The Voice of Knowledge: A Practical Guide to Inner Peace, by Don Miguel Ruiz, is a small, but mind-expanding book based on ancient Toltec wisdom. The Toltec society formed thousands of years ago near what is now Mexico City, in order to explore and conserve the spiritual knowledge and practices of the ancient ones. An expansion of his popular book, The Four Agreements, this new volume offers more Toltec wisdom: Be impeccable with your word. Don’t take anything personally. Don’t make assumptions. Always do your best. Ruiz describes his own spiritual journey but offers many Points to Ponder that will propel you on your own search for wisdom and inner peace. So what are you waiting for? With books like these to guide you, put your best foot forward and march confidently into the new year. The best is yet to come! Linda Stankard continues to be her own work in progress.

From Ken Linder, an attorney and career counselor for some of the country’s most prominent journalists, comes Crunch Time: 8 Steps to Making the Right Decisions When it Counts. Making the right decision is not always an easy task, but Linder’s book offers logical steps to find the choice that is right for you. He uses many relevant scenarios to illustrate his points, such as the recent imbroglios of former President Clinton, Martha Stewart and Kobe Bryant. One really bad decision, he warns, especially if it involves a display of poor character can tarnish all of the good things you may have previously accomplished. Linder offers Strata-Gems at the end of each chapter to encapsulate his main messages and encourages you to celebrate and savor the constructive decisions you have already made.

Linda Stankard continues to be her own work in progress.

Joel Osteen’s book Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential, offers an outline for a higher level of existence in the here and now. Osteen is the young, enthusiastic pastor of the diverse, Houston-based Lakewood Church, which has more than 30,000 members, and his inspirational television program is viewed in 100 million households worldwide. Clearly, Osteen’s outline for a life of health, abundance and victory comes from a Christian perspective. He believes that while God wants to help us, we must do our part to allow God to promote us, to increase us, to give us more. The seven steps he describes are a means to opening that path. Like Ford, he encourages us to dream big and move beyond the mundane. Osteen recognizes that life can throw everything from disappointment to disaster at us, but his outlook remains optimistic. Our human tendency, he writes, is to want everything easily. But without opposition or resistance, there is no potential for progress. Without the resistance of air, an eagle can’t soar. Linda Stankard continues to be her own work in progress.

Remember the old adage: Good, better, best; never let it rest until your good is better and your better is best ? Well, here are four books that can show you how to move from mediocre to marvelous in 2005. Best-selling author Debbie Ford (The Dark Side of the Light) offers a guide to reaching out and grasping the life we have always dreamed about in The Best Year of Your Life: Dream It, Plan It, Live It. Stop believing that the best year of your life exists somewhere off in the future, she admonishes. According to Ford, the time is here and now, and the choice is yours. As the title indicates, the book is divided into three sections. The Dream It section emphasizes the importance of dreams and desires, and how creating a powerful intent is the first step in creating your best self. The Plan It section offers a structured approach to defining and achieving goals which includes strategic exercises and straightforward examples, such as a 15-question checklist for taking charge of your life. Finally, the Live It section explains how to put those plans into action with zest, integrity and joy. Ford does not shirk from acknowledging that her plan requires effort, commitment and courage. But if you give 100 percent to the process, she ensures that having your best year yet will be more than a pipe dream; it will be your destiny. Linda Stankard continues to be her own work in progress.

Sometimes broad black humor is required, and sometimes the suffering is too delicate for anything other than the most quietly astute words. Blue Peninsula: Essential Words for a Life of Loss and Change is an unusual hybrid of health memoir and favorite poems book, detailing former teacher, researcher and editor Madge McKeithen’s struggle with her son Ike’s mysterious illness. McKeithen is consoled by compulsively reading poem after poem ripped from magazines and books and tucked into thick medical files that she ferries from clinic to clinic while trying to figure out what is happening to her son. I became a poetry addict, she writes, poems became almost all I could read. Blue Peninsula features excerpts of works by Billy Collins, Donald Hall, e.e. cummings, Louise GlŸck, Mark Doty, Sharon Olds, Czeslaw Milosz and many others; their precise, concentrated wisdom becomes at times near lifesaving for McKeithen as she faces her son’s uncertain future and herself as mother, diagramming the words and her own procession through isolation, frustration, sorrow and small slivers of light. Do I have it in me to reach for Peace, Hope, even Delight? McKeithen asks, referencing the Emily Dickinson poem that gives the book its title.

White-knuckle flyers and their struggles while suspended in those big aluminum tubes in the sky inspired Chicken Soup for the Soul Presents The Fearless FlightKit. Compiled by pilots Ron Nielsen and Tim Piering, the kit contains a pocket-sized guide to bring onboard that explains every sound and sensation during takeoff and landing. The Real Life Fearful Flyer Stories booklet details the sagas of ordinary people who are also licking their panic habits. Finally, the kit’s 30-minute “Flight Harmonizer” CD grounds fearful thoughts before and during flight with a mesmerizing blend of voices, sounds and music. Some intonations soothe (“Your seatbelt is firmly attached. You are safe.”); others lead flyers into New Age territory (“It’s about taking off in all areas of your life”). Obsessing about crashes and other terrifying possibilities will be almost impossible while this gentle symphony swirls through your ears.

But the most persuasive aspect of the kit is the confession of Fearless FlightKit creator Nielsen, who flies commercial aircraft and also has a degree in counseling. “I really believe in the power of self-disclosing,” says Nielsen, who was nearly grounded by his own fear of flying during his Air Force training. “My expertise comes from my own fears in life.”

<B>I’m in a hurry and don’t know why</B> Journalist Carl HonorŽ, a self-confessed speedaholic, has, thankfully, downshifted enough to write <B>In Praise of Slowness</B>. A call for perspective and balance, rather than a rant against speed, the book examines how our world came to be so frenetic and how this pace affects us. It also explores alternative lifestyles, especially the Slow Movement, that are gaining healthful ground.

Our speedy, technological modern age negatively affects our minds, bodies and spirits. The global mantra to do more, faster, has dangerously homogenized our life rhythms we eat, sleep, work, play at an ever breathless pace. HonorŽ, when he encounters a newspaper article, “The One-Minute Bedtime Story,” realizes, “My life has turned into an exercise in hurry. . . . I am Scrooge with a stopwatch . . . . And I am not alone.” This skillful blend of investigative reportage, history and reflection on time and our relationship to it makes In Praise of Slowness a book whose arrival couldn’t be, well, better timed.

<B>What love’s got to do with it</B> You might fight like cats and dogs, but where would you be without dear old mom? Without her attention and affection? And endless advice? Sure, her helpful hints are often unasked-for (and sometimes shrilly delivered), but they’re sent with unconditional love the kind only mothers can provide. So take a tip from BookPage and remember mom this month with one of the terrific titles listed below.

Motivational speaker Cherie Carter-Scott, Ph.

D., commemorates the maternal role in <!–BPLINK=–>0767904281<B>The Gift of Motherhood: 10 Truths for Every Mother</B><!–ENDBPLINK–>. Author of the best-selling advice book, <I>f Life is a Game, These are the Rules</I>, Scott, who has worked with Fortune 500 companies like American Express and IBM, offers 10 insights about motherhood that she has gleaned from personal experience and from years of coaching women all over the world. The universals she presents in the book Remembering to care for yourself is essential and Love shows up in many different forms are examined in-depth and illustrated by inspiring anecdotes from real-life moms. <B>The Gift of Motherhood</B> also functions as a how-to guide to parenting, proposing practical strategies for dealing with mother-daughter conflicts, for envisioning the type of mother you want to become and achieving that vision for being both friend and authority figure to your child. Each of Scott’s truths serves to demystify the role of mother, providing support for the struggling parent. Transcending race, religion and nationality, her words of wisdom and humor will energize future and seasoned mothers alike. With <!–BPLINK=–>1930170025<B>Busy Woman’s Cookbook</B><!–ENDBPLINK–>, authors Sharon and Gene McFall share more than 500 recipes that are sure to ease a mother’s greatest domestic burden. For those without the time or inclination to experiment in the kitchen, this back-to-the-basics book offers three- and four-element recipes, composed of easily accessible ingredients, that take the complexity out of cooking. From Old Time Meat Loaf to Skinny Minny Pork Chops, from Cinnamon Coffee Cake to Sopaipillas, creative ideas for appetizers, entrees, salads and desserts are simply and briefly presented. Downhome or exotic, old-fashioned or new-fangled, there’s a dish for every food preference. Amusing anecdotes and fascinating facts (200 to be exact) about famous women enliven the text. A sturdy cover and spiral binding make the book easy to handle in the kitchen. <B>Busy Woman</B> lets the overwhelmed mother put meal planning where it belongs on the back burner.

For moms who are coming-of-age, consider <B>Fifty Celebrate Fifty: Fifty Extraordinary Women Talk About Facing, Turning and Being Fifty</B>, a book of sparkling photos and fabulous interviews from the editors of <I>More</I> magazine. The volume features candid talks with women who are better than ever at mid-life, including Diane Sawyer, Amy Tan, Susan Sarandon and Phylicia Rashad. The book includes a broad range of voices women from various cultures and career arenas who testify with pride about hitting their stride at 50. AIDS activist Beverly Mosley talks about living with HIV. Newscaster Judy Woodruff discusses coping with her son’s brain injury. These honest accounts of juggling family and career, of overcoming obstacles and achieving inner peace will inspire females of any age. Experience is sexy, says Susan Sarandon. And today, women can be sexy and 50. Indeed, the future has never looked brighter for these confident, accomplished women, each of whom combines the poise of youth with the wisdom that only age can bring. A tribute to diversity, beauty and individuality, <B>Fifty Celebrate Fifty</B> is a great way to remind mom that the best really is yet to come. <I> The job of mother most often plays itself out not on the lofty levels of Hallmark splendor but rather in the trenches of day-to-day life. </I> Cherie Carter-Scott <I>The Gift of Motherhood</I>