My thirteen-year-old daughter walked into the living room and sat down beside me on the sofa. She was crying. "Momma, I think God has called me to preach. I had a dream and I saw a sea of people with black hair. There were so many people crowded together, and they don't know who Jesus is." I invite you to step into the very private heart of a mother and her daughter. This is Jamie's story - a story of courage and obedience, faith and doubt, heartbreak and disappointment, inner struggles and victories. A young East Texas girl who followed God's call to the other side of the world, Jamie loved the lost and those who have never heard the good news of Jesus Christ. Then why did she have to die? Through it all I have learned His grace is always sufficient and He is faithful to His Word. While in our home the last ten weeks of her life, we walked with her through that valley of the shadow of death. It was the most difficult and, at the same time, the most blessed time, for we saw God transition her from this life into everlasting life with Him. What a precious hope we have in Jesus! Not only that; the Lord has also walked with me through this grief journey, transforming my sorrow into joy.

Marriage must be on your mind. Otherwise, why would you be reading this back cover? Perhaps you’re engaged, or a newlywed, or a marriage pro—regardless—God’s Word contains all the information you need about how to have a godly and successful marriage. Do you know that every single book in the Bible has something to say to us today about marriage? Most of us know the familiar passages like 1 Corinthians 7 and Ephesians 5. But in every book? Yes, instructions for a godly marriage abound from cover to cover. And why does God put such great emphasis on marriage? Because He uses the metaphor of marriage to illustrate His boundless love for the children of Israel in the Old Testament. This intense love moves into the New Testament personified in the heavenly bridegroom’s unconditional love for His bride, the church. From the moment God created the institution of marriage in Genesis 2:24 to the ultimate consummation in Revelation 19:7, we sense His exceedingly abundant love and concern for marriage. Since marriage originated with God and was ordained by Him as a good thing for mankind, it is imperative that we listen to His words more than anyone else’s. “Marriage in Every Book of the Bible” is excellent for personal study or can be used in a classroom or group setting.

Christian Author and Speaker, Karen Norton, has written Marginalysis "" Building Margin into our Busy Lives, as a window into her own practice of establishing healthy boundaries. She defines this creative term by saying, Marginalysis is all about self-care and how to build and maintain healthy God-honoring margin in your life. In fourteen short but power-packed chapters, Karen illustrates how to integrate this principle into key areas impacting the development of body, soul, and spirit so that stress is reduced and the pressure of life's demands do not prevent the blessings of deepening our relationship with God. For those who are struggling with finding consistent devotional time and managing the chaos of life, Karen's book will be a guide and inspiration to establishing margins that result in renewal and refreshing. Marginalysis is God's Word activated in every area of our life and ministry. I highly recommend it as a timely encouragement in stressful times. Dr. Gaylan D. Claunch Superintendent North Texas District Assemblies of God Karen F. Norton is passionate about helping people strengthen their walk with the Lord by knowing, loving, and living out God's Word in everyday life. An ordained minister, she served on a church staff for thirty years. www.karennorton.com

Caleb's Kite is the light-hearted story of a little boy whose Mommy lives in heaven. Oh, that grown-ups could view loss through a child's eyes! (Matthew 18:3).

Christians believe a relationship with the living God is accessible through prayer. As a Christian grows in their faith, their prayer life expands. When we pray, we enter into an attitude of humility. In a visual presentation of twenty-first century Christian culture, Carol Soul presents this humility in her original paintings of people praying as well as in accompanying testimonies. Through the paintings and testimonies, others will learn how each subject’s prayers and spiritual journey have been positively impacted by their relationship with God. After an unthinkable loss, young Debbie shuns bad choices and accepts Jesus as her Savior. When Pierre meets an angel, he tries harder to live for the Lord. Kathy and Manuel must trust in God’s guidance to help them find a new home. Illustrated God Stories is a collection of paintings of people praying and inspiring testimonies that beautifully demonstrate the power of God to change lives for the better.

This book is a blueprint that will show you how to turn your heartaches, disappointments, tragedies, and life struggles into an instrument of healing for other people. Everyone at some point and time in their life will deal with a pickle (heartache) and an anchor (a pickle that you did not deal with) and turn it into a beautiful key (your story)! When you learn the simple steps within this book of how to transform your pickles and anchors into keys, you will be able to help many people that are struggling with the same pickles and anchors you have.

Celebrate “an authentic American genius” (Gore Vidal) in James Purdy’s first complete short story collection. The publication of The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy is a literary event that marks the first time all of James Purdy’s short stories—fifty-six in number, including seven drawn from his unpublished archives—have been collected in a single volume. As prolific as he was unclassifiable, James Purdy was considered one of the greatest—and most underappreciated—writers in America in the latter half of the twentieth century. Championed by writers as diverse as Dame Edith Sitwell, Gore Vidal, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams, Carl Van Vechten, John Cowper Powys, and Dorothy Parker, Purdy’s vast body of work has heretofore been relegated to the avant-garde fringes of the American literary mainstream. His unique form and variety of style made the Ohio-born Purdy impossible to categorize in standard terms, though his unique, mercurial talent garnered him a following of loyal readers and made him—in the words of Susan Sontag—“one of the half dozen or so living American writers worth taking seriously." Purdy’s journey to recognition came with as much outrage and condemnation as it did lavish praise and lasting admiration. Some early assessments even dismissed his work as that of a disturbed mind, while others acclaimed the very same work as healing and transformative. Purdy's fiction was considered so uniquely unsettling that his first book, Don't Call Me by My Right Name, a collection of short stories all reprinted in this edition, had to be printed privately in the United States in 1956, after first being published in England. Best known for his novels Malcolm, Cabot Wright Begins, Jeremy's Version, and Eustace Chisholm and the Works, Purdy captured an America that was at once highly realistic and deeply symbolic, a landscape filled with social outcasts living in crisis and longing for love, characterized by his dark sense of humor and unflinching eye. Love, disillusionment, the collapse of the family, ecstatic longing, sharp inner pain, and shocking eruptions of violence pervade the lives of his characters in stories that anticipate both "David Lynch and Desperate Housewives" (Guardian). In "Color of Darkness," for example, a lonely child attempts to swallow his father's wedding ring; in "Eventide," the anguish of two sisters over the loss of their sons is deeply felt in the summer heat; and in the gothic horror of "Mr. Evening," a young man is hypnotized and imprisoned by a predatory old woman. These stories and many others, both haunting and hilarious, form a canvas of deep desperation and immanent sympathy, as Purdy narrates "the inexorable progress toward disaster in such a way that it's as satisfying and somehow life-affirming as progress toward a happy ending" (Jonathan Franzen). It may have taken over fifty years, but American culture is finally in sync with James Purdy. As John Waters writes in his introduction, Purdy, far from the fringe, has "been dead center in the black little hearts of provocateur-hungry readers like myself right from the beginning."