For the Pet Lover:

CAT DADDY by Jackson Galaxy

In this book, star of Animal Planet’s “My Cat from Hell” traces his journey from down-and-out rock musician with multiple addictions to animal shelter worker to gifted cat trainer. Along the way, he charts his trials with the original cat from hell, Benny, a supposedly “unbondable” cat bearing physical and emotional wounds as raw as Galaxy’s own.

Purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indiebound

EVERY DOG HAS A GIFT by Rachel McPherson

In this book, founder and executive director of The Good Dog Foundation, Rachel McPherson tells stories of how dogs touch our lives in countless ways, chronicling the quietly heroic deeds of a variety of canines—from service and therapy dogs to the lovable household dogs that bring us happiness every day.

Purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indiebound

For the Creative Mom:

ARTIST’S WAY by Julia Cameron

The Artist’s Way is used by people from all walks of life. The simple yet profound program for creative renewal laid out in this book is used by everyone from screenwriters, directors, and novelists to salesmen, business executives and CEOs. In addition, the material is taught in thousands of workshops and spiritual centers around the globe, and has inspired scores of famous artists, including Alicia Keys, Patricia Cornwell and Eva Longoria (to name a few).

Purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indiebound.

DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN by Betty Edwards

Today, The Artist’s Way is used by people from all walks of life. The simple yet profound program for creative renewal laid out in this book is used by everyone from screenwriters, directors, and novelists to salesmen, business executives and CEOs. In addition, the material is taught in thousands of workshops and spiritual centers around the globe, and has inspired scores of famous artists, including Alicia Keys, Patricia Cornwell and Eva Longoria (to name a few).

Purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indiebound

For the Health-Conscious Mom:

MAIN STREET VEGAN by Victoria Moran

In this book, author Victoria Moran explains the surprising reason she made the transition despite numerous setbacks—and why others can too, no matter how small the budget, or the town. In short: while it is a major change, becoming a vegan isn’t nearly as hard as it seems.

Purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indiebound

ENERGY MEDICINE FOR WOMEN by Donna Eden

ENERGY MEDICINE FOR WOMEN is a follow-up to the popular guide Energy Medicine and is specifically tailored to the special needs of women and addresses fertility, menopause, heart disease, breast cancer, and many other health issues faced by women.  With step-by-step instructions, ENERGY MEDICINE FOR WOMEN explains how the techniques of energy medicine can be used to heal and help prevent many problems women face today.

Purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indiebound

FALLING IN LOVE WITH JOSEPH SMITH by Jane Barnes – Storyteller or visionary, fraud or messenger of God – this book describes one woman’s quest to untangle America’s homegrown prophet. Though many writers have explored Mormonism, Barnes describes a more personal journey into religious obsession. The result, Falling In Love with Joseph Smith, is a book that anyone with a spiritual bone will relate to.

MISS JANE AUSTEN’S GUIDE TO MODERN LIFE’S DILEMMAS by Rebecca Smith is the ideal gift for the Jane Austen fanatic in your life. In this sly and funny book, novelist Rebecca Smith—who also happens to be Jane Austen’s great, great, great, great, great niece—draws on Austen’s novels to glean answers to some of our most burning questions about life, love, and what to wear.

REAL WOLFMEN: True Encounters in Modern America by Linda S. Godfrey is written for skeptics and believers alike, collecting and analyzing eyewitness accounts of so-called “manwolf” sightings across the United States. It traverses the fringes of American folklore, and shines an unwavering light on the questions gnawing at every reader: Who are these wolfmen? Where did they come from? What do they want from us?

GROSS AMERICA by Richard Faulk is a coast-to-coast catalog of the most grandly gross science experiments, beautifully bizarre art, and delightfully disgusting historical sites that America has to offer. Part travel atlas, part trivia guide, it presents these United States as you’ve never seen them before—weird, wonderful, and totally, utterly gross.

INSPIRED AND UNSTOPPABLE by Tama Kieves offers proof that the path to career success isn’t always linear. Stressing that nothing great ever happens overnight, it rejects the typical, simple, ‘8 Easy Steps’ formulas that populate so many career guides, and offers inspiration and guidance framed through Kieves’ own journey to empowerment, including ways that readers can combat the fears, doubts and bogeymen that will plague them along the way.

Read the Q&A below to learn more about the cat in your life. Click here to read an excerpt from the book, or here to watch the video trailer!

What were a few of the more surprising things you learned while working in an animal shelter?

The amount of commitment and genuine love that a staff can bring to every animal they come in contact with, regardless of the thousands they see every year. And the poop. I was constantly surprised by the incredible amount of poop I cleaned up every day!

At one point, you say that Benny took an immediate dislike to your girlfriend of the time and walloped her across the head. Have you found that cats have an innate sense about people?

Hell yes! If your cat doesn’t like someone, take it seriously and move on. Forget about them not liking the person; they can truly sense when someone is “off.” Heed their advice!

How does one train a cat? Can all cats be trained to walk on a leash?

The principles of operant conditioning like positive reinforcement apply to all sentient beings. These training techniques have worked on birds, chickens, gophers, dolphins, killer whales and yes, 3 year old children. Most cats can be taught most anything. The question is, should they? If your cat is afraid of the outside, shows no interest, why do it other than to satisfy you? I believe that all trainable activities should only be considered if they will enrich the already present inclinations of your cat. I don’t believe in training cats to jump through hoops, ride a bicycle or pee on a toilet. Clearly I would not subject a cat to walking on a leash that just didn’t want to.

What’s easier – dealing with out-of-control cats or their owners?

Dealing with cats, because they lack the ability to reason away; defend themselves; to fight to the end for a belief system, for no other reason than to keep their ego intact.

Available for purchase at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound.

“The day he died—actually, while I waited for the vet to come into that room and euthanize him—I told him exactly what his story would be; I’d write a book about how we cohealed, how we refused to let each other live broken ever after. And contained in that story would be practical advice: methodology and techniques specifically born from our time together. Maudlin as it may seem, I was committed to his living on. His level of difference allowed me to see the mind and body of a cat like I never had before. All cats—all animals, for that matter—took me to the water of understanding. Benny held me under until I drank. And now that I’ve come up to gulp some air, I want to tell you what I’ve learned.”

Read the rest of the introduction to CAT DADDY on Jackson Galaxy’s website.

CAT DADDY goes on sale on Thursday, May 10.

You can preorder the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indiebound!

• 1.5 oz tequila
• .5 oz triple sec
• 1.5 ginger ale
• 1 oz pomegranate juice

Combine in a large glass with ice. Enjoy!

Purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indiebound.

Let’s talk about what I call the Five Fitness Groups- vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, and nuts and seeds- and which foods within each group are the best value. In the vegetable group, greens provide the most nutritional bang for your buck. It’s good to eat a variety of these, but you can compare prices at the market and see when Swiss chard is a good buy and when spinach is better. Don’t skimp here, though: these greens are your lifeline. In terms of other veggies, carrots, turnips, yams, potatoes, cabbage, and onions are almost always cheap, and all produce costs less when it’s in season.

Fruit is a good buy in the summer, especially if it’s at its peak of ripeness and just went to the quick sale table. In winter, I always get persimmons, my totally favorite fruit, on the quick sale. Many stores don’t realize that persimmons aren’t edible till they’re so soft that many people think they’re rotten. Mangoes are also best when they’re very ripe, a stage that says “gotta move those” to produce managers, so you can often get perfect ones for a song.

Apples and citrus are reasonably priced when they’re in season, especially if you buy them in bags. (Bagged apples are less perfect, but we’re over perfections, right?) Bananas are never expensive, and when they’re about to go, you can peel and freeze them for smoothies. berries, arguably the most nutritious of all fruits, can be pricy. I was over the moon when I discovered that Wyman’s frozen, organic, wild blueberries- a super antioxidant food- cost less than non-organic fresh blueberries.

Legumes warm the frugal heart. Canned beans don’t cost much, and the ones in the bags are dirt cheap. When you think of how much you’ll get after you’ve soaked and cooked them, red beans, kidney beans, navy beans, black beans, split peas, lentils, and the like are almost free.

Whole grains, flours, and pasta are bargains, too. The refined ones are cheaper still, but they don’t give you much for your money besides calories and some questionable “enrichment” with a few synthetic vitamins. brown rice, barley, millet, cracked wheat, and oats are really inexpensive, especially when you purchase them in bulk.

Nuts and seeds are more costly, but you’ll only be eating a couple of ounces a day, and buying from the bulk bins can save you a bundle. Sunflower seeds are usually the cheapest, and they’re really versatile, making appetizing seed pates and some of the tastiest sprouts around. When purchasing walnuts, raw cashes, and some other nuts, you can buy pieces, as opposed to whole, shelled nuts, to save a third or more on the cost.

Where vegan eating can get expensive is in the tempting array of packaged stuff. But remember- we stay healthier with less processed food, even plant-based processed foods. Tell yourself you’re skipping them for your health if it’s too depressing to think that you’re bypassing them for budgetary reasons. Obviously, you’re going to buy a few things in packages- tofu, tomato sauce, pasta, crackers- but it’s amazing how well you can eat from earth to table.  And some prepared and prepackaged foods, although pricier than the grains, beans, and veggies you prepare yourself, are still affordable. Stick with these if you’re on a budget. Most of us weren’t buying caviar and Kobe beef before, and we don’t have to go for the vegan equivalent now.

IT’S OK NOT TO SHARE by Heather Shumaker endeavors to challenge all the old adages in the parenting rulebook. It encourages parents to discard everything they thought they knew about parenting in favor of a set of new, ‘renegade’ rules that focus on what a child really needs.

Not everyone may agree with Shumaker’s philosophies,  but either way, IT’S OK NOT TO SHARE is guaranteed to make you at least question why we raise our children the way we do and why the old system might need an overhaul.

Get an exclusive look at one of these renegade rules in the full chapter excerpt here!

Preorder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indiebound.

Daniel Pink, author of the New York Times bestseller A Whole New Mind, called it “A wonderful book.”

Now for the first time in over a decade, Edwards has fully revised and updated her landmark guide.

DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN: The Definitive Fourth Edition (Tarcher/Penguin, $32.95/hardcover, $19.95/paperback, $32.95 hardcover) helps readers deepen their artistic ability by channeling the power of right-brain perception. This all-new edition includes crucial updates based on current research on brain plasticity and the significance of right-brain learning. There are also new exercises that help your perception “cross over” from the dominant left brain mode to right. The new edition has a new focus on how exercising the right brain hemisphere can help balance out the left brain emphasis in American life. It also contains new information on how employing right-brain drawing skills can improve and broaden your everyday problem-solving skills.

Click here to read the first chapter of DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN: The Definitive Fourth Edition , or purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indiebound.

Get another sneak peek at the book by clicking here for an excerpt!

Book trailer created by Lewis Film (www.lewisfilm.com)

Preorder now and Tarcher/Penguin will donate $1.00 for every copy to the cause of helping homeless cats! To make your preorder count, simply e-mail your receipt (or a photo/scan of your receipt) to: CatDaddyBook@gmail.com.

Preorder: Barnes & Noble | IndieBound (to order from an independent bookseller) |  Amazon  | Books-a-Million

Charities that benefit: Best Friends Animal Society, Stray Cat Alliance, and Neighborhood Cats.

Jackson and Benny…

In honor of World Book Day, Tarcherites wrote a few words about a book that served as a major inspiration or learning tool for them in their lives. Read what they had to say below!

Joel, Publisher — Illusions by Richard Bach – I read this book as a teenager and it inspired me to see religion, faith and the world in a completely different way.

Mitch, Editor-in-Chief — The books that have most influenced me recently are the works of Vernon Howard. He produced the most penetrating and straight-forward works of spiritual psychology of this generation. Don’t be put off by their sensationalistic titles, Howard’s books explore the most complex problems of human nature with extraordinary clarity. Check out “The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power,” “Secrets for Higher Success,” and “The Power of Your Supermind.”

Kevin, Marketing Manager  — One of my life mantras is a line in Steel Magnolias—“If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me.” Lots of people have written travel books about their great times abroad, but Martha Gellhorn’s Travels with Myself and Another is about all her misadventures. Possibly America’s most important war correspondent, Gellhorn writes about four wonderfully nightmarish journeys to the Caribbean, Kenya, Russia and China—with and without her husband Ernest Hemingway. The New York Times said “There’s not a boring word in her humane and often funny book”—and they were right. I’m hoping the upcoming HBO movie “Hemingway and Gellhorn” (with Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen) is half as fun.

Lauren, Publicity Assistant – In college, I spent a semester studying abroad in Prague. The city, its people, and overwhelmingly beautiful, anachronistic charm left such an impression on me I continually find myself returning to its writers and visionaries for perspective on my life, to this day. Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being is one such work I turn when I need inspiration. Melancholic at times, the meat of this work lies in its playful take on situations and archetypes we encounter every day. A quote that always particularly resonated with me is, “In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.” It reminds me that, though things might have seemed very important while they were happening, they will always fade into the tableau of the past. Time keeps moving and, as humans, so do we.

Molly, Senior Publicist – Eileen Flanagan’s The Wisdom to Know the Difference helped me to apply the words of the famous Serenity Prayer to difficult situations of all varieties. It’s a beautiful book that I continue to refer to when facing hard times!

Saryta, Editorial Assistant — The Master and Margarita. This classic Bulgakov novel has been one of my very favorites since my first of many, many reads! The writing is simply beautiful, the characters at once compelling and comical. This book straddles so many borders—serious vs. funny, fantasy vs. reality, poverty vs, decadence; a celebration of duality, a warning from history…in short, timeless.