Things aren’t easy right now for Marvin Pickering. He’s twelve years old, just beginning to really discover who he is…and he’s realizing that his feelings for his childhood friend, Ellen Peterson, are deeper and more complex than he knew. He could really use the guidance and understanding of his beloved father, Jay, but he’s serving his country in Viet Nam. When Marvin and his mother get the news that Jay is missing in action, the foundation of Marvin’s world is shattered. Instead of turning to family and friends, he runs away to his favorite retreat, the Big Woods. There, imaginative Marvin will have the adventure of a lifetime, as he meets his guardian angel, John, who takes him to see his father. Marvin will learn a valuable lesson about faith and trust, while those back home are left to look for him…with unexpected consequences that will teach Marvin even more about what’s really important. A vivid snapshot of a turning point in American history, a thrilling adventure, and a tender story about different kinds of love, The Adventures of Marvin Pickering: The Miracle at Weston Falls is a book with a positive message for young adult readers.

This groundbreaking study explores the later lives and late-life writings of more than two dozen British women authors active during the long eighteenth century. Drawing on biographical materials, literary texts, and reception histories, Devoney Looser finds that far from fading into moribund old age, female literary greats such as Anna Letitia Barbauld, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Porter toiled for decades after they achieved acclaim -- despite seemingly concerted attempts by literary gatekeepers to marginalize their later contributions. Though these remarkable women wrote and published well into old age, Looser sees in their late careers the necessity of choosing among several different paths. These included receding into the background as authors of "classics," adapting to grandmotherly standards of behavior, attempting to reshape masculinized conceptions of aged wisdom, or trying to create entirely new categories for older women writers. In assessing how these writers affected and were affected by the culture in which they lived, and in examining their varied reactions to the prospect of aging, Looser constructs careful portraits of each of her Subjects and explains why many turned toward retrospection in their later works. In illuminating the powerful and often poorly recognized legacy of the British women writers who spurred a marketplace revolution in their earlier years only to find unanticipated barriers to acceptance in later life, Looser opens up new scholarly territory in the burgeoning field of feminist age studies.

The children had spent weeks watching their caterpillar grow and then hatch into a butterfly. They weren't prepared for the excitement and adventure the butterfly experienced as she was set free

From terrorism to social inequality and from health care to environmental issues, social problems affect us all. The Encyclopedia will offer an interdisciplinary perspective into these and many other social problems that are a continuing concern in our lives, whether we confront them on a personal, local, regional, national, or global level.

Newly updated, this definitive reference work on major cult systems is the gold standard text on cults with nearly a million copies sold.