A dead body is found on a deserted road, the body has been cut into small pieces and abandoned in a suitcase; it has been so badly mutilated that it is unrecognisable. The police believe that the victim could be a junkie or a whore since nobody has bothered to report her missing. They visit the local convent where the nuns are known to have been working with the prostitutes. As the investigation develops, we witness a struggle for power in the convent. Father Moses is sent to investigate the disappearance of one of the nuns and as he unravels the tangled relationships within the convent he begins a journey of self-discovery which ends when he has to decide whether he is to be Jesus or Judas.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER What do you do when God’s timing seems questionable, his lack of intervention hurtful, and his promises doubtful? Lysa TerKeurst unveils her heart amid shattering circumstances, inviting you to live assured when life doesn't turn out like you expected. Life often looks so very different than we hoped or expected. Some events may simply catch us off guard for a season, but others shatter us completely. We feel disappointed and disillusioned at best and overwhelmed and hopeless at worst. We quietly start to wonder about the reality of God’s goodness and why he allows us to suffer and experience grief and loss. Lysa TerKeurst understands this deeply. But after many tears, godly counseling, and prayerful seeking, she's also discovered that our disappointments can be the divine appointments our souls need to radically encounter God. In It's Not Supposed to Be This Way, Lysa invites us into her own journey of faith and, with grit, vulnerability, and honest humor, helps us to: Stop being pulled into the anxiety of disappointment by discovering how to better process unmet expectations and other painful situations. Train ourselves to recognize the three strategies of the enemy, so we can stand strong and persevere through unsettling relationships and uncertain outcomes. Discover the secret of being steadfast and not panicking when God actually does give us more than we can handle. Shift our suspicion that God is cruel or unfair to the biblical assurance that God is protecting and preparing us. Know how to encourage a friend and help her navigate hard realities with real help from God's truth, the Bible. Look for additional biblically based resources and devotionals from Lysa: Good Boundaries and Goodbyes Forgiving What You Can't Forget Uninvited You're Going to Make It Embraced Seeing Beautiful Again

As The Kite Runner and The Swallows of Kabuldid for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, this slim, profound novel illuminates the plight of those living under the Islamic State as well as the spirit of the Yazidi people. Today is Nazo’s wedding. Today she will set herself on fire. Nazo Heydo has drenched herself in kerosene and is ready to light the match in order to avoid marrying the Syrian elder who bought her from Islamic State officials. Her forced marriage is just the latest horror in a journey that began when ISIS fighters surrounded her peaceful village, demanding spoils and the Yazidis’ conversion to Islam. Rebuffed, they took away her father, brothers, and the love of her life in their pickup trucks with the other village men. The women and children they enslaved and separated, transporting the younger women to be trafficked for the pleasure of their soldiers or sold for money. Only Nazo’s wits and daring have saved her from further abuse or death, yet each escape leads to some new horror. Meanwhile, in a parallel narrative, Soz, another young Yazidi, flees her family’s farm when she sees the black-flagged pickups approach. She manages to reach Mount Sinjar, where she joins the Yazidi fighters who have allied with the Kurdish Peshmerga. Her journey will lead back to her homeland to do battle against ISIS. What Comes with the Dust is a powerful novel about genocide and the will to survive as well as a testament to struggles of the Yazidi people.

Acclaimed author Karen Hesse's Newbery Medal-winning novel-in-verse explores the life of fourteen-year-old Billie Jo growing up in the dust bowls of Oklahoma. Out of the Dust joins the Scholastic Gold line, which features award-winning and beloved novels. Includes exclusive bonus content!"Dust piles up like snow across the prairie. . . ."A terrible accident has transformed Billie Jo's life, scarring her inside and out. Her mother is gone. Her father can't talk about it. And the one thing that might make her feel better -- playing the piano -- is impossible with her wounded hands.To make matters worse, dust storms are devastating the family farm and all the farms nearby. While others flee from the dust bowl, Billie Jo is left to find peace in the bleak landscape of Oklahoma -- and in the surprising landscape of her own heart.

The weather is all around us all the time. From ancient times people have attributed the weather to the work of the gods. Ancient Israel shared this perception. The book of Psalms reflects theologically significant views on the weather that have not, until now, been fully explored. In this meteorological survey of the Psalms, whimsically called "meteorotheology," every reference to the weather is translated in accordance with the known climate and weather of ancient Israel. Each verse is discussed with particular attention to the function of the weather in the hymnal of ancient Israel. This book will be a resource for translators, clergy, and scholars with an interest in how the weather impacted religious outlooks in ancient Israel. Readers will learn that some expected associations, such as thunder and lightning, did not influence Israelite views on the natural world in the same way that they do today. Yahweh was God of the weather, and the Psalms frequently use this paradigm as a reason for both praise and fear of the Lord.

Informed Western understanding of Imperial Japan still often conjures up images of militarism, blind devotion to leaders, and fanatical pride in the country. But, as Imperial Japan and Defeat in the Second World War reveals, Western imagination is often reductive in its explanation of the Japanese Empire and its collapse. In his analysis of the Emperor, Imperial Japanese Army and Navy during the Second World War, Peter Wetzler examines the disconnect between nation and state during wartime Japan and in doing so offers a much-needed nuanced and sensitive corrective to existing Western scholarship. Rooted in the perspective of the Japanese, Wetzler makes available to readers vital primary and secondary Japanese archival sources; most notably, this book provides the first English assessment of the recently-released Actual Record of the Showa Emperor. This book is an important advance in English-language studies of the Second World War in Asia, and is thus essential reading for all those wishing to understand this crucial period in Japanese history.