Priceless: A Novel on the Edge of the World

End Pain.

Foster Personal and Professional Growth.

Live Better.

While endings are a natural part of business and life, we often experience them with a sense of hesitation, sadness, resignation, or regret. But consultant, psychologist, and bestselling author Dr. Henry Cloud sees endings differently. He argues that our personal and professional lives can only improve to the degree that we can see endings as a necessary and strategic step to something better. If we cannot see endings in a positive light and execute them well, he asserts, the "better" will never come either in business growth or our personal lives.

In this insightful and deeply empathetic book, Dr. Cloud demonstrates that, when executed well, "necessary endings" allow us to proactively correct the bad and the broken in our lives in order to make room for the professional and personal growth we seek. However, when endings are avoided or handled poorly—as is too often the case—good opportunities may be lost, and misery repeated. Drawing on years of experience as an executive coach and a psychologist, Dr. Cloud offers a mixture of advice and case studies to help readers

• know when to have realistic hope and when to execute a necessary ending in a business, or with an individual;
• identify which employees, projects, activities, and relationships are worth nurturing and which are not;
• overcome people's resistance to change and create change that works;
• create urgency and an action plan for what's important;
• stop wasting resources needed for the things that really matter.

Knowing when and how to let go when something, or someone, isn't working—a personal relationship, a job, or a business venture—is essential for happiness and success. Necessary Endings gives readers the tools they need to say good-bye and move on.

   Dave left behind his lifelong crush at high school graduation, when she went off to college and he stayed at home to take care of his grandmother.

"Why did I say that? Why did I do that? Where on earth did those mean thoughts and motivations come from? I'm so glad no one can read my mind." We all get whiplashed and sometimes broadsided by the "dark" side of our nature, which produces thoughts and behaviors that cause us to feel ashamed. many of us deny that part of ourselves, and kick it off somewhere in the shadowy recesses of the heart, where we hope it will stay put, not cause us any more trouble, and hopefully not be noticed.

In The Zippered Heart, Marilyn does a gentle exploration of those secrets and issues which, if denied, can rob us of the abundant life we are promised in Christ. God means for us to be whole. This book is an encouragement in that process.

"This book will change lives, because it requires that we look precisely at both the dark and the light sides of ourselves. Then it brings an overflowing grace and forgiveness. As a psychologist with thirty-five years of clinical experience, I can say that this is one of the best books I have read." ?Neil Clark Warren, author of Finding the Love of Your Life

"Step into liberty through the rapscallion brilliance of Marilyn Meberg." ?Patsy Clairmont, author of Mending Your Heart in a Broken World

"For thirty years Marilyn's compassionate exploration of the human heart has amazed me. Now, with skill and tenderness she opens that heart for all of us to see how fearfully and wonderfully we are made." ?Luci Swindoll, author, speaker, Women of Faith

"The Zippered Heart is a perceptive and sensitive examination of the 'war within' between our two natures." ?Archibald D. Hart, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Graduate School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary

"Whoever Saves a Life, It Is Considered as If He Saved an Entire World"

Dr. Rick Hodes arrived in Africa more than two decades ago to help the victims of a famine, but he never expected to call this extremely poor continent his home. Twenty-eight years later, he is still there.

This Is a Soul tells the remarkable story of Rick Hodes's journey from suburban America to Mother Teresa's clinic in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As a boy, Rick was devoted to helping those in need, and eventually he determined that becoming a doctor would allow him to do the most good. When he heard about famine in Africa, that's where he went, and when genocide convulsed Rwanda, he went into the refugee camps to minister to the victims. When he was told that Ethiopia was allowing its Jews to emigrate to Israel, he went to help. While there, he was drawn to Mother Teresa's mission in Addis Ababa. It was there that Rick found his calling when he began caring for the sickest children in one of the world's poorest countries. But he did more than that-he began taking them into his home and officially adopted five of them.

This Is a Soul is also a book filled with great joy and triumph. When Rick's kids return from surgery or life-saving treatments, he is exultant. "Seeing these people after surgery is like going to heaven," he says.

Marilyn Berger went to Africa to write about Dr. Hodes, but while there, she became involved with the story. When she came upon a small, deformed, and malnourished boy begging on the street, she recognized immediately that he had the exact disease Rick could cure. She took him to Rick, who eventually arranged for the boy to have a complicated and risky surgery, which turned out to be incredibly successful. The boy's story-intertwined with Rick's, and Marilyn's as well-is unforgettable in its pathos and subtle humor.

This Is a Soul is not just a story of the savior and the saved, it is a celebration of love and wisdom, and an exploration of how charity and devotion can actually change lives in an overcrowded, unjust, and often harsh world.