'The Walmart Book of the Dead' was inspired by the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, funerary texts with accompanying illustrations containing spells to preserve the spirit of the deceased in the afterlife. In Lucy Biederman's version, people from all walks of life wander Walmart unknowingly consigned to their afterlives.
A rich romp through untold American history featuring fabulous characters, The Wild Vine is the tale of a little-known American grape that rocked the fine-wine world of the nineteenth century and is poised to do so again today. Author Todd Kliman sets out on an epic quest to unravel the mystery behind Norton, a grape used to make a Missouri wine that claimed a prestigious gold medal at an international exhibition in Vienna in 1873. At a time when the vineyards of France were being ravaged by phylloxera, this grape seemed to promise a bright future for a truly American brand of wine-making, earthy and wild. And then Norton all but vanished. What happened? The narrative begins more than a hundred years before California wines were thought to have put America on the map as a wine-making nation and weaves together the lives of a fascinating cast of renegades. We encounter the suicidal Dr. Daniel Norton, tinkering in his experimental garden in 1820s Richmond, Virginia. Half on purpose and half by chance, he creates a hybrid grape that can withstand the harsh New World climate and produce good, drinkable wine, thus succeeding where so many others had failed so fantastically before, from the Jamestown colonists to Thomas Jefferson himself. Thanks to an influential Long Island, New York, seed catalog, the grape moves west, where it is picked up in Missouri by German immigrants who craft the historic 1873 bottling. Prohibition sees these vineyards burned to the ground by government order, but bootleggers keep the grape alive in hidden backwoods plots. Generations later, retired Air Force pilot Dennis Horton, who grew up playing in the abandoned wine caves of the very winery that produced the 1873 Norton, brings cuttings of the grape back home to Virginia. Here, dot-com-millionaire-turned-vintner Jenni McCloud, on an improbable journey of her own, becomes Norton’s ultimate champion, deciding, against all odds, to stake her entire reputation on the outsider grape. Brilliant and provocative, The Wild Vine shares with readers a great American secret, resuscitating the Norton grape and its elusive, inky drink and forever changing the way we look at wine, America, and long-cherished notions of identity and reinvention.
Join bestselling author Beth Moore in her life-changing quest of vine-chasing—and learn how everything changes when you discover the true meaning of a fruitful, God-pleasing, meaning-filled life. God wants us to flourish. In fact, he delights in our flourishing. Life isn’t always fun, but in Christ it can always be fruitful. In Chasing Vines, Beth shows us from Scripture how all of life’s concerns—the delights and the trials—matter to God. He uses all of it to help us flourish and be fruitful. Looking through the lens of Christ’s transforming teaching in John 15, Beth gives us a panoramic view of biblical teachings on the Vine, vineyards, vine-dressing, and fruitfulness. Along the way you’ll discover why fruitfulness is so important to God—and how He can use anything that happens to us for His glory and our flourishing. Nothing is for nothing. Join Beth on her journey of discovering what it means to chase vines and to live a life of meaning and fruitfulness. An inspiring spiritual book for every Christian.
2020 L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist, History A provocative examination of how the U.S. military has shaped our entire world, from today’s costly, endless wars to the prominence of violence in everyday American life. The United States has been fighting wars constantly since invading Afghanistan in 2001. This nonstop warfare is far less exceptional than it might seem: the United States has been at war or has invaded other countries almost every year since independence. In The United States of War, David Vine traces this pattern of bloody conflict from Columbus's 1494 arrival in Guantanamo Bay through the 250-year expansion of a global U.S. empire. Drawing on historical and firsthand anthropological research in fourteen countries and territories, The United States of War demonstrates how U.S. leaders across generations have locked the United States in a self-perpetuating system of permanent war by constructing the world’s largest-ever collection of foreign military bases—a global matrix that has made offensive interventionist wars more likely. Beyond exposing the profit-making desires, political interests, racism, and toxic masculinity underlying the country’s relationship to war and empire, The United States of War shows how the long history of U.S. military expansion shapes our daily lives, from today’s multi-trillion–dollar wars to the pervasiveness of violence and militarism in everyday U.S. life. The book concludes by confronting the catastrophic toll of American wars—which have left millions dead, wounded, and displaced—while offering proposals for how we can end the fighting.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Trapped in the Mexican jungle, a group of friends stumble upon a creeping horror unlike anything they could ever imagine in "the best horror novel of the new century" (Stephen King). Also a major motion picture! Two young couples are on a lazy Mexican vacation—sun-drenched days, drunken nights, making friends with fellow tourists. When the brother of one of those friends disappears, they decide to venture into the jungle to look for him. What started out as a fun day-trip slowly spirals into a nightmare when they find an ancient ruins site ... and the terrifying presence that lurks there. "The Ruins does for Mexican vacations what Jaws did for New England beaches.” —Entertainment Weekly “Smith’s nail-biting tension is a pleasure all its own.... This stuff isn’t for the faint of heart.” —New York Post “A story so scary you may never want to go on vacation, or dig around in your garden, again.” —USA Today
A gorgeous compendium of Joni Mitchell's handwritten lyrics and drawings, originally handcrafted as a gift for a select group of friends in 1971 and now available to the public for the first time In 1971, as her album Blue topped charts around the world, Joni Mitchell crafted one hundred copies of Morning Glory on the Vine as a holiday gift for her closest friends. For this stunningly beautiful book, Joni hand-wrote an exquisite selection of her own lyrics and poems and illustrated them with more than thirty of her original pictures. Handcrafted, signed, and numbered in Los Angeles, the existing copies of this labor of love have rarely been seen in the past half-century. Now, during Joni's seventy-fifth birthday year, Morning Glory on the Vine: Early Songs and Drawings will be widely available for the first time. In this faithfully reproduced edition, Joni's best-loved lyrics and poems spill across the pages in her own elegant script. The lively, full-color drawings depict a superb array of landscapes, still lifes, portraits of friends, self-portraits, innovative abstractions, and more. All the artwork from the original book is included, along with several additional pictures that Joni drew of her friends from the same period. Finally, the refreshed volume features an original introduction written by Joni. Morning Glory on the Vine is a gorgeous and intimate keepsake and an invitation to explore anew the dazzling, visionary world of Joni Mitchell.
"When Elise Beckett's long-distance beau, Stuart, offers her a dream job in organic horticulture research, she's torn between the opportunity of a lifetime and her responsibilities at her family's River Bend vineyard. But before Elise has time to make her decision, Uncle Edmond -- the family's money-loving and temper-toting black sheep -- is found dead on vineyard land. What seems to be an accidental drowning proves to be murder, and every Beckett, even Elise, is a suspect. Sheriff's Deputy Jackson Landry must catch Edmond's killer, and Elise is determined to help him -- whether he wants her to or not. Delving deeper into the mystery, Jackson and Elise become tangled in a long vine of suspects and dark secrets. Now a race is on for them to stop the deadly plot before the murderer claims another victim."--
Ex-NYPD homicide detective Nico Doyle investigates the murder of a local bartender in the Tuscan countryside. On a late October Sunday morning in Gravigna, local maresciallo Perillo is having breakfast with ex-NYPD detective Nico Doyle when he is called back to the station in Greve. Laura Benati, the young manager of Hotel Bella Vista, is worried—her bartender and good friend eighty-year-old Cesare Costanzi has been missing for three days. The next morning, Jimmy, co-owner of Bar All’Angolo, Gravigna’s local café, where Nico is a frequent patron, runs out of gas on his way back from Florence. When Nico meets him to help, Nico’s dog, OneWag, reacts to the smell coming from Jimmy’s trunk. Inside Nico finds a body wrapped in plastic: Cesare Costanzi, stabbed several times in the chest. Why would anyone kill Cesare, and how did he end up in Jimmy’s car? That’s for Nico to find out, as Perillo once again turns to Nico for help with the investigation.
Lucie Montgomery is the only member of her family opposed to the sale of the family's vineyard, and therefore the next possible victim of a greedy murderer.