“[Halima Bashir’s] mesmerizing tale of against-all-odds endurance is a piercing lament—and a clear-eyed call to action.”—Vogue “This memoir helps keep the Darfur tragedy open as a wound not yet healed.”—Elie Wiesel, author of Night Born into the Zaghawa tribe in the Sudanese desert, Halima Bashir received a good education away from her rural surroundings (thanks to her doting, politically astute father) and at twenty-four became her village’s first formal doctor. Yet not even Bashir’s degree could protect her from the encroaching conflict that would consume her homeland. Janjaweed Arab militias savagely assaulted the Zaghawa, often with the backing of the Sudanese military. Then, in early 2004, the Janjaweed attacked Bashir’s village and surrounding areas, raping forty-two schoolgirls and their teachers. Bashir, who treated the traumatized victims, some as young as eight years old, could no longer remain quiet. But breaking her silence ignited a horrifying turn of events. Raw and riveting, Tears of the Desert is the first memoir ever written by a woman caught up in the war in Darfur. It is a survivor’s tale of a conflicted country, a resilient people, and an uncompromising spirit. Praise for Tears of the Desert “This is a brave book. And a valuable one. Halima’s story of the atrocities and immeasurable losses she has endured must be told.”—Mia Farrow, actor and advocate “Vivid, poignant and brutally candid . . . Tears of the Desert is that rarest of literary endeavors, not just a book you read but a book you experience.”—The Washington Post Book World “An extraordinary memoir . . . Halima Bashir’s bravery contrasts with the world’s fecklessness and failures.”—Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times “Searing . . . Tears of the Desert gives voice to the unspeakable.”—USA Today “Powerful, harrowing and brave.”—The Economist “A luminous tale of growing up in rural Darfur . . . a wonderful and moving African memoir.”—The New York Review of Books

Life is often filled with trial, heartache, grief, and struggle. But, perhaps there’s a treasure to be found in those difficult seasons and that treasure is intimacy with God Himself. That should be reason enough to rejoice. So, how do we take God’s command to Pharaoh in Exodus 5 to “Let my people go so they may hold a festival for me in the desert” as a holy invitation to be stripped down and made whole, while still worshipping the one who allows the stripping? Through vulnerable and transparent stories, Laureen Alexa Trujillo shares her personal testimony of hardship and trial and all that God taught her through suffering. She highlights the faithfulness of God and brings attention to the purpose of her struggle: To learn dependency on God by being exposed to the barrenness of the desert, surrender the false comfort of our personal Egypt, and come out stronger and more refined for the Promise Land we were created to inherit. Through Festival in the Desert Laureen walks you through the question that confronted her: how do we learn and truly embrace the fact that God can and will work all things together for good as we seek Him and choose to love Him through uncertainty, fear, and hardship? The stories and interactive prompts will point us to the heart of the Father, reminding us that God is faithful, present, trustworthy, and more than capable of making a way for us when there doesn’t seem to be one, ushering in freedom, comfort, and renewed hope.

At age 31, having left a stifling decade-long marriage, Debi Holmes Binney set off alone into the harsh Utah desert to find direction and spiritual renewal. Armed with only basic supplies and her writing journals, she spent an extended sojourn in a place by turns physically terrifying, psychologically invigorating, and gloriously beautiful. Her moving account will appeal to both physical and spiritual adventurers.

In the fall of 1999, a twenty-two-year-old woman was discovered naked and bleeding on the streets of a small New Mexico town south of Albuquerque. She was chained to a padlocked metal collar. The tale she told authorties--of being beaten, raped, and tortured with electric shock--was unthinkable. Until she led them to 59-year-old David Ray Parker, his 39-year-old financee Cindy Hendy--and the lakeside trailer they called their "toy box". What the FBI uncovered was unprecedented in the annals of serial crime: restraining devices, elaborate implements of torture, books on human anatomy, medical equipment, scalpels, and a gynecologist's examination table. But these horrors were only part of the shocking story that would unfold in a stunning trial... Cries in the Desert is the true story of "The Toy Box Killer"--a shocking story of torture and murder in the New Mexico desert.

Rudi Mackenzie has traveled from the land where the sun sets to the land where it rises and back. He has found his weapon—the Sword crafted for him before he was born. He has made friends from among his enemies and found enemies where he expected friends. He has won the heart and hand of the woman he has loved his entire life. Now Rudi is Artos, the High King of Montival, and his final destiny awaits him. He must face and defeat the forces of the Church Universal and Triumphant. Everything in the present, everything in the future, depends on the outcome of the conflict. And like his father before him, Rudi knows that in winning the war he might well lose his life...

"This is a personal, urgent, and universal book." —Gloria Steinem Situated more than one hundred miles off Italy’s southern coast, the rocky island of Lampedusa has hit world headlines in recent years as the first port of call for hundreds of thousands of African and Middle Eastern refugees fleeing civil war and terrorism and hoping to make a new life in Europe. Dr. Pietro Bartolo, who runs the lone medical clinic on the island, has been caring for many of them—both the living and the dead—for a quarter century. Tears of Salt is Dr. Bartolo’s moving account of his life and work set against one of the signal crises of our time. With quiet dignity and an unshakable moral center, he tells unforgettable tales of pain and hope, stories of those who didn’t make it and those who did.