Running The Light
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Running the Light
A bona fide “instant classic” (Doug Stanhope) novel that tells the story of a road comic crashing and burning by acclaimed comedian Sam Tallent Billy Ray Schafer stepped off the plane in Amarillo, Texas, with twenty-six hundred dollars tucked down the leg of his black ostrich-skin cowboy boot. He walked to baggage claim slowly, jelly-legged and nearing lucidity, coming out from under the Xanax he snorted before the flight. Debauched, divorced, and courting death, Billy Ray Schafer is a comedian who has forgotten how to laugh. Over the course of seven spun-out days across the American Southwest, he travels from hell gig to hell gig in search of a reason to keep living in this bleak and violent glimpse into the psyche of a thoroughly ruined man. Ex-inmate, ex-husband, ex-father—comedian is the only title Schafer has left. Trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career, Billy Ray knows the answer to the question: What happens when opportunity doesn't come—or worse—it comes and goes? “In vivid, electric sentences that read like cinematic tracking shots,” (Denver Post) Tallent hurls you into an absolute mess of a man’s life as we search for the mercy he does not want.
Run to the Light
Laura has it all: a great job, a loving family, a new husband, and a house in her hometown, where she can watch her sister, Taylor, grow up. But one month after her wedding, Laura and her family receive shocking news: Taylor has Batten disease. A rare, fatal disease that will cause Taylor to go blind, suffer seizures, and lose the ability to walk and talk. There is no cure. Laura thought she'd get to watch her baby sister grow up, but instead she'll have to watch her die. Unwilling to take no cure for an answer, Laura founds a charity with family and friends, Taylor's Tale, to save children with the disease. Meanwhile, Taylor starts running, completing her first race blind. Inspired, Laura, a lifelong runner, begins running in half marathons to raise money and awareness. And also to run away from the pain. Taylor's Tale becomes a world leader in the fight against Batten disease, but not quickly enough to save Taylor. Stripped of her faith, Laura falls into a dark despair. But Taylor's unwavering courage in the face of certain death gives Laura a renewed sense of purpose to turn her family's tragedy into an opportunity--to ensure others won't have to suffer as her sister has suffered. Run to the Light is Laura's inspiring account of how she found the courage to face indescribable loss, and of what it means to really believe.
The Incomplete Book of Running
Peter Sagal, the host of NPR’s Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me! and a popular columnist for Runner’s World, shares “commentary and reflection about running with a deeply felt personal story, this book is winning, smart, honest, and affecting. Whether you are a runner or not, it will move you” (Susan Orlean). On the verge of turning forty, Peter Sagal—brainiac Harvard grad, short bald Jew with a disposition towards heft, and a sedentary star of public radio—started running seriously. And much to his own surprise, he kept going, faster and further, running fourteen marathons and logging tens of thousands of miles on roads, sidewalks, paths, and trails all over the United States and the world, including the 2013 Boston Marathon, where he crossed the finish line moments before the bombings. In The Incomplete Book of Running, Sagal reflects on the trails, tracks, and routes he’s traveled, from the humorous absurdity of running charity races in his underwear—in St. Louis, in February—or attempting to “quiet his colon” on runs around his neighborhood—to the experience of running as a guide to visually impaired runners, and the triumphant post-bombing running of the Boston Marathon in 2014. With humor and humanity, Sagal also writes about the emotional experience of running, body image, the similarities between endurance sports and sadomasochism, the legacy of running as passed down from parent to child, and the odd but extraordinary bonds created between strangers and friends. The result is “a brilliant book about running…What Peter runs toward is strength, understanding, endurance, acceptance, faith, hope, and charity” (P.J. O’Rourke).