Marc, in search of a dream, leaves London and sets out for the island where his grandfather was born and where his father's plane was shot down in flames. It is an island once said to be near the edge of heaven, but now ravaged and despoiled by war. There by a glittering lake he sees the subversive Uva, an eco-warrior releasing emerald doves. Finding her launches him into a world of passion and difficult choices. But their affair is cut short when she disappears. Desperate to find her, Marc embarks on a final terrifying journey that will test all his beliefs as he confronts violence in a quest for love.
Heaven has received a lot of attention in recent years as bestselling books and movies have told the stories of people who claim to have been there. But what does the Bible actually say about heaven? What difference does it make? What happens the moment after we die? What will our relationships be like in heaven? Chip Ingram sets aside the hype and myths and digs into the Scriptures to discover what God actually wants us to know about the hereafter. Most importantly, Ingram shows why our understanding of heaven matters now, in this life. Because what we believe about heaven actually affects us today in ways we may not have imagined.
A theoretical astrophysicist explores the ideas that transformed our knowledge of the universe over the past century. The cosmos, once understood as a stagnant place, filled with the ordinary, is now a universe that is expanding at an accelerating pace, propelled by dark energy and structured by dark matter. Priyamvada Natarajan, our guide to these ideas, is someone at the forefront of the research—an astrophysicist who literally creates maps of invisible matter in the universe. She not only explains for a wide audience the science behind these essential ideas but also provides an understanding of how radical scientific theories gain acceptance. The formation and growth of black holes, dark matter halos, the accelerating expansion of the universe, the echo of the big bang, the discovery of exoplanets, and the possibility of other universes—these are some of the puzzling cosmological topics of the early twenty-first century. Natarajan discusses why the acceptance of new ideas about the universe and our place in it has never been linear and always contested even within the scientific community. And she affirms that, shifting and incomplete as science always must be, it offers the best path we have toward making sense of our wondrous, mysterious universe. “Part history, part science, all illuminating. If you want to understand the greatest ideas that shaped our current cosmic cartography, read this book.”—Adam G. Riess, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2011 “A highly readable, insider’s view of recent discoveries in astronomy with unusual attention to the instruments used and the human drama of the scientists.”—Alan Lightman, author of The Accidental Universe and Einstein's Dream
From The Author Of Reef, Shortlisted For The Booker Prize, Comes A Stunning New Novel And A Masterpiece Of Storytelling. Profoundly Moving And Often Sharply Funny, The Sandglass Unravels The Many Stories Of Transformation, Disappearance And Loss That Haunt The Ducal Family From The Moment Pearl S Husband Purchases His Dream-House-Arcadia-Which Lies At The Centre Of Both The Vatunas Estate And A Bitter Feud. It Follows Pearl S Courageous Flight From Her Homeland And Traces The Consequences Of Her Children S Efforts To Find Their Own Dreamlands In England, America And Modern-Day Sri Lanka. The Sandglass Is An Intricate Novel Of Love And Longing That Transforms The World We Know Into One We Wish To Know More About; A World In Which Hope Has To Survive The Darkest Truths.
THE INSPIRATIONAL CLASSIC FROM THE MASTER STORYTELLER WHOSE BOOKS HAVE TOUCHED THE HEARTS OF OVER 40 MILLION READERS 'Mitch Albom sees the magical in the ordinary' Cecilia Ahern _________ To his mind, Eddie has lived an uninspiring life. Now an old man, his job is to fix rides at a seaside amusement park. On his eighty-third birthday, Eddie's time on earth comes to an end. When a cart falls from the fairground, he rushes to save a little girl's life and tragically dies in the attempt. When Eddie awakens, he learns that the afterlife is not a destination, but a place where your existence is explained to you by five people - some of whom you knew, others who were ostensibly strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, five individuals revisit their connections to Eddie on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his 'meaningless' life and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: 'Why was I here?' __________ WHAT READERS SAY ABOUT THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN 'Breathtakingly beautiful. A story that will stay with you forever' 'A beautiful and flawlessly choreographed book . . . No other book may ever compare' 'One of my favourite books . . . Wonderful, inspirational, and heart-warming! To me, it is a MUST READ! 'The book is beyond words . . . Well written, engaging, poignant' 'This really is a wonderful book. You should read it'
“Kraus gets under your skin with brutal, elegant efficiency. Necessarily horrifying, devastatingly timely.”—Kiersten White, New York Times-bestselling author of The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein and Slayer From New York Times-bestselling author Daniel Kraus comes a breakneck, genre-defying YA thriller perfect for fans of Kiersten White, Neal Shusterman, and M. T. Anderson. Liv Fleming’s father went missing more than two years ago, not long after he claimed to have been abducted by aliens. Liv has long accepted that he’s dead, though that doesn’t mean she has given up their traditions. Every Sunday, she and her lifelong friend Doug Monk trudge through the woods to check the traps Lee left behind, traps he set to catch the aliens he so desperately believed were after him. But Liv is done with childhood fantasies. Done pretending she believes her father’s absurd theories. Done going through the motions for Doug’s sake. However, on the very day she chooses to destroy the traps, she discovers in one of them a creature so inhuman it can only be one thing. In that moment, she’s faced with a painful realization: her dad was telling the truth. And no one believed him. Now, she and Doug have a choice to make. They can turn the alien over to the authorities...or they can take matters into their own hands. On the heels of the worldwide success of The Shape of Water, Daniel Kraus returns with a horrifying and heartbreaking thriller about the lengths people go to find justice and the painful reality of grief. “Bent Heavens is the darkest, angriest alien horror story that I've ever encountered. Hell. Yes.”—Stephanie Perkins, New York Times-bestselling author of There's Someone Inside Your House
Can Jack and Talia save the world And their happily ever after From Lucifer's deadly vengeance? Lucifer's nefarious plan materializes after he breaks the seven seals and unleashes the Seven Hell princes on Earth, triggering the apocalypse. With High House in ruins and the Gates of Hell open, Jack and Talia must fight for their lives and the fate of Heaven and humanity. Forced to wage separate battles, Jack fights to stop the Seven Travelers from unleashing their demonic payloads on Earth while Talia takes to the skies in a fierce air battle to stop Lucifer’s Dark army from taking control of Heaven. When Lucifer sets his sights on destroying the Maker’s Thrones and killing the Maker, Jack and Talia must defend the uppermost reaches of Heaven to prevent the destruction of all existence. As the clock ticks down to the end of the world, Jack and Talia must fight for their happily ever after and battle Lucifer to save everything from the King of Hell’s deadly vengeance. The Enochian Apocalypse Show is the eleventh book in A Game of Lost Souls. Dark, irreverent, and always romantic, this action-packed 13-book fantasy romance stars two lovers entangled in a mythic battle between good and evil that begins with a simple wager with the King of Hell.
A sweeping tour of the infrared universe as seen through the eyes of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope Astronomers have been studying the heavens for thousands of years, but until recently much of the cosmos has been invisible to the human eye. Launched in 2003, the Spitzer Space Telescope has brought the infrared universe into focus as never before. Michael Werner and Peter Eisenhardt are among the scientists who worked for decades to bring this historic mission to life. Here is their inside story of how Spitzer continues to carry out cutting-edge infrared astronomy to help answer fundamental questions that have intrigued humankind since time immemorial: Where did we come from? How did the universe evolve? Are we alone? In this panoramic book, Werner and Eisenhardt take readers on a breathtaking guided tour of the cosmos in the infrared, beginning in our solar system and venturing ever outward toward the distant origins of the expanding universe. They explain how astronomers use the infrared to observe celestial bodies that are too cold or too far away for their light to be seen by the eye, to conduct deep surveys of galaxies as they appeared at the dawn of time, and to peer through dense cosmic clouds that obscure major events in the life cycles of planets, stars, and galaxies. Featuring many of Spitzer’s spectacular images, More Things in the Heavens provides a thrilling look at how infrared astronomy is aiding the search for exoplanets and extraterrestrial life, and transforming our understanding of the history and evolution of our universe.
A “brilliant and fascinating” (Eben Alexander, MD, author of Proof of Heaven) exploration—rich with powerful personal stories and convincing research—of the many ways the living can and do accompany the dying on their journey into the afterlife. In 2000, end-of-life therapist William Peters was volunteering at the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco when he had an extraordinary experience as he was reading aloud to a patient: he suddenly felt himself floating midair, completely out of his body. The patient, who was also aloft, looked at him and smiled. The next moment, Peters felt himself return to his body…but his patient never regained consciousness and died. Perplexed and stunned by what had happened, Peters began searching for other people who’d shared similar experiences. He would spend the next twenty years gathering and meticulously categorizing their stories to identify key patterns and features of what is now known as the “shared crossing” experience. The similarities, which cut across continents and cultures and include awe-inspiring visual and sensory effects, and powerful emotional aftershocks. The book is filled with “moving and tender” (Jack Kornfield, PhD, author of A Path with Heart) tales of spouses seeing their loved ones reach the other side after decades together and bereaved parents who share their children’s entry into the afterlife. Applying rigorous research, Peters digs into the effects of these shared crossing experiences impart—liberation at the sight of a loved one finding joy, a sense of reconciliation if the relationship was fraught—and explores questions like: What can explain these shared death experiences? How can we increase our likelihood of having one? What do these experiences tell us about what lies beyond? And, most importantly, how can they help take away the string of death and better prepare us for our own final moments? How can we have both a better life and a better death?
A futuristic reimaging of the classic Greek myth, as a boy ventures through deep space and challenges the awesome power of black holes. The beauty of the book lies in the images, provided by NASA and the Hubble Space telescope, and printed on board rather than paper.