After a schism renders the world unrecognizable, Magic comes out into the open. Bane is a Supernatural who works for the Clocktower, the organization that is supposed to protect mortals from themselves. Jackson is able to teleport long distances and is also a clairvoyant, something that no mortal should be able to do. That's the least of their troubles, however. Sparks fly when they meet, even if relationships between mortals and Supernaturals are frowned upon. When they learn that the Clocktower is keeping mortals and Supernaturals prisoner, Bane knows that they will have to go against the Clocktower in order to break them free... but will they break themselves in the process?

The Huautla in Mexico is the deepest cave in the Western Hemisphere, possibly the world. Shafts reach skyscraper-depths, caverns are stadium-sized, and sudden floods can drown divers in an instant. With a two-decade obsession, William Stone and his 44-member team entered the sinkhole at Sotano de San Augustin. The first camp settled 2,328 feet below ground in a cavern where headlamps couldn't even illuminate the walls and ceiling. The second camp teetered precariously above an underground canyon where two subterranean rivers collided. But beyond that lay the unknown territory -- a flooded corridor that had blocked all previous comers, claimed a diver's life, and drove the rest of the team back. Except for William Stone and Barbara am Ende, who forged on for 18 more days, with no hope of rescue, to set the record for the deepest cave dive in the Western Hemisphere.

Stone brings his unique blend of Bible knowledge, prophecy, and spiritual insight to the topic in this comprehensive look at the afterlife. He show what hell will be like for those who depart this life without a salvation experience, and discusses the location and purpose of Paradise, the temporary home for Christians who have died.

"The words of David Livingstone express my feelings better than any words of my own. ‘God had an only son, and He was a missionary and a physician.’ A poor, poor imitation of Him I am, or hope to be. In this service I hope to live; in it I wish to die." —Edward Bliss, 1892 In 1892—during the latter days of the Qing Dynasty—a 26-year-old Massachusetts native embarked on a dramatic journey to an outpost in feudal China. The man’s name was Edward Bliss, and it was in the impoverished walled city of Shaowu that he fulfilled his dream of becoming a medical missionary and emerged as a true American hero. In this inspired and riveting read, distinguished journalist Edward Bliss Jr.—the son of this original Peace Corpsman—tells the remarkable story of a courageous pioneer who selflessly risked his life to serve others. With the refreshing intimacy of a memoir and based in large part on letters Bliss wrote home, Beyond the Stone Arches takes us back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which saw an outpouring of missionaries to Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Filled with drama and exhilarating anecdotes, Beyond the Stone Arches imparts the complete story of an American missionary: from Bliss’s happy childhood in Newburyport, Massachusetts, to his rigorous days at Yale University, to the remote Chinese city where he battled malaria (which twice nearly killed him), plague, torrential floods, and, finally, the encroaching Communist armies to help make the world a better place in which to live. Bliss continued to heal the sick, toil as a farmer, deliver babies, and work to eradicate the rinderpest virus—all for the "glory of God and dignity of man"—until the early days of Mao Zedong when a Communist army descended on Shaowu. This intimate glimpse into the life of Edward Bliss also provides a rare impression of the obstacles faced by missionaries in the feudal Chinese culture. A rare tribute, Beyond the Stone Arches is a luminous portrait of an exemplary figure, a man whose extraordinary life story offers us insight into how to face adversity in our own time.

The Whitbread Prize–winning author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit delivers a novel that “transports us to something like the future of our own planet” (The Washington Post Book World). On the airwaves, all the talk is of the new blue planet—pristine and habitable, like our own was sixty-five million years ago, before we took it to the edge of destruction. Off the air, Billie Crusoe and the renegade Robo sapien Spike are falling in love. Along with Captain Handsome and Pink, they’re assigned to colonize the new blue planet. But when a technical maneuver intended to make it inhabitable backfires, Billie and Spike’s flight to the future becomes a surprising return to the distant past—“Everything is imprinted forever with what it once was.” What will happen when their story combines with the world’s story? Will they—and we—ever find a safe landing place? Playful, passionate, polemical, and frequently very funny, The Stone Gods will change forever the stories we tell about the earth, about love, and about stories themselves. “Scary, beautiful, witty and wistful by turns, dipping into the known past as it explores potential futures.” —The New York Times Book Review “[A book] that you don’t so much read as drink in, refuse to put down, cast inside of like a hunting dog, seeking against all odds the insight that will illuminate everything, a true answer to the fix we’re in.” —Los Angeles Times “A vivid, cautionary tale—or, more precisely, a keen lament for our irremediably incautious species.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, bestselling author of Changing Planes

The tragedy of September 11, 2001 left us each trying to fill a uniquely unfamiliar void in our spirit with something that will make us whole again. Somehow we need to feel the experience in a way that following the news coverage just doesn't accomplish. Brian W. Vaszily found a way, and shares it with us in this brilliant anthology of thoughts, feelings, desires and dreams that were cut short on that terrible Tuesday. Through imagined characters he does what no news story or survivor's account can?he brings us into the lives of the departed?people so much like our friends, our families, and ourselves?as their final minutes play out. This uplifting work gently guides the reader beyond the tragedy of stone and steel to reaffirm what is truly important about being alive.