The Outcasts is a story of loss, running away, hope and return. Three protagonists boldly confront a tradition-driven and repressive world. Through a series of serendipitous encounters, and against all odds, their paths intertwine at a time when each stands at a personal crossroads. Tabu is a rebellious young Muslim woman, who speaks her mind under the guise of jinn influence. Santan, an aging Hindu man, in the face of a near-death experience, suddenly discovers a new spark for life. And Chameli, a dazzling but emotionally fragile transgender woman, is forced to leave the community which had once provided her with safety and identity. Together, they embark on a transformative journey, laced with doubt and danger. They are forced to re-examine their values, renounce their old risk-averse selves, and face a dark night of the soul. Set in contemporary India, a land of dichotomies, the novel challenges the notions of gender, feminism vis-à-vis spirituality/religion, and culturally appropriate romantic expression.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography Louisa May Alcott is known universally. Yet during Louisa's youth, the famous Alcott was her father, Bronson—an eminent teacher and a friend of Emerson and Thoreau. He desired perfection, for the world and from his family. Louisa challenged him with her mercurial moods and yearnings for money and fame. The other prize she deeply coveted—her father's understanding—seemed hardest to win. This story of Bronson and Louisa's tense yet loving relationship adds dimensions to Louisa's life, her work, and the relationships of fathers and daughters.

December 1348. What if you had just six days to save your soul? With the country in the grip of the Black Death, brothers John and William fear that they will shortly die and suffer in the afterlife. But as the end draws near, they are given an unexpected choice: either to go home and spend their last six days in their familiar world, or to search for salvation across the forthcoming centuries, living each one of their remaining days ninety-nine years after the last. John and William choose the future and find themselves in 1447, ignorant of almost everything going on around them. The year 1546 brings no more comfort, and 1645 challenges them in further unexpected ways. It is not just that technology is changing; things they have taken for granted all their lives prove to be short-lived. As they find themselves in stranger and stranger times, the reader travels with them, seeing the world through their eyes as it shifts through disease, progress, enlightenment, and war. But their time is running out—can they do something to redeem themselves before the six days are up?

In this story of love and loss, Tibor Schroeder, a Christian and reservist in the Hungarian forces allied with Nazi Germany, and Hedy Weisz, a young Jewish woman meet and fall in love during the Second World War - a time when romantic liaisons and marriage between Christians and Jews were not only frowned upon but against the law. Not knowing of the dangers that await them, Tibor and Hedy pledge their lives to each only to be torn apart when Hedy and her family are herded into one Nagyszollos' ghettoes. Twenty-five years pass before the lovers are finally reunited in Canada. Based on true events, this sprawling love story of hope, courage, and redemption will stay with readers long after finishing the book. A documentary, based on this story, from Postmodern Productions is scheduled for release in March 2009.

Authors of the “harrowing” (Time) and “adrenaline-laced” (The New York Times) insider memoir SEAL Team Six, Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin bring their bestselling talents and hardcore field experience to a riveting novel of a team that covertly defies military code to do what SEALs do best: keep America safe. They are the Outcasts. Because people don’t want to know what they do. With bin Laden dead and seven al Qaeda members vying to replace him, America requires a team capable of finessing the U.N.’s policies of national sovereignty to take out the would-be terrorist leaders. The quartet of elite SEALs that comprises Tier One, a product of the top-secret Special Op unit Bitter Ash, will eliminate its targets under cover of darkness and with no official support from its government. But hot on the tail of the third target, the Outcasts discover a plot with the U.S. in its crosshairs . . . a threat that will put them to the ultimate test.

Following conviction for bank fraud, White spent a year in a minimum-security prison in Carville, Louisiana, housed in the last leper colony in mainland America. His fascinating memoir reflects on the sizable group of lepers living alongside the prisoners.--"Publishers Weekly."

Sue Jones is a spacebus driver from a nowhere colony. Yearning for adventure, she pilots a shuttle into uncharted regions—and crash-lands in a harsh world. Kara is an alien whose people are Outcasts who have been banished to this world and survive in Rings above the storm-swept surface. When Kara rescues her and brings her to the Rings, Sue soon learns that the Outcasts believe humans belong on the surface. As Sue discovers her protector’s secrets, Kara struggles to keep Sue safe and her own feelings at bay. Can love bridge the gap between worlds and heal the deepest of wounds?

In To Liberate and Redeem, scholar Edward LeRoy Long Jr. surveys the full biblical narrative--setting the context by beginning with the oppression of Israel's enslavement and the Exodus liberation, then looking back to the Creation and forward to Christ, Paul, and the early church. This original approach demonstrates how the unfolding drama of the Bible is marked by those who need liberation because they are trapped in oppressive structures and those who, once freed, must faithfully construct communities of redemption so as not to become oppressors themselves. From this basis Long explores how present-day moral decisions can be informed by studying the ways in which our biblical forebears wrestled with concerns similar to our own while standing in faithful responsiveness to God.

Death and Redemption offers a fundamental reinterpretation of the role of the Gulag--the Soviet Union's vast system of forced-labor camps, internal exile, and prisons--in Soviet society. Soviet authorities undoubtedly had the means to exterminate all the prisoners who passed through the Gulag, but unlike the Nazis they did not conceive of their concentration camps as instruments of genocide. In this provocative book, Steven Barnes argues that the Gulag must be understood primarily as a penal institution where prisoners were given one final chance to reintegrate into Soviet society. Millions whom authorities deemed "reeducated" through brutal forced labor were allowed to leave. Millions more who "failed" never got out alive. Drawing on newly opened archives in Russia and Kazakhstan as well as memoirs by actual prisoners, Barnes shows how the Gulag was integral to the Soviet goal of building a utopian socialist society. He takes readers into the Gulag itself, focusing on one outpost of the Gulag system in the Karaganda region of Kazakhstan, a location that featured the full panoply of Soviet detention institutions. Barnes traces the Gulag experience from its beginnings after the 1917 Russian Revolution to its decline following the 1953 death of Stalin. Death and Redemption reveals how the Gulag defined the border between those who would reenter Soviet society and those who would be excluded through death.

The book of Ruth is a story of love, kindness, loyalty, reliability, integrity, trust, and faith in God and care for the well-being of others. The main characters in the book, Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz, demonstrated these sublime qualities. Though the book deals with ordinary people and ordinary matters of life, it deals with them in such a way as to show that God is active in the affairs of men. He works His purpose out in the lives of individuals, families, and communities and blesses them that trust Him. There are nine chapters in the book. Chapter 1 is the introduction while chapters 2 to 6 are verse-by-verse analysis of the biblical text of the book of Ruth. Chapter 7 discusses lessons that can be learnt from the book while chapter 8 focuses on mother-and-daughter-in-law relationship. Chapter 9 is on the theme "God can use anyone." The book is an invaluable guide for in-law's relationship and an ideal wedding present. There is something in the book for everybody. This book is sent out in the prayerful wish that it will have a positive influence in the lives of all who read it.