Number-cruncher-turned-missionary Jay Jarvis and his poetry-enthused girlfriend, Allie Kyle, are in for the trip of a lifetime. Joined by their friends, sports enthusiast Steve Cole and lime-lover Darcy Yeager, they head into the Outback of Australia, hoping for adventure. As the girls catch up on their girl talk and plan their next sight-seeing activity, Jay and Steve do a little planning of their own. With marriage proposals on their minds and little black jewelry boxes in their pockets, the guys chart out the perfect opportunity to pop the question. But will roo-chasing and busted Land Cruisers spoil their plans for perfect proposals? Ray Blackston's side-splitting humor, quirky characters, original poetry, song, and electrifying dialogue are back in this exciting sequel to Flabbergasted and A Delirious Summer.

Now in paper! Follow Jay as he goes to church to meet girls--and finds an unlikely assortment of believers who turn his perceptions of God upside down.

A Wholesome Christian Romance from Grace Livingston Hill “But the day will come when you will have to answer for it! You know I didn't come here alone to-day——!" Both men looked startled and glanced uneasily into the shadows, as if there might be someone lurking there. "God came with me and He knows! He'll make you remember some day!” ― Grace Livingston Hill, The Enchanted Barn Faith and love conquer despair in The Enchanted Barn by Grace Livingston Hill. When a young woman finds an unlikely place for her family to live after their crumbling apartment is condemned, she finds more than she could have ever imagined with their new landlord. Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes

To Neil Rucker, seven months, one week, and a day is too long to wait in between dates. But life as a Spanish language teacher to missionaries in Ecuador affords little opportunity for romance. When his worst student, Jay Jarvis, suggests a respite in Greenville, South Carolina, so begins Neil's delirious summer. Neil sees his chance to meet a sweet succession of southern women, but little does he know that the girls of Greenville are now more elusive than a snowflake in the Ecuadorian jungle. As they church-hop in search of the perfect man, Neil tries to find the perfect girl among the Neapolitan choices: a demanding redhead, a joy-riding blonde, and a very tardy but intriguing girl with raven hair and a pierced eyebrow. Who knew relational gumbo would look like this?

A guide to series fiction lists popular series, identifies novels by character, and offers guidance on the order in which to read unnumbered series.

An enlightening narrative exploring an oft-overlooked aspect of the sixteenth president's life, An American Marriage reveals the tragic story of Abraham Lincoln’s marriage to Mary Todd. Abraham Lincoln was apparently one of those men who regarded “connubial bliss” as an untenable fantasy. During the Civil War, he pardoned a Union soldier who had deserted the army to return home to wed his sweetheart. As the president signed a document sparing the soldier's life, Lincoln said: “I want to punish the young man—probably in less than a year he will wish I had withheld the pardon.” Based on thirty years of research, An American Marriage describes and analyzes why Lincoln had good reason to regret his marriage to Mary Todd. This revealing narrative shows that, as First Lady, Mary Lincoln accepted bribes and kickbacks, sold permits and pardons, engaged in extortion, and peddled influence. The reader comes to learn that Lincoln wed Mary Todd because, in all likelihood, she seduced him and then insisted that he protect her honor. Perhaps surprisingly, the 5’2” Mrs. Lincoln often physically abused her 6’4” husband, as well as her children and servants; she humiliated her husband in public; she caused him, as president, to fear that she would disgrace him publicly. Unlike her husband, she was not profoundly opposed to slavery and hardly qualifies as the “ardent abolitionist” that some historians have portrayed. While she providid a useful stimulus to his ambition, she often “crushed his spirit,” as his law partner put it. In the end, Lincoln may not have had as successful a presidency as he did—where he showed a preternatural ability to deal with difficult people—if he had not had so much practice at home.

Photography possesses a powerful ability to bear witness, aid remembrance, shape, and even alter recollection. In Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-Related Works of Art, the general editor, Diane Neumaier, and twenty-three contributors offer a rigorous examination of the medium's role in late Soviet unofficial art. Focusing on the period between the mid-1950s and the late 1980s, they explore artists' unusually inventive and resourceful uses of photography within a highly developed Soviet dissident culture. During this time, lack of high-quality photographic materials, complimented by tremendous creative impulses, prompted artists to explore experimental photo-processes such as camera and darkroom manipulations, photomontage, and hand-coloring. Photography also took on a provocative array of forms including photo installation, artist-made samizdat (self-published) books, photo-realist painting, and many other surprising applications of the flexible medium. Beyond Memory shows how innovative conceptual moves and approaches to form and content-echoes of Soviet society's coded communication and a Russian sense of absurdity-were common in the Soviet cultural underground. Collectively, the works in this anthology demonstrate how late-Soviet artists employed irony and invention to make positive use of difficult circumstances. In the process, the volume illuminates the multiple characters of photography itself and highlights the leading role that the medium has come to play in the international art world today. Beyond Memory stands on its own as a rigorous examination of photography's place in late Soviet unofficial art, while also serving as a supplement to the traveling exhibition of the same title.