Puan Rafeah pening kepala. Anak terunanya hanya Ikmal, tetapi calon menantunya ada dua orang. Cempaka dan Alisa. Satu pilihan hatinya dan satu lagi pilihan Ikmal. Istikharah sudah dibuat, pertandingan ala-ala masterchef juga sudah dirancang, namun masih belum nampak calon menantu yang sesuai untuk dipinang. Desakan Ikmal supaya memilih Alisa membuahkan simpati di jiwanya. Namun, pujukan Mak Su Endah agar dia segera meminang Cempaka menambahkan serabut di kepala. Takkan kedua-duanya sanggup bermadu! Bila Cempaka dan Alisa sedar mereka sedang diuji, masing-masing tersentak. Alisa yang menjadi pilihan kedua mula merajuk dan membawa diri. Cempaka pula tidak mahu dicop sebagai perigi mencari timba, mengambil keputusan menjauhkan diri. Ikmal buntu. Puan Rafeah, ibunya... Alisa pula kekasih hatinya. Jika dia memilih Alisa, banyak hati yang terluka. Tetapi, jika Cempaka jadi suri hidupnya... dia dan Alisa pasti merana. Argh, terasa sukar hidup ini! Hendak ditelan mati emak, hendak diluah mati ayah.

Mamas Voice is the product of a middle-aged Christian psychiatrist and mother who journals her life observations and experiences, hoping to pass on some life lessons to her children. What started off as random journaling of thoughts ended up being a published book released as a birthday present for her children. The book is written in a random manner with life lessons ranging from self-esteem, bad habits, addictions, snobbery, conflict, money, selfishness, greed, and codependent relationships through to family dramas. The author attempts to capture some important life lessons with a touch of humor and rawness that depicts the real-life dramas. Both pleasurable and painful life observations and experiences are unapologetically expressed with a rawness that does not coat it with sweet candy. Its about real life seen through the eyes of a mother going through a midlife crisis and questioning most things she had taken for granted. The messages are given as direct instructions to her children in second or third person voices and riddles. The messages are just as random as they entered the authors thoughts. This is a light read for both the middle aged and young, who are questioning a few things in their worldview. Like the philosopher in the book of Ecclesiastes, the author grapples with certain life issues until she finally realizes that she cannot fix the world and she gives up control. The forty-five-year-old author starts off by writing a letter to her thirteen-year-old self and ends the book with her modified version of the Ten Commandments and a futuristic letter to her eighty-five-year-old self.

For the Love of Mama is a candid and explicit look into the life of a young, confused woman through the eyes of her daughter who is trying to make sense of her life while trying to find her own way. Mama made many choices and suffered the consequences of these choices she made based on her immediate needs for a specific season in her life. The book shows how her decisions not only affected her, but how these decisions also affected her children who basically went through life, trying to find out who they were and where they belonged. The book shows how on one hand, her children grew up with a desire for the “proud look” they had witnessed from their youth and, on the other hand, the humbleness she always seemed to possess. They each tried to blend the two and ended up with an insatiable need to prove something to the world and to themselves that could not be satisfied. None of them knew who they really were. They just imitated people they saw and wanted to be like without stopping to count the cost. You will witness in For the Love of Mama how the seeds of God’s grace and mercy prevailed throughout Mama’s life. For the Love of Mama will touch your heart, and it is guaranteed to stir your emotions. You will agree that Mama was really something special and God truly had His hands on her all her life.

By the time Sylvia Richardson is eighteen, she has buried her parents; given birth to a daughter; and become a widow. It is 1942, and World War II has destroyed Sylvias dream of dancing in red heels through life to the melody of a Hank Snow record. Instead, she is raising her daughter, Sassy, alone in the coal mining town she vowed to leave behind. By 1955, thirteen-year-old Sassy has been brought up on a stiff dose of Mamas lessons on how to be a ladyeven though Mama drinks, smokes, and dates a myriad of men. But everything changes the day a woman accuses Sylvia of trying to steal her husband, forcing Sassy to come to terms with her Mamas harsh teen years. For Sylvia, only the support of kith and kin can rescue her from her mistakes. Spanning twenty years, Mamas Shoes is a haunting saga of love, despair, and forgiveness as a cadence of female voices weaves a spell of mountain lore and secrets, defines family as more than blood kin, and proves second chances can bring happiness. An absolutely wonderful novel, its setting a beautifully realized small Appalachian coal town, its characters so vivid theyre practically jumping off the page. Lee Smith, author of Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger and The Last Girls

THE TERM "REDNECK" ORIGINATED FROM THE RED SUNBURNED NECKS OF FARMERS THAT WORKED IN THE FIELDS. SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY IT WAS CHANGED TO DESIGNATE SCUMMY LOW-LIFE POOR WHITE TRASH. THEN ALONG ABOUT THE MID-SIXTIES IT MIRACULOUSLY TOOK ON A DIFFERENT TERMINOLOGY. THAT OF A CULTURED INTELLECTUAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ERUDITE. TO BE REFERRED TO AS A "REDNECK" WAS THEN TRULY A COMPLIMENT. 1967-MAMA'S PLACE, A SLEAZY BEER JOINT NEAR SMACKOVER, ARKANSAS WILL FOREVER HAVE THE FAME OF BEING THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE CULTURED ERUDITE "REDNECK". WARNING: If you are offended by crude, obscene, vulgar and downright sinful language. DO NOT read this book.

Mama Minko-A survival Quest is a fascinatingly written story that unveils the endless families' struggle to drink, feed but above all just survive. The Elephant and Giraffe families are faced with the same crisis ndash; drought, which has robbed the Okavungo country of its refreshingly quenching waters and the ever green vegetation. Despite this predicament, there is genuine love and humour shared within and amongst these families as they face harsh challenges along the way. There's frenzied conflict between the humans and the elephants as they both strive to survive. The parent animals take on the inherent roles to protect their families from the hostilities of the African savannah; for them each new dawn is a celebration of the survival of the fittest whereas for the young ones, it's a new adventure.

After Othella--the daughter of the town tramp in Shreveport, Louisiana--convinces her to give her baby away, 15-year-old Ruby Jean Upshaw runs away to New Orleans where nothing can erase the memories of the child she lost or quell her simmering rage at Othella for persuading her to let her baby go.

The inspiring, authorized biography of the woman who left a career in marketing to become the “Mother Teresa of Egypt.” Since 1997, Maggie Gobran and her organization Stephen’s Children have been changing lives in Cairo’s notorious zabala, or garbage slums. Her innovative, transformational work has garnered worldwide fame and multiple Nobel Prize nominations, but her full story has never been told—until now. Bestselling authors Martin Makary and Ellen Vaughn chronicle Mama Maggie’s surprising pilgrimage from privileged child to stylish businesswoman to college professor pondering God’s call to change. She answered that call by becoming the modest figure in white who daily navigates piles of stinking trash, bringing hope to the poorest of the poor. Smart and savvy, as tough as she is tender, Maggie Gobran is utterly surrendered to her mission to the “garbage people” who captured her heart. At her request, the book also spotlights the people she serves—the men, women, and children who prove every day what a little bit of help and a lot of love can do.

Mama's Last Hug opens with the moving farewell between Mama, a dying chimpanzee matriarch, and her human friend, a professor who inspired the author's work. Their parting, the video of which has been watched by millions online, is not only a window into the deep bonds they shared, but into the remarkable emotional capacities of animals. In this groundbreaking and entertaining book, primatologist Frans de Waal draws on his renowned studies of the social and emotional lives of chimpanzees, bonobos and other primates, and personal encounters with many other species, to illuminate new ideas and findings about animal emotions: joy, grief, shame, love, pain and happiness. Exploring the facial expressions of animals, human and animal politics, and animal consciousness, de Waal illustrates how profoundly we have underestimated animals' emotional experiences. He argues that emotions occupy a far more significant place in the way we organise our societies than a more rationalist approach would advocate. His radical proposal is that emotions are like organs: humans haven't a single organ that other animals don't have, and the same can be said of our emotions.

In writing these story's, I confess my older siblings inspired and convinced me the need for them to be told. The stories are centered, on the life of an extended family revealing the past as it was lived. Their past lives yet undocumented who became freedmen and formed an early base for progress towards a free society of blacks. This family spoke glowingly of their past. They surrendered themselves to the cause in World War One. They gained some resemblance of advancing freedom but more economic advancement in the Roaring twenties that followed. Progress was a struggle. World War Two brought a necessity for all people to be involved. We, Mama N 'Em's continued to struggle for progress, affected by economic conditions, the prejudices of our governing bodies, schooling opportunities or the lack there of, our race conscious leaders and ministers as well as those who opposed our progress. Here are stories of one family who endured those experiences. As the author I have attempted to relate as much of the life and times as possible and being the sixth child of a larger family the stories become more biological yet the lifetime of Mama N 'Em is kept.