Annika Williams left teaching to help raise her teenagers, Jarren and Lexi, and she hasn't regretted it. Along with her loving, sensitive husband, Annika and her family are living the good life in a Lincoln, Nebraska suburb. But life has more in store for Annika when her husband, the Reverend Zebediah Williams, introduces her to Carl, a homeless eleven-year-old boy with a sketchy past. Moved by his love of children and a desire to save the boy from the streets Pastor Williams convinces a reluctant Annika to adopt Carl. Perhaps motivated by a good heart or some agency quota, Carl's caseworker, Rose, tells Annika that children like Carl come with something a little extra and would bring another dimension to their family. Unfortunately, it doesn't take long before Annika figures out what Rose meant. Not only is Carl emotionally unstable, but his altercations with the police and his knack for pitting her against her family exhaust Annika and make it incredibly difficult for her to maintain her sanity. Yet Annika knows God is carrying her through all the grief. Now, if He'll just give her the patience and strength to hold on to this little boy who has completely captured her heart A heartwarming, touching tale, The Boarder shows the amazing healing power of love.

Ryan is determined to be a professional snowboarder but he's learned from what happened to his whistle-blower father that doing the right thing doesn't always pay off. When his parents leave Kamloops, Ryan decides to stay with relatives so he can be near the Salmon Valley Ski Resort. He spends all his time at the ski hill, volunteering with the Junior Safety Patrol to cover the cost of his lift pass. When his board is stolen, he discovers that his cousin, Kevin, knows more than he should about recent thefts at the resort. Kevin's in way over his head, and soon Ryan's involved, whether he wants to be or not. As Ryan prepares for the video shoot that could be his big break, he learns that Kevin's in danger. Ryan has to choose between career and family, and hope that, for him, doing the right thing will pay off.

Perfect for readers of This Is Where it Ends, The Border is a gripping drama about four teens, forced to flee home after a deadly cartel rips apart their families. They must now face life-threatening danger and unimaginable sacrifice as they attempt to cross the U.S. border. "Thrilling... often brilliant."—Kirkus One moment changed their lives forever. A band plays, glasses clink, and four teens sneak into the Mexican desert, the hum of celebration receding behind them. Crack. Crack. Crack. Not fireworks—gunshots. The music stops. And Pato, Arbo, Marcos, and Gladys are powerless as the lives they once knew are taken from them. Then they are seen by the gunmen. They run. Except they have nowhere to go. The narcos responsible for their families' murders have put out a reward for the teens' capture. Staying in Mexico is certain death, but attempting to cross the border through an unforgiving desert may be as deadly as the secrets they are trying to escape...

Annika Williams left teaching to help raise her teenagers, Jarren and Lexi, and she hasn't regretted it. Along with her loving, sensitive husband, Annika and her family are living the good life in a Lincoln, Nebraska suburb. But life has more in store for Annika when her husband, the Reverend Zebediah Williams, introduces her to Carl, a homeless eleven-year-old boy with a sketchy past. Moved by his love of children and a desire to save the boy from the streets Pastor Williams convinces a reluctant Annika to adopt Carl. Perhaps motivated by a good heart or some agency quota, Carl's caseworker, Rose, tells Annika that children like Carl come with something a little extra and would bring another dimension to their family. Unfortunately, it doesn't take long before Annika figures out what Rose meant. Not only is Carl emotionally unstable, but his altercations with the police and his knack for pitting her against her family exhaust Annika and make it incredibly difficult for her to maintain her sanity. Yet Annika knows God is carrying her through all the grief. Now, if He'll just give her the patience and strength to hold on to this little boy who has completely captured her heart... A heartwarming, touching tale, The Boarder shows the amazing healing power of love.

A man attempts to run away from life--and learns that he can't. While Craig Miller does abandon his life, he is more accurately abandoning the people he loves, and who, unfortunately for him, fail to love him in return as he would hope they would. The surprise ending demands a great deal of reflection and self-inspection by the people who populate the story.

The Border and Its Bodies examines the impact of migration from Central America and México to the United States on the most basic social unit possible: the human body. It explores the terrible toll migration takes on the bodies of migrants—those who cross the border and those who die along the way—and discusses the treatment of those bodies after their remains are discovered in the desert. The increasingly militarized U.S.-México border is an intensely physical place, affecting the bodies of all who encounter it. The essays in this volume explore how crossing becomes embodied in individuals, how that embodiment transcends the crossing of the line, and how it varies depending on subject positions and identity categories, especially race, class, and citizenship. Timely and wide-ranging, this book brings into focus the traumatic and real impact the border can have on those who attempt to cross it, and it offers new perspectives on the effects for rural communities and ranchers. An intimate and profoundly human look at migration, The Border and Its Bodies reminds us of the elemental fact that the border touches us all.

The acclaimed author of Sovietistan travels along the seemingly endless Russian border and reveals the deep and pervasive influence it has had across half the globe. Imperial, communist or autocratic, Russia has been—and remains—a towering and intimidating neighbor. Whether it is North Korea in the Far East through the former Soviet republics in Asia and the Caucasus, or countries on the Caspian Ocean and the Black Sea. What would it be like to traverse the entirety of the Russian periphery to examine its effects on those closest to her? An astute and brilliant combination of lyric travel writing and modern history, The Border is a book about Russia without its author ever entering Russia itself. Fatland gets to the heart of what it has meant to be the neighbor of that mighty, expanding empire throughout history. As we follow Fatland on her journey, we experience the colorful, exciting, tragic and often unbelievable histories of these bordering nations along with their cultures, their people, their landscapes. Sharply observed and wholly absorbing, The Border is a surprising new way to understand a broad part our world.

Historical romance retelling the story of the adventures of the Earl of Bothwell.

When the Berlin Wall fell, Germany united in a wave of euphoria and solidarity. Also caught in the current were Vietnamese border crossers who had left their homeland after its reunification in 1975. Unwilling to live under socialism, one group resettled in West Berlin as refugees. In the name of socialist solidarity, a second group arrived in East Berlin as contract workers. The Border Within paints a vivid portrait of these disparate Vietnamese migrants' encounters with each other in the post-socialist city of Berlin. Journalists, scholars, and Vietnamese border crossers themselves consider these groups that left their homes under vastly different conditions to be one people, linked by an unquestionable ethnic nationhood. Phi Hong Su's rigorous ethnography unpacks this intuition. In absorbing prose, Su reveals how these Cold War compatriots enact palpable social boundaries in everyday life. This book uncovers how 20th-century state formation and international migration--together, border crossings--generate enduring migrant classifications. In doing so, border crossings fracture shared ethnic, national, and religious identities in enduring ways.

South of the Border, West of the Sun is the beguiling story of a past rekindled, and one of Haruki Murakami’s most touching novels. Hajime has arrived at middle age with a loving family and an enviable career, yet he feels incomplete. When a childhood friend, now a beautiful woman, shows up with a secret from which she is unable to escape, the fault lines of doubt in Hajime’s quotidian existence begin to give way. Rich, mysterious, and quietly dazzling, in South of the Border, West of the Sun the simple arc of one man’s life becomes the exquisite literary terrain of Murakami’s remarkable genius.