Olga Kharitidi's debut book is a remarkable account of her spiritual adventure in snowbound Siberia. Joining an ailing friend on a spontaneous trip to the Atai Mountains, Dr. Kharitidi is taken into apprenticeship by a native Shaman who guides her through bizarre, magical, and often terrifying experiences that open her eyes to a wellspring of deeper learning. On the road to Belovedia, a fabled civilization of highly evolved beings, she encounters revolutionary mystical teachings while discovering ancient secrets of magic and healing. At once a modern odyssey and a timeless dreamscape, Entering the Circle is an inspiring story of personal growth and an insightful work about the limitless potential of human spirit.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A bestselling dystopian novel that tackles surveillance, privacy and the frightening intrusions of technology in our lives—a “compulsively readable parable for the 21st century” (Vanity Fair). When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

Entering the Circle addresses the practical and methodological aspects of research within the interpretive or hermeneutic perspective. It contains descriptions of exemplary interpretive research projects in psychology and closely allied fields. Offering insight into the range and subtleties of the methods of interpretive inquiry, this collection challenges the reader to question the assumptions behind more traditional research that aims, instead, to objectify human phenomena.

In the tradition of The Good Mother and The Deep End of the Ocean, Anne D. LeClaire delivers a heartbreaking–and breathtaking–novel of two very different but equally loving mothers who face the most painful of losses and then find the courage not only to go on but to find meaning and hope in their lives. Rose Nelson is a middle-aged woman with a broken past, a sorrow from which she cannot recover. Secretly guilty about her role in her teenaged son’s death five years ago, she has sealed herself off from life, enveloped by a grief that has slowly eaten away at her relationship with her husband. Against her will, Rose is drawn into the world she has avoided when Opal Gates and her five-year-old son, Zack, move in next door. Determined to start an independent life for herself, twenty-year-old Opal has left her family and the father of her son in North Carolina. But when she quickly begins an affair with Tyrone Miller, a part-time mechanic and local musician, Opal unwittingly breaks the tacit rules of both her family and her new hometown. Initially, Rose cannot bear the sight of Opal and her son. But later when Zack is injured, she instinctively lies to protect Opal from a single mistake that changes the lives of everyone involved. Faced with a custody suit brought by Zack’s father and her own parents, Opal faces a trial in which each choice she has made will be used as ammunition in the battle to take Zack away from her. Confronting such devastating loss and the questions it poses are at the heart of Entering Normal. How does one go on after great tragedy? What is a family? What sacrifices must a mother be willing to make for her child? And how can a good mother sometimes make bad choices? Entering Normal is a story of family, a novel about courage, loss, risk, and betrayal. It is a story that goes to the heart of love.

Meetings in the round have become the preferred tool for moving individual commitment into group action. This book lays out the structure of circle conversation, based on the original work of the authors who have standardized the essential elements that constitute circle practice.

This spiritual journey is written in the language of a generation that, having divorced religion, is still desperate to build a relationship with God.

COVR Award Winner The Circle Within is your guide to creating a personal spiritual practice for daily life. The first section is a thoughtful examination of Wiccan ethics and philosophy that explores how to truly live Wicca. The second section includes devotional prayers and rituals that provide inspiration for group or solitary practice. Topics in this Wicca book include: cultivating an ongoing personal relationship with deity, ethics and standards of behavior, concepts of sacred space, elements of a daily practice, tuning into the Wheel of the Year and the elements, and creating meaningful personal Pagan rituals. Move beyond the basics of Wicca and enter the sacred space of the circle within.