A young man from rural Korea is conscripted to fight the Communists in Vietnam. He just wants to go home alive, but the idea of killing enemy soldiers to save himself triggers deep questions about life and faith. He sees soldiers around him die from accidents, from friendly fire, from drinking and from carelessness. It seems like death is around every corner, and yet he believes that God is with him. God saves him from falling out of a helicopter, from being shot at point blank range by the enemy and from multiple potentially fatal mishaps, but why? There must be a reason. There must be something he can do to repay God for protecting his life. Even amidst the suffering and cruelty, there must be a way to turn this war into a battle for love and peace.
THIS IS BOOK TWO IN SERIES. PLEASE READ THIS IS WAR, BABY FIRST. My War was over and I had lost. My captor reminded me I was nothing more than his pawn. His strategy never changed…it was always me. But what he didn’t know was that LOVE always wins. In my War, I’d found not only peace but LOVE as well. I’d been through a battlefield with my War and LOVE was what brought us to the other side. Our LOVE was beautiful and pure. Undying. My captor thinks he has won this war. That I will LOVE him. What he doesn’t know is this time, I’m the one with a strategy. I’m always thinking several moves ahead of him, my War taught me that. I will outsmart him and find peace again. This is a war I will win. My LOVE will conquer all. Warning: This is Love, Baby is a dark romance. Strong sexual themes and violence which could trigger emotional distress are found in this story. Terrible, terrible things happen to our poor heroine, so you’ve been properly warned. This story is NOT for everyone.
On October 1941, in a small village outside Moscow, Serafima bids farewell to Vitya, a Soviet officer going to the front. With only moments left together, she places a cross around her beloved’s neck and reluctantly releases him into a cruel world where nothing is certain, especially whether she will ever see him again. Days later, Germans invade her village and take over her tiny house. Serafima and her mother must comply with orders, endure abuse, and stay put, or their village will be annihilated. As World War II intertwines Serafima’s and Vitya’s life with that of a young German violinist and a Russian intellectual, their destinies are irrevocably altered. Can they rise to the challenge of agonizing moral choices and learn to forgive and love again? Praise “The Cruel Romance is a tale of love, violence, and acceptance as Serafima is forced to live with what the Germans left behind. This compelling story makes for a thrilling read in a setting and time that comes to life, pulling the reader into the vividly drawn, rarely seen world” (Elisabeth Amaral, author of When Any Kind of Love Will Do and Czar Nicholas, The Toad, and Duck Soup).
The First World War and subsequent peace settlement shaped the course of the twentieth century, and the profound significance of these events were not lost on Harold Temperley, whose diaries are presented here. An established scholar, and later one of Britain’s foremost modern and diplomatic historians, Temperley enlisted in the army at the outbreak of the war in August 1914. Invalided home from the Dardanelles campaign in 1915, he spent the remainder of the war and its aftermath as a general staff officer in military intelligence. Here he played a significant role in preparing British strategy for the eventual peace conference and in finalising several post-war boundaries in Eastern Europe. Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, Temperley was to co-edit the British diplomatic documents on the origins of the war; and the vicissitudes of modern Great Power politics were to be his principal preoccupation. Beginning in June 1916, the diary presents a more or less daily record of Temperley’s activities and observations throughout the war and subsequent peace negotiations. As a professional historian he appreciated the significance of eyewitness accounts, and if Temperley was not at the very heart of Allied decision-making during those years, he certainly had a ringside seat. Trained to observe accurately, he recorded the concerns and confusions of wartime, conscious always of the historical significance of what he observed. As a result there are few sources that match Temperley’s diary, which presents a fascinating and unique perspective upon the politics and diplomacy of the First World War and its aftermath.
Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror examines the ways that Christian theology has shaped centuries of conflict from the Jewish-Roman War of late antiquity through the First Crusade, the French Revolution, and up to the Iraq War. By isolating one factor among the many forces that converge in war—the essential tenets of Christian theology—Philippe Buc locates continuities in major episodes of violence perpetrated over the course of two millennia. Even in secularized or explicitly non-Christian societies, such as the Soviet Union of the Stalinist purges, social and political projects are tied to religious violence, and religious conceptual structures have influenced the ways violence is imagined, inhibited, perceived, and perpetrated. The patterns that emerge from this sweeping history upend commonplace assumptions about historical violence, while contextualizing and explaining some of its peculiarities. Buc addresses the culturally sanctioned logic that might lead a sane person to kill or die on principle, traces the circuitous reasoning that permits contradictory political actions, such as coercing freedom or pardoning war atrocities, and locates religious faith at the backbone of nationalist conflict. He reflects on the contemporary American ideology of war—one that wages violence in the name of abstract notions such as liberty and world peace and that he reveals to be deeply rooted in biblical notions. A work of extraordinary breadth, Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror connects the ancient past to the troubled present, showing how religious ideals of sacrifice and purification made violence meaningful throughout history.
In pursuit of redemption, enlightenment, and self-actualization, a soul will eventually discover the Law of One. That is, the greater connectedness of all living beings in God. Written from the Lord in Christ, You Can Call Him Dad addresses the misconceptions of many in need today. Where do we come from? How do we get to heaven? Do we have a perfect match? When will the world end? Told in His words are discourse on the life and times of Jesus and Mary Christ, the mystery of the twin flames, the higher self and the oversoul, the creation story, Noah's ark and the legend of Atlantis, the Book of Revelation, and Ezekiel's wheels. This book can be read both as an interpretation of scripture, and, as a prescription for healing now and in times to come.
