"When I first discovered the grainy picture in my mother’s desk—me as a towheaded two year old sitting in what I remember was a salmon-orange-stained lifeboat—I was overwhelmed by the feeling that the boy in the boat was not waving and laughing at the person snapping the photo as much as he was frantically trying to get the attention of the man I am today. The boy was beckoning me to join him on a voyage through the harrowing straits of memory."

Unwilling to return to the darkness of her former life, Sherry Gore attacks her faith head on. Soon the life she remakes for herself and her children as she seeks to follow the teachings of the Bible features head coverings, simple dress, and a focus on Jesus Christ. Only then does she realize, in a fit of excitement, that there are others like her. They are called Amish and Mennonite, and she realizes she has found her people.

When The World in Flames begins in 1970, Jerry Walker is six years old. His consciousness revolves around being a member of a church whose beliefs he finds not only confusing but terrifying. The substantial membership is ruled by fear, intimidation, and threats. Anyone who dares leave the church will endure hardship for the remainder of this life and eternal suffering in the next. The next life, according to Armstrong, will arrive in 1975, three years after the start of the "Great Tribulation". Jerry will be 11 years old.

It is the spring of 2002, and a perfect storm has hit Boston. Across the city's archdiocese, trusted priests have been accused of the worst possible betrayal of the souls in their care. In Faith, Jennifer Haigh explores the fallout for one devout family, the McGanns. Estranged for years from her difficult and demanding relatives, Sheila McGann has remained close to her older brother, Art, the popular, dynamic pastor of a large suburban parish. When Art finds himself at the center of the maelstrom, Sheila returns to Boston, ready to fight for him and his reputation.

When Kelly Corrigan was in high school, her mother neatly summarized the family dynamic as "Your father’s the glitter but I’m the glue." This meant nothing to Kelly, who left childhood sure that her mom - with her inviolable commandments and proud stoicism - would be nothing more than background chatter for the rest of Kelly’s life, which she was carefully orienting toward adventure. After college, armed with a backpack, her personal mission statement, and a wad of traveler’s checks, she took off for Australia to see things and do things and Become Interesting.

Mary Morrissey is living the life of her dreams. She has a loving husband, Tom, two daughters, and twin boys. But beneath the shiny veneer, Mary hasn’t taken a calm breath in 10 years. She lives in a constant state of panic, afraid the secret she’s kept hidden for so long will be revealed, shattering her perfect life. When addictively charismatic ex-boyfriend Landon James reappears during his high-profile Senate campaign, Mary’s fears become even more real.

Nearly everyone thinks their own family is “nutty" or at least has one or two nuts. With stories of wacky yet lovable relatives, funny foibles, and holiday meltdowns, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Family Matters is often hilarious and occasionally poignant.

Shortlisted for the British Book Awards, Biography of the Year, 2007.
Is it possible for humans to discover the key to happiness through a larger than life, bad-boy dog? Just ask the Grogans....John and Jenny were just beginning their life together. They were young and in love, with a perfect little house and not a care in the world. Then they brought home Marley, a wiggly yellow fur ball of a puppy. Life would never be the same.

Over 20 years ago, in a small Israeli town, a desperate mother told a remarkable lie. She told her friends and family that her newborn child had died. That lie became the catalyst for the unfolding truth of the adoption of that same baby - Michael - who is, in fact, very much alive and now 22 years-old. He also has Down syndrome. When Kathryn Hulings adopted Michael as an infant, she could not have known that he would save her life when she became gravely ill and was left forever physically compromised.

In the summer of 1928, sixteen-year-old Minka was looking forward to a sewing class picnic. This would be a rare chance to put aside farm chores, don a pretty dress, and enjoy an outing with other girls. It would be a day to remember. And it was - but not in the way Minka had dreamed. Cornered by a stranger in the woods, the young girl was assaulted. Minka still believed that the stork brought babies; she would not discover for months that she was pregnant.

If you're lucky, somewhere in your past is that one person who changed your life forever. The one who pushed you to dream bigger and to reach higher, and who set you straight on what matters in life. Perhaps it was a coach, or a professor, or a family friend. For Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky, that person was a public-school music teacher, Jerry Kupchynsky, known as Mr. K - a Ukrainian-born taskmaster who yelled and stomped and screamed, and who drove his students harder than anyone had ever driven them.

Dr. Julie Walker wakes on a summer morning in San Francisco to find a city in chaos. Today Californians are voting on a controversial ballot initiative that will change history. With the future of the state and the nation uncertain, the streets have erupted into violence. Injured, Julie must make her way across the city by foot to the Veterans Administration Hospital, where her sister, recently returned from Afghanistan, is in labor. At the hospital a brutal scene is unfolding as a man who shares an intimate past with Julie begins to take his revenge.

Dating and courtship, romance, love, and marriage are favorite Chicken Soup topics. Women, and even men, love to listen to true stories about how it happened for other people. This audiobook includes the 101 best stories on love and marriage chosen from a wide variety of past Chicken Soup books. These heartwarming stories will inspire and amuse listeners, whether they are just starting to date, are newly wed, or are veterans of a long marriage.

Married when she was barely 19, Betty Auchard went straight from her parents' home to her husband's bed. She raised four children, returned to college, taught art in the public school system, and became a grandmother, a published artist, a retiree, and then a widow. When she lost her husband of almost 49 years to cancer, widowhood forced Betty to find out what she could do on her own. She had a lot to learn, having never been single before.

The Fisher family of Alluvia, New York, is coming undone. Evelyn spends her days tending to her husband, Henry - an acclaimed and reclusive novelist slowly losing his battle with Alzheimer's. Their son, Benji, onetime star of an '80s sitcom called Prodigy, sinks deeper into drunken obscurity, railing against the bit roles he's forced to take in uncelebrated regional theater.