Paul believes that homosexuality is an illness. But when he tries to cure himself, and others, he learns just how stubborn desire can be. Paul Drucker has made a name for himself telling young gay men that he can cure them of their &‘sinful desires'. Trouble is, he's all too familiar with those desires himself, which leads him to Julian Evans, a male &‘escort' he finds online. Paul tells himself, and Julian, that he simply needs an assistant, someone to help him on an upcoming lecture tour. The reality, of course, is quite different, and when the media discovers them together, Paul tries to straighten up his image by starting an ex-gay group at his church. Which is where Julian's roommate, Aaron, comes in. Eager to expose the ex-gay movement for the sham that it is, Aaron goes undercover in Paul's conversion group, posing as a gay man hoping to be &‘cured'. However, things get complicated, and more than a little strange, when Aaron meets the other members of the group—a motley assortment of queers struggling to reconcile their desires with their faith, and with their families. Will Paul's techniques, which include group showers, lessons in manly walking, and something called &‘holding therapy', lead to newly created heterosexuals? To tragedy? Maybe even to love?

A troubled doctor, an addicted mother, and the newborn that binds them together. Meet Dr. Eli Kurz—an attending neonatologist at Boston South Hospital with a career-threatening hand tremor that he treats with narcotics. When he’s called in for an emergency delivery of a premature baby, the senior resident has just "called the code," but Eli manages to resuscitate the newborn. Not your everyday heroin addict, Sula, the mother of baby Julian, is a Harvard graduate and HIV-positive. During the months of Julian's NICU stay, Eli and Sula are drawn to each other. When the corrupt social services department demands custody of the baby, Eli becomes complicit with Sula in a desperate attempt to save Julian once more.

Saving Julian is a darkly comic journey into the sad, strange world of ex-gay ministry. The novel tells the story of Paul Drucker, a 58-year-old psychology professor and part-time preacher. Author of Saving Our Boys from the Gay Menace, Paul is much in demand on the ex-gay lecture circuit, sharing the heterosexual gospel with those in need. As he tells his audiences, there s no such thing as a gay man. There are only men with unmet homoemotional love needs. And this can be fixed. But when Paul is caught with Julian, a 21-year-old escort he found online, he knows his world is about to fall apart. In a world of Larry Craig and Ted Haggard, Saving Julian offers an irreverent and poignant take on the lies, hypocrisies, and downright cruelty of those who think love is a thing to be cured. Saving Julian is a beautifully constructed and paced novel, which explores the misguided world of the ex-gay without ever being condescending. It s a very humane book. Edmund White, author of A Boy s Own Story and The Beautiful Room is Empty"

Lose yourself in the beauty of nature this winter... A ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020 For readers of George Monbiot, Isabella Tree and Robert Macfarlane - an urgent and lyrical account of endangered places around the globe and the people fighting to save them. 'Powerful, timely, beautifully written and wonderfully hopeful' Rob Cowen, author of Common Ground All across the world, irreplaceable habitats are under threat. Unique ecosystems of plants and animals are being destroyed by human intervention. From the tiny to the vast, from marshland to meadow, and from Kent to Glasgow to India to America, they are disappearing. Irreplaceable is a love letter to the haunting beauty of these landscapes and their wild species. Exploring coral reefs and remote mountains, tropical jungle, ancient woodland and urban allotments, it traces the stories of threatened places through local communities, grassroots campaigners, ecologists and academics. Julian Hoffman's rigorous, impassioned account is a timely reminder of the vital connections between humans and nature - and all that we stand to lose. It is a powerful call to arms in the face of unconscionable natural destruction. ***** 'A terrific book, prescient, serious and urgent' Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun 'Unforgettable. At a time when the Earth often seems broken beyond repair, this courageous and hopeful book offers life-changing encounters with the more-than-human world' Nancy Campbell, author of The Library of Ice 'Wonderful, tender and subtle, beautifully written and filled with a calm authority' Adam Nicolson, author of The Seabird's Cry *Highly Commended Finalist for the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation 2020*

The Roman emperor Julian is a figure of ongoing interest and the subject of David Neal Greenwood's Julian and Christianity. This unique examination of Julian as the last pagan emperor and anti-Christian polemicist revolves around his drive and status as a ruler. Greenwood adeptly outlines the dramatic impact of Julian's short-lived regime on the course of history, with a particular emphasis on his relationship with Christianity. Julian has experienced a wide-ranging reception throughout history, shaped by both adulation and vitriol, along with controversies and rumors that question his sanity and passive ruling. His connections to Christianity, however, are rooted in his regime's open hostility, which Greenwood shows is outlined explicitly in Oration 7: To the Cynic Heracleios. Greenwood's close reading of Oration 7 highlights not only Julian's extensive anti-Christian religious program and decided rejection of Christianity but also his brilliant, calculated use of that same religion. As Greenwood emphasizes in Julian and Christianity, these attributes were inextricably tied to Julian's relationship with Christianity—and how he appropriated certain theological elements from the religion for his own religious framework, from texts to deities. Through his nuanced, detailed readings of Julian's writings, Greenwood brings together ancient history, Neoplatonist philosophy, and patristic theology to create an exceptional and thoughtful biography of the great Roman leader. As a result, Julian and Christianity is a deeply immersive look at Julian's life, one that considers his multifaceted rule and the deliberate maneuvers he made on behalf of political ascendancy.

The gripping, untold story of The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and how the perpetrators of Balkan war crimes were captured by the most successful manhunt in history Written with a thrilling narrative pull, The Butcher’s Trail chronicles the pursuit and capture of the Balkan war criminals indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Borger recounts how Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić—both now on trial in The Hague—were finally tracked down, and describes the intrigue behind the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president who became the first head of state to stand before an international tribunal for crimes perpetrated in a time of war. Based on interviews with former special forces soldiers, intelligence officials, and investigators from a dozen countries—most speaking about their involvement for the first time—this book reconstructs a fourteen-year manhunt carried out almost entirely in secret. Indicting the worst war criminals that Europe had known since the Nazi era, the ICTY ultimately accounted for all 161 suspects on its wanted list, a feat never before achieved in political and military history.

An award-winning journalist’s dramatic account of a shooting that shook a community to its core, with important implications for the future On the last evening of summer in 2013, five shots rang out in a part of northeast Denver known as the Holly. Long a destination for African American families fleeing the Jim Crow South, the area had become an “invisible city” within a historically white metropolis. While shootings there weren’t uncommon, the identity of the shooter that night came as a shock. Terrance Roberts was a revered anti-gang activist. His attempts to bring peace to his community had won the accolades of both his neighbors and the state’s most important power brokers. Why had he just fired a gun? In The Holly, the award-winning Denver-based journalist Julian Rubinstein reconstructs the events that left a local gang member paralyzed and Roberts facing the possibility of life in prison. Much more than a crime story, The Holly is a multigenerational saga of race and politics that runs from the civil rights movement to Black Lives Matter. With a cast that includes billionaires, elected officials, cops, developers, and street kids, the book explores the porous boundaries between a city’s elites and its most disadvantaged citizens. It also probes the fraught relationships between police, confidential informants, activists, gang members, and ex–gang members as they struggle to put their pasts behind them. In The Holly, we see how well-intentioned efforts to curb violence and improve neighborhoods can go badly awry, and we track the interactions of law enforcement with gang members who conceive of themselves as defenders of a neighborhood. When Roberts goes on trial, the city’s fault lines are fully exposed. In a time of national reckoning over race, policing, and the uses and abuses of power, Rubinstein offers a dramatic and humane illumination of what’s at stake.

Jude is a penniless Irish orphan, fighting blizzards, bankers and the laws of physics as he walks the length of England. He has not one, but two Quests: to find his True Love - last glimpsed in the hairy clutches of a monkey - and to uncover the Secret of his Origins.

In The Small Heart of Things, Julian Hoffman intimately examines the myriad ways in which connections to the natural world can be deepened through an equality of perception, whether it’s a caterpillar carrying its house of leaves, transhumant shepherds ranging high mountain pastures, a quail taking cover on an empty steppe, or a Turkmen family emigrating from Afghanistan to Istanbul. The narrative spans the common—and often contested—ground that supports human and natural communities alike, seeking the unsung stories that sustain us. Guided by the belief of Rainer Maria Rilke that “everything beckons us to perceive it,” Hoffman explores the area around the Prespa Lakes, the first transboundary park in the Balkans, shared by Greece, Albania, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. From there he travels widely to regions rarely written about, exploring the idea that home is wherever we happen to be if we accord that place our close and patient attention. The Small Heart of Things is a book about looking and listening. It incorporates travel and natural history writing that interweaves human stories with those of wild creatures. Distinguished by Hoffman’s belief that through awareness, curiosity, and openness we have the potential to forge abiding relationships with a range of places, it illuminates how these many connections can teach us to be at home in the world.