First, I was abducted by little green men, then abandoned on a prison planet, and finally captured by a band of alien slavers... and the day isn't even over! FML. One of my alien captors is different, though. He's a man, yes, but he isn't green, and he's anything but little. Huge comes to mind. Breathtakingly big. I shouldn't trust him. I shouldn't lust for him. And if he delivers on his promise to send me back to Earth, I don't know if I can bear losing him. Alien's Mercy is a stand alone book in the Outlaw Planet Mates series. The books can be read in any order. No cliffhangers, no cheating and a HEA.

A powerful tragedy distilled into a small masterpiece by the Nobel Prize-winning author of Beloved and, almost like a prelude to that story, set two centuries earlier. Jacob is an Anglo-Dutch trader in 1680s United States, when the slave trade is still in its infancy. Reluctantly he takes a small slave girl in part payment from a plantation owner for a bad debt. Feeling rejected by her slave mother, 14-year-old Florens can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, but later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives . . . At the novel's heart, like Beloved, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter – a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.

Is mercy more important than justice? Since antiquity, mercy has been regarded as a virtue. The power of monarchs was legitimated by their acts of clemency, their mercy demonstrating their divine nature. Yet by the end of the eighteenth century, mercy had become “an injustice committed against society . . . a manifest vice.” Mercy was exiled from political life. How did this happen? In this book, Malcolm Bull analyses and challenges the Enlightenment’s rejection of mercy. A society operating on principles of rational self-interest had no place for something so arbitrary and contingent, and having been excluded from Hobbes’s theory of the state and Hume’s theory of justice, mercy disappeared from the lexicon of political theory. But, Bull argues, these idealised conceptions have proved too limiting. Political realism demands recognition of the foundational role of mercy in society. If we are vulnerable to harm from others, we are in need of their mercy. By restoring the primacy of mercy over justice, we may constrain the powerful and release the agency of the powerless. And if arguments for capitalism are arguments against mercy, might the case for mercy challenge the very basis of our thinking about society and the state? An important contribution to contemporary political philosophy from an inventive thinker, On Mercy makes a persuasive case for returning this neglected virtue to the heart of political thought.

How can we be just and merciful? Are justice and mercy in conflict? Or are they aspects of the same truth? Christians in America are presented with two conflicting versions of justice and mercy. One version comes from the dominant secular narrative of America. Justice and mercy are contradictions. Mercy is devalued and discouraged. But within the counter narrative of God revealed through Torah, the prophets, and particularly through the life and parables of Jesus, justice and mercy are aspects of the same truth and way of God. There is no justice without mercy. There is no mercy without justice. In this book, Rev. Brooks Harrington draws on more than 40 years’ experience as a criminal prosecutor, a pastor of an inner-city church in an impoverished neighborhood, and the founder of a legal ministry protecting indigent victims of family violence and child neglect and abuse. Through moving stories of women and children he has encountered, he shows the terrible toll of the dominant narrative’s version of justice and mercy. And he offers Christians hope with new and startling insights into God’s justice and mercy revealed in the parables of Jesus.

Series Summary The new What Every Catholic Should Know series is intended for the average faithful Catholic who wants to know more about Catholic faith and culture. The authors in this series take a panoramic approach to the topic of each book aimed at a non-specialist but enthusiastic readership. Forthcoming titles planned for this series include: the Eucharist, salvation, history, art, and philosophy. Book Summary In Mercy:What Every Catholic Should Know, Fr. Daniel Moloney covers a broad range of topics regarding mercy that are prevalent for our society today. Beginning from an unexpected perspective in the first half of the book, Fr. Moloney approaches mercy from a political point of view, explaining how mercy is in fact truly and intimately interwoven with politics and power. Through this lens, he touches upon pertinent topics such as legal punishments, the death penalty, and self-defense. He also assesses the clergy scandals, laying out why they occurred, what went wrong in how they were dealt with, and how the Church can improve moving forward for the greater glory of God. He eloquently explains how mercy is not synonymous with leniency, but is an act of responding to a privation, a lack of something which ought to be there. Sometimes the road to this may have to be tough love for the good of all involved. Fr. Moloney invites the reader to wrestle with the supposed contradiction of God saying that he is merciful, yet killing and punishing his creation. Moloney ultimately resolves this apparent contradiction by highlighting God's identity as the loving Father, explaining how, similar to good earthly fathers, sometimes the most loving route to take in truly loving your children and bringing them to their ultimate good is through the course of tough love. God is always good and loving, and his justice and mercy go hand-in-hand.

Mercy is an important concept in the Christian moral tradition. It is one of the most prominent divine attributes, and is embodied in Jesus Christ. This volume investigates the concept of mercy from a Protestant point of view with respect to its consequences for an increasingly non-Christian society. Starting from its biblical origins, a group of international authors explicates the intrinsically messianic logic of divine mercy for its potential in current theological ethics, practical ecclesiology, systematic and public theology.

This book explores the biblical and socio-cultural roots of mercy from the perspective of Juan/a, the Filipino every wo/man. Real-life encounters with mercy (or the lack of it) and accompanying reflections/essays attempt to weave a Filipino narrative of the Gospel of Mercy. It draws inspiration from Pope Francis’ pronouncements on poverty, on mercy and compassion; his Philippine visit; and his symbolic act of opening the Holy Door of Mercy in recognition of the Church’s responsibility to be “a living sign of the Father’s love in the world” (as articulated in Misericordiae Vultus). Read between the lines and discover how mercy flows freely at the most unexpected places, in the unlikeliest circumstances, in the company of family, friends, or strangers—the fruit of Divine love and compassion towards all of creation.