Pregnant Lindie Wyse accepts an arranged marriage with widowed father Josiah Plank in order to preserve her future, but what began as a practical arrangement soon turns into a budding romance.

Written by a personal friend of Cardinal Thuan, this moving biography—containing over 70 photographs and writing excerpts—chronicles the life of the man Pope John Paul II said was “...marked by a heroic configuration with Christ on the cross.” From a prisoner in a communist jail cell to a leader of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in Rome, Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan remained a man of unshakable faith and undying hope.

a personal friend of Cardinal Thuan, this moving biography--containing over 70 photographs and writing excerpts--chronicles the life of the man Pope John Paul II said was "...marked by a heroic configuration with Christ on the cross." From a prisoner in a communist jail cell to a leader of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in Rome, Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan remained a man of unshakable faith and undying hope.

Since the arrival of the Puritans, various religious groups, including Quakers, Jews, Catholics, and Protestant sects, have migrated to the United States. The role of religion in motivating their migration and shaping their settlement experiences has been well documented. What has not been recorded is the contemporary story of how migrants from Mexico and Central America rely on religionÑtheir clergy, faith, cultural expressions, and everyday religious practicesÑto endure the undocumented journey. At a time when anti-immigrant feeling is rising among the American public and when immigration is often cast in economic or deviant terms, Migration Miracle humanizes the controversy by exploring the harsh realities of the migrantsÕ desperate journeys. Drawing on over 300 interviews with men, women, and children, Jacqueline Hagan focuses on an unexplored dimension of the migration undertakingÑthe role of religion and faith in surviving the journey. Each year hundreds of thousands of migrants risk their lives to cross the border into the United States, yet until now, few scholars have sought migrantsÕ own accounts of their experiences.

New York Times best-selling author Stephen Mansfield was witness to much of the modern history of the Kurds. In this riveting account, Mansfield movingly tells the stories of the people who have fashioned one of the greatest economic and cultural resurrections in human history. They are the largest people group in the world without a homeland of their own. Despised and persecuted the world over, they even call themselves "the people without a friend." Saddam Hussein tried to wipe them from the face of the earth, killing several hundred thousand of them in the attempt. Their sufferings have become legend. They are the Kurds, descendants of the ancient Medes best known today from the pages of the Bible -- inhabitants of what the world now calls Northern Iraq. Yet today the Kurds are rebuilding so brilliantly from war and oppression that even their enemies call it "a miracle." Six star hotels stand where bombs once fell, shopping malls and gleaming schools rise where massacres once occurred. National Geographic and Conde Nast have listed modern "Kurdistan" as a "must-see" tourist destination.

New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel shares her favorite words of wisdom, sayings, and quotes that she has turned to time and time again for inspiration and comfort. When Danielle Steel was a young girl, her grandmother gave her a beautiful antique book with blank pages inside. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Draw? Write? Soon, she began to discover quotes she liked—words from other people that she wanted to keep and hold on to. She started to write them down on those smooth ivory pages. That habit of gathering sayings has stayed with Danielle throughout the years. And now, after a lifetime of collecting, she shares the quotations that have meant the most to her—lines from books and magazines, pieces of poetry, short passages from the Bible, and quotes gathered from the world around her. These are the words that bring her wisdom and humor, inspiration and comfort, and, above all, joy. May Expect a Miracle bring the same to you, too.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today • As a young mother facing a terminal diagnosis, Julie Yip-Williams began to write her story, a story like no other. What began as the chronicle of an imminent and early death became something much more—a powerful exhortation to the living. “An exquisitely moving portrait of the daily stuff of life.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Real Simple • Good Housekeeping That Julie Yip-Williams survived infancy was a miracle. Born blind in Vietnam, she narrowly escaped euthanasia at the hands of her grandmother, only to flee with her family the political upheaval of her country in the late 1970s. Loaded into a rickety boat with three hundred other refugees, Julie made it to Hong Kong and, ultimately, America, where a surgeon at UCLA gave her partial sight. She would go on to become a Harvard-educated lawyer, with a husband, a family, and a life she had once assumed would be impossible. Then, at age thirty-seven, with two little girls at home, Julie was diagnosed with terminal metastatic colon cancer, and a different journey began. The Unwinding of the Miracle is the story of a vigorous life refracted through the prism of imminent death. When she was first diagnosed, Julie Yip-Williams sought clarity and guidance through the experience and, finding none, began to write her way through it—a chronicle that grew beyond her imagining. Motherhood, marriage, the immigrant experience, ambition, love, wanderlust, tennis, fortune-tellers, grief, reincarnation, jealousy, comfort, pain, the marvel of the body in full rebellion—this book is as sprawling and majestic as the life it records. It is inspiring and instructive, delightful and shattering. It is a book of indelible moments, seared deep—an incomparable guide to living vividly by facing hard truths consciously. With humor, bracing honesty, and the cleansing power of well-deployed anger, Julie Yip-Williams set the stage for her lasting legacy and one final miracle: the story of her life. Praise for The Unwinding of the Miracle “Everything worth understanding and holding on to is in this book. . . . A miracle indeed.”—Kelly Corrigan, New York Times bestselling author “A beautifully written, moving, and compassionate chronicle that deserves to be read and absorbed widely.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies

"In the winter of 1587 the Spanish Armada, the largest force of warships ever assembled, set sail to crush the English navy... pening at the execution of Mary Queen of Scots - the event that precipitated the launching of the Armada - Neil Hanson explores one of the most fascinating campaigns in European history over the eighteen months in which it developed. From the first whispers of the threat against England the the English crown to the return of the battered remnants of the fleet to Spain, it is a story rich in incident and intrigue which is told with a view to giving the reader a breathtaking overview. In this controversial study Hanson claims that the aim of Drake was not to sink the Armada ships but to disable and plunder them, and that Queen Elizabeth was a monarch who left many of the survivors of the battle to die of disease or starvation and whose parsimony, prevarication and cynicism left her unable to make crucial decisions. Drawing on previously undiscovered personal papers, Neil Hanson conveys in vivid detail how the highest and the lowest in the land fared in those turbulent months when the destiny of all Europe hung in the balance.