Monsters and Miracles is the story of a complex and conflicted warrior for children and animals who changed the consciousness of a nation more than a century ago. As an animal advocate, I love the story of Henry Bergh, founder of the first animal protection society in America. It is simply a must-read for anyone interested in the humane movement and true American heroes. - Rory Freedman, author of Beg and co-author of Skinny Bitch Henry. Bergh is widely thought to have started the animal protection movement in America and now, thanks to Gary Kaskel's intelligent and compelling biography, we know how how this came to be. Kaskel paints a detailed and personal portrait of the man who taught us to respect animals. This is an important book that will be on the shelf for years to come-and it's a great read. - Elizabeth Hess, author of Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who would Be Human and Lost and Found. Kaskel has woven an urbane and atmospheric tale of New York and Europe in the mid-19th century and an aristocrat's passionate crusade not only to bring America forward on the subject of animal cruelty and children's rights but for meaning and purpose in his own life. - Andrew Gross, author of The Dark Tide and The Blue Zone

Although it's probably the most important job many people will have, most of us enter parenthood seriously unprepared. Regardless of how much we believe we know, we raise our children pretty much by what feels like instinct, doing what our parents did or what we wish they had done. When a child veers off course, our parenting approach has to change. In her book From Monsters to Miracles: Parent-Driven Recovery Tools that Work author Anette Edens, PhD, shares her experience as a parent and psychologist helping families with children who have addictions. From Monsters to Miracles: Parent-Driven Recovery Tools that Work is a must-read for parents of substance-abusing teens. You'll learn how to maneuver through the chaos to create a harmonious family life. Even if your teen is not ready or willing to change, there is help and hope.

A collection of three short stories by the creators of AngryCuddles.com. Do Svidaniya, Sandwich! - In the wake of an outbreak of Zombie Sandwiches, the CIA sends an agent to Russia to work with the FSB on finding a way to fight back. The Perfect Crime - A unique hitman describes his method to a potential client looking to hire him for a corporate assassination. We Are Human - In an alternate earth where the spirit and human realms overlap, Jack goes on a killing spree...to save her sister's life.

Deluxe Edition

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY People ∙ O: The Oprah Magazine ∙ Financial Times ∙ Kansas City Star ∙ BookPage ∙ Kirkus Reviews ∙ Publishers Weekly ∙ Booklist NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A stunner.”—Justin Cronin “It’s never the disasters you see coming that finally come to pass—it’s the ones you don’t expect at all,” says Julia, in this spellbinding novel of catastrophe and survival by a superb new writer. Luminous, suspenseful, unforgettable, The Age of Miracles tells the haunting and beautiful story of Julia and her family as they struggle to live in a time of extraordinary change. On an ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia awakes to discover that something has happened to the rotation of the earth. The days and nights are growing longer and longer; gravity is affected; the birds, the tides, human behavior, and cosmic rhythms are thrown into disarray. In a world that seems filled with danger and loss, Julia also must face surprising developments in herself, and in her personal world—divisions widening between her parents, strange behavior by her friends, the pain and vulnerability of first love, a growing sense of isolation, and a surprising, rebellious new strength. With crystalline prose and the indelible magic of a born storyteller, Karen Thompson Walker gives us a breathtaking portrait of people finding ways to go on in an ever-evolving world. “Gripping drama . . . flawlessly written; it could be the most assured debut by an American writer since Jennifer Egan’s Emerald City.”—The Denver Post “Pure magnificence.”—Nathan Englander “Provides solace with its wisdom, compassion, and elegance.”—Curtis Sittenfeld “Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.

This collection of essays examines medieval and early modern perceptions of the marvelous and the monstrous. The essays investigate the nature of those phenomena and how people of these periods experienced them and how they recreated that experience for others. The essays trace the development of representations of marvels and explicate individual incarnations of monster and miracles. They analyze the importance of marvelous difference in defining ethnic, racial, religious, class, and gender identities to ask what legacy the medieval confrontations with marvels left for the modern world. These excellent essays look at issues that have long perplexed readers, such as the meaning of marvels, and whether we can read them in earnest or whether they can be appreciated only as play. The different authors bring their expertise to the fore to discuss the development of thoughts on marvels from the classical tradition through the concept's development in the medieval and early modern tradition. This collection is essential reading for any analysis of the marvelous in these periods and the state of scholarship surrounding them.

People at all levels of medieval society were extremely fascinated by the strange and unknown in the world around them. They tried in various ways to cope with the unfamiliar mysterious, monstrous, marvellous, and miraculous forces in order to understand them and give them a coherent meaning. Voyages were undertaken to remote parts of Asia. Some journeys were real, while others were mere "armchair travels". Most people took the descriptions in travel accounts to be the ultimate truth about the mysterious places in lands far away from Europe. Scholars formed a general view of the God-created cosmos and its seemingly mysterious character, expressed in encyclopedic works, summae, and in medieval maps. Monsters, Marvels and Miracles examines such journeys and landscapes in the Middle Ages.

Based on the true story of a man who was slave to meth for twenty years, lived the violent lifestyle of a body guard for drug dealers, and served as yard captain for the Aryan Brotherhood while in prison. As a junior in high school, he tried meth for the first time and was instantly hooked on a substance that turned a loveable, hardworking athlete into a monster. Like the prodigal son who wound up in the pig pen, he found himself on the garbage heap of society before crying out to God. The Monster and the Miracle is the gripping story of a man trapped in drug addiction. His story demonstrates the possibility of escape from meth's enslavement through the power of Jesus Christ and shows the extravagant love God has for a hopeless sinner.

“In a world where we are so often dividing ourselves into us and them, this book feels like a kind of magic, celebrating all beliefs, ethnicities, and unknowns.” —The New York Times Book Review Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe meets Roswell by way of Laurie Halse Anderson in this astonishing, genre-bending novel about a Mexican American teen who discovers profound connections between immigration, folklore, and alien life. It’s been three years since ICE raids and phone calls from Mexico and an ill-fated walk across the Sonoran. Three years since Sia Martinez’s mom disappeared. Sia wants to move on, but it’s hard in her tiny Arizona town where people refer to her mom’s deportation as “an unfortunate incident.” Sia knows that her mom must be dead, but every new moon Sia drives into the desert and lights San Anthony and la Guadalupe candles to guide her mom home. Then one night, under a million stars, Sia’s life and the world as we know it cracks wide open. Because a blue-lit spacecraft crashes in front of Sia’s car…and it’s carrying her mom, who’s very much alive. As Sia races to save her mom from armed-quite-possibly-alien soldiers, she uncovers secrets as profound as they are dangerous in this stunning and inventive exploration of first love, family, immigration, and our vast, limitless universe.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2018 BY NPR AND THE NEW YORK TIMES A PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB PICK "Somehow Casey Gerald has pulled off the most urgently political, most deeply personal, and most engagingly spiritual statement of our time by just looking outside his window and inside himself. Extraordinary." —Marlon James "Staccato prose and peripatetic storytelling combine the cadences of the Bible with an urgency reminiscent of James Baldwin in this powerfully emotional memoir." —BookPage The testament of a boy and a generation who came of age as the world came apart—a generation searching for a new way to live. Casey Gerald comes to our fractured times as a uniquely visionary witness whose life has spanned seemingly unbridgeable divides. His story begins at the end of the world: Dallas, New Year's Eve 1999, when he gathers with the congregation of his grandfather's black evangelical church to see which of them will be carried off. His beautiful, fragile mother disappears frequently and mysteriously; for a brief idyll, he and his sister live like Boxcar Children on her disability checks. When Casey--following in the footsteps of his father, a gridiron legend who literally broke his back for the team--is recruited to play football at Yale, he enters a world he's never dreamed of, the anteroom to secret societies and success on Wall Street, in Washington, and beyond. But even as he attains the inner sanctums of power, Casey sees how the world crushes those who live at its margins. He sees how the elite perpetuate the salvation stories that keep others from rising. And he sees, most painfully, how his own ascension is part of the scheme. There Will Be No Miracles Here has the arc of a classic rags-to-riches tale, but it stands the American Dream narrative on its head. If to live as we are is destroying us, it asks, what would it mean to truly live? Intense, incantatory, shot through with sly humor and quiet fury, There Will Be No Miracles Hereinspires us to question--even shatter--and reimagine our most cherished myths.