This book attempts a close reading of the fiction of Flannery O'Connor, story by story, with one eye on her use of the Bible, and her view of the Bible in relation to her own work. After introductory chapters on O'Connor's markings in her own Roman Catholic Bible, her book reviews in diocesan newspapers, and her impatience with her wayward readers, Michaels looks first at her two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away, and then at seventeen of her short stories from her two collections, A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge. Michaels takes notice of O'Connor's explicit references to the Bible (or Bibles) in her stories, and looks more particularly to the ways in which the stories are driven at least in part by specific biblical texts. Among the themes that emerge are alienation or displacement, what it means to be "good," the relation between body and spirit and between the Old Testament and the New, issues of race and gender, and above all what O'Connor once called "the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil."

The saga of the mighty Forest Kingdom comes to a close as dark magic, fell foes, and a vicious dragon threaten to destroy Cormyr’s royal family—and Cormyr itself Azoun IV, in the twilight of his years, is still a shining hero to most of his subjects. To all but the eldest, he is the only king they've ever known. He's led them capably out of dark doom before. Yet Cormyr has never faced so many mighty and mysterious foes at once. Demonic ghazneths, ancient curses, weird trees of foul magic, goblins and their kin on the rise in the northern wilderlands, a blight upon the land, rebellious mutterings, dying war wizards . . . and a dragon the likes of which no living eyes on Faerûn have ever seen. The Purple Throne doesn't seem so unassailable now. It could well shatter under the weight of a gigantic dragon—or the secrets and follies of the last of the Obarskyrs.

A woman who fears she’s failing as a painter and as an artist seeks inspiration from one of her favorite poets--finding something even more wondrous, but also more impossible to capture on canvas. . . At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A greedy emperor demands an impossible task from Lao Lao, a peasant woman who makes beautiful shapes from paper. Includes instructions for making traditional Chinese paper-cuts.