NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Here is the Nobel Prize winner in her own words: a rich gathering of her most important essays and speeches, spanning four decades that "speaks to today’s social and political moment as directly as this morning’s headlines” (NPR). These pages give us her searing prayer for the dead of 9/11, her Nobel lecture on the power of language, her searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., her heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. She looks deeply into the fault lines of culture and freedom: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, “black matter(s),” human rights, the artist in society, the Afro-American presence in American literature. And she turns her incisive critical eye to her own work (The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, Paradise) and that of others. An essential collection from an essential writer, The Source of Self-Regard shines with the literary elegance, intellectual prowess, spiritual depth, and moral compass that have made Toni Morrison our most cherished and enduring voice.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present. Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison’s unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.

They call her the Langlinais Bride—though she's seen her husband only one time . . . on their wedding day, twelve years ago. For years naÏve, convent-bred Juliana dreaded being summoned to the side of the man she wed as a child so long ago. Now her husband, Sebastian, Earl of Langlinais, has become ensnared in his villainous brother's wicked plots—and has no choice but to turn to his virgin bride for help. Juliana now finds herself face-to-face with a man so virile and so powerful that she's fascinated by him—just as he asks her to go against everything she holds true. Sebastian never counted on being enchanted by the beauty of this innocent angel he intended to keep as wife in name only—and he dares not reveal to her the secret reason why their love can never be . . .

One of the great novels of the 1930s, Such Is My Beloved recounts the tragic story of two down-and-out prostitutes and the young priest who aspires to redeem their lives. The novel is at once a compassionate portrait of innocence and idealism, and an emphatic condemnation of a society where the lines between good and evil are essentially blurred. Such Is My Beloved is widely considered to be Morley Callaghan’s finest novel.

Celebrating 50 Years of Frances Roberts’s Powerful Reminder of God’s All-Encompassing Love Here’s your invitation to deeper intimacy with your loving heavenly Father—with this devotional classic from Frances J. Roberts. This powerful book, featuring original text and scripture from the King James Version of the Bible, shares the ministering spirit of the heavenly Father when you need a little encouragement, hope, comfort, and conviction. Through compelling prose and poetry, author Frances J. Roberts will challenge you to a deeper intimacy with God.

“Never before has the delight and wonder experienced in young love, in which is implicit physical discovery, been conveyed with such touching honesty or with rhapsody so involving unconscious pathos. Those who seek to drag any honest writing through the gutters of their own minds will do the same with this. Those who are not afraid of the strange miracle of life will understand this brave verse.” —William Rose Benét

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A “searching and emotionally intimate memoir” (The New York Times) told with a candor never before undertaken by a sitting Justice. This “powerful defense of empathy” (The Washington Post) is destined to become a classic of self-invention and self-discovery. The first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor has become an instant American icon. In this story of human triumph that “hums with hope and exhilaration” (NPR), she recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey that offers an inspiring testament to her own extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself. Here is the story of a precarious childhood, with an alcoholic father (who would die when she was nine) and a devoted but overburdened mother, and of the refuge a little girl took from the turmoil at home with her passionately spirited paternal grandmother. But it was when she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes that the precocious Sonia recognized she must ultimately depend on herself. She would learn to give herself the insulin shots she needed to survive and soon imagined a path to a different life. With only television characters for her professional role models, and little understanding of what was involved, she determined to become a lawyer, a dream that would sustain her on an unlikely course, from valedictorian of her high school class to the highest honors at Princeton, Yale Law School, the New York County District Attorney’s office, private practice, and appointment to the Federal District Court before the age of forty. Along the way we see how she was shaped by her invaluable mentors, a failed marriage, and the modern version of extended family she has created from cherished friends and their children. Through her still-astonished eyes, America’s infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book.

Original publication and copyright date: 2011.

When two hearts become one, both happiness and sometimes sadness will find a place in that seemingly perfect union. As much happiness as we shared, when I look back over our life together, I was blessed that God allowed me to experience such joy and love every day with a man who not only made promises but kept those promises. Even though I have also witnessed sadness to an unimaginable degree since his unexpected death, I can truly say I was still blessed to have loved and been loved to a magnitude I do not have words to describe. A lifetime cannot be defined in terms of hours, days, years, decades or century. Regardless of the length of time any relationship lasts, we must learn to live every minute like it is our last. That is what my one true love taught me! He added truth, honesty, love and devotion together and we had a sum total of joy and happiness divided by the number of offsprings produced by that love. And we never parted in anger or unforgiveness--because no one can predict what the next minute will bring. Sometimes I think my love was just too wise for this world--that is why God called him home to be with Him. As I look back over our life together, I feel enormously blessed by God to have had such a love as this in my lifetime. Only God made it possible. Only God allowed me to experience total bliss for a little while (29.8 years). Words cannot describe the memories stored in my memory bank of our span of time together. In all my days of blissful retreat, the only thing I feel I did not do enough of is giving grateful praise to the Almighty for creating that soul mate just for me and I for him. Life will go on and in each whisk of air against my skin as I sit and read, I will remember it is you my love stopping by to see me every now and then. God saw you were getting tired; So He did what He knew was best. He watched and waited for the exact time, You were in most need of some rest. You did not say to me farewell; Nor even a wave good-bye. God took you swift and easy-- I dare not ask God why. He gave you to me for a while; I loved you with all my heart, I showed you, I told you daily, Even in death, we are not apart. Rest easy Honey until I get there, I will know you when I arrive. We will be just two angels forever, Always--partners--side by side.