The Holocaust virtually destroyed the Jews of Poland, once a community of more than three million, constituting ten percent of the population, and the oldest continuous Jewish community in a European country. On the Edge of Destruction looks at the rich and complex nature of that community and the tremendous pressures under which it lived before the tragic end.

A thrilling, thought-provoking novel from one of young-adult literature’s boldest new talents. January 29, 2035. That’s the day the comet is scheduled to hit—the big one. Denise and her mother and sister, Iris, have been assigned to a temporary shelter outside their hometown of Amsterdam to wait out the blast, but Iris is nowhere to be found, and at the rate Denise’s drug-addicted mother is going, they’ll never reach the shelter in time. A last-minute meeting leads them to something better than a temporary shelter—a generation ship, scheduled to leave Earth behind to colonize new worlds after the comet hits. But everyone on the ship has been chosen because of their usefulness. Denise is autistic and fears that she’ll never be allowed to stay. Can she obtain a spot before the ship takes flight? What about her mother and sister? When the future of the human race is at stake, whose lives matter most?

The Edge of Redemption is far more than a remarkable story. Troy Evans challenges us to engage subcultures that we often perceive as threatening--to ask ourselves, who are the unreachable in our own communities? Rather than flee them, we are called to reach out and offer redemption to those who are on the edge of destruction. Evans was chasing the hip-hop dream; fame, fortune, and power could be his. And he was sure he could get it all if the gang violence or the law didn't get him first. Then redemption stepped in from the most unlikely circumstances to bring about the most unlikely change. Today, Pastor Troy Evans ministers to the community that once was his prey. He is connecting with lives and seeing the miracle of his own redemption repeated and multiplied in the same mean streets that once enslaved him. Enter into Evans' story and God's vision.

"... a carefully crafted and important book... a first-class contribution to the literature on modern Europe." --American Historical Review "... valuable... the first historical work to attempt a 'synthetic sketch' of the problems indicated in the title." --Journal of Polish Jewish Studies An illuminating study of the demographic, cultural, and socioeconomic condition of East Central European Jewry, the book focuses on the internal life of Jewish communities in the region and on the relationships between Jews and gentiles in a nationalist environment.

‘PICK OF THE WEEK’: “Sara Rena Vidal's imaginative story of her parents' war …” - Steven Carroll in Spectrum (The Age (Melbourne) & Sydney Morning Herald) 9/12/2017 “... the author has used the power of multiple sources of words to conjure the immediacy of a vanished world. I haven’t read anything quite like it before.” - Lisa Hill ANZLitLovers. “Wonderful book; deeply researched, scholarly, heartfelt and well written.” - Emeritus Professor Roger Fay, University of Tasmania ‘.. what an intrinsic and fascinating … ultimately beautiful dedication to family to faith and to life. So thoroughly researched too. A life's work for sure …’ - Stella Kinsella, Williamstown. “This memoir ... refuses to defer to hate and yearns to inspire a more humane future.” - Emeritus Professor Richard Freadman, LaTrobe University. “… a beautiful way to end, so full of a sense of our common humanity and our connection to everything on this planet if we are open to it.” - India Bell, Sydney In which my longing for that which is lost as well as for that which might yet be as told from memory fragments, journal jottings, and delving into history past and present, intertwining with my parents’ stories of more than survival, traverses despair to find transformation, home, and gratitude. So the generations will know, and choose life – after all it is a commandment. For Bella and Chaim. And for those to come. Encompassing this true story of Bella and Chaim, the author’s parents, with the intergenerational trauma of being a child of survivors, this memoir of love, loss and gratitude, is a testament to the human spirit as well as a call to rise above: ashes, victimhood, and generalizations. Bella and Chaim met and fell in love in the Warsaw Ghetto where they witnessed the destruction of a way of life; sole survivors of both their families, they were in the ghetto until its last days then endured entombment for eighteen months before rescue, liberation, and immigration to begin anew in Australia. A flowing collage embracing and mingling survivor-memory, recorded and analyzed historical context, and memory-fragments of Melbourne in the 1950s, with real-time musings on the light, dark and potential of being alive. Honoring the murdered and the righteous, reminding us that our choices matter, ever present are the dilemma’s and challenges facing us today. Augmented with photos, maps, a chapter on sources, bibliography, endnotes and an index, this book can be read as an inspirational story and/or utilized as a well-researched resource for in-depth study.

The newest volume of the annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry series features essays on the varied and often controversial ways Communism and Jewish history interacted during the 20th century. The volume's contents examine the relationship between Jews and the Communist movement in Poland, Russia, America, Britain, France, the Islamic world, and Germany.

Publisher description

President Gardner has been assassinated, dismembered and his parts stone staked to one of the walls of the Oval Office, but unbelievably that grim scenario is not (nor even close to being) the worst threat facing the United States. An attack of biblical dimensions has wiped out more than a third of the population in the large-scale operation known as "The Day of the Raven." Yet America's weapons and response capabilities are 90% operational, and what's left of the government is asking: why? Who have bulldozed us to rubble but left our offensive responsiveness mostly intact? Who have been responsible? How is it possible that any defense or response system has failed? The satellites are taken, the communications controlled by the enemy, and the Vice President turns to the only Private Investigator and ex-CIA, Jack Warden, with an impeccable record of zero failures in his services to the country, to help him understand what or who they are facing, and form a contingency and retaliatory offensive response plan. Jack will lead the efforts of the largest joint force of Intelligence and investigative resources ever formed to mitigate the damage caused and find those responsible. They cannot, however, suspect that perhaps "The Day America Was Subdued," as it would later be known, would be but the first link in a chain that could lead to global annihilation. The end... of the human race and of life as we conceive it. Marcel Pujol, in his Opera Prima, and which constitutes his eleventh published title, guides us along a path of madness and destruction in which there are a few humans who are sensitive to the flows of energies and interconnections between the different planes of the multiverse, which can be channeled with the purpose of bringing to our plane and our planet Earth, grotesque creatures as well as deadly (demons, salamanders, sylphs and Virtues) that will do whatever their summoner orders in order to return to their dimension.