldwide problem where tens of million people are getting hurt, many of them marked for life and even lose their lives mainly because most societies from across the world failed to protect its people, the present book is a great eye-opener on this very important matter. The uniqueness of this book lies in the author’s attempt to make a very accurate X-ray of the degrading world society, from which bullying, cyberbullying and mobbing spring. We believe that the democracy of today’s societies has moved too far away from the ethical and moral values that underlie a healthy society and this is the cause of all iniquities. That is why, in almost all countries, issues such as bullying, cyberbullying, and mobbing are only symptomatically addressed. However, let us not lose hope because there are also a couple of countries that have impressive results because they approach issues very effectively from an ethical and moral point of view. All of this is described in the contents of this book.

Burnout and the Mobilisation of Energy

Burnout and the Mobilisation of Energy is a radical new book. Its main objective is to help working individuals or organisations to get out of burnout and keep out of it. Further, it helps them to activate or mobilise energy.

If you are burnt out or on the slippery slope to burnout, this book will transform you. If your organisation is blocked in terms of energy, this book can transform your organisation.

It is based on research, theory and practice. It clearly describes what burnout is and what it is not. It is not depression, stress, depersonalisation or anxiety. It is, however, based on a key symptom: an extreme form of energy depletion.

Two concepts explain the core findings: a Gestalt concept called an ‘introject’, and another that Carl Jung called ‘enantiodromia’. These elaborate terms help us identify what burnout is, what causes it and how to get out of it.

The book also focuses on mobilisation of energy in the organisation. Using a psychological framework, it illustrates what happens when organisations get psychologically mixed up. This leads to a feeling of spinning wheels and crossed wires.

Burst Your Bubble

When your dreams become bigger than the ability to achieve them,

When your heart, body, and soul, feel numb,

When you are lost in the darkness, suffering, failure, and regret,

When you feel like the world for you is in huge debt,

Burst the bubble that has you imprisoned,

Seek me out in the book, and every answer will be given,

I will help you see the truth that lies beneath the mask that we wear,

Choose this book, and you shall see what you had lost in despair.

Butterflies in My Soup

With most of her friends married, Sylvia at 23 can find no good reason for turning down her boyfriend’s proposal of marriage. In her heart, though, she knows that she longs to be free to see more of the world before settling down to what she feels would be a humdrum life of a domestic city in the early 1960s. Having been dissuaded from accepting a teaching job in the USA, she continues her quest for an overseas posting until one day, she finds exactly what she's been looking for. A boarding school in Lushoto, a township in the Usambara Mountains, Tanganyika (Tanzania) needs a teacher.

With scant information about her destination, other than that African violets grow wild in the Usambara, Sylvia flies off to East Africa leaving her anxious family and a fiancé whose determination to wait for two years for her will be severely tested.

Nothing could prepare Sylvia for the amazing life that she was to lead, with experiences, friendships, and challenges that she could never have imagined, and with memories that she would cherish and try to recapture on a return visit many years later.

Café de Flore

Addressing the escalating global issue of mental health and suicide, Café de Flore is a serious book that provides inspiration and relief to those caught in the net of despair. Identifying the critical error made by mankind over the centuries. Café de Flore points towards an escape from the madness of the human condition.

An easily digestible form of philosophy, written with graceful authority, the book takes the reader on a journey that captures the sublime messages contained in the wreck of literature, poetry and prose.

Dostoevsky once said: “It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.” What more does it take?

Encouraging the world to stop thinking, to entertain a degree of madness, to live with passion and to laugh more. This book provides a fresh perspective on the perceived struggles and difficulties we find ourselves trapped in, in this sad and lonely world.