Some Friendships Are Worth Dying For Louisiana, 1848. Catarine, determined and decisive, left her beautiful family home, Magnolia Plantation, ensconced on the banks of the Mississippi River. What danger led her to leave abruptly, to live a life disguised on the streets of New Orleans, only to be rescued by the captivating Darla Morinay, a wealthy free woman of color? The two young women, from vastly different backgrounds, forge a loyal friendship unlikely to be shaken until Darla discovers Catarine's hidden secret and the true reason she had run away. Cast Away Stones, the first book in the series, is about friendships worth dying for, that cross time and racial boundaries, and speak to humanity today.

Cast Away Stones is a raw, honest and lucid account of overcoming life's challenges and developing personal resilience. The book details surviving the attacks of 9/11/2001 in New York City and a choice to serve the American people. A victim of violent abuse as a child on the verge of adolescence, Daniel Geraghty transformed pain and trauma into focus, drive, and motivation. A US Army veteran, Airborne Ranger, Captain, 9/11 survivor, first responder, teacher and leader, Daniel has waged a battle to overcome Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for over twenty years through a dedication to service and his family. Cast Away Stones: An Eyewitness Account of 9/11 and Memoir of a Survivor, Soldier, Citizen offers a journey from trauma to self-awareness and the ability to let go of grief through forgiveness.

2014 Carol Award Winner for Speculative The Fate of the Kingdom Awaits the Cast of Stones In the backwater village of Callowford, roustabout Errol Stone is enlisted by a church messenger arriving with urgent missives for the hermit priest in the hills. Eager for coin, Errol agrees to what he thinks will be an easy task, but soon finds himself hunted by deadly assassins. Forced to flee with the priest and a small band of travelers, Errol soon learns he's joined a quest that could change the fate of his kingdom. Protected for millennia by the heirs of the first king, the kingdom's dynasty nears its end and the selection of the new king begins--but in secret and shadow. As danger mounts, Errol must leave behind the stains and griefs of the past, learn to fight, and discover who is hunting him and his companions and how far they will go to stop the reading of the stones. "With an engaging, imaginative world that bristles with danger, characters that keep you guessing, and a story that sticks with you, A Cast of Stones will keep you devouring pages until the very end. I highly recommend it!" --John W. Otte, author of Failstate "Carr's debut, the first in a series, is assured and up-tempo, with much to enjoy in characterization and description--not least the homely, life-as-lived details." -Publishers Weekly This fast-paced fantasy debut set in a medieval world is a winner. Both main and secondary characters are fully drawn and endearing, and Errol's transformation from drunkard to hero is well plotted. Carr is a promising CF author to watch. Fans of epic Christian fantasies will enjoy discovering a new voice. "Like the preceding series title, Inescapable, this tale of suspense offers a colorful cast of characters, small-town drama, and a hint of romance. A sure bet for fans of Hannah Alexander." --Library Journal "[Good fantasy books] have to be excellent. Good storytelling and exceptional characters with circumstances that are easy enough to follow and wrap your brain around but keep you entertained and guessing... Cast of Stones has found itself firmly in that list of books. I absolutely, one hundred percent loved this book." --Radiant Lit

*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti* Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

Jesus: His Story in Stone is a reflection on still-existing stone objects that Jesus would have known, seen, or even touched. Each of the seventy short chapters is accompanied by a photograph taken on location in Israel. Arranged chronologically, the one-page meditations compose a portrait of Christ as seen through the significant stones in His life, from the cave where He was born to the rock of Calvary. While packed with historical and archaeological detail, the book’s main thrust is devotional, leading the reader both spiritually and physically closer to Jesus.

In the 1960s an epic battle was waged between the two biggest bands in the world—the clean-cut, mop-topped Beatles and the badboy Rolling Stones. Both groups liked to maintain that they weren’t really “rivals”—that was just a media myth, they politely said—and yet they plainly competed for commercial success and aesthetic credibility. On both sides of the Atlantic, fans often aligned themselves with one group or the other. In Beatles vs. Stones, John McMillian gets to the truth behind the ultimate rock and roll debate. Painting an eye-opening portrait of a generation dragged into an ideological battle between Flower Power and New Left militance, McMillian reveals how the Beatles-Stones rivalry was created by music managers intent on engineering a moneymaking empire. He describes how the Beatles were marketed as cute and amiable, when in fact they came from hardscrabble backgrounds in Liverpool. By contrast, the Stones were cast as an edgy, dangerous group, even though they mostly hailed from the chic London suburbs. For many years, writers and historians have associated the Beatles with the gauzy idealism of the “good” sixties, placing the Stones as representatives of the dangerous and nihilistic “bad” sixties. Beatles vs. Stones explodes that split, ultimately revealing unseen realities about America’s most turbulent decade through its most potent personalities and its most unforgettable music.

From the acclaimed author of Floating in My Mother’s Palm and Children and Fire, a stunning story about ordinary people living in extraordinary times—“epic, daring, magnificent, the product of a defining and mesmerizing vision” (Los Angeles Times). Trudi Montag is a Zwerg—a dwarf—short, undesirable, different, the voice of anyone who has ever tried to fit in. Eventually she learns that being different is a secret that all humans share—from her mother who flees into madness, to her friend Georg whose parents pretend he’s a girl, to the Jews Trudi harbors in her cellar. Ursula Hegi brings us a timeless and unforgettable story in Trudi and a small town, weaving together a profound tapestry of emotional power, humanity, and truth.

Life gives us choices. When we know whats right, JUST DO IT! These forty stones help you find that the right choices in life are much better. Wrong choices can keep our lives in turmoil and nothing will seem to ever go right. This journey through my years of raising my children and growing up will help you too as you share my stones. Some stones will seem rough, others smooth and then there are those stones which will bring hard changes in your life. But if you throw down your stones, God will begin a work in your life to help you be who you were called to be. There were times I felt like I was being stoned. Then other times I could find rest and peace in receiving these stones. Yet in all these stones you will see, as I did, that when I made the right choice to let God be God, I found these stones easy to lay down before a Holy God, knowing that no matter what was happening in my life God would be with me all the way. God promises to never leave us or forsake us. Through these years and years of learning to walk in obedience and sacrifice I have grown up and found that Gods ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. HE IS THE WAY, THE TRUTH and THE LIFE. It was not always easy, but it was a journey of a lifetime for me, with a God who loves me so much that He gave His life so we can all be over comers and not be overcome! Now, follow me down this less-traveled path to find peace, joy, obedience, and sacrificial love, as you too begin to..THROW DOWN YOUR STONES.

John Stone, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War One he was able to manipulate markets, industries and indeed whole countries and continents, has been found dead in mysterious circumstances. His beautiful young widow commissions a journalist to carry out an unusual bequest in his will but as he begins his research he soon discovers a story far more complex than he could have ever imagined... As the story moves backwards through time, from London in 1909 to Paris in 1809, before concluding in Venice in 1867, the mystery of John Stone's life and loves begins to unravel. The result is a spellbinding novel that is both a quest for the truth, a love story that spans decades and a compelling murder mystery.

A brilliant and provocative exploration of the interconnection of private life and the large-scale horrors of war and devastation. A Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and a winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Award, Susan Griffin’s A Chorus of Stones is an extraordinary reevaluation of history that explores the links between individual lives and catastrophic, world-altering violence. One of the most acclaimed and poetic voices of contemporary American feminism, Griffin delves into the perspective of those whose personal relationships and family histories were profoundly influenced by war and its often secret mechanisms: the bomb-maker and the bombing victim, the soldier and the pacifist, the grand architects who were shaped by personal experience and in turn reshaped the world. Declaring that “each solitary story belongs to a larger story”—and beginning with the brutal and heartbreaking circumstances of her own childhood—Griffin examines how the subtle dynamics of parenthood, childhood, and marriage interweave with the monumental violence of global conflict. She proffers a bold and powerful new understanding of the psychology of war through illuminating glimpses into the personal lives of Ernest Hemingway, Mahatma Gandhi, Heinrich Himmler, British officer Sir Hugh Trenchard, and other historic figures—as well as the munitions workers at Oak Ridge, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, and other humbler yet indispensible witnesses to history.