Jacob Boden is a fifty-three-year-old recovering alcoholic, at odds with himself, his family and God. In an effort to overcome his loneliness and isolation, Jacob begins a fearless moral inventory of his past. Along the way, he shares his "love-at-first sight" encounter with Meg Roberts and the bittersweet relationship that ensues and becomes an obsession; recounts misadventures and scrapes with the law as he tries to adapt to family moves, new environments and changing societal values; describes the terror of fighting in the rice paddies of Vietnam; recalls experiences with drugs and alcohol on the back alleys of Saigon and streets of Washington D.C.; and reveals what it was like to rejoin society while suffering from alcoholism. Interwoven with dreams and reappearing alter-egos who help Jacob find his road in life, Four Steps from the Sycamore is the intense struggle of a man searching for meaning. Its open and honest appraisal of this journey provides each of us with permission to look into the darkest sides of our nature and find the demons that block the pathway to the soul.
For fans of BookTok #sadbooks comes an emotional love story that will break your heart and mend it at the same time. Time is a luxury we don't all have... Emery Matterson's life has been broken for a while. First, she lost her twin sister—the other half of her heart—to an incurable autoimmune disease. Then her father left. Now Emery has been diagnosed with the same disease that killed her sister, and her mother is falling apart. Unable to live under the same roof anymore, the only option for Emery is to move in with a father she hasn't seen in ten years and try to start over. Enter Kaiden Monroe, the brooding athlete who has baggage of his own. Kaiden makes Emery feel normal. Hated. Cared for. Loathed. And...loved. Somewhere along the way, Emery finds solace in the guy with the sad eyes. But everything happens in stages. And nothing good ever lasts. From fan-favorite author B. Celeste comes a raw, real, and unforgettable story of love and loss between two young people grappling with the harsh reality of invisible disease.
The human heart is restless and searching. We are longing for happiness and peace. Even though many people speak about "the death of God", the question of meaning and religion doesn't seem to go away.This booklet looks at the adventure of spiritual life and the search for God. It uses stories and examples from history and from the bible to show how religion can be such an important part of everyday life. It explains some of the reasons why people continue to believe in God and why faith can bring us meaning and hope.
A collection of short detective stories for young adults who are interested in applying high school level mathematics and physics to solving mysteries. The main character is Ravi, a 14-year-old math genius who helps the local police solve cases. Each chapter is a detective story with a mathematical puzzle at its core that Ravi is able to solve. The
Aimi longs to have close and lasting friends. Will her adventures at church camp help her build enduring friendships? Eleven-year-old Aimi is great at making friends. But maintaining those friendships? That’s way harder. She hopes she can crack the secret code to finding a new lifelong BFF. When her parents send her to church camp, Aimi prays she will find beautiful new friendships. However, on the very first night, she gets lost in the giant forest where danger lurks behind every tree. Aimi must bravely travel through the woods to find her way back to safety. Along the way, she has some quite unexpected encounters. Will Aimi’s adventures at church camp teach her the true meaning of friendship? The Giant Forest is the exciting first book in the Growing Up Aimi middle grade fiction series. If you like honest characters, fun twists, and Christian themes, then you’ll love father-daughter writing duo Bill & Mia Belew’s wonderful tale. Buy first-in-series, The Giant Forest, and come grow up with Aimi.
Move over C S Lewis and Roald Dahl. There's a new storyteller on the rise and she's only 11 years old. Prepare to rediscover the value of friendship when family lets you down. In this mysterious true-to-life story, Aimi, Roci, Mousi, Sybil and Sycamore are a loose group of friends, aka The Bunch, who attend school together. The Bunch go to a 150-year old church camp, Mount Hermon, founded around the time of the first gold rush in 1849. The camp is located in a giant forest in the Santa Cruz mountains of California, just over the hill from Silicon Valley. In keeping with the principles of its founders, Bart, Prissie and their adopted son, Artie, the camp administrators have created a modern day refuge for children like the Bunch who live at a time when many people around them, including their parents, are chasing new gold nearby. Each member of the Bunch becomes seemingly inexplicably lost in the giant forest. They must each find themselves, then find one another before they can together again find their way home. Along the way they are baffled at why they receive help from new animal friend. Each member of the Bunch battles with and finds resolution to problems they face at home from overbearing or neglectful parents, sibling rivalry, prejudice, betrayal and displaced loyalty. When the five become reunited, bigger battles ensue. To return home they must overcome giants that have plagued them throughout their lost experience. If victorious, the Bunch can return to Mt. Hermon with the help of their new forest friends. A chapter book for for preteens who love to read. --- In this frame narrative, the second book in the Growing Up Aimi Series, Aimi is on a peace corps mission in the deepest jungles of India. Her first priority is the safety of the children she came to serve. Her second is to teach them to love to read. Miss A reads a book to the children about an earlier time of mystery when the high tech world threatened her friends and their new school. The young people determined to implement an old school approach to meet the challenges of the high-tech antics of adults bent on becoming the next unicorn in Silicon Valley. All the while, the school and children where Miss A is serving face the danger of being lost to the forces of time. Remember the impact that teachers and mentors have had on you and your life when parents and children, teachers and students read The Heliuna Academy together. The questions at the end of each chapter are student/teacher, parent/child and reader group tested. Go deeper in the relationships that are important to you. Can Aimi and her friends learn why their beloved teachers have gone missing? Can they stop the tides of change? Only the reader knows. --- I, Aimi, stood motionless as I peered through the just-closed final curtain. A few moments ago, we put a wrap on the last performance of our unique take on Beauty & the Beast. We called it - The Rose and the Thorn. Welcome to Book 3 in the Growing Up Aimi Series. Historical fiction? Mystery? Coming of Age? Or all. The reader knows. I guess the thinking is, or was, that if our school can twist Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to our tastes, then Disney’s Beauty and the Beast would be fair game as well. Or, should I say, Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s Beauty and the Beast. She wrote it, gee, like, almost 200 years ago. I won’t say her name, however, for fear I say it wrong and Violet gets offended. She’s like that and will know how to say it. Not just because she is from France, but can speak French. And she does love to point it out to me when I make a mistake. --- Book 1, The Giant Forest, Aimi was in the 5th grade. Book 2, The Heliuna Academy, Aimi was in the 6th grade. Book 3, The LoGlas Theater, Aimi is now in the 7th grade. No magic, no time-travel, no fantastical beasts. Just good clean story telling as we watch and grow along with Aimi Wilby.
A meditation on the trauma and possibility of searching for connection in a world that enforces bland norms of gender, sexual, and social conformity. When you turn the music off, and suddenly you feel an unbearable sadness, that means turn the music back on, right? When you still feel the sadness, even with the music, that means there's something wrong with this music. Sometimes I feel like sex without context isn't sex at all. And sometimes I feel like sex without context is what sex should always be.--The Freezer Door The Freezer Door records the ebb and flow of desire in daily life. Crossing through loneliness in search of communal pleasure in Seattle, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore exposes the failure and persistence of queer dreams, the hypocritical allure of gay male sexual culture, and the stranglehold of the suburban imagination over city life. Ferocious and tender, The Freezer Door offers a complex meditation on the trauma and possibility of searching for connection in a world that relentlessly enforces bland norms of gender, sexual, and social conformity while claiming to celebrate diversity.
Volume contains: 230 NY 538 (Schasel v. International Rwy. Co.) 229 NY 633 (Schieffelin v. Hylan) 230 NY 534 (Studner v. H. & N. Carburator Co.) 230 NY 539 (Sweeney v. City of N.Y.) 230 NY 532 (Syracuse Malleable Iron Works v. Travelers Ins. Co.)
