Born with a rare craniofacial disorder, Russell Joyce endured years of patchwork surgeries that left him with deep pain and physical and emotional scars. But a life-changing encounter set him on a journey where he learned how God doesn't love us despite our wounds but through them. We can find freedom in Christ, scars and all.

Collected essays, interviews, and presentations of a comics scholar and creator of the traveling exhibit, The changing image of African Americans in comics.

A widely praised young writer delivers a daring, ambitious novel about identity and race in the age of globalization. One afternoon, not long after Kelly Thorndike has moved back to his hometown of Baltimore, an African American man he doesn't recognize calls out to him. To Kelly’s shock, the man identifies himself as Martin, who was one of Kelly’s closest friends in high school—and, before his disappearance nearly twenty years before, white and Jewish. Martin then tells an astonishing story: after years of immersing himself in black culture, he’s had a plastic surgeon perform “racial reassignment surgery”: altering his hair, skin, and physiognomy to allow him to pass as African American. Unknown to his family or childhood friends, Martin has been living a new life ever since. Now, however, Martin feels he can no longer keep his identity a secret; he wants Kelly to help him ignite a controversy that will help sell racial reassignment surgery to the world. Inventive and thought-provoking, Your Face in Mine is a brilliant novel about cultural and racial alienation and the nature of belonging in a world where identity can be a stigma or a lucrative brand.

No Face Like Mine tells the story of a woman who spent her life looking for a face like hers. Growing up, she wondered why her face was unlike any of her family members. It was later revealed that she had a different father than her siblings. But even then, the man she was told was her father did not look like her. She still had doubts but never questioned what she was told. Her suspicions were finally proven valid. Her "father" was not her father. She was left with a big void in her life, so she kept wondering. After getting married and moving away from her birthplace, she felt she would never find the truth--but she kept hoping. For years, the quest and desire to find her biological father lingered in her soul.

This is an imaginative quest to earn forgiveness and grant it. Kamryn is on the quest of her life after she stumbles across the most amazing man, Lyte, And The dangerous situation she was predesined to allieviate. Lyte's history, As with the mythology of Christian beliefs engulfs her and propelles her along a path frought with danger, love and hate. Can she overcome her own desires and seek the forgivess of her sins as she grants it to others? She is weilded as an instument of God to help prepare For The biggest battle mankind will ever have to face. But can she accept that burden? This book is filled with the confusions of real life in a surreal exprience, and how the choices we make eventually bless or doom us.

Using intelligent satire, Jane Rosen brings new life and insight to the ongoing dialogue for women in leadership. She takes a daring, sacrilegious approach to the issues of what women have accomplished, what hurdles remain in the climb up the corporate ladder and, how to overcome those hurdles in heels. Women in business need a good laugh and this book hits that funny bone chapter after chapter. An entertaining read that will inform, uplift and inspire. After all, if the Goddess could share the Acropolis with the great Gods of Greek mythology, then why can't she share a seat alongside the mere mortals of the corporate boardroom?

Peter Straub has created a body of short stories and novellas establishes him as one of the best literary voices in the genres of horror and dark suspense. His list of accomplishments and awards is staggering: In addition to the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association, Life Achievement World Fantasy Award, Grand Master Award from World Horror, Living Legend Award from the International Horror Guild, he has won the Bram Stoker Award nine times, the World Fantasy Award three times, and one British Fantasy Award. He remains a living legend. Volume one features Peter's short stories. Stories included in this collection: The Juniper Tree She Saw a Young Man In the Realm of Dreams Going Home A Short Guide to the City Interlude: Bar Talk Something About a Death, Something About a Fire The Poetry Reading The Veteran Then One Day... The Ghost Village Ashputtle Hunger In Transit (with Benjamin Straub) Isn’t It Romantic? The Geezers Donald, Duck! Little Red’s Tango Lapland, or Film Noir Mr. Aickman’s Air Rifle Mallon the Guru The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine Inside Story The Collected Stories of Freddie Prothero Lost Lake (with Emma Straub) Beyond the Veil of Vision: Reinhold von Kreitz and the Das Beben Movement “Peter Straub’s shorter fictions are like tiny novels you drown in: perfectly pitched, terrifyingly smart, big-hearted, dangerous, and even cruel... If you care about the short story, you should read this book, and watch a master at work.” —Neil Gaiman, author of The Ocean at the End of the Lane “Straub has a proven knack for black humor, and he coaxes the nightmarish out of the mundane with startling ease. This is a powerful collection from an enduring favorite in literary chills.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “These stories show [Straub] ranging far and high into the uplands of literary fiction without ever leaving behind the dark impulses and fears that make his work so powerful.” —John Crowley, author of Little, Big and the Aegypt Cycle

"The ultimatum: Show me a reason to live or I kill myself in seven days. When seventeen-year-old Sophia dares life to prove to her she should stay alive, her suffering is at its climax, her predicament at its worst, and her adolescence at its crescendo. Sophia is taking summer courses at a New York City college between her junior and senior years of high school, lured to the program by Shauna, her best friend from California. Constantly reminded of her own perceived lack of beauty and brains, haunted by pangs of worthlessness, and noticed only by her lanky friend J.P., Sophia begs life for a single decent reason to stick around. Days slip by and she continues her silent countdown until...the greatest hope she can find becomes the deepest threat imaginable. As she makes her final attempt to confront life among adults, this bold adolescent and feisty storyteller shreds the hypocrisy and inequities of the adult world she yearns to inhabit."