These stories offer layered, perceptive takes on what home means to us. The people we meet in these stories are often traveling to and from home—thinking about where they have come from, where they are headed, and how that journey will impact their futures. Although the stories approach homecoming and homesickness through varied moods and styles, they all come around to confronting a shared need: a place to call home.

This is the story of Saturday, a statue come to life in a strange garden. He leaves it to discover that life is different in other places. He finds a kingdom of flying toads, and then a labyrinth containing even more life. Saturday explores the maze and learns about the creatures that inhabit it. He finds out about art, music, and other important things. Then he finds out how big his adventure really is. Witness the story through his eyes, and let it become your experience as well. But a word of caution; this existential fairy tale is not for the weak of heart. Abandon all despair, all ye who find... Myth's Treasure.

The weather forecast for the evening of October 15, 1954 was simply “rain tonight.” In fact, the hurricane was a devastating one. The storm swept from North Carolina up into Canada. In Toronto, Ontario, the official death count was 81, but it was probably much higher because the many people living in the ravines were not part of the census. Penny Doucette was 8 years old on the night the storm raged in Toronto. She, her parents, and their elderly neighbor found themselves clinging to the roof of the house as they watched the house next door float away on the swollen Humber River. Augmenting the dramatic story are illustrations, archival photographs, and fascinating information about hurricanes: their causes, their history, and lore. Published for the fiftieth anniversary of Hurricane Hazel, this is a valuable resource for young readers.

Affective Critical Regionality offers a new approach to developing a sharper, more nuanced understanding of the relations between place, space, memory and affect. It builds on the author’s extensive work on the American West, where he developed the idea of ‘expanded critical regionalism’ to underline the West as multiple, dynamic and relational; engaged in global / local processes, tensions between the rooted and the routed, and increasingly as relevant to debates around the politics of precarity and vulnerability. This book uses affective critical regionality to enable a re-valuing of the local as a powerful means to appreciate the everyday and the over-looked as vital elements within a more inclusive understanding of how we live. Exploring a variety of cultural materials including fiction, memoir, theory, poetry and film it demonstrates how this approach can deepen our understanding of, and simultaneously provoke new relations with, place. Moving beyond the US context through its use of international theoretical voices and texts, it will show how the concept is applicable to other cultural spheres.

Judas is an intimate story of the disciple who betrayed Jesus Christ. His birth in Kerioth, and family relationship to the Shepherds of Kerioth, the shepherds of the sacred Temple flock begin his life. As a young man he follows, along with other disciples and ultimately bears the responsibility for betraying the Lord. Each Bible reference to Judas is incorporated in the historical narrative along with much of typical life of a Hebrew youth of his day. The results of the betrayal lead to a surprising ending and an influence that extends into todays Christian movement. Live with Judas as he falls in love, learns to hate, is forced to forgive, sharpens his skills, serves in the fulfillment of Scripture and serves as the Master has appointed him. Judas will become a window to the disciple band, a mirror to the reader and an inspiration to the will of God.

This book addresses critical questions about how legal development works in practice. Can law be employed to shape behavior as a form of social engineering, or must social behavior change first, relegating legal change to follow as ratification or reinforcement? And what is legal development's source of legitimacy if not modernization? But by the same token, whose version of modernization will predominate absent a Western monopoly on change? There are now legal development alternatives, especially from Asia, so we need a better way to ask the right questions of different approaches primarily in (non-Western) Asia, Africa, the Islamic world, plus South America. Incoming waves of change like the 'Arab spring' lie on the horizon. Meanwhile, debates are sharpening about law's role in economic development versus democracy and governance under the rubric of the rule of law. More than a general survey of law and modernization theory and practice, this work is a timely reference for practitioners of institutional reform, and a thought-provoking interdisciplinary collection of essays in an area of renewed practical and scholarly interest. The contributors are a distinguished international group of scholars and practitioners of law, development, social sciences, and religion with extensive experience in the developing world.

Structurally innovative and culturally expansive, the works of Karen Tei Yamashita invite readers to rethink conventional paradigms of genres and national traditions. Her novels, plays, and other texts refashion forms like the immigrant tale, the postmodern novel, magical realism, apocalyptic literature, and the picaresque and suggest new transnational, hemispheric, and global frameworks for interpreting Asian American literature. Addressing courses in American studies, contemporary fiction, environmental humanities, and literary theory, the essays in this volume are written by undergraduate and graduate instructors from across the United States and around the globe. Part 1, "Materials," outlines Yamashita's novels and other texts, key works of criticism and theory, and resources for Asian American and Asian Brazilian literature and culture. Part 2, "Approaches," provides options for exploring Yamashita's works through teaching historical debates, outlining principles of environmental justice, mapping geographic boundaries to highlight power dynamics, and drawing personal connections to the texts. Additionally, an essay by Yamashita describes her own approaches to teaching creative writing.

Asian American literature abounds with complex depictions of American cities as spaces that reinforce racial segregation and prevent interactions across boundaries of race, culture, class, and gender. However, in Cities of Others, Xiaojing Zhou uncovers a much different narrative, providing the most comprehensive examination to date of how Asian American writers - both celebrated and overlooked - depict urban settings. Zhou goes beyond examining popular portrayals of Chinatowns by paying equal attention to life in other parts of the city. Her innovative and wide-ranging approach sheds new light on the works of Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese American writers who bear witness to a variety of urban experiences and reimagine the American city as other than a segregated nation-space. Drawing on critical theories on space from urban geography, ecocriticism, and postcolonial studies, Zhou shows how spatial organization shapes identity in the works of Sui Sin Far, Bienvenido Santos, Meena Alexander, Frank Chin, Chang-rae Lee, Karen Tei Yamashita, and others. She also shows how the everyday practices of Asian American communities challenge racial segregation, reshape urban spaces, and redefine the identity of the American city. From a reimagining of the nineteenth-century flaneur figure in an Asian American context to providing a framework that allows readers to see ethnic enclaves and American cities as mutually constitutive and transformative, Zhou gives us a provocative new way to understand some of the most important works of Asian American literature.

Divorced cop Matt Grayson’s New Year’s resolution is simple: get the heck out of Cheyenne, Wyoming and start fresh somewhere else. Matt’s spent the past year recovering—both from his ex-wife’s infidelity, and from a gun shot wound sustained in the line of duty. He’s been through hell, and he’s got the scars to prove it. Now, he’s landed a new job in Seattle and is ready to move halfway across the country to start his life over in a matter of days. That is, until he meets the adorable Ellie Richards on New Year’s Eve, not just once, but twice, and he has to wonder if fate keeps throwing them together for a reason. She makes him laugh, makes him think, and makes his pants way too tight. Really, she might just be perfect for him. But the clock is ticking toward midnight—has Matt and Ellie’s chance at love come too late? This is a sexy holiday romance with a guaranteed HEA. Pop some champagne and get cozy with Matt!