BFFs Danya and Emma are known around school as “Demma.” The girls are total opposites, but they know each other so well that they finish each other’s sentences. Danya is plagues with guilt when the girls and Rosie, Emma’s mom, are involved in a terrible car accident that leaves Emma in a wheelchair. Danya believes the wreck was her fault because she distracted Rosie from the road and had to be scolded. For a while, Emma believes it too. And she can’t forgive her friend.

An urgent, visionary, and heartfelt collection of essays focused on recovering deeper, time–honored values against the ravages of modern society. . In six elegant, linked literary essays, Berry considers the degeneration of language that is manifest throughout our culture, from poetry to politics, from conversation to advertising, and he shows how the ever–widening cleft between the words and their referents mirrors the increasing isolation of individuals and their communities from the land. “This skillfully conceived book is one of the strongest contemporary arguments for literary tradition: a challenging credo, un–glib, calmly assured, clearly illuminating—and required reading for those seriously interested in the interplay between literature, ethics, and morality.” —Kirkus Reviews “[Berry’s] poems, novels and essays . . . are probably the most sustained contemporary articulation of America’s agrarian, Jeffersonian ideal.” —Publishers Weekly

A Navy wife provides an unexpectedly honest and moving account of her family's experiences during her husband's deployment to the Middle East.

Brad Hastings, a former rodeo cowboy, is on leave of absence from his job as a deputy sheriff in New Mexico. He catches up with his father, Doug, who is entered in a rodeo in Mesquite, Arizona, and is in trouble with the law as usual. Doug is now in danger of violating his parole when he is thrown in jail for starting a brawl in a local saloon and he is also a possible suspect in the attempted murder of one of the rodeo promoters. The victim, a man named Mancuso, is not expected to live. Brad needs to clear his father before the local sheriff realizes that Doug is on parole from an earlier incarceration for murder in Arizona. Information on Mancuso leads Brad to Reno, Nevada, where he soon learns of a plot to kill an old friend and her husband. When Brad suspects this same plot may be tied to the Arizona incident, he seeks help from his cousin, Gary, a Phoenix police officer. The two men attempt to prevent more killing and clear Doug of any involvement in the current crime.

Line upon line, precept upon precept, Standing by the Pillar challenges the contemporary Christian's understanding of God's requirements on their lives. Utilizing biblical stories as analogies to our current situation, this book reveals that the Christian cannot have a significant impact on the culture unless and until he serves God with all of his heart, soul, mind and strength. To attempt any compromise on God's call on each Christian's life is to run the risk being relegated to insignificance. Trained as an educator, Matt Bower has not only taught social sciences in both public and private schools, he has done extensive research and teaching on the practical application of biblical principles in everyday life. Now as a pastor, he teaches and trains others in a distinctly Christian worldview. Matt pastors Valley Covenant Community church located in the heart of the Yakima Valley, where he lives with his wife and their seven children.

"There really aren't mistakes. Be very adventurous and brave in your life. Love bravely, live bravely, be courageous--there's really nothing to lose. There's no wrong you can't make right again, so be kind to yourself. . . There are no bounds." --Jewel Angel Standing By offers an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the struggles and successes of Jewel Kilcher, who in a few short years went from living in her van near the beach in San Diego to becoming a multiplatinum recording artist and nationally best selling author. With personal photographs and exclusive interview material, this fascinating account is not to be missed by any fan moved by the music of Jewel.

Many experienced facilitators, OD consultants, coaches, and organizational leaders increasingly find themselves standing in the fire - working in situations where group and community members are polarized, angry, fearful, and confused. Facilitator Larry Dressler has come to believe that simply picking up yet another method or technique wont help in situations like these. What has a truly transformational impact is what he calls the "facilitators presence". Cultivating an ability to access a compassionate presence that people experience as open, authentic, and clear in intention during the most difficult situations moves facilitators from being competent professionals to being on a path toward self-mastery.

At last in one volume: the collected Slough House spy novellas, including the never-before-published Christmas interlude Standing by the Wall. Espionage. Blackmail. Revenge. Cunning. Slapstick. State secrets dating back to the fall of the Berlin Wall. All this and more in a tight package of five novellas by Mick Herron, CWA Gold Dagger–winning author of Slow Horses. From the troubled recruitment of a new MI5 informant to a botched information transfer, Herron’s novellas capture the drama, humor, and high stakes of everyday life in the world of spycraft, a world rife with both legends and secrets, where thrill-seeking and loneliness are ubiquitous and deadly, and where the lines between friends, enemies, and lovers are perpetually blurred by circumstance and subterfuge. For fans new and old, Standing by the Wall is an excellent introduction to the extended literary universe of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses. Collection includes: The List, The Marylebone Drop, The Catch, The Last Dead Letter, and Standing by the Wall.

Since the mid-1970s, Lebanon has been at the center of the worldwide rise in sectarian extremism. Its cultural output has both mediated and resisted this rise. Standing by the Ruins reviews the role of culture in supporting sectarianism, yet argues for the emergence of a distinctive aesthetic of resistance to it. Focusing on contemporary Lebanese fiction, film, and popular culture, this book shows how artists reappropriated the twin legacies of commitment literature and the ancient topos of “standing by the ruins” to form a new “elegiac humanism” during the tumultuous period of 1975 to 2005. It redirects attention to the critical role of culture in conditioning attitudes throughout society and is therefore relevant to other societies facing sectarian extremism. Standing by the Ruins is also a strong intervention in the burgeoning field of World Literature. Elaborating on the great Arabist Hilary Kilpatrick’s crucial insight that ancient Arabic forms and topoi filter into modern literature, the author details how the “standing by the ruins” topos—and the structure of feeling it conditions—has migrated over time. Modern Arabic novels, feature films, and popular culture, far from being simply cultural imports, are hybrid forms deployed to respond to the challenges of contemporary Arab society. As such, they can take their place within a World Literature paradigm: they are cultural products that travel and intervene in the world.