Jena Nardella, cofounder of Blood:Water and one of Christianity Today’s 33 Under 33, shares a “captivatingly honest” (Publishers Weekly) account of how her passion for saving the world grew into a humbler, long-term calling of loving the world in all its brokenness in this beautifully written memoir. Ten years ago, Jena Lee Nardella was a fresh-out-of-college, twenty-something with the lofty goal of truly changing the world. Armed with a diploma, a thousand dollars, and a dream to build one thousand wells in Africa, she joined forces with Grammy Award–winning band Jars of Clay to found Blood:Water and begin her mission. Jena’s dream for her nonprofit turned that initial $1 into $20, and then $100, and today into more than $25 million. Working throughout eleven countries in Africa, Blood:Water has provided healthcare for over 62,000 people in HIV-affected areas and has partnered with communities to provide clean water for more than one million people in Africa. But along the way she faced many harsh realities that have tested her faith, encountered corruption and brokenness that nearly destroyed everything she’d fought for, and learned that wishful thinking will not get you very far. Jena discovered true change comes only when you stop trying to save the world and allow yourself to love it, even when it breaks your heart. With a fresh, intelligent, and winsome voice, Jena Lee Nardella weaves an evocative, personal narrative filled with honest and hard-won lessons that demonstrate the amazing things that can happen when you fight for your dreams.

A heart-wrenching story of how one young boy's life was forever changed during the Rwandan genocide Agabande, Rwanda, April 1994. Life is simple but good. Pascal and his brother go to school with their friends, their parents work hard, their little sister is growing up, and on Sunday almost everyone they know goes to church to thank God for his goodness. But lately, there have been whispers and suspicious glances around town, and messages of hate on the radio, and people are leaving. . . Then, in one awful night, Pascal's ordinary life in the land of one thousand hills is turned upside down. One Thousand Hills an important story of the awful consequences of unfettered prejudice in the modern world, written by a survivor.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Japanese provincial governors had to travel between the cities of Kyoto and Edo (modern-day Tokyo). This 300+ mile journey on the historic Tokaido Road required the presence of one to three thousand attendants (carriers). Yuki's father has been called to Edo and she, along with her mother and pet dog, must accompany him in this royal procession. Yuki does not want to go. She will miss her home and her teacher. But she must not be disrespectful so Yuki captures her thoughts in haiku, a Japanese form of poetry. Once outside the gate How will I find my way back? Will home disappear? Inspired by the woodcuts of Japanese printmaker, Hiroshige, award-winning author Gloria Whelan brings a cultural event to life through the observant eyes and thoughtful verses of a young Japanese girl. Gloria Whelan's many award-winning books include Homeless Bird for which she received the National Book Award. Her work with Sleeping Bear Press includes Yatandou and Mackinac Bridge: The Five-Mile Poem (a 2007 Michigan Notable Book). Ms. Whelan lives in Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan. Yan Nascimbene studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York and at the University of California at Davis. His work has appeared in numerous publications including TIME. He has illustrated over 50 books, including Hachiko: The True Story of a Loyal Dog. Yan twice received the Society of Illustrators' Silver Medal and many other awards. He lives in Provence, in the village of Cotignac.

A woman cop. A haunting memory.... The only female detective in the Miami PD's Homicide division, Joe Frye has memories that haunt her, and a past that not even her lover, detective Louis Kincaid, truly knows. It began when Joe was an ambitious rookie cop in a small Michigan town called Echo Bay.... The bones found in the woods were the first clue in a string of unimaginably brutal murders of young women. Plunged into a heated investigation -- and caught between the dictates of a reluctant local sheriff and the state police -- Joe soon uncovers the chilling truth: In the dead of winter in the Michigan woods, she must face down a predator who has chosen her as a worthy opponent -- or become his next victim.

Set between Holland and a remote Indonesian island, this intimate magical realism novel offers “an offbeat narrative that has the timeless tone of a legend” (Time). “Dermoût’s sentences came at me like a soft knowing dagger, depicting a far-off land that felt to me like the blood of all the places I used to love.” —Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild The Ten Thousand Things is at once novel of shimmering strangeness—and familiarity. It is the story of Felicia, who returns with her baby son from Holland to the Spice Islands of Indonesia, to the house and garden that were her birthplace, over which her powerful grandmother still presides. There Felicia finds herself wedded to an uncanny and dangerous world, full of mystery and violence, where objects tell tales, the dead come and go, and the past is as potent as the present. First published in Holland in 1955, Maria Dermoût's novel was immediately recognized as a magical work, like nothing else Dutch—or European—literature had seen before. The Ten Thousand Things is an entranced vision of a far-off place that is as convincingly real and intimate as it is exotic, a book that is at once a lament and an ecstatic ode to nature and life.

Fifteen-year-old Dashti, sworn to obey her sixteen-year-old mistress, the Lady Saren, shares Saren's years of punishment locked in a tower, then brings her safely to the lands of her true love, where both must hide who they are as they work as kitchen maids.

The author describes her family's efforts to help their friends and others who were left homeless and hungry in the aftermath of World War II.

“The ultimate literary bucket list.” —THE WASHINGTON POST Celebrate the pleasure of reading and the thrill of discovering new titles in an extraordinary book that’s as compulsively readable, entertaining, surprising, and enlightening as the 1,000-plus titles it recommends. Covering fiction, poetry, science and science fiction, memoir, travel writing, biography, children’s books, history, and more, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die ranges across cultures and through time to offer an eclectic collection of works that each deserve to come with the recommendation, You have to read this. But it’s not a proscriptive list of the “great works”—rather, it’s a celebration of the glorious mosaic that is our literary heritage. Flip it open to any page and be transfixed by a fresh take on a very favorite book. Or come across a title you always meant to read and never got around to. Or, like browsing in the best kind of bookshop, stumble on a completely unknown author and work, and feel that tingle of discovery. There are classics, of course, and unexpected treasures, too. Lists to help pick and choose, like Offbeat Escapes, or A Long Climb, but What a View. And its alphabetical arrangement by author assures that surprises await on almost every turn of the page, with Cormac McCarthy and The Road next to Robert McCloskey and Make Way for Ducklings, Alice Walker next to Izaac Walton. There are nuts and bolts, too—best editions to read, other books by the author, “if you like this, you’ll like that” recommendations , and an interesting endnote of adaptations where appropriate. Add it all up, and in fact there are more than six thousand titles by nearly four thousand authors mentioned—a life-changing list for a lifetime of reading. “948 pages later, you still want more!” —THE WASHINGTON POST

Based on an actual historical event but told through fictional diaries, this is the story of May Dodd—a remarkable woman who, in 1875, travels through the American West to marry the chief of the Cheyenne Nation. One Thousand White Women begins with May Dodd’s journey into an unknown world. Having been committed to an insane asylum by her blue-blood family for the crime of loving a man beneath her station, May finds that her only hope for freedom and redemption is to participate in a secret government program whereby women from “civilized” society become the brides of Cheyenne warriors. What follows is a series of breathtaking adventures—May’s brief, passionate romance with the gallant young army captain John Bourke; her marriage to the great chief Little Wolf; and her conflict of being caught between loving two men and living two completely different lives. “Fergus portrays the perceptions and emotions of women...with tremendous insight and sensitivity.”—Booklist “A superb tale of sorrow, suspense, exultation, and triumph.” —Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump

In this beautiful edition of Ann Voskamp's New York Times bestseller, One Thousand Gifts, Voskamp invites you into her grace-bathed life of farming, parenting, and writing. Here you will discover a way of seeing ordinary amazing grace, a way of living that is fully alive, and a way of becoming present to God that brings deep, lasting joy.