Mark Beauregard

A literary tale set in mid-nineteenth-century New England reimagines the emotionally volatile, intimate relationship between debt-ridden Herman Melville and passionate Nathaniel Hawthorne to explore how their connection shaped the writing of "Moby Dick."

A Love Story

The Whale

Les Fehmi

Susan Shor Fehmi

Learn to change your mindset, relieve anxiety, dissolve pain, and bring a greater sense of wellbeing into your life by changing how you pay attention, with easy-to-apply techniques and in-the-moment exercises from Dr. Les Fehmi’s Open Focus method. How you pay attention affects literally every moment of your conscious life, so learning how to be flexible with your focus can profoundly change how you respond to everyday challenges. The Open-Focus Life shows you many different ways of paying attention that you were never taught in school and illustrates how to use different attention styles as powerful tools to help you feel better, act more effectively, and improve the quality of your life. Dr. Les Fehmi and Susan Shor Fehmi, pioneers in biofeedback, have spent decades developing and applying these methods with clients from all walks of life in their private clinical practice. In The Open-Focus Life, they coach you through common everyday stressors and show you how to shift out of modes of attention that exacerbate negative feelings and into modes of calm and balance. Based on peer-reviewed neuroscience and clinical experience, these quick, practical techniques will improve how you feel about your body, how you relate to people at work and at home, and how you interact with your everyday environment, to achieve a more relaxed life with less chronic physical and emotional pain.

Practices to Develop Attention and Awareness for Optimal Well-Being

The Open-Focus Life

A rich and captivating novel set amid the witty, high-spirited literary society of 1850s New England, offering a new window on Herman Melville’s emotionally charged relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne and how it transformed his masterpiece, Moby-Dick In the summer of 1850, Herman Melville finds himself hounded by creditors and afraid his writing career might be coming to an end—his last three novels have been commercial failures and the critics have turned against him. In despair, Melville takes his family for a vacation to his cousin’s farm in the Berkshires, where he meets Nathaniel Hawthorne at a picnic—and his life turns upside down. The Whale chronicles the fervent love affair that grows out of that serendipitous afternoon. Already in debt, Melville recklessly borrows money to purchase a local farm in order to remain near Hawthorne, his newfound muse. The two develop a deep connection marked by tensions and estrangements, and feelings both shared and suppressed. Melville dedicated Moby-Dick to Hawthorne, and Mark Beauregard’s novel fills in the story behind that dedication with historical accuracy and exquisite emotional precision, reflecting his nuanced reading of the real letters and journals of Melville, Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others. An exuberant tale of longing and passion, The Whale captures not only a transformative relationship—long the subject of speculation—between two of our most enduring authors, but also their exhilarating moment in history, when a community of high-spirited and ambitious writers was creating truly American literature for the first time.

A Novel

The Whale: A Love Story

When legendary fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent dies, his longtime lover and business partner Pierre Bergé announces that he will auction off their vast private art collection for charity. To celebrate this once-in-a-lifetime event, the Grand Palais in Paris hosts a public exhibition of the rare masterpieces, but the celebration ends abruptly when one of the paintings is stolen! An anonymous tip leads police to American war photographer Luke Johnson, whose murky connections to Saint Laurent's past make him all the more suspect. And when Luke's friend Benoît is kidnapped and the kidnappers demand the stolen painting as ransom, it seems the only person in Paris who doesn't think Luke is an art thief is Luke himself. Now, Luke must rescue Benoît while dodging the police and matching wits with the inscrutable mastermind who stole the painting in the first place. And everyone Luke meets wants some kind of revenge, including his ex-girlfriend! In Paris, the only thing as romantic as falling in love is getting even.

The French Art of Revenge

American war photographer Luke Johnson just wants a quiet drink in his neighborhood bar in Paris, but when his friend Giselle stumbles in with a priceless stolen painting, his peaceful sojourn in the City of Light is over. Suddenly a French Count, black market thugs, Interpol, and the Paris Sanitation Department all want a piece of him. It's lucky Luke has a sense of humor. The French Art of Stealing is a giddy joyride through the back alleys of Paris, an insider's guide to the charms and complexities of French society, and a comic thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Mark Beauregard

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