Sacred chants are Ada Franklin’s power and her medicine. By saying them, she can remove warts, stanch bleeding, and draw the fire from burns. At age twenty, her reputation as a faith healer defines her in her rural Pennsylvania community. But on the day in 1953 that her family’s barn is consumed by flame, her identity as a healer is upended. The heat, the roar of the blaze, and the bellows of the trapped cows change Ada. For the first time, she fears death and—for the first time—she doubts God. With her belief goes her power to heal. Then Ada meets an agnostic named Will Burk and his pet raven, Cicero. Fire Is Your Water is acclaimed memoirist Jim Minick’s first novel. Built on magical realism and social observation in equal measure, it never gives way to sentimentality and provides an insider’s glimpse into the culture of Appalachia. A jealous raven, a Greek chorus of one, punctuates the story with its judgments on the characters and their actions, until a tragic accident brings Ada and Will together in a deeper connection.

Margaret Hart. Maximilian Lamb. Their superiors from beyond the stars have given them human bodies and dispatched them to Planet Earth, specifically to Asheville, North Carolina. Their mission: to bring together Emily Hoffman, a broken-hearted teacher, and pharmacist John Flyte, a boy in a man's body who claims to know women, but can never hold onto one. As it turns out, John and Emily are the least of their problems. Soon after their arrival, Max and Maggie find themselves embroiled in a situation never before encountered by any of their kind, a bewildering dance of emotions incomprehensible to them. Why were they sent here? What is their real mission? What strange force is drawing them together? Are they part of some celestial experiment? Are they creatures of free will? Are they in a state of rebellion or a state of grace? Dust On Their Wings is an entertainment about the mysterious pathways of the human heart. Through Max and Maggie we remember--or perhaps rediscover--the tremendous power of passion and love: the feeling of fingertips on fingertips, the first kiss, secrets shared in a glance. Through them we also remember the words from the Old Book: "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

An astonishing collection of graphics, uncovered from long- forgotten sources, mostly in China itself. From posters and advertisements to book covers and magazines, this book presents a dazzling panoply of modern graphic design in China. Beginning with the basic traditions of Chinese graphics, the authors show how the writer and artist Lu Xun became the center of cultural revival in the new China. We see Art Deco coming to China in the Shanghai Style, and the birth of a dynamic national design style, born of Russian Constructivism and China’s own drive for new technology. The Socialist Realist art of Mao in turn adopted folk art traditions to fuel the Revolutionary machine, while the continuing search for a new identity can be seen in the graphic images of protest from the summer of 1989.

"A truly inspiring story, in gorgeous prose, about one family's journey into blueberry farming. Delicious reading." —Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America The Blueberry Years is a mouth-watering and delightful memoir based on Jim Minick's trials and tribulations as an organic blueberry farmer. This story of one couple and one farm shows how our country's appetite for cheap food affects how that food is grown, who does or does not grow it, and what happens to the land. But this memoir also calls attention to the fragile nature of our global food system and our nation's ambivalence about what we eat and where it comes from. Readers of Michael Polland and Barbara Kingsolver will savor the tale of Jim's farm and the exploration of larger issues facing agriculture in the United States—like the rise of organic farming, the plight of small farmers, and the loneliness common in rural America. Ultimately, The Blueberry Years tells the story of a place shaped by a young couple's dream, and how that dream ripened into one of the mid-Atlantic's first certified-organic, pick-your-own blueberry farms.

"I get the job done." This is Amanda Bell's credo, the bedrock principle she ruthlessly embraces as a supervisor at Saxon & Henle, an Atlanta Law and accounting firm. Ambitious, tough, and disciplined, Amanda demands the impossible from herself and her subordinates. Despite their hostility--their kindest nickname for her is "The Immaculate Perfection"--her success in the corporate world seems assured. But is it? What happens when carefully-laid plans unexpectedly explode? What happens when a storm demolishes cherished dreams, when dreams themselves are blown to dust? What becomes of the heart when it hides behind the walls of an interior castle, locking out friendship, affection, and love? Twenty-seven-year-old Amanda Bell is about to find out. In this modern fairy tale, a woman devastated by crushed hopes and a vicious assault finds herself on a strange new path, searching for release from her self-imprisonment. On her journey Amanda encounters characters usually associated with the Brothers Grimm: a wicked witch of a homemaker, a best friend witty and sharp as an elf, a wise old priest with a bag of wizard's tricks, an architect in the dented armor of a knight-errant, a ghost offering solace and light, and four motherless children. Amanda's life will never again be the same.

Facing Cyber Threats Head On explains battle against hackers as a fight between people, not technologies. Brian Minick offers a new approach to defending against cyber attacks, one that balances business risk with the cost of creating defenses that can change as quickly and often as attackers can.

Minick peers into the "hollow-hidden spring" of his aunt's life, exploring her struggles with poverty, "elephant man's disease," loneliness, cancer, and her death.