In the shared setting of fictional Balford, Wyoming, the characters in Darin Cozzens's stories demonstrate both the follies and the virtues of rural Mormons in the late twentieth century. Hewell Penroy is a forty-two-year-old bachelor who, unbeknownst to his mother, falls in love with Benita, the meter reader he has never met. Flynn Darlington plays matchmaker with the youngest of his four unmarried daughters and an itinerant roofer. For all their married life, Rowe Sloan has struggled to supply his wife Vida with enough water for her household, but his crowning effort ends in tragedy. And with high school long past and no taste for college or missionary service, Siler Godwin faces the doom of digging postholes until, as he says, "something better comes up." Yet whatever their quirks and limitations, these characters are, in the end, as thoroughly human as heartache and love.

Ordinary worker, Hamilton Key, rebels against work and the authority, thinking he has achieved a form of independence, when he finds the world has been taken over by alien armies, after returning home from a short vacation. On the brink of a zombie apocolypse, he prepares for the worst. He bypasses and runs through a severe revolution that has broken out in the streets of his fictional city Erotica, which sits on the east coast of America, awaiting devastation. Alien armies bring him through different eras, as he battles the conspiracies that have prevented humanity from moving forward. In this heroic tale, one man cannot only save the world, but everyone he meets believes in him. His triumph is short lived as he faces more opposition and more obstacles to his freedom. Filled with Aliens, armies, killing and death, sex and humor, drugs, revolution, devastation, zombies, sickness, atrocity, mermaids and King Triton, Rastamen, giant breeds of kings and queens, outer space visitors, cannibals, corrupt police and age old guides and manipulative elitests, he must decide what is right or wrong for his constant need and struggle for survival.

Philip Ó Ceallaigh's first collection of stories, Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse, established him as one of the most vital and distinctive new voices in fiction. The Pleasant Light of Day confirms his enormous talent and presses brilliantly into new territory. Whether he is imagining a father and son walking the streets of Cairo or concocting a hilarious parody of a certain wildly popular inspirational writer from Brazil, Philip Ó Ceallaigh is a writer who demands to be read.

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Also on the USA Today, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Globe and Mail, Publishers Weekly, and Indie bestseller lists. One of the most important stories of World War II, already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture: a spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters—a group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now. Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland—some still in their teens—helped transform the Jewish youth groups into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. With courage, guile, and nerves of steel, these “ghetto girls” paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and jars of marmalade, and helped build systems of underground bunkers. They flirted with German soldiers, bribed them with wine, whiskey, and home cooking, used their Aryan looks to seduce them, and shot and killed them. They bombed German train lines and blew up a town’s water supply. They also nursed the sick, taught children, and hid families. Yet the exploits of these courageous resistance fighters have remained virtually unknown. As propulsive and thrilling as Hidden Figures, In the Garden of Beasts, and Band of Brothers, The Light of Days at last tells the true story of these incredible women whose courageous yet little-known feats have been eclipsed by time. Judy Batalion—the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors—takes us back to 1939 and introduces us to Renia Kukielka, a weapons smuggler and messenger who risked death traveling across occupied Poland on foot and by train. Joining Renia are other women who served as couriers, armed fighters, intelligence agents, and saboteurs, all who put their lives in mortal danger to carry out their missions. Batalion follows these women through the savage destruction of the ghettos, arrest and internment in Gestapo prisons and concentration camps, and for a lucky few—like Renia, who orchestrated her own audacious escape from a brutal Nazi jail—into the late 20th century and beyond. Powerful and inspiring, featuring twenty black-and-white photographs, The Light of Days is an unforgettable true tale of war, the fight for freedom, exceptional bravery, female friendship, and survival in the face of staggering odds. NPR's Best Books of 2021 National Jewish Book Award, 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Award, 2021

Young and Strickland analyze the four largest discourses of Jesus in Mark in the context of Greco-Roman rhetoric in an attempt to hear them as a first-century audience would have heard them. The authors demonstrate that, contrary to what some historical critics have suggested, first-century audiences of Mark would have found the discourses of Jesus unified, well-integrated, and persuasive. They also show how these speeches of the Markan Jesus contribute to Mark‘s overall narrative accomplishments.

The author offers clear-cut Christian motivational writing using a mix of scripturally backed texts and contemporary reflection in this useful, easy-to-read volume of inspirational poetry. (Practical Life)

When the disappearance of thirty high school students from a Houston prep school is linked to a Navy SEAL mountain raid in Afghanistan, Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong must go up against an enemy that is capable of destroying the very fabric of American life.