A young gifted woman who’s faith is tested, when the man she married turns out to be a devil worshiper. After giving birth to her fifth child, she finds out that her gift also fell upon her son.
When I returned home from my latest deployment in the U.S. Army, my life began to fall apart. My nightmares and flashbacks kept getting worse, and I reached the point where I was afraid of sleep. I decided the best days of my life were behind me and decided I was going to take my own life. One night, after heavy drinking, I placed my 1911 pistol in my mouth and said a prayer in my mind. “God, if you're there, save me,” but there was no response.I heard a metallic “click” when I deactivated the safety and began to slowly squeeze the trigger. Then I heard a BANG! I dropped the pistol and I looked around me, but there was no blood. The bang I heard was the Bible on my desk falling and hitting the floor. I fell to my knees and asked God for forgiveness. I surrendered to Jesus Christ and asked him to help me. He answered.
A murder on the unforgiving Icelandic coast unearths a dark past in this thriller by the acclaimed author of Last Rituals. Attorney and single mother Thóra Gudmundsdóttir is on the west coast of Iceland, where a client named Jonas is turning an old farm into a New Age spa. In this ruggedly beautiful region of lore and superstition, Thóra has no patience for local tales of hauntings. But some horrors are all too real—as when a young woman is brutally murdered, and Jonas becomes the chief suspect. As Thóra digs deep into the farm's past, discovering long-buried secrets, her once-solid view of reality begins to waver. Could the farm truly be haunted? And more importantly, does its eerie past have some connection to the murder? When another body is discovered—looking very much like the first—Thóra is forced to put aside her doubts and confront a twisted killer.
The diaries of a remarkable young woman who was determined to live a meaningful and happy life despite her struggle with cystic fibrosis and a rare superbug—from age fifteen to her death at the age of twenty-five—the inspiration for the original streaming documentary Salt in My Soul “An exquisitely nuanced chronicle of a terrified but hopeful young woman whose life was beginning and ending, all at once.”—Los Angeles Times Diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at the age of three, Mallory Smith grew up to be a determined, talented young woman who inspired others even as she privately raged against her illness. Despite the daily challenges of endless medical treatments and a deep understanding that she’d never lead a normal life, Mallory was determined to “Live Happy,” a mantra she followed until her death. Mallory worked hard to make the most out of the limited time she had, graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University, becoming a cystic fibrosis advocate well known in the CF community, and embarking on a career as a professional writer. Along the way, she cultivated countless intimate friendships and ultimately found love. For more than ten years, Mallory recorded her thoughts and observations about struggles and feelings too personal to share during her life, leaving instructions for her mother to publish her work posthumously. She hoped that her writing would offer insight to those living with, or loving someone with, chronic illness. What emerges is a powerful and inspiring portrait of a brave young woman and blossoming writer who did not allow herself to be defined by disease. Her words offer comfort and hope to readers, even as she herself was facing death. Salt in My Soul is a beautifully crafted, intimate, and poignant tribute to a short life well lived—and a call for all of us to embrace our own lives as fully as possible.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear. ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • The Christian Science Monitor • Southern Living Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women’s rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson’s crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear—a struggle that continues even now. While the American story has not always—or even often—been heroic, we have been sustained by a belief in progress even in the gloomiest of times. In this inspiring book, Meacham reassures us, “The good news is that we have come through such darkness before”—as, time and again, Lincoln’s better angels have found a way to prevail. Praise for The Soul of America “Brilliant, fascinating, timely . . . With compelling narratives of past eras of strife and disenchantment, Meacham offers wisdom for our own time.”—Walter Isaacson “Gripping and inspiring, The Soul of America is Jon Meacham’s declaration of his faith in America.”—Newsday “Meacham gives readers a long-term perspective on American history and a reason to believe the soul of America is ultimately one of kindness and caring, not rancor and paranoia.”—USA Today
A tale of two torturersâ??Where I Left My Soul is a powerful exploration of guilt and identity in the savagery of the Algerian War. Captain Andre Degorce is reunited with Lieutenant Horace Andreani, with whom he experienced the horrors of combat and imprisonment in Vietnam. Captives now pass from the Captainâ??s hands into Andreani's: one-time victims have become torturers. Andreani has fully embraced his new status, but Degorce has lost all sense of himself, only finding peace when he is with Tahar, a commander in the National Liberation Army. Taharâ??s cell now acts as a confessional for Andreani, with the jailor opening up to his prisoner.
As nasty as I knew Peter Terry to be, I never expected him to start kidnapping kids. Much less a sweet, funny little boy with nothing to protect him but a few knock-kneed women, two rabbits, and a staple gun… It’s psychology professor Dylan Foster’s favorite day of the academic year–graduation day. A day of pomp, circumstance, and celebration. And after all the mortar boards are thrown, Dylan and some of her best friends will gather around a strawberry cake to celebrate Christine Zocci’s sixth birthday. But the joyful summer afternoon goes south when a little boy is snatched from a neighborhood park, setting off a chain of events that seem to lead exactly nowhere. Police are baffled, but Christine’s eerie connection with the kidnapped child sends Dylan on a chilling investigation of her own. Is the pasty, elusive stranger Peter Terry to blame? Exploding light bulbs, the deadly buzz of a Texas rattlesnake, and the vivid, disturbing dreams of a little girl are just pieces in a long trail of tantalizing clues leading Dylan in her dogged search for the truth.
The Window to My Soul is an empirical experience, essentially aimed to demonstrate how powerful we, as humans, really are and that when we come to terms with our impediments and make decisions to fight, victory finally becomes ours. As I reached the end of my script, I realized that I needed to complete the preface to the book (in the making). Thinking about the past, a past that Ive put behind me, I also realized that I had to bring those experiences into the present in order for me to make sense of what had really happened to me. As I structured and completed my thoughts, I eventually found the courage to put the past back to where it belonged. This book covers my experiences over a period of time, and I felt that I had to make sense of those happenings that took place around me while I was in a state of total confusion. The stroke that I suffered was one of the key issues with which I had to deal; the damage to my brain had been so severe that I could hardly grasp the full severity of what was happening to me or comprehend or come to terms with what was happening to me at the time. But I knew I had to survive in the ever-changing world around me.
Terri Lynns inspirational story shows her fight to be happy in the midst of a living hell. Her two young sons moved away with their father. Devastated, without a will to live, Terri Lynn surrenders her life to God for the strength to carry on. Her story demonstrates that when God steps in, magic and miracles follow. Living on welfare amid shattered dreams, she had to choose happiness or die in sadness. After a few years, she awakened to new possibilities and set a goal. Once her goal was set, divine guidance took over and directed her, much like a navigation system. Before long, she was living a luxurious life with her sons, and her happiness level went over the top. Her gratitude to God for delivering her from her past pain to such happiness and success put her on a spiritual path, a journey within. Her message is simple: The decision to be happy, no matter what, makes everything feel better, and when you feel good, good things happen.