After losing her twin in a freak accident, Kristen meets a mysterious stranger at her sister's grave, and falls in love with him.

In this eloquent and provocative "open letter" to evangelicals, Ronald Osborn wrestles with the problem of biblical literalism and the ongoing challenge of animal suffering within an evolutionary understanding of the world. Osborn forces us to ask hard questions, not only of the Bible and church tradition, but also and especially of ourselves.

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A deeply reported, searingly honest portrait of the death penalty in Texas—and what it tells us about crime and punishment in America “If you’re one of those people who despair that nothing changes, and dream that something can, this is a story of how it does.”—Anand Giridharadas, The New York Times Book Review WINNER OF THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS AWARD In 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: the country’s death penalty system violated the Constitution. The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier. When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment. Then, amid a larger wave of criminal justice reform, came the death penalty’s decline, a trend so durable that even in Texas the punishment appears again close to extinction. In Let the Lord Sort Them, Maurice Chammah charts the rise and fall of capital punishment through the eyes of those it touched. We meet Elsa Alcala, the orphaned daughter of a Mexican American family who found her calling as a prosecutor in the nation’s death penalty capital, before becoming a judge on the state’s highest court. We meet Danalynn Recer, a lawyer who became obsessively devoted to unearthing the life stories of men who committed terrible crimes, and fought for mercy in courtrooms across the state. We meet death row prisoners—many of them once-famous figures like Henry Lee Lucas, Gary Graham, and Karla Faye Tucker—along with their families and the families of their victims. And we meet the executioners, who struggle openly with what society has asked them to do. In tracing these interconnected lives against the rise of mass incarceration in Texas and the country as a whole, Chammah explores what the persistence of the death penalty tells us about forgiveness and retribution, fairness and justice, history and myth. Written with intimacy and grace, Let the Lord Sort Them is the definitive portrait of a particularly American institution.

“A gripping and beautiful book about the power of love in the face of unimaginable loss.” --Cheryl Strayed For readers of The Bright Hour and When Breath Becomes Air, a moving, transcendent memoir of loss and a stunning exploration of marriage in the wake of unimaginable grief. As the book opens: two-year-old Greta Greene is sitting with her grandmother on a park bench on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A brick crumbles from a windowsill overhead, striking her unconscious, and she is immediately rushed to the hospital. But although it begins with this event and with the anguish Jayson and his wife, Stacy, confront in the wake of their daughter's trauma and the hours leading up to her death, Once More We Saw Stars quickly becomes a narrative that is as much about hope and healing as it is about grief and loss. Jayson recognizes, even in the midst of his ordeal, that there will be a life for him beyond it--that if only he can continue moving forward, from one moment to the next, he will survive what seems unsurvivable. With raw honesty, deep emotion, and exquisite tenderness, he captures both the fragility of life and absoluteness of death, and most important of all, the unconquerable power of love. This is an unforgettable memoir of courage and transformation--and a book that will change the way you look at the world.

Craig DeMartino never thought this would happen to him. He was 100 feet up a cliff in Rocky Mountain National Park when--with one step--his 13 years of rock climbing experience and 15 pounds of gear plummeted with him to the ground. Expert climbers say that if you fall 10 feet you have a 10% chance of dying, a 20% chance at 20 feet, 30% at 30, and so on. Craig fell 100 feet. By basic calculation, Craig should not be alive today. But he is. For anyone who has been knocked down or run over by life, After the Fallnot only offers an engaging read but also provides a clear message of hope: sometimes the greatest gift we can receive isn't just healing, but the power to endure.

It's the era of peace and love in the 1960s, but nothing is peaceful in Caroline's life. Since her beautiful older sister disappeared, fifteen-year-old Caroline might as well have disappeared too. She's invisible to her parents, who can't stop blaming each other. The police keep following up on leads even Caroline knows are foolish. The only one who seems to care about her is Tony, her sister's older boyfriend, who soothes Caroline's desperate heart every time he turns his magical blue eyes on her. Tony is convinced that the answer to Jess's disappearance is in California, the land of endless summer, among the street culture of runaways and flower children. Come with me, Tony says to Caroline, and we'll find her together. Tony is so loving, and all he cares about is bringing Jess home. And so Caroline follows, and closes a door behind her that may never open again, in a heartfelt thriller that never lets up.

Costa Prize Winner: The “best biography yet” of notorious media mogul Robert Maxwell, “by turns engrossing, amusing, and appalling” (Sunday Times). In February 1991, Robert Maxwell triumphantly sailed into New York Harbor on his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, to buy the ailing Daily News. Taxi drivers stopped their cabs to shake his hand, children asked for his autograph, and patrons of the hottest restaurant in Manhattan gave him a standing ovation while he dined. Ten months later, Maxwell disappeared off that same yacht in the middle of the night and was later found dead in the water. As John Preston, author of A Very English Scandal, reveals in this biography, Maxwell’s death was as mysterious as his remarkable life. A tightly paced, addictive saga of ambition, hubris, narcissism, greed, power, and intrigue, this book recounts Maxwell’s rise and fall and rise and fall again. Preston moves backward and forward in time to examine the forces that shaped Maxwell, from his Jewish childhood in occupied Eastern Europe to his failed political ambitions in the 1960s that ended in accusations of financial double-dealing to his resurrection as a media mogul—and the family legacy he left behind, including his daughter Ghislaine Maxwell. Preston chronicles Maxwell’s all-encompassing rivalry with Rupert Murdoch—a battle that ruined Maxwell financially, threatened his sanity, and led, indirectly, to his death. Did Maxwell have a heart attack and fall overboard? Was his death suicide? Or was he murdered—possibly by Mossad or the KGB? Few in the twentieth century journeyed as far from his roots as Robert Maxwell. Yet, as Fall reveals, no one, however rich and powerful, can entirely escape their past. “Preston tells [the story] with great verve and the benefit of extensive interviews.” —The Economist “The mystery of this larger-than-life figure is perplexing—true crime aficionados will be absorbed.” —Library Journal “One of the most enigmatic figures in the annals of white-collar crime . . . well-researched, compelling.” —Kirkus Reviews

Gripping accounts of all known fatal mishaps in the most famous of the World's Natural Wonders.

When Dan loses his best friend to an occupational accident, he questions everything. Did the company do enough to protect him? Are the rest of us protected from this happening again? Dan's questions turn into an unshakeable resolve to improve safety for the company-to make sure that his friend didn't die in vain. Dan's journey from ignorance to expertise illustrates how all organizations can and should approach protecting workers at heights.

This book celebrates the great stripping process of aging, dying and spiritual awakening. Beautiful, poignant, at times humorous, transcendent, messy, down to earth, refreshingly honest--the book explores death, and more importantly, being alive, through a rich mix of personal stories and spiritual reflections. Joan writes about her mother's final years and about being with friends and teachers at the end of their lives. She shares her own journey with aging, anal cancer, and other life challenges. She explores what it means to be alive in what may be the collapse of civilization and the possible extinction of life on earth due to climate change. Pointing beyond deficiency stories, future fantasies, and oppressive self-improvement projects, Joan invites an awakening to the immediacy of this moment and the wonder of ordinary life. She demonstrates a pathless path of genuine transformation, seeing all of life as sacred and worthy of devotion, and finding joy in the full range of our human experience.