When homicide detective Alexandra Jarvis is assigned a new partner in Aramael, a Guardian Angel who doubles as a hit man, they have only one thing in common: a fallen angel hell-bent on triggering the apocalypse. Now they have no choice but to work together-relentlessly, fearlessly, intimately. Because only they can stop the rogue angel from ushering in the end of days.

The &“Strong Black Woman&” has been a part of mainstream culture for centuries, as a myth, a goddess, a positive role model, a stereotype, and as a burden. In Fierce Angels, Sheri Parks explores the concept of the Strong Black Woman, its influence on people of all races, and the ways in which black women respond to and are affected by this image. Originating in the ancient Sacred Dark Feminine as a nurturing and fierce goddess, the Strong Black Woman can be found in myths from every continent. Slaves and slave owners alike brought the legend to America, where the spiritual icon evolved into the secular Strong Black Woman, with examples ranging from the slave Mammy to the poet Maya Angelou. She continues to appear in popular culture in television and movies, such as Law and Order and The Help, and as an inspirational symbol associated with the dispossessed in political movements, in particular from Africa. The book presents the stories of historical and living black women who embody the role and puts the icon in its historical and evolutionary context, presenting a balanced account of its negative and positive impact on black culture. This new paperback edition has been revised from the hardcover edition to include two new chapters that expand on the transformative Dark Feminine in alchemy and Western literature and a chapter on the political uses and further potential of the Sacred Dark Feminine in social justice movements in the United States and abroad.

Provides convincing evidence that angels, demons, and fallen angels were flesh-and-blood members of a giant race predating humanity, spoken of in the Bible as the Nephilim. • Indicates that the earthly paradise of Eden was a realm in the mountains of Kurdistan. • By the author of Gateway to Atlantis. Our mythology describes how beings of great beauty and intelligence, who served as messengers of gods, fell from grace through pride. These angels, also known as Watchers, are spoken of in the Bible and other religious texts as lusting after human women, who lay with them and gave birth to giant offspring called the Nephilim. These religious sources also record how these beings revealed forbidden arts and sciences to humanity--transgressions that led to their destruction in the Great Flood. Andrew Collins reveals that these angels, demons, and fallen angels were flesh-and-blood members of a race predating our own. He offers evidence that they lived in Egypt (prior to the ancient Egyptians), where they built the Sphinx and other megalithic monuments, before leaving the region for what is now eastern Turkey following the cataclysms that accompanied the last Ice Age. Here they lived in isolation before gradually establishing contact with the developing human societies of the Mesopotamian plains below. Humanity regarded these angels--described as tall, white-haired beings with viperlike faces and burning eyes--as gods and their realm the paradise wherein grew the tree of knowledge. Andrew Collins demonstrates how the legends behind the fall of the Watchers echo the faded memory of actual historical events and that the legacy they have left humanity is one we can afford to ignore only at our own peril.

It rises suddenly out of the Sonoran Desert landscape, towering over the tallest tree or cactus, a commanding building with a sensuous dome, elliptical vaults, and sturdy bell towers. There is nothing else like it around, nor does it seem there should be. This incongruity of setting is what strikes first-time visitors to Mission San Xavier del Bac. This great church is of another place and another time, while its beauty is universal and timeless. Mission San Xavier del Bac is a two-century-old Spanish church in southern Arizona located just a few miles from downtown Tucson, a metropolis of more than half a million people in the American Southwest. A National Historic Landmark since 1963, the mission’s graceful baroque art and architecture have drawn visitors from all over the world. Now Bernard Fontana—the leading expert on San Xavier—and award-winning photographer Edward McCain team up to bring us a comprehensive view of the mission as we’ve never seen it before. With 200 stunning full-color photographs and incisive text illuminating the religious, historical, and motivational context of these images, A Gift of Angels is a must-have for tourists, scholars, and other visitors to San Xavier. From its glorious architecture all the way down to the finest details of its art, Mission San Xavier del Bac is indeed a gift of angels.

Cadence Lightbringer, daughter of an archangel, has trained from birth to one day drink the Nectar of the gods and ascend to the angels' ranks. She's always been the perfect soldier. She's always known exactly where her life is headed. Until she is assigned to a mission with Damiel Dragonsire, Master Interrogator of the Legion of Angels. Powerful, paranoid, and brutally intelligent, Damiel has built up a reputation for hunting down each and every traitor hiding within the Legion's ranks. And his latest suspect is Cadence. Convinced she is not the perfect soldier everyone believes her to be, he will stop at nothing to expose her. Angel Fire is the first book in the Immortal Legacy series.

Twenty-five years in the ER could become a résumé for despair, but for bestselling author Dr. Robert D. Lesslie, it's a foundation for inspiring stories of everyday "angels"—friends, nurses, doctors, patients, and even strangers who offer love, help, and support in the midst of trouble. "The ER is a difficult and challenging place to be. Yet the same pressures and stresses that make this place so challenging also provide an opportunity to experience some of life's greatest wonders and mysteries." Dr. Lesslie illuminates messages of hope while sharing fast-paced, captivating stories about discovering lessons from the ER frontline watching everyday miracles unfold holding on to faith during tragedy and triumph embracing the healing balm of hope For anyone who enjoys true stories of the wonders of the human spirit, this immensely popular book is a reminder that hope can turn emergencies into opportunities and trials into demonstrations of God's grace.

In this sequel to Only the River Runs Free, Joseph Connor Burke has reclaimed his ancestral acres, but his dreams of a peaceable kingdom are shattered by violence and betrayal. Will he stand for what he truly believes?

Omnibus edition of the Legacy of Caliban trilogy, featuring the mysterious Dark Angels Space Marines. Descendents of the First Legion, the Dark Angels are peerless warriors with a knightly heritage from their sundered home world of Caliban. Amongst their hallowed ranks are the lightning fast Ravenwing and the stalwart Deathwing. But the Legacy of Caliban is dark, and the need for atonement is great and echoes through the ages. Ever do the Dark Angels hunt the mysterious Fallen, their greatest shame and their darkest secret. This omnibus edition contains the novels Ravenwing, Master of Sanctity and The Unforgiven, along with the short story collection Lords of Caliban.

Amantha Starr, born and raised by a doting father on a Kentucky plantation in the years before the Civil War, is the heroine of this powerfully dramatic novel. At her father's death Amantha learns that her mother was a slave and that she, too, is to be sold into servitude. What follows is a vast panorama of one of the most turbulent periods of American History as seen through the eyes of star-crossed young woman. Amantha soon finds herself in New Orleans, where she spends the war years with Hamish Bond, a slave trader. At war’s end, she marries Tobias Sears, a Union officer and Emersonian idealist. Despite sporadic periods of contentment, Amantha finds life with Tobias trying, and she is haunted still by her tangled past. “Oh, who am I?” she asks at the beginning of the novel. Only after many years, after achieving a hard-won wisdom and maturity, does she begin to understand that question. Band of Angels puts on ready display Robert Penn Warren’s prodigious gifts. First published in 1955, it is one of the most searing and vivid fictional accounts of the Civil War era ever written.

Since the 1980s, Los Angeles has become the most racially and economically divided city in the United States. In the poorest parts of South Central Los Angeles, buildings in disrepair--the legacy of racial unrest. Moving beyond stereotypes of South Central's predominantly African American residents, João H. Costa Vargas recounts his almost two years living in the district. Personal, critical, and disquieting, Catching Hell in the City of Angels examines the ways in which economic and social changes in the twentieth century have affected the black community, and powerfully conveys the experiences that bind and divide its people. Through compelling stories of South Central, including his own experience as an immigrant of color, Vargas presents portraits of four groups. He talks daily with women living in a low-income Watts apartment building; works with activists in a community organization against police brutality; interacts with former gang members trying to maintain a 1992 truce between the Bloods and the Crips; and listens to amateur jazz musicians who perform in a gentrified section of the neighborhood. In each case he describes the worldviews and the definitions of "blackness" these people use to cope with oppression. Vargas finds, in turn, that blackness is a form of racial solidarity, a vehicle for the renewal of African American culture, and a political expression of revolutionary black nationalism. Vargas reveals that the social fault lines in South Central reflect both contemporary disparities and long-term struggles. In doing so, he shows both the racialized power that makes "blackness" a prized term of identity and the terrible price that African Americans have paid for this emphasis. Ultimately, Catching Hell in the City of Angels tells the story of urban America through the lives of individuals from diverse, overlapping, and vibrant communities. João H. Costa Vargas is assistant professor in the Center for African and African American Studies and the department of anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. Robin D. G. Kelley is the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of numerous books, including Yo Mama's Disfunktional: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America.