Aria Bastion is aging without the power of Keir's love. Jace has become her keeper, but he can do nothing to offset the foreseeable death in her future. When nineteen-year-old sorcerer Laniar Storm walks into their lives, he may be the key to give Aria and Jace a new future. Laniar's young body holds a secret that Aria and Jace are the last to discover. Can he overcome his own insecurity to find a place in the lives of the two highest powers Jasta has ever known? When the power again calls strife into their lives, can Jace and Laniar work together to save Aria's body and mind, or will the dark claws of death sink their talons into her after all?
What if fear is the new brave? That's the question that you need answered if you are living afraid. Finding courage begins with fear itself--fear of the Lord. I Choose Brave reveals a countercultural plan to help you where you are--knee-deep in fears of parenting, the future, your marriage, and a world that feels unstable. When you're feeling fearful, the last thing you need is a social-media meme telling you to simply "power through" your fears. In I Choose Brave, Katie Westenberg digs deep into Scripture and shows that finding the courage to overcome our fears must start with fear of the Lord. Hundreds of passages speak to this foundational truth, yet we have somehow relegated them to antiquity. In sharing her own compelling story of facing her worst fear, Katie serves up theological truth with relatable application. In this book, you will · discover a fresh take on an old truth that displaces fear once and for all · understand why the culture's idea of "fearlessness" is a farce · access the holy courage you were made for With this new knowledge comes tremendous freedom. Hidden in the cleft of the Rock, the One truly worthy of our fear, you will begin to understand the only path to real courage.
What happens when you discover nothing you’d believed about yourself is true? All Genny Dupont wants for her 21st birthday is to sleep in, eat a great breakfast, and go out dancing with her best friend. At first, it seems like her day goes exactly to plan. She even meets a cute guy at the club. But when they get together for coffee the next afternoon, she realizes she’s made a huge mistake. Because the story JP tells her, that she and her sister are the only remaining descendants of a family of immortal vampire slayers, is completely insane. He’s obviously a lunatic. Disappointed, she walks out, but Genny can’t quite shake the idea he’s planted. Could he possibly have been telling the truth? Learning about her family and how they died opens the door to a world she’d thought only existed in fiction. Sure, this world includes enemies that want her dead, but it’s not all doom and gloom. As Genny starts to embrace her legacy, she and JP grow closer. She’s a slayer. JP insists vampires are evil. But when she strikes up an unlikely friendship with Quinn, a vampire who risked his own life to save her, she comes to understand that not everything—or everyone—is how it seems.
A New York Times Editors' Choice; A Southern Living Best Book of 2018; An Amazon Editors' Best Book of 2018; A Refinery29 Best Book of 2018; A New York Post Most Unforgettable Book of 2018 "Fascinating." —Vogue “This is the story of a daughter and her mother. It’s also a memoir, a love story, and a tale of high-flying stunts . . . An adventure toward and through fear.” —Southern Living Tessa Fontaine’s astonishing memoir of pushing past fear, The Electric Woman, follows the author on a life-affirming journey of loss and self-discovery—through her time on the road with the last traveling American sideshow and her relationship with an adventurous, spirited mother. Turns out, one lesson applies to living through illness, keeping the show on the road, letting go of the person you love most, and eating fire: The trick is there is no trick. You eat fire by eating fire. Two journeys—a daughter’s and a mother’s—bear witness to this lesson in The Electric Woman. For three years Tessa Fontaine lived in a constant state of emergency as her mother battled stroke after stroke. But hospitals, wheelchairs, and loss of language couldn’t hold back such a woman; she and her husband would see Italy together, come what may. Thus Fontaine became free to follow her own piper, a literal giant inviting her to “come play” in the World of Wonders, America’s last traveling sideshow. How could she resist? Transformed into an escape artist, a snake charmer, and a high-voltage Electra, Fontaine witnessed the marvels of carnival life: intense camaraderie and heartbreak, the guilty thrill of hard-earned cash exchanged for a peek into the impossible, and, most marvelous of all, the stories carnival folks tell about themselves. Through these, Fontaine trained her body to ignore fear and learned how to keep her heart open in the face of loss. A story for anyone who has ever imagined running away with the circus, wanted to be someone else, or wanted a loved one to live forever, The Electric Woman is ultimately about death-defying acts of all kinds, especially that ever constant: good old-fashioned unconditional love.
Steve Hayner was serving as president of Columbia Seminary and was healthy and fit when he found out he had terminal pancreatic cancer. These pages, including reflections from some of those closest to Steve and his wife Sharol, offer us a hope-filled glimpse into what it means to walk with God in honesty, with joy, even through great pain.
If you truly love Allah, you will die for him. Your death will mean much reward for you and your family in heaven. Only death will prove your love. It was the final test. A chance to win not only the love of Allah, but the love of her father—something she had never been able to earn. Esther took a deep breath and raised her hand in the air. At the age of eighteen, she had just volunteered to become a suicide bomber. Defying Jihad is the true story of a girl growing up under radical Islamic rule, trained to believe her ultimate purpose was to serve Allah by dying as a jihadist. But two nights before she was to leave forever, she had a dream . . . one that would change the course of her destiny. Against all odds, Esther became a follower of Jesus—even though leaving Islam meant her death sentence. But rather than kill her immediately, Esther’s furious father challenged her to a series of public debates with Muslim scholars: the Bible versus the Quran. If Esther won, she might yet survive. But if the Muslim clerics won, Esther must renounce her Christian faith. For an entire month—if she lived that long—Esther would be brought before the mob daily to defend her newfound faith. Would God give her the words to argue against Muslim leaders, former friends, and even her own family? Defying Jihad is an amazing story of a woman prepared to surrender all for Jesus—and whose life transformed from terror to overwhelming love.
Louis Gerhani is a hard drinking, heartbroken, newspaper reporter for the Washington Gazette. He is disinterested in life after his fiancé left him for a doctor, and his final assignment in order to retain his job is to write a full story on Lolita Croome, an 110 year old, philosophical woman, and the oldest living person in the country, who resides in a nursing home in Hagerstown Maryland. As he reluctantly begins the assignment, he uncovers a 90 year old unsolved triple murder of three young women, that Lolita lived through, and a full diary from Lolita from 1923, the year of the murders. Consumed with solving the murders, turning out the story of a lifetime, and using the diary, Lou begins to wake a sleeping giant that someone is clearly trying to keep unsolved at all costs. Major violence erupts in this quiet town as Lou tries desperately to stay alive, finish the story, solve the murders, fall in love, and learn from a very wise, old woman. Defying Death In Hagerstown is the page turner on the century.
Math rocks! At least it does in the gifted hands of Sean Connolly, who blends middle school math with fantasy to create an exciting adventure in problem-solving. These word problems are perilous, do-or-die scenarios of blood-sucking vampires (How many months would it take a single vampire to completely take over a town of 500,000 people?), or a rowboat of 5 shipwrecked sailors with a single barrel of freshwater (How much can they drink, and for how long, before they go mad from thirst???). Each problem requires readers to dig deep into the tools they’re learning in school to figure out how to survive. Kids will love solving these problems. Sean Connolly knows how to make tough subjects exciting and he brings that same intuitive understanding of what inspires and challenges kids’ curiosity to the 24 problems in The Book of Perfectly Perilous Math. These problems are as fun to read as they are challenging to solve. They test readers on fractions, algebra, geometry, probability, expressions and equations, and more. Use geometry to fill in for the ship’s navigator and make it safely to the New World. Escape an evil Duke’s executioner by picking the right door—probability will save your neck.
With contributions from Will Brooker, Jeffrey A. Brown, Scott Bukatman, John G. Cawelti, Peter Coogan, Jules Feiffer, Charles Hatfield, Henry Jenkins, Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, Gerard Jones, Geoff Klock, Karin Kukkonen, Andy Medhurst, Adilifu Nama, Walter Ong, Lorrie Palmer, Richard Reynolds, Trina Robbins, Lillian Robinson, Roger B. Rollin, Gloria Steinem, Jennifer Stuller, Fredric Wertham, and Philip Wylie Despite their commercial appeal and cross-media reach, superheroes are only recently starting to attract sustained scholarly attention. This groundbreaking collection brings together essays and book excerpts by major writers on comics and popular culture. While superhero comics are a distinct and sometimes disdained branch of comics creation, they are integral to the development of the North American comic book and the history of the medium. For the past half-century, they have also been the one overwhelmingly dominant market genre. The sheer volume of superhero comics that have been published over the years is staggering. Major superhero universes constitute one of the most expansive storytelling canvases ever fashioned. Moreover, characters inhabiting these fictional universes are immensely influential, having achieved iconic recognition around the globe. Their images and adventures have shaped many other media, such as film, videogames, and even prose fiction. The primary aim of this reader is twofold: first, to collect in a single volume a sampling of the most sophisticated commentary on superheroes, and second, to bring into sharper focus the ways in which superheroes connect with larger social, cultural, literary, aesthetic, and historical themes that are of interest to a great many readers both in the academy and beyond.
When Pepper Roux was born his aunt foretold that he would not live past 14 years of age. Throughout his childhood his parents haven't bothered with him much, knowing that his life would be short-lived. So when Pepper wakes up on his 14th birthday he knows this will be the day that he'll die. But as the day wears on, and Pepper finds himself still alive, he decides to set off to sea in an attempt to try and avoid death for as long as possible. As time goes on Pepper steps into many roles and personas and has numerous outrageous adventures. But can he stay one step ahead of death? Or will fate catch up with him? And, if he does live, which of his many lives will he choose to adopt? This riot of a story is a wonderful adventure, and Pepper is an unforgettable character who stays with you long after his story has been told.
