This is the true story of an American physician's tragic Thanksgiving in Managua, Nicaragua searching for his son Benjamin who was abducted by the U.S. embassy in Nicaragua. Dr. Mangold endured multiple assaults and robberies during his search and eventually ended up in an Immigration detention center while the embassy flew in his ex-wife to pick up Ben. Michael Mangold M.D. and Ben were pawns in a cosmic chess game between U.S. government officials and Mike's Nemesis. All he had was a handful of Cordobas and the truth against an unlimited amount of money and power. It is the ""Story of Job"" without an overcompensating God, and ""The Odyssey"" without the love and support of an awaiting Penelope. It is a true tale of good and evil and how the evil that people do has consequences for eternity."

What would YOU do if your spouse used the police and courts to abuse you? What would YOU do if your child was abducted in a foreign country? How would YOU survive in a foreign country without access to money or the support of family and friends? Worst Thanksgiving Ever Trilogy starts with Mythomania: A Psychodrama which describes what it is like to live in a Miniature Sick Society and how that sickness pervades our own society. My Worst Thanksgiving Ever is the story of Dr. Mangold's tragic Thanksgiving in Managua searching for his son Ben who was abducted by the U.S. embassy. Mangold endured multiple muggings during his search and was eventually imprisoned in an Immigration detention center while the embassy flew in his wife to pick up Ben. Desperately Seeking Cereal is the sequel to ""Thanksgiving."" Alone, broke, and abandoned by family and friends, this true story relates how Michael Mangold MD survived being homeless in Nicaragua by using his wits and at times doing the ""unthinkable."

Rebecca Crawford had always viewed herself as strong and in-dependent. She never would have imagined that shed find her-self trapped in an abusive situation. In The Walk Home from a Broken Road, Crawford shares details from her five-year relationship with her abusive boyfriend, Blake. In this memoir, she narrates her storyfrom the time she met Blake while working at a pizza restaurant when she was seventeen years old, to the day she found the courage to leave the relationship, and to the present, where she has found the fortitude to heal, to learn, and to grow. Crawford tells how, slowly and deliberately, Blake cut her off from her friends, family, school, and activities in order to control her every movement and how that control escalated to a torrent of abuse. The Walk Home from a Broken Road provides a firsthand account of an emotionally dysfunctional relationship. It shares Crawfords intensely personal feelings that give great insight into the mindset of a woman trapped in an abusive situation. But more than that, it provides hope for others who face similar circumstances.

Learn and laugh with these women of the church, bound together by a deep commitment to ministry. Over fifty clergywomen representing fourteen denominations explore their holy—and unflinchingly human—moments as they juggle the sometimes isolating expectations from their congregations and the shared realities, graces and humor of everyday life.

This is the inspiring true story of a girl that despite hardships with abuse, her mother's death, her father's alcoholism, and many other trials she overcame the odds as many as they were. Who didn't know what love was... Until Jesus Christ came into her life like a shining beacon overshadowing all the pain she'd faced in life. With God ALL things are possible!

How can we lead sane lives in a world gone mad? How do we create a sane world when we are sick ourselves? Dr. Mangold interweaves politics, medicine, and psychology in a real-life account of how he was broken by forces fueled by fear and lies. This heart-felt and transparent account takes us on a personal journey into a world that is flying upside and on the verge of crashing soon. This true story recounts the struggles Dr. Mangold faced not only from an uncaring and unforgiving government but also from a wife whose own psycho-pathologies prevented her from performing the two tasks he needed so desperately during those struggles: love and support. It is more than an account of persecution and victimization. It is a story of falling and discovering that the rescue rope had been severed by those entrusted to throw it in the first place.

In late 2003, five Military Intelligence Soldiers were tasked to track the radical firebrand Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. These Army Reservists followed his moves through the streets and back alleys of Kufa and Najaf, they reported the activities of and the growing influence of his 'Mahdi Army' as they slowly but deliberately encroached on the local governments for control of the prized Imam Ali shrine, and the millions of dollars worth of gold and currency that laid therein. Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez personally followed the progress of this small group of Soldiers, looking for clues of Sadr's intentions and how it would affect the Coalition and the rest of Iraq. For the next six months, debates raged from the Green Zone to the corridors of the Pentagon, and even to the Oval Office of the White House: what should be done with Muqtada al-Sadr? Now for the first time, the ground truth is revealed about how America let Iraq's most dangerous man raise an army, fight the Coalition-twice-and then slip through their fingers to escape to Iran, where he is being groomed to become Iraq's next Ayatollah and awaits the time to return and claim Iraq for Iran.

This is a humorous rendition of a typical American familys adventures (or mis-adventures) through the rigors of immigration and development from the East to the West coast of the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Alone, broke, and abandoned by family and friends, this true story relates how Michael Mangold MD survived being homeless in Nicaragua by using his wits and at times doing the ""unthinkable." With help from unexpected sources like a Roman Catholic priest in Estelí and Mormon missionaries in León, Desperately Seeking Cereal also describes how those who are entrusted to serve the needy and desperate often do so at a cost. If at all. The book is a sequel to My Worst Thanksgiving Ever and the fourth in Dr. Mangold's "Bridges" series. It is a tale of ugliness and beauty, of evil and good, and how all are to be found in the least expected sources.

*A LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER* *A FINALIST FOR THE 2017 THURBER PRIZE FOR AMERICAN HUMOR* Ken Pisani's sharp and hilarious debut novel AMP'D tells the story of a man who returns to his boyhood home after his arm is amputated, forcing the most awkward of family reunions as he struggles to feel whole again and falls in love with a voice on the radio. "Hilarious and heart-breaking.” —Jenny Lawson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Furiously Happy “Complete with painfully wry observations and delightfully caustic wit, this novel is a gritty exploration of what it's like to feel incomplete in the world. All five fingers up for this bitterly satisfying tale.” —Kirkus Reviews(starred) Aaron is not a man on a hero's journey. In the question of fight or flight, he'll choose flight every time. So when a car accident leaves him suddenly asymmetrical, his left arm amputated, looking on the bright side just isn't something he's equipped to do. Forced to return to his boyhood home to recuperate, Aaron is confronted with an aging father (a former Olympic biathlete turned hoarder), a mother who's chosen to live in a yurt with a fireman twelve years her junior, and a well-meaning sister whose insufferable husband proves love isn't just blind, but also painfully stupid. As Aaron tries to make the world around him disappear in a haze of Vicodin and medical marijuana, the only true joy in his life comes from daily ninety-second radio spots of fun science facts: the speed of falling raindrops, batteries made out of starfish, and sexual responses triggered by ringtones - all told in the lush, disembodied voice of commentator Sunny Lee, with whom he falls helplessly, ridiculously, in love. Aaron's obsession with Sunny only hastens his downward spiral, like pouring accelerant on a fire. Pressured to do something - anything - to move his life forward, he takes the only job he can get. As a "fish counter" at the nearby dam, where he concludes that an act of violent sacrifice to liberate the river might be his best, final option.