#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this, the extraordinary conclusion of the ice-age epic series, Earth’s Children®, Ayla, Jondalar, and their infant daughter, Jonayla, are living with the Zelandonii in the Ninth Cave. Ayla has been chosen as an acolyte to a spiritual leader and begins arduous training tasks. Whatever obstacles she faces, Ayla finds inventive ways to lessen the difficulties of daily life, searching for wild edibles to make meals and experimenting with techniques to ease the long journeys the Zelandonii must take while honing her skills as a healer and a leader. And there are the Sacred Caves that Ayla’s mentor takes her to see. They are filled with remarkable paintings of mammoths, lions, and bears, and their mystical aura at times overwhelms Ayla. But all the time Ayla has spent in training rituals has caused Jondalar to drift away from her. The rituals themselves bring her close to death, but through them Ayla gains A Gift of Knowledge so important that it will change her world. BONUS: This edition contains a reading guide and an interview with Jean M. Auel. Sixth in the acclaimed Earth’s Children® series.

How the humanitarian act of saving one foal, a by-product of a Premarin producing Pregnant Mare Urine Line (PMU), from slaughter evolves into a life changing odyssey. The unforeseen trail leads a woman from the California Wine Country through the PMU farms in Canada to the National Champion Draft Horse Driving Shows of two countries. Along the way, while learning to drive and show her Percheron Draft Horses, many emotional experiences, from comical to tear-producing are encountered. Her amusing thought-provoking story is brilliantly delivered, as she candidly reveals behind-the-scene secrets about driving, training and showing horses, with the turn of every page. Embark upon the spirited adventure of this inspiring literary work that will intrigue all. Those who have read this uplifting book find it impossible to put down, cover to cover.

The plans of four women--including a college student egg donor, a working-class surrogate mother, a wealthy woman, and her stepdaughter--are thrown into turmoil when the wealthy woman's husband suddenly dies and names the stepdaughter the unborn baby's guardian.

The shattering novel of underground life the New York Times called “a cry of rapture and horror . . . the purest lyrical genius.” Jean Genet’s debut novel Our Lady of the Flowers, which is often considered to be his masterpiece, was written entirely in the solitude of a prison cell. A semi- autobiographical account of one man’s journey through the Paris demi-monde, dubbed “the epic of masturbation” by no less a figure than Jean-Paul Sartre, the novel’s exceptional value lies in its exquisite ambiguity.

The Middle Ages are often viewed as a repository of tradition, yet what we think of as traditional marriage was far from the only available alternative to the single state in medieval Europe. Many people lived together in long-term, quasimarital heterosexual relationships, unable to marry if one was in holy orders or if the partners were of different religions. Social norms militated against the marriage of master to slave or between individuals of very different classes, or when the couple was so poor that they could not establish an independent household. Such unions, where the protections that medieval law furnished to wives (and their children) were absent, were fraught with danger for women in particular, but they also provided a degree of flexibility and demonstrate the adaptability of social customs in the face of slowly changing religious doctrine. Unmarriages draws on a wide range of sources from across Europe and the entire medieval millennium in order to investigate structures and relations that medieval authors and record keepers did not address directly, either in order to minimize them or because they were so common as not to be worth mentioning. Ruth Mazo Karras pays particular attention to the ways women and men experienced forms of opposite-sex union differently and to the implications for power relations between the genders. She treats legal and theological discussions that applied to all of Europe and presents a vivid series of case studies of how unions operated in specific circumstances to illustrate concretely what we can conclude, how far we can speculate, and what we can never know.

A grief-stricken widower learns to open his heart again in this touching and emotionally charged novel from New York Times bestselling author LaVyrle Spencer… A man of unshakable faith, Eddie Olczak derives intense pleasure from the life he’s built with his beloved wife, Krystyna, and their two daughters. But when a tragic accident cuts Krystyna’s life short, Eddie is sure his heart is broken forever. Sister Regina, the girls’ teacher at St. Joseph’s school, has always felt a special affinity for the Olczak family, but the strict rules of the Benedictine sisterhood have kept her from getting too close. Now, as Sister Regina and Eddie cross paths, they realize there is a connection between them that goes beyond their shared love of Krystyna and the girls. Thrilled—and secretly frightened—they must summon the courage to look within their hearts and make their own choices.

Ida Corley, a troubled thirty-six year old nurse from Albuquerque is searching for her unknown half-brother, a sibling she discovered by reading an old letter in her deceased mother’s personal effects. On her deathbed, Ida’s mother had confessed a teenage abortion, but the letter reveals a different past, a secret that unhinged Ida and drove her on a quest to find him. Her journey takes her to Victoria, Canada where she goes on a whale watching tour and becomes bewildered by a close encounter with a killer whale. He captures her eye with his own eerie whale eye, luring Ida into new spiritual territory and the mystery of interspecies communication. Ida searches the Inside Passage where killer whales act as guides, save her life, open windows into the natural world, and reach deep into her soul. It is as if these powerful mammals carried Ida up to the heart of Mother Nature, showed her the stars, and then returned her to a new life. Ida had set out to find her half-brother, but ended up finding herself. Ida Corley first appeared as a character in Prairie Dog Blues, and surfaced again as Danny Sandoval’s lover in Dog Shelter Blues, both from Sunstone Press. Along with Killer Whale Blues, the three novels explore the power of nature and living creatures to transform broken peoples’ lives.