'I was arrested on Thursday 9th July 2009. On Wednesday I'd quit my job, killed a man and set his body on fire. I was sentenced to death. I'm not a good man, but I am an honest one. This is my story.' Rob Langdon served in the Australian Army for almost fifteen years, before becoming a security contractor working in Iraq and Afghanistan. In July 2009 Rob was protecting a convoy when he shot and killed an Afghan guard during a heated argument after the guard drew a pistol on him. Rob's claim of self-defence was dismissed by a court in Kabul that refused to hear any of his evidence or call any of his witnesses, and he was sentenced to death in a matter of minutes. Rob's death sentence was later changed to 20 years in jail, to be served in Afghanistan's most notorious prison, Pol-e-Charkhi, described as the world's worst place to be a westerner. Rob was there for seven years, and every one of those two thousand five hundred days was an act of survival in a jail run from the inside by the Taliban and filled with some of Afghanistan's most dangerous extremists and criminals. In 2016 Rob was pardoned and released. The Seventh Circle is his extraordinary account of what it took to stay alive and sane in almost unimaginable circumstances.
Winner of the 2016 Whiting Award One of Publishers Weekly's "Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2016" One of Lit Hub's "10 must-read poetry collections for April" “Reading Vuong is like watching a fish move: he manages the varied currents of English with muscled intuition. His poems are by turns graceful and wonderstruck. His lines are both long and short, his pose narrative and lyric, his diction formal and insouciant. From the outside, Vuong has fashioned a poetry of inclusion.”—The New Yorker "Night Sky with Exit Wounds establishes Vuong as a fierce new talent to be reckoned with...This book is a masterpiece that captures, with elegance, the raw sorrows and joys of human existence."—Buzzfeed's "Most Exciting New Books of 2016" "This original, sprightly wordsmith of tumbling pulsing phrases pushes poetry to a new level...A stunning introduction to a young poet who writes with both assurance and vulnerability. Visceral, tender and lyrical, fleet and agile, these poems unflinchingly face the legacies of violence and cultural displacement but they also assume a position of wonder before the world.”—2016 Whiting Award citation "Night Sky with Exit Wounds is the kind of book that soon becomes worn with love. You will want to crease every page to come back to it, to underline every other line because each word resonates with power."—LitHub "Vuong’s powerful voice explores passion, violence, history, identity—all with a tremendous humanity."—Slate “In his impressive debut collection, Vuong, a 2014 Ruth Lilly fellow, writes beauty into—and culls from—individual, familial, and historical traumas. Vuong exists as both observer and observed throughout the book as he explores deeply personal themes such as poverty, depression, queer sexuality, domestic abuse, and the various forms of violence inflicted on his family during the Vietnam War. Poems float and strike in equal measure as the poet strives to transform pain into clarity. Managing this balance becomes the crux of the collection, as when he writes, ‘Your father is only your father/ until one of you forgets. Like how the spine/ won’t remember its wings/ no matter how many times our knees/ kiss the pavement.’”—Publishers Weekly "What a treasure [Ocean Vuong] is to us. What a perfume he's crushed and rendered of his heart and soul. What a gift this book is."—Li-Young Lee Torso of Air Suppose you do change your life. & the body is more than a portion of night—sealed with bruises. Suppose you woke & found your shadow replaced by a black wolf. The boy, beautiful & gone. So you take the knife to the wall instead. You carve & carve until a coin of light appears & you get to look in, at last, on happiness. The eye staring back from the other side— waiting. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, Ocean Vuong attended Brooklyn College. He is the author of two chapbooks as well as a full-length collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds. A 2014 Ruth Lilly Fellow and winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, Ocean Vuong lives in New York City, New York.
From the author of the Madison Kate series comes the dark and delicious interconnected Hades series, another biting "why choose" romance in Shadow Grove. "I wouldn't fall. Because the second I did, someone would be there to slit my throat and toss me to the sharks. After all, it's what I would do." Five years ago, I masterminded the infamous massacre of the Tri-state Timberwolves. The streets outside the Wolves HQ ran red with the blood of the old guard, and not one of the members loyal to my father was spared mercy. Not a single one. I let the media twist and distort the story. My new recruits eagerly proved themselves by spreading false news, then covering our tracks. To the general public, the Tri-State Timberwolves were extinct. But that couldn't have been further from the truth. We changed, we grew, we evolved, and we came out stronger than ever. Now, I live, eat, sleep and breathe Timberwolves. I'll do anything to keep my empire safe and thriving. To keep the people depending on me safe. So, what do I do when it's my own weakness that places us all in danger? When I let sex cloud my judgment, and my people pay the price? Simple. Kill the distractions. I'm called Hades for a reason, after all.
A simple change of venues for one of Matt Murdock's cases becomes more complicated when THE PUNISHER attempts to send the defendant away...permanently! If DAREDEVIL and BLINDSPOT want to get this mobster his day in court, it will take every ounce of wit and wile they have. All Frank needs to get what he wants is a bullet. The race is on! COLLECTING: DAREDEVIL/PUNISHER: SEVENTH CIRCLE 1-4.
Reprint. Originally published in 1985 by the Free Press and Collier Macmillan. Zerubavel (sociology, Rutgers U.) discusses the rhythm that the week--an arbitrary invention--imposes on our activities. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Welcome to Wise Acres, where the sassy kids go. In the seventh installment of Heck, Dale E. Basye sends Milton and Marlo Fauster to Wise Acres, the circle reserved for kids who sass back. In Wise Acres, the cleverest, snarkiest, put-downiest kids debate and trade insults in Spite Club. But the new vice principal, Lewis Carroll, has some curious plans to raise the profile—and the stakes—of the competition. Now a full-fledged War of the Words will be broadcast through the afterlife. The winner will get the heck out of Heck and go straight to heaven. And the loser? Well, the loser goes down . . . all the way down to the real h-e-double-hockey-sticks. And Milton and Marlo are on opposite teams. Can they find a way out of Lewis Carroll’s mad-as-a-hatter scheme? Or is one Fauster about to pay a permanent visit to the Big Guy Downstairs?
“Bryan Davis writes with the scope of Tolkien, the focus of Lewis, the grandeur of Verne, and most of all the heart of Christ.” —Jeremiah F., reader What will Billy do when he’s confronted with an impossible choice? Billy and Bonnie discover seven evil circles in a multidimensional world. Faced with danger at every turn, the two friends must call upon their dragon gifts to defeat the malevolent ruler. When tragedy strikes along the way, Billy has to face the most difficult decision of his life: forsake Bonnie to rescue a group of prisoners or find a way to save her, his best friend in the world. Filled with action, danger, and suspense, Circles of Seven is sure to keep readers on the edge of their seats.
The Seventh Circle is a tale of high adventure, fantasy and destiny. An excerpt: "Mal Tarsis laid the book on the ground before the altar. He then knelt before it and opened it to a book-marked page. The bindings creaked with age as they always did. He remembered long nights poring over this tome just to decipher the ancient dialects within it. He found it strange that he had slaved so many long hours over this book. But he always knew there had to be something in it. Something that would give him the power that was rightfully his. If he succeeded in this ceremony tonight, then nothing could stand in his way. As Mal Tarsis knelt before the altar, he laid the curved blade atop the book so that it balanced over the curving pages. The first part of the ceremony would imbue the blade with the proper powers and nuances. Mal Tarsis read aloud from the book. He could hear nothing but his own voice now. The man's cries and pleas were a distant dream. He saw nothing but the aged, yellow pages and his hands as he followed the lines of text. He must concentrate. With the soul of fire I consecrate you, With the stone of earth I will create you, Take from him his, which is not his, Take from him life, and give him this. Mal Tarsis rose from the ground after reading these words. The knife took on a reddish hue. Everything went according to plan. Yet he had barely begun. Sweat began to bead on his forehead. . . . . . Mal Tarsis edged his way to the head of the altar. The final, most important, cut neared. He laid the blade across the man's throat. With a dark elation, the warlock drew the knife from one side to the other. As he did so, he spoke again. I summon thee, oh timeless ones. The warlock bolted from the center of the circles. To remain within would be suicide. Soon the tortured souls would bridge the gap between the Lands of Death and the mortal world. The outer circle of herbs protected the summoner and any others present from the souls of the damned. As he reached the outer edge of the second circle of herbs, Mal Tarsis quickly glanced at the red candles. The candles had not been very tall to begin with. They were almost three quarters down now. He must finish the spell quickly."
When a traumatized minister is on the brink of despair, how can he find the strength to go on? Who is going to minister to his wounded and broken spirit? Along the path to hope and healing, he learns that true ministry is universally challenging, pastoral care is intense, and no one is immune to human limitations. Can restoration be found in a circle of seven?
