Deborah Jacobs quit the job from hell, rented her house and planned to Airbnb her way through France. Alternately humorous and poignant, this inspiring memoir chronicles her misadventures as she and her husband cook in quirky kitchens, struggle to speak French and shop like locals in outdoor markets. With candor and optimism, Jacobs transports readers from the grape harvest in the Loire Valley to an exuberant chile pepper festival in Basque Country and, ultimately, to Paris, where she witnesses history in the making. En route, she does the pintxo bar crawl in San Sebastián, Spain, develops an affinity for sheep’s milk cheese and cultivates new friendships.

Four Seasons in a Day, an expression used to describe the changeable weather in the Pyrenees, also captures the author’s extreme resilience. Her grit and determination in the face of every obstacle give us the courage to chart our own course, carve out a new life and embrace the unexpected.

Those who are thinking of using their home to subsidize foreign travel will find several chapters showing how to do that. Others will whet the reader’s appetite to explore the places Jacobs visited. Anyone who has ever fantasized about taking a break from the rat race will want to follow the thread – in the style of the 2009 film Julie & Julia – of how this life-transforming journey became a widely and favorably reviewed book.

Four Seasons in a Day won first place in the travel category of the 2017 CIPA EVVY Awards and was an award-winning finalist in the “Travel: Guides & Essays” category of the International Book Awards.

Estate planning deals with providing for ourselves as we age and taking care of loved ones after we are gone. Whether or not you are wealthy, you need to tackle this potentially emotional process. Otherwise, state law determines how your belongings get distributed. And if your children are minors, a court will appoint a guardian for them.

The best place to start is with this book’s Table of Contents. It can help you identify the issues that apply to you. At the end of every chapter is an action-oriented To-Do list based on material covered in that chapter.

Estate Planning Smarts is a product of Jacobs’ personal experience, as she notes in her introduction:

Like many other people, I didn’t used to think much about estate planning. Longevity ran in my family, and hardly anyone ever died. Then, in the space of three months, three major events gave me a cold shot of reality. I became a parent, lost a parent, and following my father’s death found myself in charge of a trust that my grandmother had set up. Soon after, an editor at Bloomberg called to say he was looking for someone to write about estate planning. I decided to turn my attention to this important topic that had suddenly become so relevant to my own life.

This is the book one reviewer referred to as “a category killer,” and The Wall Street Journal called “a terrific guide for people who are just beginning to grapple with estate planning, as well as those who have (or think they have) their affairs in order.” In plain English, Deborah Jacobs writes with authority and compassion about issues that affect us all.

Now in the 4th edition, which placed in the 2017 Eric Hoffer Awards.