The residents of an aquarium learn that often a smile can turn a bully into a friend.

Drop the Rock—The Ripple Effect provides multiple perspectives from people successfully working a Twelve Step Program, showing Step 10 as a key to a sober life free of fear and resentment and filled with serenity and gratitude. When Drop the Rock: Removing Character Defects was first published in 1999, it quickly became the standard resource for working Steps 6 and 7, two of the most challenging of the Twelve Steps for many people in recovery. Learning what it means to fully surrender character defects frees you to make amends with Steps 8 and 9, realize the Big Book’s “Promises,” and move on to Step 10. In this new follow-up resource, Fred H. explores what he calls “the ripple effect” that can be created by using Step 10 to practice Steps 6 and 7 every day and avoid picking up “the rock” again. Drawing on his years of lecturing on the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, he reveals Step 10 as the natural culmination of working the previous Steps.

Discover the God-inspired difference only you can make in the world . . . using the key you never knew you had. Tim Tebow credits his mom with being the key to his success--but Pam never expected that she would be known on a national stage. For most of her life, she was serving quietly and faithfully as a wife and a mom--choosing life for her child in the face of medical risks, answering the Lord's call to mission work in the Philippines, and homeschooling before anyone knew what the word meant. But all along the way, her experiences--and her consistent, everyday choices to follow the Lord and to serve wherever He placed her--were creating unexpected ripples of influence throughout her family, her community, and her world. And they would end up extending far beyond anything she ever imagined. Pam believes that every one of us can be influential--and that deep within a woman's heart is the desire to use her influence for good. In Ripple Effects, Pam uncovers and explores the miraculous motivating power of influence we can have on this generation and the next, no matter where we are planted in life. Whether we are in the midst of endless diaper changes, climbing up the corporate ladder, or simply doing our best to live, love, and serve well each day, Pam will encourage us to maximize our God-given opportunities for influence--and watch how far the ripples will spread.

AS ALEX PRUD’HOMME and his great-aunt Julia Child were completing their collaboration on her memoir, My Life in France, they began to talk about the French obsession with bottled water, which had finally spread to America. From this spark of interest, Prud’homme began what would become an ambitious quest to understand the evolving story of freshwater. What he found was shocking: as the climate warms and world population grows, demand for water has surged, but supplies of freshwater are static or dropping, and new threats to water quality appear every day. The Ripple Effect is Prud’homme’s vivid and engaging inquiry into the fate of freshwater in the twenty-first century. The questions he sought to answer were urgent: Will there be enough water to satisfy demand? What are the threats to its quality? What is the state of our water infrastructure—both the pipes that bring us freshwater and the levees that keep it out? How secure is our water supply from natural disasters and terrorist attacks? Can we create new sources for our water supply through scientific innovation? Is water a right like air or a commodity like oil—and who should control the tap? Will the wars of the twenty-first century be fought over water? Like Daniel Yergin’s classic The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, Prud’homme’s The Ripple Effect is a masterwork of investigation and dramatic narrative. With striking instincts for a revelatory story, Prud’homme introduces readers to an array of colorful, obsessive, brilliant—and sometimes shadowy—characters through whom these issues come alive. Prud’homme traversed the country, and he takes readers into the heart of the daily dramas that will determine the future of this essential resource—from the alleged murder of a water scientist in a New Jersey purification plant, to the epic confrontation between salmon fishermen and copper miners in Alaska, to the poisoning of Wisconsin wells, to the epidemic of intersex fish in the Chesapeake Bay, to the wars over fracking for natural gas. Michael Pollan has changed the way we think about the food we eat; Alex Prud’homme will change the way we think about the water we drink. Informative and provocative, The Ripple Effect is a major achievement.

Consider your life as a series of ripples. The experiences in your life and your response to them have led you to exactly where you are now.

In Postcolonial Preaching, HyeRan Kim-Cragg argues that preaching is the act of dropping the stone of the Gospel into a lake, making waves to move hearts and transform the world wounded by colonial violence. The ripple effect serves as a metaphor and acronym to guide to preaching that takes postcolonial concerns seriously: Rehearsal, Imagination, Place, Pattern, Language and Exegesis (RIPPLE). Kim-Cragg explains each “ripple” in this approach and exercise of creating and delivering sermons. The author delivers fresh insights while drawing on some traditional homiletical perspectives in the service of a homiletic that takes the reality of racism, migration, and environmental degradation seriously. Moreover, Kim-Cragg demonstrates the postcolonial sermon in action by including annotated homilies. This book contributes to the very first wave of the application of postcolonial scholarship in preaching. Given the continuing extent and influence of colonial worldviews and legacies, this approach should become a staple in preaching over the next generation.

Finally. The thinking woman's guide to great sex. Bookshelves sag under the weight of guides and manuals that tell readers that their sex lives will be transformed if only they are limber enough to hoist leg A into position B. Many women have found that transformation underwhelming to say the least. Sex is physical. But as best-selling author and television commentator Dr. Gail Saltz writes, "Seeing sex in only physical terms is an old-fashioned and ineffective approach that is based on a fundamental misunderstanding, like treating tuberculosis with breathing exercises, which we did before we knew that tuberculosis was caused by a bacterium. We know better now." With a dose of good humor, Dr. Saltz explains how women can approach their sexuality from the inside out and create a ripple effect that will change how they think, feel, and behave in every aspect of life.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this inspired follow-up to the million-copy bestseller To Heaven and Back, Dr. Mary Neal (featured in the Netflix original series Surviving Death) shares untold stories about her encounters with Jesus and powerful insights about how the reality of heaven can make each day magnificent. “If you want practical ways to bring more of Heaven into your life today, Dr. Neal shows how.”—John Burke, pastor and author of New York Times bestseller Imagine Heaven Dr. Mary Neal’s unforgettable account of the Chilean kayaking accident that took her life and sent her on a journey to heaven and back riveted millions of readers. But as she shared her story with audiences throughout the world, Dr. Neal realized she had more to tell, especially on the biggest questions, such as how does her story help others? And how does knowing that heaven is real change our lives here on Earth? In 7 Lessons from Heaven, Dr. Neal takes readers deeper into her experience, which included meeting Jesus face-to-face, encounters with angels, and a journey to a “city of light.” She digs into important findings about the physiology of drowning, and shares why—from the perspective of heaven—we can know that beauty blossoms from even our greatest losses. Then she shows how each of us can personally experience God’s presence, develop an absolute trust in the truth of God’s promises, and learn how to live joyfully every day.