Rupert and his wild and beautiful wife, Jacquie, move to France to renovate a chapel in the Pyrenees. The work is demanding, but with the help of neighbours and friends, as well as their own faith and energy, their dream starts to become a reality. But as the ruined chapel is slowly built up, Jacquie falls apartplunging into her own personal hell and taking their marriage with her. The changes are so subtle at first that neither Rupert nor their friends notice it, but her descent into despair gathers speed and is soon hurtling towards a devastating conclusion. This is an extraordinary story, told with the immediacy of first-hand experience. It is a story about youth and naivety, energy and exhaustion, but most of all it is about the agonies and responsibilities of love.

In 1983, at the age of twenty-one, shy, inexperienced diabetic Rupert Bogarde fell in love with Jacquie, a nurse. They married shortly after moving to southern France and bought a ruined chapel near Perpignan that, after a long struggle, they turned into a holiday business. With the birth of their two sons their dream should have been complete, but Jacquie had been suffering under the strain. Then one evening she disappeared into thin air. For years Rupert searched for her while the French police blew hot and cold in their efforts to find out what had happened to her. Then in 2000, seven years after her disappearance, he finally discovered the truth.

“Lucht’s engaging prose style and keen ethnographic eye provide for a captivating narrative on a form of population movement often in the news but rarely if ever really understood.” --Jeffrey E. Cole, author with Sally Booth of Dirty Work: Immigrants in Domestic Service, Agriculture, and Prostitution in Sicily. “Few ethnographers manage to integrate in-depth multi-sited fieldwork, enthralling narrative and innovative theory as well as Hans Lucht does in this study of existential reciprocity among Ghanaian fishermen forced by dwindling catches to embark on hazardous migrations to Europe in search of the wherewithall of life. In Lucht's capable hands, these stories become an allegory of our times.” --Michael Jackson, author of Life Within Limits: Well-Being in a World of Want. "An original, comprehensive, and skilled study, Darkness before Daybreak provides the reader with a real sense of the quality and meaning of existence in Ghana and in Naples, while providing enough historical and political/economic context to permit a nuanced critical analysis of globalization theory." --Peter Schneider, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Anthropology, Fordham University, and author with Jane Schneider of Reversible Destiny: Mafia, Antimafia, and the Struggle for Palermo.

After Daybreak brings J. A. London's romantic dystopian Darkness Before Dawn series to a thrilling conclusion. Dawn grew up behind a wall, terrified of the vampires outside who controlled the lives of humans and demanded their blood. But when she became a delegate for her city and met Victor, she realized that not all vampires were the same, that maybe one could be trusted. Now Day Walker Sin is infecting his followers with a disease that turns them into mindless killers. Dawn and Victor will have to convince humans and vampires to band together to stop him, because alone they will all die. After Daybreak is perfect for fans of the Morganville Vampires or Vampire Diaries series.

Daybreak is a thorough investigation of how Bush/Cheney altered the way American government works and deteriorated the Constitution and Bill of Rights. It includes clear plans for how we may reclaim democracy, declare our rights, and truly set out for a new America. Shocking and inspirational, Daybreak provides a clear breakdown of all that we have lost, and all that we have to gain.

Journey to Daybreak is a spiritual guide for those who are experiencing a season of darkness on their path to a new day of light. In this wonderful little book, Martha Toney has explored the hidden shadows of everyday life and found not only many pathways to the light but also hidden blessings to be treasured in the darkness. With poignant personal anecdotes and a rich banquet of Christian wisdom from the past, she gives the reader a road map to daybreak and the encouragement to follow it (Dr. John W. Howe, Episcopal bishop of Central Florida, retired). Dr. Toneys journey is an outstanding and insightful guide for those traveling through a dark season on their way to daybreak (Pat Williams, Orlando Magic senior vice president, author of Woodens Forgotten Teams). From the front steps of her childhood home to international operatic stages then onward to more than a decade at hospital bedsides, Dr. Martha Toney shares her remarkable spiritual journey in service to all who, in times of grief or fear, may be questioning the direction of our lives or our very existence. Her compassionate and compelling meditations guide us to draw counsel and courage from the depths of our shadow experiences and rekindle the light of our lifes purpose (Katherine Ciesinski, internationally renowned American mezzo-soprano, professor of voice, Eastman School of Music).

In these critical essays Gregory Stephenson takes the reader on a journey through the literature of the Beat Generation: a journey encompassing that common ethos of Beat literature—the passage from darkness to light, from fragmented being toward wholeness, from Beat to Beatific. He travels through Jack Kerouac’s Duluoz Legend,following Kerouac’s quests for identity, community, and spiritual knowledge. He examines Allen Ginsberg’s use of transcendence in “Howl,” discovers the Gnostic vision in William S. Burroughs’s fiction, and studies the mythic, visionary power of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poetry. Stephenson also provides detailed examinations of the writing of lesser-known Beat authors: John Clellon Holmes, Gregory Corso, Richard Fariña, and Michael McClure. He explores the myth and the mystery of the literary legend of Neal Cassady. The book concludes with a look at the common traits of the Beat writers—their use of primitivism, shamanism, myth and magic, spontaneity, and improvisation, all of which led them to a new idiom of consciousness and to the expansion of the parameters of American literature.