Mary Morrison

Did you ever want to run away from home? Feeling battered by multiple losses, including her parents, her husband, and her job, Mary Morrison needs a change. She doesn't just want another job, she wants another life. Carrying the baggage of anxiety and low self esteem, she moves to Africa to heal her bruises and rediscover her strength and purpose. She is captivated by the people, the land and the animals, but nothing seems to go right and disaster threatens. How will Mary overcome adversity and unleash the power of her inner lioness to fulfill her childhood dreams? Looking for the Lioness is a memoir of a difficult time when Mary Morrison abandoned everything to start a new life as a volunteer teacher half way around the world. "Sometimes you have to give a little push, one way or the other, to get past the depression, low self-esteem, unhealthy relationships, procrastination, or whatever is holding you back from living your best life."

Christmas costume jewelry produced in the last fifty years has never before been so carefully explored. Here are Christmas tree pins, wreaths, ornaments, Santas, snowmen, and other decorations set with rhinestones mounted as earrings and pins. Over 340 dazzling photographs display over 900 different jewelry pieces by noted manufacturers, some common and some so rare they are found in only a few collections. This is a book you will want to have when you daydream and take with you when you shop. With a revised Price Guide reflecting current values.

This book reviews Latin America's experience with infrastructure reform over the last fifteen years. It argues that the region's infrastructure has suffered from public retrenchment and unrealistic expectations about private involvement. Poor infrastructure now hampers productivity, growth, and poverty reduction. Addressing this requires more and better spending, and acceptance that governments remain central to infrastructure provision and supervision, although the private sector still has an important role to play.

Snow babies appeal not only to Christmas enthusiasts, but to collectors of dolls, figurines, and miniatures. Principally manufactured in Germany in the early part of this century, these tiny grouted figures decorated cakes in England and mantel pieces in the United States. Today they are avidly sought by collectors, who still use them to create little winter scenes. This carefully researched and documented book explores the origins of snow babies. (Were they created to honor Marie Peary, the daughter of Admiral Peary and the first white baby born in Northern Greenland?) The collection of 700 color photographs, the largest ever published, displays exquisite all-white pieces and the smaller action snow babies. It also introduces the reader to the rare blue and pink snow pieces. Included are chapters on bisque Santas (over 150 of them), elves, dwarves, snowmen, buildings, animals, and other pieces that are collected and displayed with snow babies. A rarity scale and price guide are included.