A boy recounts his annual summer trips to rural Illinois with his sister during the Great Depression to visit their larger-than-life grandmother.

This illustrated children’s book celebrates the extraordinary potential of ordinary deeds—showing how one child’s act of kindness can change the world One ordinary day, Ordinary Mary stumbles upon some ordinary blueberries. When she decides to pick them for her neighbor, Mrs. Bishop, her thoughtful act starts a chain reaction that multiplies around the world. Mrs. Bishop makes blueberry muffins and gives them to her paperboy and four others—one of whom is Mr. Stevens, who then helps five different people with their luggage—one of whom is Maria, who then helps five other people—and so on, until the deed comes back to Mary.

Since Eugene Peterson first wrote this spiritual formation classic nearly forty years ago, hundreds of thousands of Christians have been inspired by Peterson's prophetic and pastoral wisdom and the call to deeper discipleship found in the Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120-134). This special commemorative edition includes a new preface taken from Leif Peterson's eulogy at his father's memorial service.

At the heart of Walking Distance: Extraordinary Hikes for Ordinary People are firsthand descriptions of thirty of the world's best long-distance hikes on six continents—including personal anecdotes, historical backgrounds, and useful tips—accompanied by stunning full-color photographs and maps.

Best Book of 2021 —Esquire? Featured on Good Morning America "A meticulous cartography of how outer forces shape young people’s inner lives." —Esquire, Best Books of 2021 In conversation with young adults and experts alike, journalist Rainesford Stauffer explores how the incessant pursuit of a “best life” has put extraordinary pressure on young adults today, across our personal and professional lives—and how ordinary, meaningful experiences may instead be the foundation of a fulfilled and contented life. Young adulthood: the time of our lives when, theoretically, anything can happen, and the pressure is on to make sure everything does. Social media has long been the scapegoat for a generation of unhappy young people, but perhaps the forces working beneath us—wage stagnation, student debt, perfectionism, and inflated costs of living—have a larger, more detrimental impact on the world we post to our feeds. An Ordinary Age puts young adults at the center as Rainesford Stauffer examines our obsessive need to live and post our #bestlife, and the culture that has defined that life on narrow, and often unattainable, terms. From the now required slate of (often unpaid) internships, to the loneliness epidemic, to the stress of "finding yourself" through school, work, and hobbies—the world is demanding more of young people these days than ever before. And worse, it’s leaving little room for our generation to ask the big questions about who they want to be, and what makes a life feel meaningful. Perhaps we’re losing sight of the things that fulfill us: strong relationships, real roots in a community, and the ability to question how we want our lives to look and feel, even when that’s different from what we see on the ‘Gram. Stauffer makes the case that many of our most formative young adult moments are the ordinary ones: finding our people and sticking with them, learning to care for ourselves on our own terms, and figuring out who we are when the other stuff—the GPAs, job titles, the filters—fall away.

After a life dedicated to the study of languages, A. Colin Wright has distilled his life's observations into this engaging collection of short stories, most of which have been previously published in literary journals. Now retired, his life's adventures, which include serving in the British Air Force, attending Cambridge University, and being a professor of Russian, have inspired this collection. "I'm a librarian and I kissed a film star once. I touched her nipples too. At least, I think I did." So begins "Queen's Grill." Horatio Humphries, one of the unreliable narrators, strikes up a brief friendship with a movie star on a rough Atlantic crossing, but his "twin" brother doesn't believe him. In "A Pregnant Woman with Parcels at Brock and Bagot," an unnamed woman may or may not have an affair with a man she met at a party-depending on whether she can get by a woman in front of her. "Distantly from Gardens," a variant on the theme of the "double" found often in Russian literature, presents a man with a split personality, inhabited by two narrators who are his past as well as his present. While other stories are told in either the first or third person, the subject here demands the use of the second. The stories in A Cupboardful of Shoes explore subjects as wide-ranging as largely disappointed love, violence, and war, sometimes with an underlying religious theme, serving to illustrate Wright's eclectic style and literary interests.

Retire early, sell everything, buy a boat and sail around the world. What could go wrong? Told with great suspense and sparkling with wry humor, Escape from the Ordinary captures the terrors and pleasures that come with forging ahead against great odds on the adventure of a lifetime.