Freyja, the ancient Norse Goddess of love, fertility, and sorcery is one of the most popular deities of modern Norse religious traditions, and yet there is a dearth of devotional material dedicated to her. This collection of writings hopes to remedy that problem. Here you will find poems, prayers, rituals, songs, and more in praise of the goddess in her various aspects. To some, she is a goddess of love, others speak of her as sorceress and seidr-worker, some see her as the goddess who mourns for her absent husband, others as a mighty warrior, still others as her father's daughter shining upon the sea. She is all of these things, and more. She is the Goddess who wears Brisingamen, the Fire Jewel, the most beautiful necklace in the world - and knows that she is worthy of its gift.
In the backwoods of Mississippi, a land of honeysuckle and grapevine, Jewel and her husband, Leston, are truly blessed; they have five fine children. When Brenda Kay is born in 1943, Jewel gives thanks for a healthy baby, last-born and most welcome. Jewel is the story of how quickly a life can change; how, like lightning, an unforeseen event can set us on a course without reason or compass. In this story of a woman's devotion to the child who is both her burden and God's singular way of smiling on her, Bret Lott has created a mother-daughter relationship of matchless intensity and beauty, and one of the finest, most indomitable heroines in contemporary American fiction.
One of the most respected artists in popular music today, Jewel is much more than a music industry success with her debut album selling more than 10 million copies. Before her gifted songwriting comes an even more individual art: Poetry. Now available in paperback, A Night without Armor highlights the poetry of Jewel taken from her journals which are both intimate and inspiring, to be embraced and enjoyed. Writing poems and keeping journals since childhood, Jewel has been searching for truth and meaning, turning to her words to record, to discover, and to reflect. In A Night Without Armor, her first collection of poetry, Jewel explores the fire of first love, the lessons of betrayal, and the healing of intimacy. She delves into matters of the home, the comfort of family, the beauty of Alaska, and the dislocation of divorce. Frank and honest, serious and suddenly playful, A Night Without Armor is a talented artist's intimate portrait of what makes us uniquely human.
*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti* Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).
Her family secret is stolen by pirates. His business is in jeopardy if he doesn’t find it. An eerie prophecy throws them both into the path of danger. “You will fall in love with the characters right from the beginning. Chloe & Finn were destined for adventure. This book is a must read!” Consumed: Chloe Larson is a historian obsessed with clearing the name of her grandfather, eight greats back. After his heroic exploits during the Prussian Wars his life slid into oblivion and madness, taking with him the location of a queen’s priceless emerald dowry. The discovery of his cryptic journal offers a clue, except it’s been stolen and her only hope of recovery is proving uncooperative. Resolute: Finnegan Kane is a top-notch marine bounty hunter on the hunt for Emerald Fire, a 120-foot Sunseeker yacht stolen by ruthless pirates. It’s the kind of dirty work that keeps his antique ship restoration business afloat. With the fate of NorthStar on the line, he reluctantly teams up with a desperate stranger, one who dangles the GPS coordinates of the Fire’s location as leverage. Destiny: Against all odds and one dangerous battle to the next, Chloe and Finn must fight to decipher a historical legacy, unravel a surprising prophecy, and settle a score against a family gone mad. Emerald Fire is the second stand-alone book in the Jewel Intrigue series, a fast-paced high-adventure romantic tale full of surprising twists, vengeful pirates, royal secrets, and a mystery two centuries in the making. Race into adventure with all three Jewel books today! Jewel Intrigue Series Diamond Legacy Emerald Fire Phantom Pearl
'The Flaming Jewel' is an adventure-romance novel by Robert W. Chambers. The story follows the exploits of a man named Mike Clinch, who is hunting down an international band of thieves led by Jose Quintana.
The deity Inari has been worshipped in Japan since at least the early eighth century and today is a revered presence in such varied venues as Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, factories, theaters, private households, restaurants, beauty shops, and rice fields. Although at first glance and to its many devotees Inari worship may seem to be a unified phenomenon, it is in fact exceedingly multiple, noncodified, and noncentralized. No single regulating institution, dogma, scripture, or myth centers the practice. In this exceptionally insightful study, the author explores the worship of Inari in the context of homogeneity and diversity in Japan. The shape-shifting fox and the wish-fulfilling jewel, the main symbols of Inari, serve as interpretive metaphors to describe the simultaneously shared yet infinitely diverse meanings that cluster around the deity. That such diversity exists without the apparent knowledge of Inari worshippers is explained by the use of several communicative strategies that minimize the exchange of substantive information. Shared generalized meanings (tatemae) are articulated while private meanings and complexities (honne) are left unspoken. The appearance of unity is reinforced by a set of symbols representing fertility, change, and growth in ways that can be interpreted and understood by many individuals of various ages and occupations. The Fox and the Jewel describes the rich complexity of Inari worship in contemporary Japan. It explores questions of institutional and popular power in religion, demonstrates the ways people make religious figures personally meaningful, and documents the kinds of communicative styles that preserve the appearance of homogeneity in the face of astonishing factionalism.
From earthquakes to floods, atom bombs aimed at Amchitka and Black Gold to prostitution Mike, Charley, Jewel and Wolf persevere in Alaska’s wilds Jewel is not destined to be the teacher her mother wished, or to be romantic with Mike. All must find their own paths, not just through Alaska’s wilds, but also summer’s ninety and winter’s sixty below. Little in Alaska is easy, as this book reveals.
