Rain's Amazing Dentist works at Western Heights Dental Office. This amazing new children's book, is dedicated to the entire staff of Western Heights Dental Clinic. I thank you Western Heights Dental for my amazing smile, over the years. And special thanks to everyone, at Western Heights Dental for my beautiful teeth. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rains-Favorite-Dentist/1626647000915556

Cyn. Cyn, where have you bin? I’ve been trying to call you all day. Expect you’re in bed with Kevin the Red, Where the skies are not cloudy all day. Life is happy for 40-year-old poetry buff and senior librarian Colin Quirke, happily married to Cynthia for thirteen years with two great kids. Not so for Cynthia. Cyn is bored. This all changes when a new, younger couple moves in next door. Eddie and ditsy blonde Avril’s motto is ‘Life is for living!’. Wild parties with loud music are soon followed by girls’ nights out, and life will never be the same on the De Lacey Street cul-de-sac. In the meantime, Eddie is killed in a tragic micro-light plane accident. Cyn consoles Avril by taking her to Miami. Next thing you know, she’s met up with some red-haired American guy called Kevin Ranker (aka 'the home-wrecker'). Is divorce on the cards for Cyn and Colin? Consolations, at least. Still, there’s always the lovely Alison at the Poetry Society. Or the new assistant librarian at work, she could be interesting… It Always Rains on Sundays is a laugh-out-loud new novel from BBC prize-winner Roger Johnson. Full of intelligent humour, it is an entertaining read for fans of funny and original fiction.

Sigrid Carter's life story is worthy of becoming a movie. This was true before she even turned thirty. As an adventurous girl in her twenties, she and two girlfriends from Germany hitchhiked from Colorado to the Pacific coast of Mexico, where the trio took a canoe into the ocean, got lost, and found themselves surrounded by sharks just as bad weather set in. Somehow, they survived. The tide carried them to the shores of Peru, where they spent time living with Indians in the Amazon and working for biologists researching the rainforests, one of whom later became Carter's husband. A Peruvian filmmaker did, in fact, turn the ordeal into a television movie, but Carter professes not to know the title or release date. She has no time for such thingsshe's too busy continuing to live a life most of us can only imagine. It was her adventurous spirit that led Carter to set up her agency, Envoy Travel, in 1971 in Lubbock, Texas, where her husband has established himself as an associate dean at Texas Tech University. Lest you think married life and operating a thirty-six-year-old business has tamed her, Carter kayaks every morning, and a few days after we spoke, she was on her way to a polar bear expedition in Churchill, Canada. "Whatever you do in life is a big commitment, so it needs to be fun," says Carter, who's been to all seven continents. "I love this business. There is nothing more fun in life than talking about destinations." And Carter has a lot of stories to tellso much so that she landed the cover of Travel Agent in 1992 and in 1995 self-published a book, Travel Like a Millionaire Without Being One, which is being updated for a second printing. Her zest for life is infectious. She personally runs select small group trips, leading people on a pilgrimage to Santiago, Spain, and taking others to the Arctic Circle to stay with Eskimos. Many of the local operators she uses have been discovered and vetted through her own travels. "Wherever I go, I make friends," Carter says, who also works with such suppliers as Abercrombie & Kent, Butterfield & Robinson, and Clipper Adventures. "I went to India, and my goal was to experience yoga with the best teacher there. I checked the prices, and it was $850 a night! I thought, 'I'm not going to spend that kind of money.'" She left for India and, on the way, met a yoga teacher who invited her to dinner. "It turned out that the family is the number-one yoga family in Indiaeven the Clintons have studied with them," Carter shares. "They live very, very basic, but the simplicity of their lifestyle is something that we all can learn from."

When I first realised that a "miracle herb" had prevented my asthma attacks and stopped me wheezing, somewhat miraculously, during the first few months of my battle against lung disease in my early forties, I started to study herbal medicines in the University of Life. Thus far, I haven't had an asthma attack or wheezed for 17 years.

Winner of 2018 National Book Award in Translated Literature Library Journal Best Books of 2018 Yoko Tawada’s new novel is a breathtakingly light-hearted meditation on mortality and fully displays what Rivka Galchen has called her “brilliant, shimmering, magnificent strangeness” Japan, after suffering from a massive irreparable disaster, cuts itself off from the world. Children are so weak they can barely stand or walk: the only people with any get-go are the elderly. Mumei lives with his grandfather Yoshiro, who worries about him constantly. They carry on a day-to-day routine in what could be viewed as a post-Fukushima time, with all the children born ancient—frail and gray-haired, yet incredibly compassionate and wise. Mumei may be enfeebled and feverish, but he is a beacon of hope, full of wit and free of self-pity and pessimism. Yoshiro concentrates on nourishing Mumei, a strangely wonderful boy who offers “the beauty of the time that is yet to come.” A delightful, irrepressibly funny book, The Emissary is filled with light. Yoko Tawada, deftly turning inside-out “the curse,” defies gravity and creates a playful joyous novel out of a dystopian one, with a legerdemain uniquely her own.

A look at what both our successes and failures in preaching can tell us about how to craft better sermons. Paul Wilson has long been one of the most important figures among those who seek a richer and more complete understanding of what preaching is, and how it might be made better. In this new book he draws on his broad and deep work in homiletics to show preachers how to craft a variety of types of sermons. How do you preach from the Old Testament? What are the particular needs and challenges of preaching the Good Friday, and then the Easter, sermon? What do you do when you want to address contemporary events? Recognizing that all sermons are in some ways "broken words," he includes in each chapter an illustrative sermon, some of which work well, yet others of which don't. If you stand in the pulpit long, he reminds us, you're going to preach your share of both. You would do well to learn, then, how either kind of sermon--the ones you're proud of and the ones you want to forget--can provide ample opportunities to learn how to be a more effective and faithful preacher of the gospel. Readers will learn how to vary the sources, styles, and substance of their sermons. Key Benefits: Will empower the reader to move outside their comfort zone in preaching, thus engaging the broader possibilities for preaching; Will help the reader to learn how to assess both their strong and weak sermons, and learn from each.