All Joran wanted was a quiet life of research and study in his alchemy lab. It didn’t seem like so much to ask. But when an emergency at one of his family’s trading posts crops up, his father insists that Joran is the only one that can straighten it out. The next day finds Joran packed and on the road to the empire’s southernmost province. Little does Joran know that a simple business trip will turn into the most dangerous journey of his life. An Unwelcome Journey is the first book in an exciting new Epic Fantasy Adventure.

In this resource, those dealing with grief will learn they are not alone in their feelings and their experiences are not unique. The text also explains ways the Christian community can develop more effective ways to support those who are grieving. (Practical Life)

Ever since Martin Banks and his fellow computer geeks discovered that reality is just a computer program to be happily hacked, they've been jaunting back and forth through time, posing as medieval wizards and having the epic adventures that other nerds can only dream of having. But even in their wildest fantasies, they never expected to end up at the mercy of the former apprentice whom they sent to prison for gross misuse of magic and all-around evil behavior. Who knew that the vengeful Todd would escape, then conjure a computer game packed with wolves, wenches, wastelands, and assorted harrowing hazards--and trap his hapless former friends inside it? Stripped of their magic powers, the would-be wizards must brave terrifying dangers, technical glitches, and one another's company if they want to see Medieval England--and their favorite sci-fi movies on VHS--ever again. Can our heroes survive this magical mystery torture? Or will it only lead them and their pointy hats into more peril?

The High Kingdom has known twenty years of peace. The true reason unknown to everyone save Sultan Vilos the First. At the height of The Crown War, Vilos made a deal with a powerful sorcerer. Vilos’s reign would be secured in exchange for his first born daughter. The sorcerer promised to come for the princess on her eighteenth birthday. That day is today. The sorcerer is coming to claim his due and if he doesn’t get it, all Hell is going to break loose.

A gay teenage American vampire adjusts to life at a prestigious—and mysterious—English boarding school and its dangerous headmaster in this YA adventure. Archangel Academy is more than a school to Michael Howard. Within its majestic buildings and serene English grounds, he’s found friends, new love, and a place that feels more like home than Nebraska ever did. But the most important gift of Archangel Academy is immortality . . . Life as a just-made vampire is challenging for Michael, even with Ronan, an experienced vamp, to guide him. Michael’s abilities are still raw and unpredictable. To add to the turmoil, the ancient feud between rival vampire species is sending ripples of discord through the school. And beneath the new headmaster’s charismatic front lies a powerful and very personal agenda. Yet the mysteries lurking around the Academy pale in comparison to the secrets emerging from Michael’s past. And choosing the wrong person to trust—or to love—could lead to an eternity of regret . . .

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title In eighteenth-century America, no centralized system of welfare existed to assist people who found themselves without food, medical care, or shelter. Any poor relief available was provided through local taxes, and these funds were quickly exhausted. By the end of the century, state and national taxes levied to help pay for the Revolutionary War further strained municipal budgets. In order to control homelessness, vagrancy, and poverty, New England towns relied heavily on the "warning out" system inherited from English law. This was a process in which community leaders determined the legitimate hometown of unwanted persons or families in order to force them to leave, ostensibly to return to where they could receive care. The warning-out system alleviated the expense and responsibility for the general welfare of the poor in any community, and placed the burden on each town to look after its own. But homelessness and poverty were problems as onerous in early America as they are today, and the system of warning out did little to address the fundamental causes of social disorder. Ultimately the warning-out system gave way to the establishment of general poorhouses and other charities. But the documents that recorded details about the lives of those who were warned out provide an extraordinary—and until now forgotten—history of people on the margin. Unwelcome Americans puts a human face on poverty in early America by recovering the stories of forty New Englanders who were forced to leave various communities in Rhode Island. Rhode Island towns kept better and more complete warning-out records than other areas in New England, and because the official records include those who had migrated to Rhode Island from other places, these documents can be relied upon to describe the experiences of poor people across the region. The stories are organized from birth to death, beginning with the lives of poor children and young adults, followed by families and single adults, and ending with the testimonies of the elderly and dying. Through meticulous research of historical records, Herndon has managed to recover voices that have not been heard for more than two hundred years, in the process painting a dramatically different picture of family and community life in early New England. These life stories tell us that those who were warned out were predominantly unmarried women with or without children, Native Americans, African Americans, and destitute families. Through this remarkable reconstruction, Herndon provides a corrective to the narratives of the privileged that have dominated the conversation in this crucial period of American history, and the lives she chronicles give greater depth and a richer dimension to our understanding of the growth of American social responsibility.