This exciting novel about a young Air Force pilot on secret duty in Laos after the February 1973 cease-fire is based on actual historical events in that landlocked Kingdom. After the shoot down and capture of his best friend by the communist Pathet Lao, Brian Marshall, a raven FAC, devises and executes an unauthorized rescue attempt. However, it is more than just a war story. It is also the story of one man's attempt to overcome his own weaknesses and the political and bureaucratic obstacles in his way. Details of Laos history at the time the story takes place build the perception that the story might not really be fiction. The story covers 10 days in August 1973 and takes place in Washington, D. C., Bangkok, Thailand, Vientiane, Laos, and the jungles near the Plain of Jars, and is based on the author's personal experiences.

Twenty-three Catholic nuns and priests, mostly New Zealanders and Australians, write about their lives.

Fruitcakes 12 - Sing No sad Songs

Although the cultural and literary influence of Christina Rossetti has recently been widely acknowledged, the belatedness of this critical attention has left wide gaps in our understanding of her poetic contribution. Often focusing solely on her early work and neglecting her later volumes, many critics minimized her relevance by measuring her stature through either her early poems or her relationships with well-known Victorian literary figures. In Christina Rossetti: The Patience of Style, Constance W. Hassett argues against this diminishment by reopening Rossetti's canon, challenging both critics and readers to trade their silent appreciation of her most familiar verse for a patient and active scrutiny of her body of work, which contains some of the finest lyric poetry of the nineteenth century. Keeping her primary focus on the poems themselves, Hassett traces Rossetti's career through her five poetry collections, Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), The Prince's Progress and Other Poems (1866), Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872), A Pageant and Other Poems (1881), and Verses (1893). In a comprehensive account of Rossetti's evolving style and genre, Hassett analyzes the strengths and failures of the poetry, its attention to the resources of rhythm and the shifts of diction, its momentum and reserve, and the rationale for its revision. The book also explores Rossetti's innovative poetry for children, her daring reconfiguration of religion and poetry in a late-life commentary on the Apocalypse, and the influences both of female precursors she admired and outgrew and of the male circle of Pre-Raphaelite poets. For art historians of the Pre-Raphaelites, scholars of women's writing and gender studies, students of children's literature, and researchers in religious studies, not to mention readers in Victorian poetry, Christina Rossetti: The Patience of Style will serve as an indispensable and eye-opening guide.

A study in nature-based colors, Christina Rossetti's timeless poem is here represented in vivid, interpretive art by French illustrator Laëtitia Devernay.

NOW AND THEN I’ve played in summer sunshine and I’ve been left out in the rain. I’ve known moments of sweet ecstasy and I’ve lived with fear and pain. I’ve run barefoot through meadow and nearly drowned in tear-filled streams; but even in the worst of times I’ve clung by faith to dreams. And so, my friend, I thank the Lord for all He’s brought me through. If I hadn’t been where I was then I couldn’t be here now with you. “I will never forget your commandments, for you have used them to restore my joy and health.” Psalms 119:93

An exquisite collection of the very best writing on love. THE LOVE BOOK presents a new anthology of writing on all aspects of the most important emotion on earth. There’s true love, unrequited love, erotic love, platonic love, thwarted love, comic love, mourned love and just about every other type of love, explored here in poetry, prose, letters and lyrics from the greatest writers in the English language. In one fabulously comprehensive volume, Allie Esiri brings together texts ancient and modern, from William Shakespeare to Sharon Olds, Catullus to Carol Ann Duffy, the bible to Bob Dylan; she offers us sonnets for wooing, lamentations for loss and perfect passages for weddings. Full of classics and all-time favourites, THE LOVE BOOK also includes lesser-known marvels, such as Mozart’s love notes, Sappho’s lesbian odes and a letter from Napoleon. Forget corny greeting cards and chocolate box cliché, this is the literature of love at its finest. Beautifully presented and helpfully divided into themed sections, it’s an indispensable collection for anyone who’s ever had a heart.