As migration from poverty-stricken and conflict-affected countries continues to hit the headlines, this book focuses on an important counter-flow: the money that people send home. Despite considerable research on the impact of migration and remittances in countries of origin - increasingly viewed as a source of development capital - still little is known about refugees' remittances to conflict-affected countries because such funds are most often seen as a source of conflict finance. This book explores the dynamics, infrastructure, and far-reaching effects of remittances from the perspectives of people in the Somali regions and the diaspora. With conflict driving mass displacement, Somali society has become progressively transnational, its vigorous remittance economy reaching from the heart of the global North into wrecked cities, refugee camps, and remote rural areas. By 'following the money' the author opens a window on the everyday lives of people caught up in processes of conflict, migration, and development. The book demonstrates how, in the interstices of state disruption and globalisation, and in the shadow of violence and political uncertainty, life in the Somali regions goes on, subject to complex transnational forms of social, economic, and political innovation and change.

From the beloved author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven comes his most thrilling and magical novel yet—a page-turning mystery and a meditation on the power of human connection. One morning in the small town of Coldwater, Michigan, the phones start ringing. The voices say they are calling from heaven. Is it the greatest miracle ever? Or some cruel hoax? As news of these strange calls spreads, outsiders flock to Coldwater to be a part of it. At the same time, a disgraced pilot named Sully Harding returns to Coldwater from prison to discover his hometown gripped by "miracle fever." Even his young son carries a toy phone, hoping to hear from his mother in heaven. As the calls increase, and proof of an afterlife begins to surface, the town—and the world—transforms. Only Sully, convinced there is nothing beyond this sad life, digs into the phenomenon, determined to disprove it for his child and his own broken heart. Moving seamlessly between the invention of the telephone in 1876 and a world obsessed with the next level of communication, Mitch Albom takes readers on a breathtaking ride of frenzied hope. The First Phone Call from Heaven is Albom at his best—a virtuosic story of love, history, and belief.

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Lord Burford had some serious misgivings about hosting yet another house party at Alderley. After all, the previous two could, at best, be described as disastrous. But with family members travelling down for the funeral of an elderly relative, the Earl really had no choice but to offer accommodation. It did not take long for things to go wrong even before a body was found. For readers who want the twist in the tale to be as elegant as a well-tied cravat, it would be criminal to miss The Affair of the Thirty-Nine Cufflinks.

Recovering from a broken marriage, schoolteacher Mike Stanton has decided to abandon his life in California and immigrate to New Zealand. With high hopes, a large backpack, money, and documents in hand, Mike boards a Pan Am flight from San Francisco bound for adventure. Trouble arises immediately when his flight develops engine trouble and is diverted to Hawaii. During the days of waiting for another flight to take him onward, Mike falls in love with the beaches, surf, and island girls but is still content to leave when the time comes. Upon his arrival in New Zealand, however, he is informed he cannot immigrate after all. With only three months until his visa expires, Mike decides to explore the stunning countrysideand soon finds himself caught up with a gang of passport counterfeiters. He is stalked and mistaken for an FBI agent, and in the serenity of this South Pacific paradise, he is kidnapped, the first in a series of treacherous events that the wayward teacher may not survive. In this thriller, one man on an extended vacation in New Zealand finds himself out of his depth, mixed up with international criminals, and facing dangers that could end with his death.

Humankind has always been in search of new ways to harness inner powers to ensure that our full potential can be reached. In Medium9, Smith-Moncrieffe unlocks the secrets of consciousness by taking readers on a fascinating adventure. Experience the power of spiritual energy as ordinary people are reunited with loved ones who materialize and return from the spirit world to communicate during physical mediumship sances. Learn about the extraordinary benefits each of us can achieve during out-of-body experiences and astral travel. Gain insight into the secrets of energy healing with authentic healers who manipulate energy to produce healing beyond the capabilities of traditional medicine. Examine how ordinary people learn about their past lives, subsequently change behaviors, and transform their lives through hypnosis. Gain insight into how extraterrestrial races facilitate instrumental transcommunication, energy healing and mediumship. When you enlighten yourself with this important knowledge, you can make stunning transformations in your life. Donna Smith-Moncrieffe continues gathering evidence for the afterlife, this time going where few have gone, into the world of dark sances. Using her finely honed critical skills she makes the reader aware that, far from having died out or being totally fraudulent, genuine physical mediumship still exists. She systematically describes the evidence she personally gathered in a series of paradigm shifting sances held in the United States. Ever the thorough researcher, she conducts fascinating follow-up interviews with witnesses and experts in the field. Her conclusions will stun you. Dr. Victor Zammit and Wendy Zammit, Co-authors of A Lawyer Presents the Evidence for the Afterlife and The Friday Afterlife Report Medium9 explores the fascinating phenomena of physical mediumship from interviews with participants as well as from the viewpoint of the authors experience. For those readers who wish to understand the nature of our third dimensional reality as well as what lies beyond and how our world can interact with higher dimensional realities, Medium9 is a unique study of consciousness. Dr. Susan Kolb, MD, FACS, author of the The Naked Truth about Breast Implants: From Harm to Healing

New York, the city. New York, the magazine. A celebration. The great story of New York City in the past half-century has been its near collapse and miraculous rebirth. A battered town left for dead, one that almost a million people abandoned and where those who remained had to live behind triple deadbolt locks, was reinvigorated by the twinned energies of starving artists and financial white knights. Over the next generation, the city was utterly transformed. It again became the capital of wealth and innovation, an engine of cultural vibrancy, a magnet for immigrants, and a city of endless possibility. It was the place to be—if you could afford it. Since its founding in 1968, New York Magazine has told the story of that city’s constant morphing, week after week. Covering culture high and low, the drama and scandal of politics and finance, through jubilant moments and immense tragedies, the magazine has hit readers where they live, with a sensibility as fast and funny and urbane as New York itself. From its early days publishing writers like Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, and Gloria Steinem to its modern incarnation as a laboratory of inventive magazine-making, New York has had an extraordinary knack for catching the Zeitgeist and getting it on the page. It was among the originators of the New Journalism, publishing legendary stories whose authors infiltrated a Black Panther party in Leonard Bernstein’s apartment, introduced us to the mother-daughter hermits living in the dilapidated estate known as Grey Gardens, launched Ms. Magazine, branded a group of up-and-coming teen stars “the Brat Pack,” and effectively ended the career of Roger Ailes. Again and again, it introduced new words into the conversation—from “foodie” to “normcore”—and spotted fresh talent before just about anyone. Along the way, those writers and their colleagues revealed what was most interesting at the forward edge of American culture—from the old Brooklyn of Saturday Night Fever to the new Brooklyn of artisanal food trucks, from the Wall Street crashes to the hedge-fund spoils, from The Godfather to Girls—in ways that were knowing, witty, sometimes weird, occasionally vulgar, and often unforgettable. On “The Approval Matrix,” the magazine’s beloved back-page feature, New York itself would fall at the crossroads of highbrow and lowbrow, and more brilliant than despicable. (Most of the time.) Marking the magazine’s fiftieth birthday, Highbrow, Lowbrow, Brilliant, Despicable: 50 Years of New York draws from all that coverage to present an enormous, sweeping, idiosyncratic picture of a half-century at the center of the world. Through stories and images of power and money, movies and food, crises and family life, it constitutes an unparalleled history of that city’s transformation, and of a New York City institution as well. It is packed with behind-the-scenes stories from New York’s writers, editors, designers, and journalistic subjects—and frequently overflows its own pages onto spectacular foldouts. It’s a big book for a big town.

Prior to the mid-sixties, Grayville, TN was one of twenty-four “sundown towns.” A “sundown town” was a town that had a sign on the outskirts of town that said, “Negros are not allowed in the city limits after sundown.” Very few blacks lived in Grayville. Grayville High School seldom had black students. In August of 2020, a black doctor moved to Grayville. He moved from Weston, Ohio to be near his adopting white parents who lived in the Homeland Retirement Center in Pleasant Hill. Grayville never had a black basketball player, now it has three. The doctor has three sons. Joseph is a 6’ 9” senior and his twin brothers, Samuel and David both 6’ 6” juniors. The three brothers took Weston to the Ohio State basketball championship. Cox County youth grew up to have a “culturally absorbed prejudice.” That is what the three black players encountered.