Bøger udgivet af PAPER & INK

From high atop a hill in his New Mexico home, Dean Rudoy surveys seven decades of "this hard, sweet life". Psychologist, teacher, activist, son, friend, he offers inspirational stories of indelible encounters with the extraordinary, arising from familiar and uncanny events alike. Growing up with a necessary secret in a small Midwestern town, Rudoy awakens to the private yearnings of others. Troubled young men in a New York hospital struggle for clarity; children proclaim truths that adults have long forgotten; desert ravens attend an act of atonement; the touch of friends banishes pain; the departed make their presence felt. Small kindnesses offered to him by larger- than-life figures such as Paul Newman, Harry Belafonte, and Edward Kennedy adjoin meaningful gestures from migrant workers, ageing parents and thoughtful young people finding their way. All are emissaries bearing the message that life is lived well, when lived with an open heart. Resounding throughout these stories is a deep reverence born of the author's conviction that all things in this world are connected in a matrix of meaning. In his lucid, generous, and engaging style, Rudoy has written as much a guide for the perplexed as a memoir. Reading Emissaries is akin to walking along a country road with an old, reassuring friend.

O.Henry's The Gift of the Magi, tells the tale of James Young and his wife Della who are a couple of modest means. They have only two possessions between them in which they take pride: Della's beautiful long, flowing hair, almost touching to her knees, and Jim's shiny gold watch, which had belonged to his father and grandfather. One Christmas Eve, neither can afford a present for the each. The length each willing to go to shows their love for each other, and how priceless their love really is. O. Henry was the pen name for the American short story writer William Sydney Porter. He was born in North Carolina but moved to Texas in his youth. He worked as a bank teller and newspaper columnist before being put in prison in Ohio for embezzlement. It was in jail that he started writing stories. Upon his release, he moved to New York and began his career as a writer. His stories are known for wit, wordplay and clever surprise endings.