This book integrates examples from folklore, songs, and news articles with strong attention to empirical research to create an accessible and engaging work intended to provoke the reader to think about how to address the issue of child abuse and neglect in America.

Paralyzed by drink and despair since the accidental death of his young daughter, Shelby, Detective Kyle Sommers nonetheless must lead a task force to catch a brutal serial killer. Nicknamed the Cradle Robber, this murderer has methodically snuffed out the lives of children all along the California coast. Now he's come to Portland. While investigating, Sommers learns that a strange man has been saving local children from various dangers-then mysteriously disappearing. With the help of Sherrie Nolan, a brilliant and embittered scientist, Sommers learns that the man is a time traveler who, grieving for his own murdered child, has vowed to use his brilliant mind to create a way for a future generation of children to live. And Sommers hungrily hopes to save children who have died in the past as well. Particularly Shelby. Laughed off the task force as word spreads of his theory, Sommers investigates on his own. Desperate to undo his tragic history and rebuild his career, Sommers determines that the way to stop the Cradle Robber is to get to the time traveler. But the Cradle Robber has hatched a diabolical scheme. Intent on continuing his carnage, the baby-killer has laid a trap for both Sommers and the time traveler . . . one sure to destroy every adult and child in the city. "David (Ship of the Damned) has contributed a fine novel to that popular genre, the well-told tale. One can only hope that the survivors will make a return appearance. " - Publishers Weekly At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In The Proper Study of Religion, Sam Gill charts an innovative course of development for the academic study of religion by engaging the legacy of Jonathan Z. Smith, Gill's teacher and mentor for fifty years. Building on Smith's foundational legacy through creative encounters, Gill explores an extensive range of absorbing topics including: comparison as essential to academic technique and to human knowledge itself; play, philosophically understood, as a coredynamic of Smith's entire program; the relationship of academic document-based studies to the sensory-rich real world of religions; and self-moving as providing a biological and philosophical foundation on which to develop and expand upon a proper academic study of religion.

A “superbly plotted” (Los Angeles Times) page-turning classic from the undisputed Queen of Suspense and #1 New York Times bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark. A minor road accident landed county prosecutor Katie DeMaio in Westlake Hospital. That night, from her window, she thought she saw a man load a woman’s body into the trunk of a car...or was it just a sleeping pill induced nightmare? At work the next day, Katie began investigating a suicide that looked more like murder. Initial evidence pointed elsewhere, but medical examiner Richard Carroll saw a trail leading to Dr. Edgar Highley. He suspected that the famous doctor’s work “curing” infertile women was more than controversial—that it was deceitful, depraved, and often deadly. But before Richard could tell Katie his fears, she left the office for the weekend and an appointment for routine surgery...in Dr. Highley’s operating room. “A harrowing tale” (The New York Times Book Review) that’s “indescribably suspenseful” (San Francisco Chronicle), The Cradle Will Fall is a page-turning thriller of the highest order.

Millions of years ago, humans just happened. Accidents of environment and genetics contributed to the emergence of sentient beings like us. Today, however, people no longer "just happen"; they are created by the voluntary acts of other people. This book examines several questions about the ethics of human existence. Is it a good thing, for humans, that humans "happened"? Is it ethical to keep making new humans, now that reproduction is under our control? And given that a person exists (through no fault or choice of his own), is it immoral or irrational for him to refuse to live out his natural lifespan? Sarah Perry answers these questions in the negative--not out of misanthropy, but out of empathy for human suffering and respect for human autonomy. "Every Cradle Is a Grave undertakes a difficult task-to write on discomforting matters from a perspective that is socially unsanctioned. Strange as it may seem to some of us, there are scads of volumes that praise the abuses we endure in our lives. Such works have always been well thumbed, though they are only prayer-books for the purpose of worshiping misery. Sarah Perry is more honest and less perverse on the subject of suffering, treating pain as both a philosophical and a practical problem to which, it is admitted, there is no ultimate solution. Nonetheless, in her view there still remains intelligence and compassion as a means for confronting the insoluble. That is what makes this book as much a necessity as it is a rarity." --Thomas Ligotti, author of The Conspiracy against the Human Race Meaning. Value. Birth. Death. Sanctity. These subjects and others are reexamined through the lens of suicide rights and procreation ethics in Sarah Perry's Every Cradle Is a Grave. If you're at all fond of asking the truly Big Questions, this is the read you've been waiting for. Why are we here, and why do we stay? Prepare to have your assumptions dissected and turned on their heads. It's a bumpy ride, but then, so is this little journey we're on as we spin aimlessly around a sun that's destined to burn out, just as surely as each individual life will one day fall back down into the mud from which all life arises. Asking the hard questions is one thing, but hearing answers that might shake us to the core can be something else again. --Jim Crawford, author of Confessions of an Antinatalist "In this eminently rational, clear and serious book, Sarah Perry is courageous and strong enough to confront the forbidden truths of human life. Every Cradle Is a Grave should be mandatory reading for anyone who plans to have children." -Mikita Brottman, author of Thirteen Girls

An alliance embarks on a dangerous journey to uncover the secrets of the distant past and save their world in this captivating, deeply visionary adventure from #1 New York Times bestselling thriller-master James Rollins. A gifted student foretells an apocalypse. Her reward is a sentence of death. Fleeing into the unknown she is drawn into a team of outcasts: A broken soldier, who once again takes up the weapons he’s forbidden to wield and carves a trail back home. A drunken prince, who steps out from his beloved brother's shadow and claims a purpose of his own. An imprisoned thief, who escapes the crushing dark and discovers a gleaming artifact - one that will ignite a power struggle across the globe. On the run, hunted by enemies old and new, they must learn to trust each other in order to survive in a world evolved in strange, beautiful, and deadly ways, and uncover ancient secrets that hold the key to their salvation. But with each passing moment, doom draws closer. WHO WILL CLAIM THE STARLESS CROWN? The Moonfall Series: The Starless Crown The Cradle of Ice At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.