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Catching Cold Volume 3: Judgment

Author: Lem Moyé

For those readers who aren’t already hooked on to this series, book 3 begins with a bang — literally — or at least the aftermath of one. A bomb has just destroyed the 29^th floor of Triple S Pharmaceuticals, injuring and killing employees, many of whom had become like family to Meredith Doucette, the company’s CEO.

However, for readers who have read the first two books in the series, Dr. Jon DeLeon, Meredith Doucette, and Olivia Steadman are at it again. While the three independently pursue reining in the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. DeLeon’s team of researchers has dissolved once again.

Olivia Steadman, now a retired regulatory director, leaves the team for Washington, DC, to develop legislation, while Kevin Wells, her boyfriend, remains at CiliCold to rebuild and discover cells’ chemical language.

While the book is nearly 300 hundred pages, the chapters are short, allowing the reader to get in some reading even when they only have a few minutes.

Catching Cold Volume 3: Judgment is a realistic read, with the author offering information based on his scientific, lab-driven profession.

Good Grief

Authors: Valerie Swinton and Fred Kirby, Jr.

Losing a loved one is hard. And while many books focus on coping after the loss, Good Grief focuses specifically from a biblical perspective of coping with the loss of a spouse after a long illness.

Both authors share their stories of their personal struggles with their spouses and their spouses’ illnesses. After the loss of their spouses, the authors felt a loss of purpose and hope. Though they each had children, the children were grown, leaving the authors with an empty feeling in day-to-day activities.

To assist those in the grieving process, the authors disclose the effects of grief and the potential effects of grief on the body. The authors then share in more detail their stories about the grief they have endured in their lives. Those stories are then followed by short essays written by other surviving spouses and how they have rebuilt their lives after the loss of a spouse.

The authors explain the stages of grief and answer a list of questions to show how they moved through the stages. The final section of the book is a guided grief journey that includes those same questions and space for the reader’s response to help one move through the grief process and begin to heal.

Good Grief is a well-designed book to help the reader journey through the grieving process. It allows the reader to understand that their feelings are normal. While this book can be read in a single sitting, it may be best for the reader to read the section related to their current need and work through that before continuing in the book.

Highway to Homelessness: Road to Recovery

Author: Brian Masters

Many look to the homeless as people who want to be there, people who are addicted to drugs, and while some do want to live on the streets, and some are addicted to drugs, this life may not have always been what was desired.

Brian Masters was a successful technology sales executive, married with a son in college, living in a nice neighborhood, and owning a second house on a lake. However, when his wife chose to leave him, all of Masters’ plans for his retirement years disappeared. Even his attorney told Masters that the divorce settlement, the worst one in the county, would leave him without any money.

While the financial settlement from the divorce did leave Masters with a significantly smaller nest egg, the economic circumstances occurring in the 2008 banking crisis caused him to not be able to afford his home and soon after he found himself unemployed as his employer closed up shop. Masters was left to live out of his car and fall into a cycle of drugs and depression.

Once Masters has the reader hooked based on his circumstances, he doesn’t leave the reader behind. In his final chapters, Masters offers an 11-point action plan that turned his life around and shows the reader how they can use it too.

Highway to Homelessness offers a real-life story of how a successful life can be turned upside down, and how one can overcome those obstacles and live a fulfilling life.