A vivid account of ritual, power, and social inequality in rural India.

A vivid account of ritual, power, and social inequality in rural India.

A time of reckoning has begun. For ten years the Free Ports held their own against the despotic empire of Mann - but the empire is now poised to destroy them. The crucial fortress city of Bar-Khos is under attack and its freedom depends on a few unsteady hands. Betrayal could come from any side, at any moment. While chaos reigns, Nico will search for his captive mother and attempt to defend his people. And Shard the Dreamer will hunt for legendary charts, which could yet save the city. However, a Red Guard officer gone rogue could bring about the end, and a visitor from another world has a hidden agenda. With the war entering its darkest hours, will any of them survive? Fierce Gods is the fourth and final novel in Col Buchanan's Heart of the World series.

Abby Johnson thought she knew what mercy was when she ushered desperate women toward abortion as the director of a Planned Parenthood facility. She was wrong. It wasn't until she understood the blood on her hands that she personally experienced the power of God's fierce yet tender mercy to transform her life. But she never imagined what could happen once she allowed that very mercy to infiltrate her life and spill out into a hurting world. In Fierce Mercy, Abby calls you to experience a transformation of your own. Against the backdrop of her first decade involved in the pro-life movement, Abby helps you discover God's unrestrained mercy at work in your own life and take steps toward becoming a channel of that life-changing mercy in the world around you. She shows you how to model God's mercy, freely offer mercy to those who seem undeserving, respond with mercy when others err or offend, and bear witness to God's unrestrained compassion so that others may know him. This is Abby's challenge to you: dare to do what is hard, what is right, and what is good. And do all of it in love.

In her breakthrough generational memoir, Boomer expert Carol Orsborn relates the ups and downs of a tumultuous year spent facing, busting, and ultimately triumphing over the stereotypes of growing old. Along the way, she nurtures a love-starved friend through a doomed affair with a younger man, wrestles with the meaning of an exploding fish, and regains her passion for life at the side of her squirrel-crazed dog, Lucky. The message is as deep as it is engaging. In Carol’s own words, “Plummet into aging, stare mortality in the eye, surrender everything and what else is there left to fear? The way is perilous, danger on all sides. But we can be part of a generation no longer afraid of age. We are becoming, instead, a generation fierce with age.”

The &“Strong Black Woman&” has been a part of mainstream culture for centuries, as a myth, a goddess, a positive role model, a stereotype, and as a burden. In Fierce Angels, Sheri Parks explores the concept of the Strong Black Woman, its influence on people of all races, and the ways in which black women respond to and are affected by this image. Originating in the ancient Sacred Dark Feminine as a nurturing and fierce goddess, the Strong Black Woman can be found in myths from every continent. Slaves and slave owners alike brought the legend to America, where the spiritual icon evolved into the secular Strong Black Woman, with examples ranging from the slave Mammy to the poet Maya Angelou. She continues to appear in popular culture in television and movies, such as Law and Order and The Help, and as an inspirational symbol associated with the dispossessed in political movements, in particular from Africa. The book presents the stories of historical and living black women who embody the role and puts the icon in its historical and evolutionary context, presenting a balanced account of its negative and positive impact on black culture. This new paperback edition has been revised from the hardcover edition to include two new chapters that expand on the transformative Dark Feminine in alchemy and Western literature and a chapter on the political uses and further potential of the Sacred Dark Feminine in social justice movements in the United States and abroad.

Haraldur the northman once joined Jason on his fabled quest for the Golden Fleece, but now he wants nothing more to do with gods and adventure. Returning to his homeland for the first time in many years, he hopes only to settle down on a farm of his own—until he comes across an impenetrable wall of eldritch fire and a lovesick youth determined to breach the wall at any cost. Behind the towering flames, he is told, lies a beautiful Valkyrie trapped in an enchanted sleep, as well as, perhaps, a golden treasure beyond mortal reckoning. It is the gold that tempts Hal to agree, against his better judgment, to assist the youth in his quest. But to find a way past the fiery wall, they must first brave gnomes, ghosts, and the wrath of the gods themselves. For a mighty battle is brewing, and Hal soon finds himself caught up in a celestial conflict between Thor the Thunderer, Loki the Trickster, and most powerful of all, Wodan, the merciless Lord of Battles!