Lod Airport, Israel: Two Concorde jets take off for a U.N. conference that will finally bring peace to the Middle East. Covered by F-14 fighters, accompanied by security men, the planes carry warriors, pacifists, lovers, enemies, dignitaries -- and a bomb planted by a terrorist mastermind. Suddenly they're forced to crash-land at an ancient desert site. Here, with only a handful of weapons, the men and women of the peace mission must make a desperate stand against an army of crack Palestinian commandos -- while the Israeli authorities desperately attempt a rescue mission. In a land of blood and tears, in a windswept place called Babylon, it will be a battle of bullets and courage, and a war to the last death.

It is 1989. Across Central Europe, socalism is crumbling, and robber capitalism is being born. Rivers of Babylon tells this story of a Central Europe, where criminals, intellectuals and secret policemen have infiltrated a new democracy, through the eyes of Racz, sociopathic gangster and idiot of genius. Slovak readers acknowledge Peter Pist'anek as their most flamboyant and fearless writer, stripping the nation of its myths and false self-esteem.

German poet Heinrich Heine was bedridden with a debilitating illness for the last eight years of his life, during which time he reassessed many of his previous views on life. By the Rivers of Babylon examines the changes in his thinking about history, philosophy, and religion during that period and shows how those changes are reflected in his later poetry. Roger Cook offers an analysis of Heine's vehement renunciation of the Hegelian ideas that had shaped his earlier conception of history. Refuting accepted opinions that this shift in thought was a displaced opposition to social developments, Cook contends that these late writings represent Heine's consistent rejection of idealist philosophy and reveal Heine's new understanding of poetry's role as a transmitter of myth. Cook shows how Heine transcended the boundaries of European culture and Judeo-Christian religion by aligning his work with alternative cultures on the margins of society.

The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east. It is forbidden to go to any of the Dead Places except to search for metal and then he who touches the metal must be a priest or the son of a priest. Afterwards, both the man and the metal must be purified. These are the rules and the laws; they are well made. It is forbidden to cross the great river and look upon the place that was the Place of the Gods-this is most strictly forbidden. We do not even say its name though we know its name. It is there that spirits live, and demons-it is there that there are the ashes of the Great Burning. These things are forbidden- they have been forbidden since the beginning of time.

The third novel in the acclaimed Slovak trilogy 'Rivers of Babylon', 'End of Freddy' is a tour de force (translated partly from the Slovak and partly from the Czech) that expands the action from Bratislava to the Czech republic and to an imaginary Khanate in the Russian Arctic. The gangster Rácz now becomes a terrifying international figure, an oil oligarch, and the former car-park attendant Freddy Piggybank, half by chance, rises from being a porn-film king to the hero of an uprising by Slovak settlers in the Arctic. The same grotesque but convincing satirical picture of Bratislava expands into a fantastic, but believable tale of a war of liberation, and of Czech imperial ambitions, in the Arctic. Pišťanek's prodigious and often prophetic invention knows no bounds. Willian Boyd acclaimed the first 'Rivers of Babylon' novel as ÒA tremendous novel: powered by an uncompromising, ferocious energy and exhibiting a brutally dark sense of humour that is both ruthless and exhilarating. An amazing find.Ó This final novel adds new qualities of fantasy, insight and human warmth to Pišťanek's world.

The language of exile, focused with theological and biblical narratives and coupled with depictions of real-life exilic communities, can equip church leaders as agents in the creation of new communities. Robert Hoch reads the larger North American tradition of Christian worship and mission through the prism of visibly marginalized communities. Through this lens, leaders may come to see diversity as an indication of mission vitality, and focus less on assimilating people and more on the future promises of God and the manifold textures of incarnation.

A gritty, sophisticated, supernatural street thriller that explores the nature of forbidden love and its power to transform even the hardest of hearts. Lincoln Duvall is the Third Ward's most notorious criminal, a drug lord and known murderer who has sold his soul to the devil and abandoned his early roots of religious upbringing. But when he falls in love with Gabriella Sinclaire, a street-savvy Christian journalist with the power to reveal his secrets and dismantle his entire organization, good is pitted against evil in a dramatic showdown. Wealthy, powerful, and connected, Lincoln has always been untouchable—until Gabriella invades his heart. Is spiritual redemption possible for Lincoln, or will he pull Gabriella away from her life of virtue down to the darkness of his world?