It's New Year's resolution time again, but Barbara's wants to help you stick to it with this event with Fitness Magazine's "dynamic duo" Liz Neporent and Suzanne Schlosberg, and their new book THE FAT-FREE TRUTH: Real Answers to the Fitness and Weight Loss Questions You Wonder About the Most. This interactive event will stimulate you and get you going in the right direction for a healthier New Year.

Three Chicago women (Dolores Greenberg, Helen Cammuso, and A. J. Kelly) have made their dream come true with GETTING A LIFE, a collection of short stories. These writers want to do more than entertain or shock, they want to get you thinking about what happens between the lines, of both the stories and of your own lives, as well as leave you wondering about what will happen to the characters after you close the book.

A panoramic, epic novel in the grand romantic tradition, PUSH NOT THE RIVER is a story of Poland in the late 1700s - a time of heartache and turmoil, as the peaceful land is torn apart by neighboring countries and divided loyalties. Young and vulnerable Lady Anna Maria Berezowska loses her parents and must leave her sheltered home as the Empress Catherine's Russian armies despoil the country. Based on the diaries of the real Anna, this is a vivid, fast paced novel of a woman and a country, forced into metamorphosis.

In the vast overgrown vineyard of food and dining-related books and magazines, Robert Scarola's MAKE MINE MEDIUM RARE: A DINER'S SURVIVAL GUIDE, stands apart as the first book to address restaurant-going from a diner's perspective. Whereas typical dining books, TV and radio shows talk about food and dining from the celebrity chef's, cooking expert's or critic's point of view, Make Mine is a view from the table top, written to help those of us paying the check to get the most for our dining entertainment dollar.

P.O.V. - Reaction Shots from the Brew and View Balcony Seats is a collection of film essays, personality profiles, interviews and movie reviews by media critic Anthony ("Michael Moore and the Awful Truth") Zoubek. No matter what the topic-shady Hollywood screenwriting contests, cult movies, bad movies, classic movies, or the 'brew and view' theaters, Zoubek tackles them with humor, insight and the enthusiasm of a true film buff.

A stunning debut novel: a spy thriller whose female protagonist is brilliantly drawn from the author's experience as the first woman director of Britain's MI5. Stella Rimington's AT RISK starts with a meeting at British Intelligence Joint Counter-Terrorist Group with an announcement that "the opposition may be about to deploy an invisible." Officer Liz Carlyle will find herself tested as never before, seeking out an enemy agent who can cross borders unchecked and go unnoticed while committing monstrous harm.

The release last year of GHOST WARS: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, by Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll made international news when it broke the story of the CIA's early plan to capture Osama bin Laden. Ghost Wars answers the questions so many have asked since the horrors of September 11: To what extent did America's best intelligence analysts grasp the rising threat of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail?

In THEY DON'T TEACH CORPORATE IN COLLEGE: A Twenty-Something's Guide to the Business World, Chicago twentysomething and business world veteran Alexandra Levit delivers the vital information junior corporate employees need to get ahead in today's tough work climate. They Don't Teach is peppered with personal stories, including the author's, and focuses on the unique challenges faced by young people in the workplace, as well as practical tactics that they can put to work immediately.