The stories of 23 little-known but remarkable inhabitants of the Spanish, English and Portuguese colonies of the New World. These include women and men of all the races and classes of colonial society.

An indifferent student with few real friends, PJ Barnes accidentally gains possession of his English teacher's personal journal and at the same time becomes involved with some drug dealers, but when his mother is in a car accident that lands her in the hospital, his already complicated life starts to spin out of control.

The Beats and the Academy marks the first sustained effort to train a scholarly eye on the dynamics of the relationship between Beat writers and the academic institutions in which they taught. Rather than assuming the relationship between Beat writers and institutions of higher education was only a hostile one, The Beats and the Academy begins with the premise that influence between the two flows in both directions. Beat writers' suspicion of established institutions was a significant aspect of their postwar countercultural allure. Their anti-establishment aesthetic and countercultural stance led Beat writers to be critical of postwar academic institutions that tended to dismiss them as a passing social phenomenon. Even today, Beat writing still meets resistance in an academy that questions the relevance of their writing and ideas. But this picture, like any generalization, is far too easy. The Beat relationship to the academy is one of negotiation, rather than negation. Many Beats strove for academic recognition, and quite a few received it. And despite hostility to their work both in the postwar era and today, Beat works have made it into syllabi, conference resentations, journal articles, and monographs. The Beats and the Academy deepens our understanding of this relationship by emphasizing how institutional friction between the Beats and institutions of higher education has shaped our understanding of Beat Generation literature and culture—and what this relationship between Beat writers and the academy might suggest about their legacy for future scholars.

On the outside, Josefina Navarro's life seems fortunate enough—she lives with her father and her nursemaid, Regla, who raises her after the death of her mother in a luxurious home in Vedado, one of Cuba's wealthiest districts. She attends society dances and is courted by all of Havana's elite young bachelors. Enchanted by the rituals of her nursemaid, Josefina learns about the profound mysticism inherent in even the most mundane affairs. Though she is pampered, Josefina feels that her life is without passion or excitement. Her father, Sergeant Antonio Navarro, a Spaniard by birth, is a stern and demanding man whose past is a tightly kept secret. When she meets and marries Lorenzo Concepción, a poor, reckless young man, the sergeant tells her, "So, you have chosen him...and you will be hungry and miserable all your life." The couple moves to El Cotorro, a poverty-stricken town that is far removed from the Vedado plazas and carefully tended gardens Josefina knew. Lorenzo begins to leave her for months at a time, "looking for work," but in reality, womanizing and carousing all over the island. Even after the birth of two healthy children, Josefina is not happy. This is not the life she had envisioned. During a political maelstrom, history brings the sergeant to El Cotorro to quell a riot, where he is attacked and presumed dead. But perception is reality on an island in which darkness and light commingle, and magic and truth are one in the same. When Josefina begins receiving letters from her father, she believes that what she holds are heaven's missives, ghost letters. Through the letters, Josefina comes to know her father intimately, as a ghost and guardian, as he reveals the truth about his life. In the act of writing and reading, she has found a love to fill the empty places in her heart. Set in Cuba and Miami, covering nearly fifty years of the island's history, LOVE AND GHOST LETTERS unfolds the lives of the Navarro-Concepción families in the patterns and permutations of memory, and conjures a Cuban setting that evokes mysticism and magic.

This is a true story, a series of events that transpired in my life which I deemed necessary to expose and by so doing alert others to vigilance. Naturally, the subject matter is sensitive both for me and all parties involved. I can never discount the relevance of demons, deny their reality and their harassing ways. If and when I was to do so, I would magnify the role of human agents. Frequently, even mature Christians underestimate the magnitude of the spiritual warfare enlisted in from the time of the new birth. We are in a severe struggle, persistently and subtly driven by powerful, spiritual opposing forces beyond our comprehension. Often we rely on human resources and fail to use the spiritual source available to us through the power of the Holy Spirit. I fell in the fourth generation of my maternal fore-parents lineage to suffer unnecessary heartbreaking consequences because of spiritual ignorance. Since I came to see the light of Jesus Christ, I made up my mind to loose all yokes of bondage over my generation and the ones to come after me should Christ tarry. I now know demonic spirits are to be kept afar and never be trusted. Even though at times through subtlety we may be deceived to think that certain spirits work for the good and well-being of a person, such deception should be seen as a trap, a means of securing the individual into a mesh. Sooner or later, such individual will be caught unaware and conquered. It should never be a surprise how the Devil, the starch enemy of the saints, will use anyone, foe and often those who would be considered ally, to win a person over to cause him to fall. Read on and enjoy this treat to your spiritual health!

An Incredible True Story of Awakening In Caught Between Heaven & Earth, Nancy van Alphen takes us on her unexpected spiritual journey that changed her from agnostic to believer. A humorous peak into her childhood, during which she had but a mere smattering of religion, paints the picture of an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. As a teen she concluded God was unprovable and never looked back—until God decided He wasn't content being a mere possibility. Alone one night, Nancy happened upon a video of a young man given little time to live. Heartfelt compassion morphed into anger as she raised her fists and railed about suffering to a God in whom she didn't really believe. To her utter amazement, God responded. Thus begins her journey in which she traverses a surreal chasm between doubt and belief, caught between Heaven and Earth, as she struggles to understand messages she was given about suffering, reincarnation—including her own—and humanity's true identity. With a sprinkling of light-hearted family anecdotes, Nancy recalls her progressively more profound experiences within the context of earthly reality. Interactions with God, Jesus and angels chip away at her agnosticism, until one day something so amazing happens it obliterates all traces of doubt. Between scenes, Nancy looks at various religious traditions and present day near-death experiences, uncovering information supporting what she was told by Divine source, helping her round out her new picture of reality. Her conclusion presents four habits of LOVE by which to live to foster evolution of one’s soul, as well as the spiritual evolution of humanity. Praise for Caught Between Heaven & Earth: "I am proud of Nancy for her courage in sharing her story with us that we might find light in it! It is valuable that she is open and sharing of her reproachment to God. Nancy went in as an agnostic and exited as a full-on believer. Kudos to Nancy for her persistence in continuing the work, in having courage and resilience, and in doing it in a world too often filled with darkness. What a lesson for the rest of us!" - Dr. Doris Eliana Cohen, PhD Repetition and Dreaming on Both Sides of the Brain "Nancy van Alphen takes you by the hand and ushers you into her mind and then into her heart where you experience her intimate and breathtaking journey from agnosticism to spirituality. Her authentic report begins with angels at her door. That day marked the beginning of her transformation which she describes in honest detail. Hers is a journey similar in its mystical nature to that which I and countless others have experienced in this time of rising awareness. The truths that unfold to Nancy in surprising, even astonishing ways will resonate in the heart of experiencers and non-experiencers alike." - Emily Rodavich Mystical Interludes and Mystical Interludes II