Liberia, Africa was a country that became synonymous for corruption, poverty and death. Samuel K. Doe and Charles Taylor were warlords that razed a once beautiful land and brought down terror on innocent Liberians. Author Jerome Cabeen stepped off a plane in September of 2008 into the unknown world of West Africa and Liberia. Along with his wife Clarisa he had come to the war-torn and desolate country to serve as a Catholic missionary for one year. God had other plans. Memoirs of a Reluctant Servant is a chronicle of the triumphs and sorrows experienced by Cabeen while serving in Liberia. Questions of faith, truth and self sacrifice were constant and sometimes overwhelming obstacles in his path while living in the country. It is a riveting and tragic account of the death and destruction that swept through all parts of Liberia from 1980 until 2003 during two separate civil wars and what one Catholic mission is doing to re-build the country and save its children. David Dionisi, founder and President of Teach Peace Foundation says of the book: It is a fascinating, real world story about compassion and courage. This is a must read for any Catholic or person that has empathy for the suffering of others.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down. In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it. Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online—a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.

I'm called Esther-a Persian name, and yet I'm a Hebrew. Had I been able to do so, one of the questions I would have asked my mother and father when I grew older was, "Why did you give me this name?" But now, of course, I know why. The story of the orphaned Jewish girl who saves the Jewish nation from extinction is the stuff of fantasy and legend. Did such a person exist? Could an anonymous girl have been selected to be wife of the ancient Persian king of kings? "Esther, soldiers will soon be combing the cities and countryside to look for the most beautiful young virgins. They will take hundreds of young girls for the king's harem. Then the king's eunuchs and servants will spend many months preparing the women for their night with him." His words came faster and faster, wanting to get through this." The author of the award-winning I, Claudia and My Name is Saul ancient novels returns with the story of Esther. Wilder's skills at blending historical fact with vividly imagined, well-founded characters have become her trademark. The Reluctant Queen is guaranteed to captivate both her loyal fans and eager newcomers, right down to its last riveting page.

When Carolyn Weber set out to study Romantic literature at Oxford University, she didn't give much thought to God or spiritual matters—but over the course of her studies she encountered the Jesus of the Bible and her world turned upside down. Surprised by Oxford chronicles her conversion experience with wit, humor, and insight into how becoming a Christian changed her. Carolyn Weber arrives at Oxford a feminist from a loving but broken family, suspicious of men and intellectually hostile to all things religious. As she grapples with her God-shaped void alongside the friends, classmates, and professors she meets, she tackles big questions in search of truth, love, and a life that matters. From issues of fatherhood, feminism, doubt, doctrine, and love, Weber explores the intricacies of coming to faith with an aching honesty and insight echoing that of the poets and writers she studied. Surprised by Oxford is: The witty memoir of a skeptical agnostic who comes to a dynamic personal faith in God Rich with illustration and literary references Gritty, humorous, and spiritually perceptive An inside look at Oxford University Weber eloquently describes a journey many of us have embarked upon, grappling with tough questions and doubts about the meaning of faith—and ultimately finding it in the most unlikely of places.

'Ella darling, There are things I have concealed from you up till now that I think you ought to know; things that have turned me from a different person from the Ronald you know.' So, in April 1918, Ronald Skirth, a non-commissioned officer in the Royal Artillery, wrote to his sweetheart, back in England. A year before, Skirth, then just nineteen years old, had been sent to fight on the Western Front. This is his story, the story of a young man who went to war a devoted servant of King and country and returned utterly convinced that war, all war, was wrong and who acted upon his convictions, making a pact with God that he would not kill. This riveting memoir was written fifty years after the end of the war, drawing on his own contemporary diary entries and letters home. Never published before, it affords a vivid, moving and surprising insight into that most dreadful of conflicts.

Something to Stand the Rain is a biographical memoir that celebrates the often unrecognized worth of individuals beneath the radar of fame. At a time in our nation when faith in its leadership is at a low ebb, the components of a good man are laid out for review before being illustrated in the life of a man named David Dionisi, someone who rose to wealth as corporate executive before surrendering it to lift up those less fortunate than himself. Youthful longing to be a paratrooper carries him beyond a pancake landing without benefit of parachute from which, miraculously, he walks away. Military service as an intelligence officer ends when conflicting with love for the woman he marries. Though he rises rocket-like in the corporate world, his affluence leaves him dissatisfied. Moved to overwhelming compassion by the suffering of the poor and needy, he decides to devote his savings and his talents to their aid. Among the benefactions born of the foundation he launches are an orphanage in Africaand a writing career. This emerges from realization that one of the most effective ways to lift the impoverished from their plight rests in the exposure of its unrecognized root causes.

Lady Hyegyong's memoirs, which recount the chilling murder of her husband by his father, form one of the best known and most popular classics of Korean literature. From 1795 until 1805 Lady Hyegyong composed this masterpiece, depicting a court life Shakespearean in its pathos, drama, and grandeur. Presented in its social, cultural, and historical contexts, this first complete English translation opens a door into a world teeming with conflicting passions, political intrigue, and the daily preoccupations of a deeply intelligent and articulate woman. JaHyun Kim Haboush's accurate, fluid translation captures the intimate and expressive voice of this consummate storyteller. Reissued nearly twenty years after its initial publication with a new foreword by Dorothy Ko, The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong is a unique exploration of Korean selfhood and an extraordinary example of autobiography in the premodern era.