Civilization has crumbled. Nature itself has become carnivorous. Living to the next day is a constant challenge for the humans still left in the world. "Things were not always like this," he told her. The world has changed, humanity was gone, and hope in life lost. Shay had nothing left for her. She was just surviving, but for what? In a stroke of luck or fate, Shay found herself faced with a decision that could change the course of her life. After running into a spirited girl that somehow still had a craving for life, Shay disregarded years of warnings and left her village, joining the girl's caravan on a journey to find something better.

A collection of short stories - four previously published and three new - linked by the theme of young people experiencing personal dilemmas. All are set in South Africa, first under apartheid and then after the first democratic elections. They cover the period from 1950 to 2000 and reflect the lives of a range of young people, black and white, living in what was for many years seen as the world's most openly racist society.

No Longer Bound is about the intersection of reading comprehension and interpretation that leads to the development of a powerful and transformative sermon. Reading facilitates the interpretive process, which is the essence of any sermon. The sermon is an interpretation of an interpretation and as such presents itself as a new gospel message. The ability to write and preach a sermon is an exercise in freedom. The book is grounded in a narrative theological form that begins with the author's experience and filters that experience through the lens of hermeneutic philosophy and theology. Reading and preaching constitute the thread that runs throughout the book. The book suggests that the sermon is the philosophic theology of Black practical religion inasmuch as the Black church is central to religion and culture. This is a fresh and new understanding of homiletics, philosophical theology, and interpretation theory that is intended to produce better preachers and more powerful and life-changing sermons by all who endeavor to preach.

In The Mike File, Stephen Trimble grapples with his brother's heartrending life and death and looks behind doors he's barricaded in himself. In 1957, when "Stevie" was six and Mike 14, psychosis overwhelmed Mike. He never lived at home again and died alone in a Denver boarding home at 33. Journalists used Mike's death to expose these "ratholes" warehousing people with mental illness.Detective story, social history, journey of self-discovery, and compassionate and unsparing memorial to a family and a forgotten life, The Mike File will move every reader with a relative or friend touched by psychiatric illness or disability. "Trimble adds a new voice of eloquent witness to the growing literature of severe mental illness. With restrained grief and unrestrained remembrance, he reclaims in words his lost, loved and loving brother. He reminds us that the mad among us are human-and in many ways versions of ourselves." -Ron Powers, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of No One Cares About Crazy People "The only one way to compose an authentically inclusive and connected world is to first imagine it. Trimble does so specifically. This book is an unflinching witness as well a resounding call to our collective responsibility." -Nan Seymour, Founder of River Writing "The Mike File is insightful, heartfelt and unforgettable-a love letter to his family and a somber contemplation of what might have been." --Robert Kolker, author of ​Hidden Valley Road

What happens when you put two of the most irreverent women (one a bounty hunter and the other, a case of mistaken identity) together for a rip-roaring, hilariously wild adventure? WHEN FATES COLLIDE - MARDI GRAS BOUND! The sequel to the popular mystery adventure, WHEN FATES COLLIDE - A MORGAN AND HARRINGTON MYSTERY; this time around, join bounty hunter Alex Morgan and her new friend, a former mistaken suspect jumper, Hope Harrington as they head to New Orleans during Mardi Gras for the bounty of a lifetime...a descendant of the legendary Marie Laveau, herself! Strap yourselves in tight for the ride of your wildest imagination, through swamps, all the while meeting some of the most colorful characters imaginable! This is sure to be one adventure Alex and Hope will never forget!

Cory and her lovers on Green's Hill face an enemy that doesn't just kill people, it unmakes them.

Emancipation, a defining feature of twentieth-century China society, is explored in detail in this compelling study. Angelina Chin expands the definition of women’s emancipation by examining what this rhetoric meant to lower-class women, especially those who were engaged in stigmatized sexualized labor who were treated by urban elites as uncivilized, rural, threatening, and immoral. Beginning in the early twentieth century, as a result of growing employment opportunities in the urban areas and the decline of rural industries, large numbers of young single lower-class women from rural south China moved to Guangzhou and Hong Kong, forming a crucial component of the service labor force as shops and restaurants for the new middle class started to develop. Some of these women worked as prostitutes, teahouse waitresses, singers, and bonded household laborers. At the time, the concept of“women’s emancipation” was high on the nationalist and modernizing agenda of progressive intellectuals, missionaries, and political activists. The metaphor of freeing an enslaved or bound woman’s body was ubiquitous in local discussions and social campaigns in both cities as a way of empowering women to free their bodies and to seek marriage and work opportunities. Nevertheless, the highly visible presence of sexualized lower-class women in the urban space raised disturbing questions in the two modernizing cities about morality and the criteria for urban citizenship. Examining various efforts by the Guangzhou and Hong Kong political participants to regulate women’s occupations and public behaviors, Bound to Emancipate shows how the increased visibility of lower-class women and their casual interactions with men in urban South China triggered new concerns about identity, consumption, governance, and mobility in the 1920s and 1930s. Shedding new light on the significance of South China in modern Chinese history, Chin also contributes to our understanding of gender and women’s history in China.

This definitive biography of Pope John Paul II explores his historic influence on the world stage: “Magnificent. A tremendous achievement” (Washington Post). As head of the Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005, John Paul II was one of the world’s most transformational figures. With unprecedented cooperation from the Pope, as well as the people who knew and worked with him throughout his life, George Weigel offers a groundbreaking portrait of him as a man, a thinker, and a leader whose religious convictions defined a new approach to world politics—and changed the course of history. The Pope played a crucial yet underexplored role in some of the most momentous events of his time, including the collapse of European communism, the quest for peace in the Middle East, and the democratic transformation of Latin America. With an updated preface, this edition of Witness to Hope explains how this “man from a far country” did all of that, and much more—and what both his accomplishments and the unfinished business of his pontificate mean for the future of the Church and the world.

The place of women's rights in African American public culture has been an enduring question, one that has long engaged activists, commentators, and scholars. All Bound Up Together explores the roles black women played in their communities' social movements and the consequences of elevating women into positions of visibility and leadership. Martha Jones reveals how, through the nineteenth century, the "woman question" was at the core of movements against slavery and for civil rights. Unlike white women activists, who often created their own institutions separate from men, black women, Jones explains, often organized within already existing institutions--churches, political organizations, mutual aid societies, and schools. Covering three generations of black women activists, Jones demonstrates that their approach was not unanimous or monolithic but changed over time and took a variety of forms, from a woman's right to control her body to her right to vote. Through a far-ranging look at politics, church, and social life, Jones demonstrates how women have helped shape the course of black public culture.