Books in the Life series

The Lifestyle-integrated Functional Exercise (LiFE) program is a way of reducing the risk of falls by integrating balance and strength activities into regular daily tasks.

Life is precious, unique, and amazing. But . . . what is it? Young readers can explore what it means to be alive, and all the essentials that living things need, in this beautiful and interesting series. Look at what plants and animals need to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow in these informative and engaging titles.

Foreward Reviews' INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award Gold Winner for Travel. Winner 1st place for best travel memoir at the 2014 North American Book Awards. Also winner of the silver Solas Awards for Best Travel Story of the Year 2014.From licking a Monet in Paris, to pushing an abusive macho honeymooner off his sailboat in the shark-infested Galápagos, to saving her toddler son from a charging bull elephant in Africa, these delightful tales will inspire readers to follow the call of a wild life and leave home with their doors unlocked."When you're hitchhiking about in foreign lands, whether in France, Morocco, or perhaps New Zealand, it helps-as California-girl Lisa Alpine discovered-to be "young, blond, persistent, and female." And to get along, once you've reached an approximate destination in hardscrabble exotica, you should be friendly, fearless, and sometimes counter intuitively trusting. There is daring, humor, and even a bit of Eros in the fourteen stories that span her life from the innocence of eighteen, when she was struck with wanderlust, into middle age. "I am a woman who wanders and wonders and writes," she explains. And what wandering there's been, beginning in Paris, where she tasted art by licking a Monet. In Vienna, she asked an old woman, who turned out to be a survivor of Auschwitz, where she might find cheap lodging and ended up as the woman's house guest. She met the chauffeur of Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones in Switzerland and was offered a job babysitting Richards's two children, but after witnessing a temper tantrum by Richards's live-in girlfriend, declined and took a job as a bartender, offering free drinks in order to get her slave-driving boss, who held her passport as ransom, to fire her. She had the sort of inevitable adventure that tests us all, coping with her mother's dementia before her death on Mother's Day, 2011. In a bittersweet way, it was probably her most admirable adventure of all." - Foreword Reviews'"Lisa's love of travel and her fierce determination to push all boundaries, takes the reader with her on a thoughtful, fun and fearless journey. Lisa opens herself and the reader to the world and explores with courage, the physical world around her and the philosophical world within." - Maureen Wheeler, founder Lonely Planet"I never tire of talking to Lisa Alpine about her exploits, adventures, and fascinating life. She has carved a path that is an inspiration to any free-spirited, or secretly free-spirited, woman." - Constance Hale, author of "Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch" and "Sin and Syntax""Lisa Alpine's winning title tells much about her personal timeline, and the bestiary of good, bad, ugly or rare characters encountered in these sometimes breathless pages." - David Downie, author of Paris to the Pyrenees"Lisa's stories are not only packed with the humor and adventure that comes from being a solo woman traveler, but also filled with compassion that cuts to the core of what travel is all about-a deep connection to a people and place found when we shed our protective armor and remember we are all human." - Kimberley Lovato, author of "Walnut Wine and Truffle Groves"

The existential graphic novel about Prague's thirty-something who's just been dumped by his longtime girlfriend. Is it a blessing or a curse? Drawn in a highly expressive but highly detailed style that fits the closed protagonist, for whom beer and soccer are essential life anchors. The story about loneliness disguised under a tough macho shell.

A horror detective story about two sisters, whose world is created from the surreal visions of Vojt¿ch Mašek, one of the most acclaimed Czech comics authors. When one of the Dietl sisters ends up in hospital after what appears to be a brutal attack, leaving her with a mutilated face and unable to move, Mašek leads the reader on a detective story exploring change of identity, doppelgängers, deformation, hallucination and altered states of mind in contrast with idyllic family life. This comics takes place in a fictional world woven from dreams, hazy and distorted memories of childhood fears, fear of the unknown and the desire for a safe hiding place. Reality constantly disrupted by doubts, changing points of view, the neurotic need to find objective truth. All this is contained in the story about the Dietl sisters ¿ many theories, many possibilities but seemingly with only one solution. Mašek employs a unique multilayered art style, combining backgrounds created from various texts, newspaper cuttings and patterns with the main plot taking place in the foreground. The connections and juxtapositions between these two levels brilliantly evoking the main themes of the book.

The story of the Mašín brothers and their band waging guerilla war against the Communist regime in the early 1950s could be the most dramatic Czech tale of the 20th century. After their activities in Czechoslovakia, these five young men headed west ¿ facing off against twenty thousand East German Volkspolizei and shooting their way to freedom. In the novel So Far, So Good, Jan Novák wrote the story like a thrilling Czech Western and won the Magnesia Litera prize for Best Book of the Year. Now he and the artist Jaromír 99 have created a dramatic and visually arresting graphic novel in Jaromír 99¿s unique and specific style of noir. After the runaway success in Czechia of their previous collaboration, Zátopek, the authors return with an even more explosive comic book.