My brother use to tell me bedtime stories about angels and a monster that threatened their rule. But now those stories are real and standing right in front of me. I should have never trusted a bedtime story.
He smiles. "Hello." It's a deep voice. I can feel it reverberate in my chest and echo all the way down to my toes. I know I should leave, but I don't want to. I want to keep my senses like this forever. I'm all eye, all ear, all skin. Persephone lives in the most gorgeous place in the world. But her mother's a goddess, as overprotective as she is powerful. Paradise has become a trap. Just when Persephone feels there's no chance of escaping the life that's been planned for her, a mysterious stranger arrives. A stranger who promises something more—something dangerous and exciting—something that spurs Persephone to make a daring choice. A choice that could destroy all she's come to love, even the earth itself. In a land where a singing river can make you forget your very name, Persephone is forced to discover who—and what—she really is.
Ildiko has always known her only worth to the royal family lay in a strategic marriage. Resigned to her fate, she is horrified to learn that her intended groom isn't just a foreign aristocrat but the younger prince of a people neither familiar nor human. Bound to her new husband, Ildiko will leave behind all she's known to embrace a man shrouded in darkness but with a soul forged by light. Two people brought together by the trappings of duty and politics will discover they are destined for each other, even as the powers of a hostile kingdom scheme to tear them apart.
Riley has crossed the bridge into the afterlife—a place called Here, where time is always Now. She has picked up life where she left off when she was alive, living with her parents and dog in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. When she's summoned before The Council, she learns that the afterlife isn't just an eternity of leisure. She's been assigned a job, Soul Catcher, and a teacher, Bodhi, a possibly cute, seemingly nerdy boy who's definitely hiding something. They return to earth together for Riley's first assignment, a Radiant Boy who's been haunting a castle in England for centuries. Many Soul Catchers have tried to get him to cross the bridge and failed. But all of that was before he met Riley . . . Radiance is the first book in the Riley Bloom series from bestselling author Alyson Noël.
“In The Radiant Midnight you will find not merely abstract ideas about the essence of darkness or how to go about facing it. You will also find humor, Wisdom. Honesty. You will find Melissa’s very bone and blood…it is here, then, in reading—rather, perhaps, listening to—her words, that your heart, trapped as it may feel in its own midnight, begins to see the first signs of dawn.” –Curt Thompson, MD, author of Anatomy of the Soul Grace and Hope for Long Dark Nights Have you ever suffered with depression, sadness, or the feeling that you just can't seem to get it together? Do you wonder if you could ever view your deepest wounds in a different light? Through candid storytelling, biblical truth, honest lament, and unexpected humor, The Radiant Midnight is a bold refusal to simplify the experience of suffering by moving too quickly to try to relieve it. With questions to guide you and practical suggestions to lead you through dark moments, this book takes you on a journey of surrender, suffering, rest, and restoration as it encourages and comforts you in whatever struggle you face. The message of The Radiant Midnight is fueled by the passionate belief that not only will God lead you out of darkness, He will be fully and beautifully present within it. You can find deep contentment in painful circumstances and discover a profound intimacy with a compassionate, tender God who is with you in every moment—in each hope-filled dawn and every radiant midnight.
[Zagajewski] is in some sense a pilgrim, a seeker, a celebrant in search of the divine, the unchanging, the absolute. His poems are filled with radiant moments of plenitude. They are spiritual emblems, hymns to the unknown, levers for transcendence. --Edward Hirsch, Doubletake. Zagajewski deserves the attention of readers accustomed to swerve away from poetry. And moreover, he is good: the unmistakable quality of the real thing -- a sunlike force that wilts clichés and bollixes the categories of expectation -- manifests itself powerfully through able translation. --Robert Pinsky, The New Republic.
At the beginning of this masterpiece of African literature, Clarence, a white man, has been shipwrecked on the coast of Africa. Flush with self-importance, he demands to see the king, but the king has just left for the south of his realm. Traveling through an increasingly phantasmagoric landscape in the company of a beggar and two roguish boys, Clarence is gradually stripped of his pretensions, until he is sold to the royal harem as a slave. But in the end Clarence’s bewildering journey is the occasion of a revelation, as he discovers the image, both shameful and beautiful, of his own humanity in the alien splendor of the king.
This book is an introduction to the ideas of the Swiss psychologist and psychoanalyst, C. G. Jung. The first chapter describes his early home life whilst subsequent chapters are devoted to his work in various sectors. This started in psychiatry at Burgholzli Hospital in Zurich, where Eugen Bleuler was the Director, a significant figure in Jung's life for many years. The book goes on to describe at some length the professional relationship between Freud and Jung, and the disastrous impact of their subsequent acrimonious split in 1913 on themselves but, more importantly, on the profession of psychoanalysis itself, both at that time and subsequently. Several chapters elaborate Jung's main concepts, including an extensive investigation of his all-important work on psychological alchemy, which includes 10 black and white illustrations from the alchemical text The Rosarium Philosophorum and 10 black and white ox-herding pictures of Kuo-an from the twelfth-century Buddhist tradition. The rest of the book depicts some of the significant women and men who contributed to analytical psychology, which is the term Jung chose to designate his psychoanalytic discipline. This is used interchangeably with the term psychoanalysis as many Jungians designate themselves psychoanalysts, including the author, as a New York State licensed psychoanalyst. This is also an account of some of the scientific, philosophical, and psychological influences on Jung's thinking. The book concludes with an entry on China, where the author has spent the last few years analysing, lecturing, supervising, and teaching analytical psychology to Chinese psychotherapists, counsellors, and students in Beijing and Shanghai. This comprehensive work is essential reading for all those with an interest in C. G. Jung and his work.
This book explores nuances of faith-no-faith moments, twists and turns of living and focuses on variations of faith, beginning with nature, sleep, beauty, goodness, the opening-closing of the human face, and the paradox of the growth of faith through pain and shattering.
Amid the middle of fall, seven best friends set out to start their college career. Excitement runs high as they began to enjoy the freedom of adulthood when they move in to live together. But little do they know that the happiness they so foolishly desired would not come easy. Facing the afflictions of rape, murderous revenge, dangerous love affairs, and the discovery of mystical beautiful worlds hidden from man, these best friends will have to survive many obstacles before they truly have a chance at happiness. But will their struggle to endure the hardships weaken their friendship? Or will their sisterly bonds be strong enough to bring these best friends closer than ever?