NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, this extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities. • Now an acclaimed FX limited series streaming on HULU. “Fantastic.... Right up there with In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.” —San Francisco Chronicle Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities. At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith. Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

From 2007 to 2011 South Korean filmmaker and newspaper reporter Hark Joon Lee lived among North Korean defectors in China, filming an award-winning documentary on their struggles. Crossing Heaven's Border is the firsthand account of his experiences there, where he witnessed human trafficking, the smuggling of illicit drugs by North Korean soldiers, and a rare successful escape from North Korea by sea. As Lee traces the often tragic lives of North Korean defectors who were willing to risk everything for their hopes, he journeys to Siberia in pursuit of hidden North Korean lumber mills; to Vietnam, where defectors make desperate charges into foreign embassies; and along the 10,000-kilometer escape route for defectors stretching from China to Laos and to Thailand.

In this "captivating" crime novel (People), Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is on the hunt for a missing child -- but it's the boy's family of white supremacists who are his real target. 9-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; now he's alone in the darkness of vast Caddo Lake, in a boat whose motor just died. A sudden noise distracts him - and all goes dark. Darren Mathews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; after the events of his previous investigation, his marriage is in a precarious state of re-building, and his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she's not above a little maternal blackmail to press her advantage. An unlikely possibility of rescue arrives in the form of a case down Highway 59, in a small lakeside town where the local economy thrives on nostalgia for ante-bellum Texas - and some of the era's racial attitudes still thrive as well. Levi's disappearance has links to Darren's last case, and to a wealthy businesswoman, the boy's grandmother, who seems more concerned about the fate of her business than that of her grandson. Darren has to battle centuries-old suspicions and prejudices, as well as threats that have been reignited in the current political climate, as he races to find the boy, and to save himself. A Best Book of the Year New York TimesHouston ChronicleNPRWall Street JournalMilwaukee Journal-SentinelBook PageFinancial TimesKirkusSheReadsSunday TimesLitHubGuardianBook RiotSouth Florida Sun SentinelLonglisted for the Orwell Political Fiction Book Prize

Between Heaven and Earth explores the relationships men, women, and children have formed with the Virgin Mary and the saints in twentieth-century American Catholic history, and reflects, more broadly, on how people live in the company of sacred figures and how these relationships shape the ties between people on earth. In this boldly argued and beautifully written book, Robert Orsi also considers how scholars of religion occupy the ground in between belief and analysis, faith and scholarship. Orsi infuses his analysis with an autobiographical voice steeped in his own Italian-American Catholic background--from the devotion of his uncle Sal, who had cerebral palsy, to a "crippled saint," Margaret of Castello; to the bond of his Tuscan grandmother with Saint Gemma Galgani. Religion exists not as a medium of making meanings, Orsi maintains, but as a network of relationships between heaven and earth involving people of all ages as well as the many sacred figures they hold dear. Orsi argues that modern academic theorizing about religion has long sanctioned dubious distinctions between "good" or "real" religious expression on the one hand and "bad" or "bogus" religion on the other, which marginalize these everyday relationships with sacred figures. This book is a brilliant critical inquiry into the lives that people make, for better or worse, between heaven and earth, and into the ways scholars of religion could better study of these worlds.

“I wish every self-identified ‘person of faith’ could read this remarkable, thought-provoking book.”—Bruce Bawer, author of Stealing Jesus There is a lot of tension in churches today about whose ministry is primary—that of the laity or of the clergy. Living on the Border of the Holy offers a way of understanding the priesthood of the whole people of God and the priesthood of the ordained by showing both are rooted in the fundamental priestly nature of life. After an exploration of the ministries of laity and ordained, Country examines the implications of this view of priesthood for churches and for those studying for ordination. “For anyone struggling with how to live in the thin places between heaven and earth, Dr. Countryman’s brilliant offer hope, companionship, and the fruits of years of experience. His theory of a ‘fundamental human priesthood’ gives us all a compassionate guide to follow as we enter the borderlands, and it should help end the division between clergy and laity. Countryman’s human priesthood leads us into the future, where God calls us to be.”—Nora Gallagher, author of Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith

If any of us learned we were going to move to a foreign country, we'd do everything we could to learn about that place so that we'd be prepared when moving day arrived. As Christians, we know some day we will leave our familiar country and be united with God in heaven. And yet many of us know very little about this place called heaven. In this enlightening book, bestselling author Dr. Robert Jeffress opens the Scriptures to unpack ten surprising truths about heaven and explain who we will see there and how we can prepare to go there someday. Perfect for believers or skeptics who are curious about heaven.

Acquisition of 25 paintings from the collection of C.C. Wang.

One of the Ten Best Books of the Year, Washington Post Book World One of the Los Angeles Times’ Favorite Books of the Year One of the Top Ten National Books of 2008, Portland Oregonian A 2009 Honor Book of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association “Few books have combined the historical scope and the literary skill to give the ­foreign reader a sense of events from a Vietnamese perspective. . . . Now we can add Andrew Pham’s Eaves of Heaven to this list of indispensable books.” —New York Times Book Review “Searing . . . vivid–and harrowing . . . Here is war and life through the eyes of a Vietnamese everyman.” —Seattle Times Once wealthy landowners, Thong Van Pham’s family was shattered by the tumultuous events of the twentieth century: the French occupation of Indochina, the Japanese invasion during World War II, and the Vietnam War. Told in dazzling chapters that alternate between events in the past and those closer to the present, The Eaves of Heaven brilliantly re-creates the trials of everyday life in Vietnam as endured by one man, from the fall of Hanoi and the collapse of French colonialism to the frenzied evacuation of Saigon. Pham offers a rare portal into a lost world as he chronicles Thong Van Pham’s heartbreaks, triumphs, and bizarre reversals of fortune, whether as a South Vietnamese soldier pinned down by enemy fire, a prisoner of the North Vietnamese under brutal interrogation, or a refugee desperately trying to escape Vietnam after the last American helicopter has abandoned Saigon. This is the story of a man caught in the maelstrom of twentieth-century politics, a gripping memoir told with the urgency of a wartime dispatch by a writer of surpassing talent.

Award of Merit, 2019 Christianity Today Book Awards (History/Biography) More than forty years ago, conservative Christianity emerged as a major force in American political life. Since then the movement has been analyzed and over-analyzed, declared triumphant and, more than once, given up for dead. But because outside observers have maintained a near-relentless focus on domestic politics, the most transformative development over the last several decades--the explosive growth of Christianity in the global south--has gone unrecognized by the wider public, even as it has transformed evangelical life, both in the US and abroad. The Kingdom of God Has No Borders offers a daring new perspective on conservative Christianity by shifting the lens to focus on the world outside US borders. Melani McAlister offers a sweeping narrative of the last fifty years of evangelical history, weaving a fascinating tale that upends much of what we know--or think we know--about American evangelicals. She takes us to the Congo in the 1960s, where Christians were enmeshed in a complicated interplay of missionary zeal, Cold War politics, racial hierarchy, and anti-colonial struggle. She shows us how evangelical efforts to convert non-Christians have placed them in direct conflict with Islam at flash points across the globe. And she examines how Christian leaders have fought to stem the tide of HIV/AIDS in Africa while at the same time supporting harsh repression of LGBTQ communities. Through these and other stories, McAlister focuses on the many ways in which looking at evangelicals abroad complicates conventional ideas about evangelicalism. We can't truly understand how conservative Christians see themselves and their place in the world unless we look beyond our shores.