In an eye-opening sequence of personal meditations through the cycle of seasons, Ackerman awakens readers to the world at dawn--drawing on sources as diverse as meteorology, world religion, etymology, art history, poetry, organic farming, and beekeeping.

The end of a global electrical blackout signals the beginning of the Branning family's ultimate test. Murder and affairs of the heart form the backdrop for a family struggling to keep their faith and heed the lessons they have learned.

'a well-crafted plot that builds to a chilling climax' - Publishers Weekly Starred Review A medieval mystery from the author of the Hawkenlye series It is 1087 and William Rufus has just ascended the throne; England lies under a harsh new militaristic regime. Rebellion is in the air and, in the shadows, secrets are muttered that men will kill for. On her sister’s wedding day, Lassair meets an attractive and enigmatic stranger who brings a breath of the glamorous and fascinating outside world to her backwater Fenland village. Young and confident, when Lassair is asked to use her unique talents to help locate a mysterious treasure she accepts with barely a hesitation – despite the grave consequences should the mission be discovered. But after a night-time march across East Anglia, Lassair begins to understand the danger she is in. For this is no ordinary treasure hunt; the object of the perilous search is five hundred years old and has a terrifying power of its own . . .

***NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER (2012)*** From the award-winning, internationally acclaimed writer (“One of the best novelists alive” —Irving Howe): a Jewish woman marries a gentile laborer in turn-of-the-century Austria, with disastrous results. A high school honor student bound for university and a career as a mathematician, Blanca lives with her parents in a small town in Austria in the early years of the twentieth century. At school one day she meets Adolf, who comes from a family of peasant laborers. Tall and sturdy, plainspoken and uncomplicated, Adolf is unlike anyone Blanca has ever met. And Adolf is awestruck by beautiful, brilliant Blanca–even though she is Jewish. When Blanca is asked by school administrators to tutor Adolf, the inevitable happens: they fall in love. And when Adolf asks her to marry him, Blanca abandons her plans to attend university, converts to Christianity, and leaves her family, her friends, and her old life behind. Almost immediately, things begin to go horribly wrong. Told in a series of flashbacks as Blanca and her son flee from their town with the police in hot pursuit, the tragic story of Blanca’s life with Adolf recalls a time and place that are no more but that powerfully reverberate in collective memory.

As the electronic pulses that caused the power outage finally come to an end, thirteen-year-old Beth Branning witnesses two brutal murders. She narrowly escapes the killer and runs away in terror. But he knows who she is, and it’s just a matter of time before he comes after her. Torn between fear and compassion, Beth tries to help the grieving wife of one of the victims. But will her bravery cost Beth her life? As the power begins to be restored, the Brannings face their toughest crisis yet. Will God require more of them this time than they’re prepared to give? New York Times bestselling suspense author Terri Blackstock weaves a masterful what-if novel in which global catastrophe reveals the darkness in human hearts—and lights the way to restoration for a self-centered world. “Blackstock is absolutely masterful at bringing spiritual dilemmas to the surface and allowing readers to wrestle with them alongside her characters.” —RT Book Reviews, 4.5 stars (of Dawn’s Light)

"The latest entry in National Geographic's popular photo line gives readers a front-row seat to the wonders of landscape photography. Choosing from among the world's best portfolios, curators at National Geographic have arranged a symphony of photographs that tell the story of a single day, from dawn's first light to the closing moments of sunset, from daylight to dark. Short legends accompany every photograph to explain the picture, the scene it conveys, or how the photographer captured it, along with quotations from literature that provide historical context. With the widest possible array of perspectives, close-ups, and details, these photos present a lifetime of vision, each page a new experience of time and light"--

Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the Universe's history, from recording the afterglow of the Big Bang to imaging thousands of galaxies, and even to visualising an actual black hole. There's a lot for astronomers to be smug about. But when it comes to understanding how the Universe began and grew up we are literally in the dark ages. In effect, we are missing the first one billion years from the timeline of the Universe. This brief but far-reaching period in the Universe's history, known to astrophysicists as the 'Epoch of Reionisation', represents the start of the cosmos as we experience it today. The time when the very first stars burst into life, when darkness gave way to light. After hundreds of millions of years of dark, uneventful expansion, one by the one these stars suddenly came into being. This was the point at which the chaos of the Big Bang first began to yield to the order of galaxies, black holes and stars, kick-starting the pathway to planets, to comets, to moons, and to life itself. Incorporating the very latest research into this branch of astrophysics, this book sheds light on this time of darkness, telling the story of these first stars, hundreds of times the size of the Sun and a million times brighter, lonely giants that lived fast and died young in powerful explosions that seeded the Universe with the heavy elements that we are made of. Emma Chapman tells us how these stars formed, why they were so unusual, and what they can teach us about the Universe today. She also offers a first-hand look at the immense telescopes about to come on line to peer into the past, searching for the echoes and footprints of these stars, to take this period in the Universe's history from the realm of theoretical physics towards the wonder of observational astronomy.