A moving tribute, singer and songwriter Danny Oertli tells the story of his wife Cyndi's battle with cancer. When she dies after eight years of fighting the disease, Danny and their two young children see that there is a special place in heaven for their wife and mother.

Stepparenting Is Hard…but It Can Also Be Richly Rewarding Stepparenting can sometimes feel like an overwhelming and thankless challenge. Loving and caring for children who aren’t biologically yours means having to earn trust, establish authority, and often put your own needs aside in favor of your stepchild’s well-being or a birth parent’s wishes. But here’s the good news: With some expert guidance and God’s help, you can have tremendous influence in your stepchild’s life and grow in your faith along the way. Seasoned stepmom Laurie Polich Short understands and empathizes with the difficult job you face. Drawing on extensive research, biblical teaching, and her own real-life experience (including an insightful chapter cowritten with her stepson, Jordan), Laurie provides practical and spiritual advice to help you fully embrace and succeed in your role as stepparent. Whether you are about to become a stepparent or are further along on your journey, this compassionate and insightful resource offers the hope, help, and encouragement you’ve been looking for.

Fourteen bold, dynamic, and daring women take the stage in this collection of women's lives and stories. Individually and collectively, these writers and performers speak the unspoken and perform the heretofore unperformed. The first section includes scripts and essays about performances of the lives of Gertrude Stein, Georgia O'Keeffe, Mary Church Terrell, Charlotte Cushman, Anaïs Nin, Calamity Jane, and Mary Martin. The essays consider intriguing interpretive issues that arise when a woman performer represents another woman's life. In the second section, seven performers--Tami Spry, Jacqueline Taylor, Linda Park-Fuller, Joni Jones, Terri Galloway, Linda M. Montano, and Laila Farah--tell their own stories. Ranging from narrrative lectures (sometimes aided by slides and props) to theatrical performances, their works wrest comic and dramatic meaning from a world too often chaotic and painful. Their performances engage issues of sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, loss of parent, disability, life and death, and war and peace. The volume as a whole highlights issues of representation, identity, and staging in autobiographical performance. It examines the links among theory and criticism of women's autobiography, feminist performance theory, and performance practice.

Miller shares her remarkable story of hope and faith. After surviving the Columbine shootings, Miller dedicated her life to offer support in the midst of tragedy. (Practical Life)

In a delightfully written book, the author of Making God Real to Your Children shares her secrets from more than 20 years of classroom experiences. Hundreds of simple, creative activities are grouped around a "seed thought" about God and His care. Each section is accompanied by suggestions for faith-building conversation.

Upset that her New Mexico school can only afford music and art teachers in alternate years, fourth-grader Saige works with her grandmother, Mimi, to plan a fundraiser but when Mimi has an accident, Saige relies on new friend Gabi to help.

A past full of pain and chaos-a world of deception, dysfunction, and darkness: The World She Knew is an emotional journey full of secrets, where the main character, Sage struggles to adapt to the environment that God provided for her. How does little Sage keep faith in the unseen? How can she justify a Higher Powers love for her, when all she feels is lost and forgotten? The World She Knew is a soundless scream, searching for hope underneath all the turmoil and faithless souls Sage encounters.

And Daddy Makes Five Rust Creek Ramblings In a town as small as Rust Creek Falls, it would be hard not to notice the new millionaire on Main Street, even if he wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous. But bachelor Autry Jones does not disappoint—he’s every bit as handsome as his settled-down brothers Walker and Hudson. However, this business-minded CEO not only shies away from commitment, he’s also heading for Paris in a month. So why is he keeping company with Marissa Fuller, a young widow with three daughters? Marissa and Autry have made a “no-strings/just friends” agreement, but Abby, Kiera and Kaylee clearly have other ideas. Can a dedicated tycoon find happiness with a mom and her kids? We here at the Gazette are hopeful. Some contracts were made to be broken!

“A vast, thoroughly wonderful assortment of poetry, memoirs and stories . . . that defines today’s female Italian-American experience” (Publishers Weekly). Often stereotyped as nurturing others through food, Italian-American women have often struggled against this simplistic image to express the realities of their lives. In this unique collection, over 50 Italian-American female writers speak in voices that are loud, boisterous, sweet, savvy, and often subversively funny. Drawing on personal and cultural memories rooted in experiences of food, they dissolve conventional images, replacing them with a sumptuous, communal feast of poetry, stories, and memoir. This collection also delves into unexpected, sometimes shocking terrain as these courageous authors bear witness to aspects of the Italian American experience that normally go unspoken—mental illness, family violence, incest, drug addiction, AIDS, and environmental degradation. As provocative as it is appetizing, “this collection of verse and prose pieces . . . reveals the evocative and provocative power of food as event and as symbol, as well as the diversity of these women’s lives and their ambivalence regarding the role of nurturer” (Library Journal).

An attractive gift book of 100 joyful meditations on the nature of heaven, our hearts’ true home.We all think about heaven--or at least we wonder what will happen to us after we die. For the Christian, these should be comforting, exciting thoughts. In this beautiful devotional gift book, Joni Eareckson Tada has chosen short excerpts from her book, Heaven, and arranged them around common topics such as: Where is heaven and what is it like? What will we do in heaven? Each inspiring and faith-filled meditation is paired with a verse of scripture and a heart-felt prayer.