The Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James) is one of the most gruelling pilgrimages in the world. There are many starting points throughout Europe for the Way but all roads lead the dedicated pilgrims to the shrine of the apostle St. James in Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. John describes his first tentative steps as a novice pilgrim many years ago, progressing, after many 'Caminos', and not a few blisters, to a guide in his 74th year! He has no doubt that the Camino, although physically demanding is, first and foremost, a spiritual journey which induces in the pilgrims a feeling of other-worldliness... an eerie blurring of time and space accompanied by an 'unexplainable' sense of inner peace. John's lucid descriptions of the Camino conjure up an uncanny sense of the mediaeval. The characters who accompany him on the road bring to mind the motley pilgrims in Chaucer's Middle Ages epic Canterbury Tales.

Walter Glover's fall on Mount Rainier led to the discovery of three aneurysms in three separate body systems, a medical rarity. That persuaded the senior-citizen adventure author to abandon his worldwide quest to climb on all Seven Summit mountains. Repurposed by open-heart surgery, he reimagined his dream. Forget climbing famous mountains--hike long distances. Walter's first challenge, chronicled in this thrilling book, was 500 miles long (well, 492), trekking El Camino, The Way of Saint James, across Spain. Called The Way, it is named for Jesus' apostle, whose remains rest in a cathedral at the end of the journey. The most compelling story Walter tells is his own meeting with St. James at his cathedral, concerning his deceased brother. Glover fits into mobile Camino communities, befriending people from around the world, as he did on mountaineering expeditions he's written about. The final of four books of the retired hospital chaplain's popular Seven Mountain Story series, Camino recounts adventures of 40 days of 14-mile distances hiked from village to village with nights in hostels. He was among an estimated quarter-million pilgrims on Camino in 2014. The book's centerpieces are spirituality and adventure. Walter's altruistic reason to hike--raise money for children's wellness initiatives, almost $150,000. His writing and activism inspired kids to seniors. The ugly irony, the superhealthy adventurer now has a chronic disease--Parkinson's. Exercising now has significant limitations for Walter. His outlook, "My life continues vibrant, hopeful, and full of gratitude and light. I believe my best work is in front of me."

One woman’s dark night leads her on a journey to find her light. Butterfly Awakens depicts the story of the extraordinary transformation of a forty-something Italian American attorney as she moves through unimaginable grief and sadness watching her beloved mother lose her battle to breast cancer. This tumultuous life experience shifts her world, causing her to question her life choices and opening her up to her soul’s calling. Nocero brings readers along on her journey through a dark night of the soul as she deals with the grieving process, a toxic work environment, and intense stress that results in depression, anxiety, and an acquired somatic nervous disorder called tinnitus. Through it all, she never gives up, instead looking for the help she needs to start to heal and find her light. In the end, like the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly, this story is a beautiful love letter that honors Nocero’s mother’s legacy while detailing the awakening of her own. There are many stories about breast cancer and grief, but none are quite like this one. Throughout her tale, Nocero pulls the reader deep into her story through the intensity of her emotions; and in the end, after resigning from her career as a federal prosecutor due to a toxic administration, she searches for the lighthouse she saw in a vision when her mother died. Embarking on a spiritual pilgrimage on El Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain to get to the lighthouse at Cap Finisterre, she sets out to wake up and live again; the butterfly connection and stark honesty of her writing offers readers important lessons learned from moving through grief so that each person can shine their light again.

An encrypted SOS carved on a boulder alarms the Defense Department. The DNA in a two-thousand-year-old tooth identifies the mason as British SAS Captain King, who disappeared from Old Jerusalem, carrying the mystical spear tip that pierced Jesuss side at the Crucifixion. Is it responsible for the time ripples threatening the twenty-first century? Green Beret Robert Lake time-transports to first-century England with an unconventional commando team. He discovers that demons are real and aligned with the Dark Lord Daniel. Lake organizes a fight to the death against a cannibalistic druid army and the possessed Roman Ninth Legion, both commanded by the demonic Daniel, who carries the spear tip in battle. The novel explores several themes. May you kill a wounded enemy? May orders be disobeyed? Are US citizens bound by the constitution before it was enacted? Do parallel realms exist? Is the universe a field of consciousness? What is span of control? What is real? The reader may ponder these ideas or just hang on tightly for a ripping adventure story.

Norberto Cruz is a prolific poet who writes about subjects that touch your heart and your mind. This first book is divided into two sections; in the first the poems are written in English and grouped into multiple themes. In the second, the poems are written in Spanish.

The seventh volume in Knopf’s critically acclaimed Complete Lyrics series, published in Johnny Mercer’s centennial year, contains the texts to more than 1,200 of his lyrics, several hundred of them published here for the first time. Johnny Mercer’s early songs became staples of the big band era and were regularly featured in the musicals of early Hollywood. With his collaborators, who included Richard A. Whiting, Harry Warren, Hoagy Carmichael, Jerome Kern, and Harold Arlen, he wrote the lyrics to some of the most famous standards, among them, “Too Marvelous for Words,” “Jeepers Creepers,” “Skylark,” “I’m Old-Fashioned,” and “That Old Black Magic.” During a career of more than four decades, Mercer was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song an astonishing eighteen times, and won four: for his lyrics to “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe” (music by Warren), “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” (music by Carmichael), and “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses” (music for both by Henry Mancini). You’ve probably fallen in love with more than a few of Mercer’s songs–his words have never gone out of fashion–and with this superb collection, it’s easy to see that his lyrics elevated popular song into art.