Optimism had been a mainstay since the post-World War II days. Few of us expected the economic slowdown would be more than a pause. "A SIMPLICITY REVOLUTION: FINDING HAPPINESS IN THE NEW REALITY" is a commentary on America's Boom and Bust decade and the "Corporatocracy," that caused it. What economists refer to as America's "New Normal," Author Sue Schell calls our "New Reality." She writes, "After millions of people lost their jobs and some ultimately their homes, we had heightened anxiety over the possibility that America's best days may be behind us? Would our American Dream survive for future generations? What was to become of the vanishing middle class? Anthropology Professor Dr. Robert Launay, of Northwestern University, penned the forward to the book. He writes, "The challenges we are facing are new, and so the solutions and values we forge to meet them must also be new. Here, Sue Schell has hit the nail on the head." A Simple life is not about frugality. It is about living an authentic life that lets you live the life that you dream of living. A life that is rooted not in the stuff you own, but in your relationships with family and friends. This may very well prove to be the silver lining we find in this Great Recession.

Happy Now?" follows Claire Kessler's chaotic and often tragicomic journey through the weeks that follow her husband Jay's suicide---on Valentine's Day. Nomie, Claire's pregnant younger sister, welcomes Claire into her guest house and abandons her own husband in solidarity. Claire's father turns into a concerned stalker, trailing her every movement in his car. Encounters with well-meaning therapists turn horribly awry, and Jay's abandoned cat goes on a hunger strike. All the while, Jay's extensive suicide note (binder, actually) looms on the coffee table, waiting for Claire to gather the courage to read it. With wit and compassion, Katherine Shonk explores both the possibilities and limitations of human relationships. "Happy Now?" is an uncommonly honest portrayal of love, loss, and letting go.

An unflappable heroine anchors Park's epic postKorean War love story (after Shakespeare's Sonnets). Having grown up in a privileged home in Daegu, Soo-Ja, a brilliant and ambitious 22-year-old woman, has dreams of being a diplomat in Seoul. After her father refuses to let her leave home, however, she sets out to find and marry a weak man who will allow her to make her own decisions. The first candidate is Min, a young revolutionary, who pursues her from afar, writing her letters from Seoul, one of which puts her on a path to meet a charismatic student leader, Yul. Although her feelings for Yul are strong, she marries Min and is immediately faced with the cold realities of his corrupt and hateful family and the realization that she isn't any closer to getting to Seoul. Her responsibilities and, soon, a daughter, keep her trapped in a loveless marriage as she longs for Yul, now a doctor, and a better life. But this is no quiet tale of yearning: the plot kicks in with an unexpected fierceness, and the ensuing actiona kidnapping, fist fights, blackmailmake for a dramatic, suck-you-in chronicle of a thrilling love affair.

As a young girl growing up in Spain, Ana Larragoity Cubillas is powerfully drawn to Puerto Rico by the diaries of an ancestor who traveled there with Ponce de Leon. And in handsome twin brothers Ramon and Inocente--both in love with Ana--she finds a way to get there. She marries Ramon, and in 1844, just eighteen, she travels across the ocean to a remote sugar plantation the brothers have inherited on the island. Ana faces unrelenting heat, disease and isolation, and the dangers of the untamed countryside even as she relishes the challenge of running Hacienda los Gemelos. But when the Civil War breaks out in the United States, Ana finds her livelihood, and perhaps even her life, threatened by the very people on whose backs her wealth has been built: the hacienda's slaves, whose richly drawn stories unfold alongside her own. And when at last Ana falls for a man who may be her destiny--a once-forbidden love--she will sacrifice nearly everything to keep hold of the land that has become her true home.