Books about Mom who from Amazon.com

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The amazing inside story about a gambling ring of M.I.T.students who beat the system in Vegas -- and lived to tell how.

Robin Hood meets the Rat Pack when the best and the brightest of M.I.T.'s math students and engineers take up blackjack under the guidance of an eccentric mastermind. Their small blackjack club develops from an experiment in counting cards on M.I.T.'s campus into a ring of card savants with a system for playing large and winning big. In less than two years they take some of the world's most sophisticated casinos for more than three million dollars. But their success also brings with it the formidable ire of casino owners and launches them into the seedy underworld of corporate Vegas with its private investigators and other violent heavies.

Filled with tense action, high stakes, and incredibly close calls, Bringing Down the House is a nail-biting read that chronicles a real-life Ocean's Eleven. It's one story that Vegas does not want you to read..
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Antichrist. The very word send shivers through us. And Nicolae Carpathia certainly does not disappoint as Antichrist Nicolae is the third book in Left Behind series written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, and is preceded by book one, Left Behind, and book two, Tribulation Force.

Nicolae Carpathia becomes the focus as he continues to consolidate his power, unifying political states ("Global Community"), media ("Global Community Network," "Global Weekly"), and religions ("Enigma Babylon One World Faith") under a Nicolae-appointed supreme pontiff. Nicolae himself is grand potentate of the global community.

Our heroes, pilot Rayford Steele and journalist Buck Williams, along with the rest of the Tribulation Force, continue their struggle to survive and protect their families in the midst of global war and destruction. They have come to recognize Nicolae Carpathia to be the Antichrist prophesied in the Bible, and to them it comes as no great revelation that this man, who presented himself as a charming and benevolent leader, has been unmasked as a ruthless and cruel tyrant, manipulating people and events to serve his own ends. And his ends are undoubtedly evil.

It becomes apparent that the chaos and turmoil created by Nicolae are the fulfillment of John's prophesy of the seven seals as recorded in the book of Revelation. And it becomes also apparent they are now facing the sixth seal, a great earthquake which is sometimes called "the wrath of the lamb." This upheaval of the earth, with its accompanying death and destruction, is familiar apocalyptic imagery: a blood-red moon, a sun turned black, and the stars falling from the sky. And the Tribulation Force discovers that these incredible descriptions turn out to be not so very far from the truth.

Who survives? How? What does Nicolae have in mind for the world? Readers of the first two books should not be disappointed with this third installment to this chilling tale..
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Trisha McFarland is a plucky 9-year-old hiking with her brother and mom, who is grimly determined to give the kids a good time on their weekends together. Trisha's mom is recently divorced, and her brother is feuding with her for moving from Boston to small-town Maine, where classmates razz him. Trisha steps off the trail for a pee and a respite from the bickering. And gets lost.

Trisha's odyssey succeeds on several levels. King renders her consciousness of increasing peril beautifully, from the "first minnowy flutter of disquiet" in her guts to her into-the-wild tumbles to her descent into hallucinations, the nicest being her beloved Red Sox baseball pitcher Tom Gordon, whose exploits she listens to on her Walkman. The nature writing is accurate, tense, and sometimes lyrical, from the maddening whine of the no-see-um mosquito to the profound obbligato of the "Subaudible" (Trisha's dad's term for nature's intimations of God). Our identification with Trisha deepens as we learn about her loved ones: Dad, a dreamboat whose beer habit could sink him; loving but stubborn Mom; Trisha's best pal, Pepsi Robichaud, vividly evoked by her colorful sayings ("Don't go all GIRLY on me, McFarland!"). The personal associations triggered by a full moon, the running monologue with which she stays sane--we who have been lost in woods will recognize these things.

In King's revealing Amazon.com interview, he said the one book he wishes he'd written was Lord of the Flies. When Trisha confronts a vision of buzzing horror in the middle of the woods, King creates his strongest echo yet of the central passage of Golding's novel. --Tim Appelo.
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If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova's long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian. The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor." When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century--was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also.

As well as numerous settings, both in and out of the East Bloc, Kostova has three basic story lines to keep straight--one from 1930, when Professor Bartolomew Rossi begins his dangerous research into Dracula, one from 1950, when Professor Rossi's student Paul takes up the scent, and the main narrative from 1972. The criss-crossing story lines mirror the political advances, retreats, triumphs, and losses that shaped Dracula's beleaguered homeland--sometimes with the Byzantines on top, sometimes the Ottomans, sometimes the rag-tag local tribes, or the Orthodox church, and sometimes a fresh conqueror like the Soviet Union.

Although the book is appropriately suspenseful and a delight to read--even the minor characters are distinctive and vividly seen--its most powerful moments are those that describe real horrors. Our narrator recalls that after reading descriptions of Vlad burning young boys or impaling "a large family," she tried to forget the words: "For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth." The reader, although given a satisfying ending, gets a strong enough dose of European history to temper the usual comforts of the closing words. --Regina Marler.
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Jesus Freaks by dc Talk and The Voice of the Martyrs, is a companion volume to dc Talk's album of the same name. It is a book for teenagers about martyrdom, containing dozens of profiles of figures ranging from Stephen, whose martyrdom is described in the Book of Acts, to "Anila and Perveen," two teenage Pakistani girls and Christian believers. In 1997, Perveen was killed for running away in order to avoid marrying a Muslim man; Anila was imprisoned for helping her friend escape. In an introduction to the book, Michael Tait explains its purpose: "In a world built on free will instead of God's will, we must be the Freaks. While we may not be called to martyr our lives, we must martyr our way of life. We must put our selfish ways to death and march to a different beat. Then the world will see Jesus." The book's design is hip and easy to read, and its summary of Christian persecutions that continue today is useful--and frightening..
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Sing your baby to sleep with . . . The Love Boat theme song? Children deserve better than that! With its hip approach, witty headnotes, and accompanying CD, Humpty Who? is the crash course for every new mom or dad who wants to give their child the simple pleasures of classic nursery rhymes . . . but can't remember what happens past the first line.

A what-to-read as well as a how-to-read, this collection of 80 judiciously selected, edited, and annotated rhymes, songs, and finger play features all the timeless characters and their stories—Jack and Jill, Georgie Porgie, Little Bo Peep, the Noble Duke of York, Contrary Mary, Wee Willie Winkie, the Three Blind Mice. But it's more than just Mother Goose. There are lullabies, rounds, and riddles. How to recite "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider," and make the hand-motions that have held children spellbound for generations. How to act out "I'm a Little Teapot," or really get a child rocking with "Banbury Cross." Plus, there are explanations for curious children (and grown-ups)—for example, what exactly a "tuffet" is, how to make "pease porridge," what else on the bus goes round and round—and suggestions for reciting the poetry of the greats (Shakespeare, Blake, Dickinson); tips on how to improvise; and the secret weapon of the yoga "Om."

The accompanying CD, featuring the rocking "Hell's Kitchen Moms and Babes Ensemble," is both great to play for baby, and the fun way for parents to learn the music that goes along with many of the rhymes..
Price: $5.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

For full-time moms, going back to work doesn't mean returning to your old job and easing back into the life you had before staying home to take care of the kids. Instead, it means reigniting old contacts (even those who were once your junior), marketing yourself, and getting over the intimidation that plagues most women who have been out of the workforce, whether it's been two, six, or fifteen years.
Carol Cohen and Vivian Rabin, who have successfully pulled it off themselves, know that it can be done--with careful planning, strategizing, and creativity. In BACK ON THE CAREER TRACK, they offer a seven-step program for going back to work. These steps are:
-Relaunch or not? You decide
-Learn confidence
-Assess your career options
-Update your professional and job search skills, and prepare for the interview
-Network, market yourself, and clinch the opportunity
-Channel family support
-Handle the job (or find another one)
Cohen and Rabin also offer advice on maintaining the balance between work and home, and navigating the inevitable sticky situations with family and friends that arise when you return to work. This is a comprehensive, inspiring guide that is sure to become the classic resource in this field.
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Raising children ranks as one of life’s most rewarding adventures. Yet between Mom and Dad working full-time jobs, endless carpooling of overscheduled youngsters, and the never-ending pressures to buy and consume, family life can be incredibly—needlessly—complex. What if you could find a way to spend more time with your children, replace unnecessary activities with meaningful ones, and teach your children an invaluable life lesson in the process? Living Simply with Children offers a realistic blueprint for zeroing in on the pleasures of family life:

• How (and why) to live simply and find more time to be with your children
• Activities and rituals that bring out the best in every family member
• Realistic ways to reclaim your children from corporate America
• Helping children of any age deal with peer pressure
• Raising kids who care about people and the planet
• How to focus on the “good stuff” . . . with less stuff

Including sections on limiting television, environmentally friendly practices, celebrating the holidays, and tapping into the growing community of families who embrace simplicity, this inspiring guide will show you how to raise children according to your own values—and not those of the consumer culture—as you enjoy both quality and quantity time with your family..
Price: $4.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]