The most ambitious work of fiction by a writer widely considered the most important novelist working in China today In this darkly comic novel, a group of women inhabits a world of constant surveillance, where informants lurk in the flowerbeds and false reports fly. Conspiracies abound in a community that normalizes paranoia and suspicion. Some try to flee—whether to a mysterious gambling bordello or to ancestral homes that can only be reached underground through muddy caves, sewers, and tunnels. Others seek out the refuge of Nest County, where traditional Chinese herbal medicines can reshape or psychologically transport the self. Each life is circumscribed by buried secrets and transcendent delusions. Can Xue's masterful love stories for the new millennium trace love's many guises—satirical, tragic, transient, lasting, nebulous, and fulfilling—against a kaleidoscopic backdrop drawn from East and West of commerce and industry, fraud and exploitation, sex and romance.

Almost every entry in the book includes a verbal marker of depression or an outright mention of pain and hurting. Does it give the reader an opportunity to explore feelings? Of course it does. It occurs time and again. On that measure, Programmed to Self Destruct has to be counted a success. It feels simply barbaric to review this book, as if pondering on the aesthetics of the cries of pain. The aesthetics are excellent and works well, the writing is clear, direct, with minute details that startle even as the cumulative effect brings on numbness. I don't see a lot of middle preference for Programmed to Self Destruct; you'll either love it or you don't. Come to think of it, that all-or-nothing feeling, having to be the best or not exist at all. It's very painful. My heart wonders about Khan's true life experiences.

Every commentary on the Book of Psalms has had to face the issue that many of these prayers commemorate and celebrate wrath and vengeance. What is needed is not ingenious exegetical rationalization of ancient texts, but the kind of transformation into a work of piety and art that is provided here.Addressed are the needs of a world seeking to counter individual and societal injustices by a global peace born of personal peace through prayer and practice. In short, here is the Book of Psalms recast in the light of the continuing revelation and evolution of the authentic religious spirit of the scriptures.

In The Art of Healing Prayer, Charles Ringma and Mary Dickau invite us to enter the realm of God’s curative love to aid those seeking the wholeness of Christ. Implicit in this invitation is the understanding that we have opened up our own lives to God’s healing grace. For this is a costly ministry, in which precious time and resources will be required of us as we pray biblically, imaginatively and sensitively for someone who may be on a very difficult journey to restoration. Although often carried out behind the scenes of much of the Church’s activity, the healing ministry is one of joy and transformation. A person released from long-standing inner woundedness – from the prison of reaction, bitterness, self-pity, self-protection and fear – is one who can grow to inhabit new wide spaces of love and forgiveness. In turn, they may become a source of goodness and healing, as the ‘magic’ of God’s grace results in eddies of life-giving love for others.

"Where are you leading me?" the bewitching woman questions. A smile crossed the phantom's lips. "To a place of endless time," he promises her, "then for evermore." Under the Blood Moon begins on a fateful windswept October night in the year 1838 as a band of Cherokees seek refuge in a hidden mountain valley. Despite the valley's impenetrable fortress, ravenous creatures enter and soak the valley with blood. The cries of those slaughtered reach heaven as one escapes to become "keeper of the truth." Years later an enigmatic figure known as Peter Brickman mysteriously vanishes from the valley without a trace. Now, in present day, Peter's spirit guides Joseph Raincloud, a renowned archeologist, who is haunted by a mysterious stick figure, and five extraordinary souls who must unknowingly enter the valley of death and prepare, in five days, for the final battle against an ancient demon who consumes the soul of an innocent mortal. Disguised as a human the demon rises to power and prepares, under the auspice of a group known as MAGUS, to devour the children of man.