Laura Lynne Jackson is a wife, a mother, a high school English teacher—and a psychic medium. Where most believe an impenetrable wall divides the world between the living and the dead, Jackson sees brilliant cords of light. She has dedicated her life to exploring our connection to the Other Side, conversing with departed loved ones, and helping people come to terms with loss.

Stories of Your Life and Others presents characters who must confront sudden change-the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens-while striving to maintain some sense of normalcy. In the amazing and much-lauded title story (the basis for the 2016 movie Arrival), a grieving mother copes with divorce and the death of her daughter by drawing on her knowledge of alien languages and non-linear memory recollection.

In My Stroke of Insight, Taylor shares her unique perspective on the brain and its capacity for recovery, and the sense of omniscient understanding she gained from this unusual and inspiring voyage out of the abyss of a wounded brain. It would take eight years for Taylor to heal completely. Because of her knowledge of how the brain works, her respect for the cells composing her human form, and most of all an amazing mother, Taylor completely repaired her mind and recalibrated her understanding of the world.

When 24-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: At the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?

Once a trained athlete in peak condition, Joanne Moody suffered a postpregnancy injury that sidelined her for the next 14 years. Not one to give up easily, Moody fought to find an answer to her pain year after year. Countless doctors attempted to treat her until, finally, one recommended a surgeon in France. Joanne and her sisters made the trek only to stare death in the face again. At the moment of greatest pain, God reached down and gave her a promise.

After 30 years of a healthy, rewarding, and exciting life, I wake up in a hospital bed unable to move. The neurosurgeon leans down and breaks the news: You won't regain any function in your body and you will never walk again. My medical insurance sends me home, discontinues my care, and tells me to "adapt to my new life". Little Big Steps is the story of the pivotal moments, interactions, and breakthroughs following the injury that turned my life upside down.

When 18-year-old Becky Andrews is diagnosed with the degenerative eye condition retinitis pigmentosa, she finally understands her childhood challenges of softball strikeouts, notorious clumsiness, and why she's never been able to see the stars. As her vision narrows, she must give up driving and accept her need for a mobility cane. In the process, she learns to embrace her new identity as a blind woman, one step at a time.

A short, inspirational audiobook from Henry Fraser, a young quadriplegic motivational speaker and artist. Henry Fraser was a 17-year-old sports enthusiast and senior prefect when he broke his spinal cord and was left paralysed from the shoulders down. Life as he knew it was over, and yet, through extraordinary determination and a positive attitude, he has forged a successful career as an inspirational speaker and an artist.

The first thing you will notice when you meet Kechi Okwuchi is her scars. One of just two survivors of a devastating plane crash that killed more than 100 people, 16-year-old Kechi was left with third-degree burns over 65 percent of her body. More than My Scars is her incredible story. A story of not just surviving impossible odds but thriving in a world that is too often caught up with how we look on the outside rather than seeing that our true value is within. Now in her early 30s, Kechi has spent the last 16 years refusing to be defined by her trauma.

When Schuyler Rummel-Hudson was 18 months old, a question about her lack of speech by her pediatrician set in motion a journey that continues today. When she was diagnosed with bilateral perisylvian polymicrogyria (an extremely rare neurological disorder), her parents were given a name for the monster that had been stalking them from doctor to doctor, and from despair to hope, and back again.

In Shock is a riveting first-hand account from a young critical care physician, who in the passage of a moment is transfigured into a dying patient. This transposition, coincidentally timed at the end of her medical training, instantly lays bare the vast chasm between the conventional practice of medicine and the stark reality of the prostrate patient.

In 2015, Barbara Lipska - a leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illness - was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Within months, her frontal lobe, the seat of cognition, began shutting down. She descended into madness, exhibiting dementia- and schizophrenia-like symptoms that terrified her family and coworkers. But miraculously, the immunotherapy her doctors had prescribed worked quickly. Just eight weeks after her nightmare began, Lipska returned to normal. With one difference: she remembered her brush with madness with exquisite clarity.

In addition to presenting Sean Stephenson's unbelievable life story, Get Off Your "But," offers anyone who needs to conquer fears and insecurities a hands-on guide for overcoming the forces of negativity and self-sabotage. Sean - a successful psychotherapist - shows what it takes to overcome the big bumps in the road, eliminate excuses, end insecurities, and ultimately stand up for happiness and success in life.

One morning in late 2017, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni woke up with strangely blurred vision. He wondered at first if some goo or gunk had worked its way into his right eye. But this was no fleeting annoyance, no fixable inconvenience.

On June 10, 2008, Carol Decker walked through the hospital doors a healthy woman with flu-like symptoms and early labor contractions. Three months later, she returned home a blind triple-amputee struggling to bond with a daughter she would never see. Unshattered recounts Carol's fight for survival against sepsis and its life-shattering complications. From excruciating skin grafts to learning how to function in daily life without lower legs, a left hand, and her sight, Carol takes us on a personal and raw, yet inspiring journey.

On June 10, 2008, Carol Decker walked through the hospital doors a healthy woman with flu-like symptoms and early labor contractions. Three months later, she returned home a blind triple-amputee struggling to bond with a daughter she would never see. Unshattered recounts Carol's fight for survival against sepsis and its life-shattering complications. From excruciating skin grafts to learning how to function in daily life without lower legs, a left hand, and her sight, Carol takes us on a personal and raw, yet inspiring journey.

Thirty-four-year-old Rebecca Alexander is a psychotherapist, a spin instructor, a volunteer, and an athlete. She is also almost completely blind, with significantly deteriorated hearing. Not Fade Away is a deeply moving exploration of the obstacles we all face-physical, psychological, and philosophical. Rebecca's story is an exquisite reminder to live each day to its fullest.

When Amy B. Scher was struck with undiagnosed late-stage, chronic Lyme disease, the best physicians in America labeled her condition incurable and potentially terminal. Deteriorating rapidly, she went on a search to save her own life - from the top experts in Los Angeles and the world-renowned Mayo Clinic in Minneapolis to a state-of-the-art hospital in Chicago. After exhausting all of her options in the US, she discovered a possible cure - but it was highly experimental, available only in India, and had as much of a probability of killing her as it did of curing her.

Crushed between a truck and a tree, Simon and his wife were both pronounced dead at the scene of a horrific car accident. Enduring a broken skull, jaw, arms, clavicle and pelvis, followed by a coma, Simon lives to tell his remarkable journey from tragedy to triumph.

In 2015, Barbara Lipska - a leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illness - was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Within months, her frontal lobe, the seat of cognition, began shutting down. She descended into madness, exhibiting dementia- and schizophrenia-like symptoms that terrified her family and coworkers. But miraculously, the immunotherapy her doctors had prescribed worked quickly. Just eight weeks after her nightmare began, Lipska returned to normal. With one difference: she remembered her brush with madness with exquisite clarity.

Julia Fox Garrison refused to listen to the professionals she called Dr. Jerk and Dr. Panic, who - after she suffered a massive, debilitating stroke at age thirty-seven - told her she’d probably die, or to Nurse Doom, who ignored her emergency call button. Instead she heeded the advice of kind, gifted Dr. Neuro, who promised her he would “treat your mind as well as your body.” Julia figured if she could somehow manage to get herself into a wheelchair, at least she’d always find parking. But after many, many months of hospitalization and rehab, Julia not only got into a wheelchair, but she got back out.

When Schuyler Rummel-Hudson was 18 months old, a question about her lack of speech by her pediatrician set in motion a journey that continues today. When she was diagnosed with bilateral perisylvian polymicrogyria (an extremely rare neurological disorder), her parents were given a name for the monster that had been stalking them from doctor to doctor, and from despair to hope, and back again.

101 True Stories about how Positive Thinking can change your life! Everyone needs a little attitude adjustment once in a while, and these amazing true life stories reveal how real people used positive thinking to improve their lives and overcome challenges. You’ll read stories about how you can make every day a special day, incorporate gratitude and joy into your daily life, count your blessings and change your outlook, use a few well-chosen words to reorient your life, manage cancer and other health challenges through a positive attitude, simplify and have a more meaningful life and more!

At the age of two, Carly Fleischmann was diagnosed with severe autism and an oral motor condition that prevented her from speaking. Doctors predicted that she would never intellectually develop beyond the abilities of a small child. Although she made some progress after years of intensive behavioral and communication therapy, Carly remained largely unreachable. Then, at age 10, Carly had a breakthrough....

In 1999, Clark Elliott suffered a concussion when his car was rear-ended. Overnight his life changed from that of a rising professor with a research career in artificial intelligence to a humbled man struggling to get through a single day. At times he couldn't walk across a room, or even name his five children. Doctors told him he would never fully recover. After eight years, the cognitive demands of his job, and of being a single parent, finally became more than he could manage.

In The Anatomy of a Calling, Lissa Rankin, MD, makes a simple yet revolutionary claim: We are all, every single one of us, heroes. We are all on what Joseph Campbell calls "a hero's journey"; we are all on a mission to step into our true nature and fulfill the assignment our souls were sent to Earth to fulfill. Navigating the hero's journey, Dr. Rankin argues, is one of the cornerstones of living a meaningful, authentic, healthy life.

Already Here tells of the death of Leo Galland's son, Christopher, at age 22; the direct visual evidence Christopher showed Leo that our souls do go on; and the communications from Christopher's spirit that changed Leo's understanding of life and its meaning. In life, Christopher was a brain-damaged special-needs child who challenged everyone he knew with unpredictable behavior and uncanny insights. After his death, he revealed to Leo the real purpose of his life, as a spiritual guide who taught others by confounding their assumptions and expectations.

Nearly 26 years after receiving her first heart transplant, Amy Silverstein's donor heart plummeted into failure. If she wanted to live, she had to take on the grueling quest for a new heart - immediately. A shot at survival meant uprooting her life and moving across the country to California. When her friends heard of her plans, there was only one reaction: "I'm there." Nine remarkable women - Joy, Jill, Leja, Jody, Lauren, Robin, Valerie, Ann, and Jane - put demanding jobs and pressing family obligations on hold to fly across the country and be by Amy's side.

Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health-care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success.

David Menasche lived for his work as a high school English teacher. His passion inspired his students, and between lessons on Shakespeare and sentence structure, he forged a unique bond with his kids, buoying them through personal struggles while sharing valuable life lessons.