Carleton Beals was among America’s most distinctive foreign correspondents. His colorful, combatively critical reporting of U.S. intervention in Latin America had a fearless energy and authority that won him millions of readers. He interviewed the Nicaraguan rebel leader Sandino in the camp from which he fought thousands of U.S marines in 1928, covered two revolutions in Cuba (1933 and 1959), and interpreted the Mexican Revolution for American readers. Beals’s dispatches and features appeared regularly in the Nation, New Republic, Current History and the Progressive, and often in the New York Times. Time magazine called him “the best informed and the most awkward living writer on Latin America.” Forty books, including chronicles, political analysis and novels, drawn mostly from his travels and wide-ranging contacts in what he called “America South” made that characterization apt. But Beals was also an eyewitness reporter on Mussolini’s rise in Italy. He wrote on U.S. topics too, such as Louisiana’s Huey Long, and the environmental damage and rural migration in the 1930s caused by emerging agri-business in America’s South and West. Many of his books were best-sellers, their evidence-based assessments earning at least grudging respect even among those who took issue with his indictments of U.S. economic and government elites. At once biography and analytical history, The Rebel Scribe tells the story of a fiercely independent non-conformist. It probes Beals’s interactions with political leaders, democrats, demagogues, populists and revolutionaries, and reveals how his ability to immerse himself in their societies gave his accounts a palpable authenticity and, time has shown, a prescience that is almost prophetic. Christopher Neal’s layered narrative traces how Beals identified patterns of political behavior and concepts that later became fully-fledged schools of thought, such as the idea of a Third World, dependency theory, U.S. neo-imperialism, and aspects of critical theory. His story sheds light on the evolution of U.S. foreign policy and intervention, from Mexico and Nicaragua in the 1920s, to Cuba and Vietnam in the 1960s. It reveals the fraught trail that faced—and still faces—contrarian journalists who challenge conventional assumptions, while also showing how probing journalism drives change.

Christ Church Priory, Canterbury, 990 AD. Orphaned by vikings, Folcwin and his elder brother Aelfwynn have become excellent scribes. Their lives, enlivened by sibling rivalry, are upset by a competition to illuminate a commissioned psalter. After Folcwin is selected the victor, his brother is accused of murdering another competitor, and he escapes. While Aelfwynn begins a patriotic battle against Viking raiders, Folcwin's fame as a scribe increases. Even with their imbalanced fortunes, the paths of the two brothers are bound to cross with powerful kings and strong leaders, including King Aethelred, Thorkell the Tall and Edmund Ironside. But can they overcome the Viking menace?

"If earlier scholarship on apocalyptic literature was once described as "clueless about apocalypticism, " it was due in part to a focus on questions of definition, literary genre, and theological eccentricity. Richard A. Horsley takes a different approach, letting the language of the apocalypses themselves reveal their chief concern: the expanding domination by foreign empires and the form that popular defiance should take. Most telling are the traces where Judean scribes wrote themselves into their texts - and thus into God's purposes in history."--Jaquette du livre.

In a cramped corner of the dimly-lit basement in the Israel Museum, Susan Bauer, a graduate student is translating the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls when she discovers a few words on a scroll fragment-words that have the potential to change religious beliefs worldwide. When Bauer informs prominent linguistic scientist Dr. Samuel Gold that the carbon dating on the ancient document is between 50 B.C.E. and 100 C.E., he is stunned to realize that these few words refer to a long-lost stolen manuscript that, if found, would correct misconceptions about the life of Jesus. Dr. Gold, Bauer, and a team of experts must determine if the words are evidence that the mysterious scroll really exists, how to find it, and its meaning for today's world. The search for the stolen Secret Temple Scroll becomes a clandestine operation organized by Israel's Mossad and as word of the scroll is leaked, the world clamors for its contents just as a surprising second scroll is unearthed. Along the twisting route of the scrolls, all those involved must face their own insecurities, but it is the anonymous scribe who has the final word in a mesmerizing depiction of his life in Galilee.

Endorsements: "Gift yourself with a tour of ancient worlds. Fisher is a talented scholar in ancient languages and invites the reader into the dynamic world of language and international relations. Once one has read this novel (and hopefully the two previous novels in the series) one will read Old Testament Scriptures with new eyes. Fisher helpfully presents an alternative to a belief in a punishing and rewarding deity." --Rev. Arthur Gafke, author of Strong Ministry: Strengthening Your Pastoral Leadership and Pray the Seasons About the Contributor(s): Loren R. Fisher retired as Professor of Hebrew Bible at the School of Theology at Claremont and as Professor of Semitic Languages and Literature at the Claremont Graduate University. He is the author of The Many Voices of Job, Tales from Ancient Egypt, The Jerusalem Academy, and the editor of Ras Shamra Parallels, vols. 1 and 2.

Move back through time into the alluring worlds of the Alchemists’ Council The anticipated second book in Cynthea Masson’s series takes readers to Flaw Dimension, centuries before the events of book one. Rebel scribe Genevre, exploring secreted libraries with Dragonsblood pulsing through her young veins, accidentally discovers a 5th-Council manuscript with a long-forgotten alchemical formula whose implications could permanently transform both the Alchemists’ Council and the Rebel Branch. A revolution looms as High Azoth Dracaen strengthens the power of the Rebel Branch, Cedar and Saule take treacherous steps against fellow alchemists, and the unprecedented mutual conjunction of Ilex and Melia changes the fate of all dimensions. With insurgents gathering, Ilex and Melia’s attempt to open a forbidden breach through time could bring salvation — or total destruction — to the elemental balance of the world. The battle over free will for all of humanity continues in The Flaw in the Stone, the remarkable second instalment of this epic fantasy trilogy.