LETRAS

NICOLE “NIC” MONROE IS IN A RUT. At twenty-four, she lives N alone in a dinky apartment in her hometown óf Mishawaka, Indiana; she's just gotten a DWI; and she's been working the | same dead-end job since high school, a job she has only because her, boss is a family friend and feels sorry for her. Everyone has felt sorry | for her for the last seven years—since the day her older sister, Kasey, M vanished without a trace. On the night Kasey went missing, her car was found over a hundred miles from home. The driver's door was open and her purse was untouched “in the seat next to it. The only real clue in her disappearance was Jules Connor, another young woman from the same area who disappeared in the same way, two weeks earlier. But with so little for the police to go on, both cases eventually went cold. Nic wants nothing more than to move on from her sister's disappearance and the state it's left her in. But then one day, Jules's sister, Jenna Connor, walks into Nic's life and offers her something she hasn't felt in a long time: hope. What follows is a gripping tale of two sisters who will . do anything to find their missing halves, even if it means destroying everything they've ever known.

It is 1940 and twenty-year-old Charlotte Richmond watches from her attic window as enemy planes fly over London. Still grieving her beloved brother, who never returned from France, she is trying to keep herself out of trouble: holding down a typist job at the Ministry of Information, sharing gin and confidences with her best friend, Elena, and dodging her overbearing father. On her way to work she often sees the boy who feeds the birds—a source of unexpected joy amid the rubble of the Blitz. But every day brings new scenes of devastation, and after yet another heartbreaking loss Charlotte has an uncanny sense of foreboding. Someone is stalking the darkness, targeting her friends. And now he’s following her. As grief and suspicion consume her, Charlotte’s nerves become increasingly frayed. She no longer knows whom to trust. She can’t even trust herself . . .

“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Franz Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction.

Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf. Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?

The Luminous Self shares teachings and practices that can help us connect with our true Self and reclaim our inherent power and wisdom—essential for living with purpose and grace in our turbulent world. In this book, Tracee Stanley shares teachings and practices in each chapter—including meditation, yoga nidra, breath work, dreaming rituals, community care practices, journaling, and more—that can help us remember and honor our deepest Self. The book is a journey of inner exploration for anyone who desires to know themselves more deeply. Chapters introduce different paths to personal discernment—including facing obstacles to liberation, forgiveness, the power of memory, transitions as portals to wisdom and devotion, and nature as a teacher—and include stories from Stanley’s life, teachings, and practice.