Jack Emerson is proud of his old-fashioned scruples. After retirement in the mid-1980s, his life settles into a peaceful routine centered around carving wooden horses. He thinks nothing can send his life spinning off its comfortable courseuntil his teenage grandson challenges Jacks staunch beliefs. Granpop, can I live with you? Jack Emerson lives by the Ten Commandments and doesnt think allowing Scott, a teenager, under his roof is part of Gods job description for a widower who is content in retirement. But his grandson is miserable, and Jack loves him. Scott moves in, shrouded in unanswered questions. Who inflicted the wound on Scotts back? Why wont he talk about his parents? Who is he afraid of in school and why? An unexpected romance with a vibrant woman he meets at the Carousel gives Jack a welcome respite from his worries. Then Scott reveals that hes gay. Jack is stunned and repulsed. The boys parents are mired in their own problems and are no help for Jack. He feels as though his life is spinning like a merry-go-round out of control. The master craftsman who carves exquisite wooden carousel ponies cannot carve away his familys problems. Nikolas, his best friend, counsels faith, trust, and patience. But Jack wants resolution now. Scott must change. Surely God does not want Jack to accept the boys homosexual lifestyle. Does He? Can love and faith overcome deep-seated prejudice?

Jack Ruby changed history with one bold, violent action: killing accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV two days after the November 22, 1963, murder of President John F. Kennedy. But who was Jack Ruby—and how did he come to be in that spot on that day? As we approach the sixtieth anniversaries of the murders of Kennedy and Oswald, Jack Ruby's motives are as maddeningly ambiguous today as they were the day that he pulled the trigger. The fascinating yet frustrating thing about Ruby is that there is evidence to paint him as at least two different people. Much of his life story points to him as bumbling, vain, violent, and neurotic; a product of the grinding poverty of Chicago's Jewish ghetto; a man barely able to make a living or sustain a relationship with anyone besides his dogs. By the same token, evidence exists of Jack Ruby as cagey and competent, perhaps not a mastermind, but a useful pawn of the Mob and of both the police and the FBI; someone capable of running numerous legal, illegal, and semi-legal enterprises, including smuggling arms and vehicles to both sides in the Cuban revolution; someone capable of acting as middleman in bribery schemes to have imprisoned Mob figures set free. Cultural historian Danny Fingeroth's research includes a new, in-depth interview with Rabbi Hillel Silverman, the legendary Dallas clergyman who visited Ruby regularly in prison and who was witness to Ruby's descent into madness. Fingeroth also conducted interviews with Ruby family members and associates. The book's findings will catapult you into a trip through a house of historical mirrors. At its end, perhaps Jack Ruby's assault on history will begin to make sense. And perhaps we will understand how Oswald's assassin led us to the world we live in today.

The accompanying DVD features an exclusive interview with Douglas Gresham, stepson to C. S. Lewis who wrote this first-hand biography of the famous author .

Stripper, B-girls and naive bus station broads knew Jack Ruby best. Two of the girls who worked for him--felt the sting of his insults and the childlike gentleness of his compassion for all living things--have given a fascinating account about the life in Ruby's Carousel Club in Dallas. And in doing it, they have also told a compelling story about Jack Ruby himself. Diana Hunter and Alice Anderson have put together their stories and the stories of the other Jack Ruby Girls with straightforward honesty. They are sometimes funny. Sometimes tearfully pathetic. And sometimes $exy. More effectively than other writers and reporters who thought they understood Ruby and why he shot the man who killed President Kennedy, these girls give their own penetrating insight into Jack Ruby's character. They offer the most believable explanation yet for his undoing--a compulsion for what he thought of as "class." Ruby died (and the Carousel Club with him) while legal minds were studying what should be done about the death sentence placed on him for a deed he thought should have made him a hero. And even the Dallas "establishment" gets another blast from these tart-tongued girls, when one of their characters sums up the multiple tragedies that happened in Dallas in 1963 by saying: "This goddam town will never know how to embrace the dead in the right way, or how to kiss a ghost goodbye."--From jacket flap

When Alex's father can't get home in time for her birthday, even his gift of a beautiful carousel can't make up for it. From the marvelous opening spread that shows Mom brushing Alex's hair to fabulous pictures of Alex and her carousel animals playing in the moonlight, Cummings has created a stunning book that will thrill youngsters with its magic. Full color.