Using her mother's recorded words as a springboard, Lana Laws Downing has written eighteen stories of fiction and fact woven together to recreate life as her mother remembered it in a remote logging camp on the shores of Lake Verett in the Louisiana cypress swamp in the 1920's.

FIRST IN A NEW SERIES! Tucked away in the rolling Tennessee countryside is the charming community of Watervalley, whose inhabitants are quirky and captivating and more surprising than you might expect… As an ambitious young doctor with a penchant for research, Luke Bradford never wanted to set up practice in a remote rural town. But to pay back his student loans and to fulfill a promise from his past, he heads for Watervalley, Tennessee—and immediately stumbles into one disaster after another. Will he be labeled the town idiot before he’s even introduced as the new doctor? Very quickly he faces some big challenges—from resuscitating a three-hundred-pound farmer who goes into cardiac arrest to not getting shot by a local misanthrope for trespassing. He expects the people of Watervalley to be simple, but finds his relationships with them are complicated, whether he’s interacting with his bossy but devout housekeeper, the attractive schoolteacher he consistently alienates, or the mysterious kid next door who climbs trees while wearing a bike helmet. When a baffling flu epidemic hits Watervalley, Luke faces his ultimate test. Whether the community embraces him or not, it’s his responsibility to save them. And he’ll soon discover that while living in a small town may not be what he wants, it may be just what he needs… READERS GUIDE INCLUDED For stories, recipes, and anecdotes from your favorite Watervalley characters, visit watervalleybooks.com.

When unspeakable loss, devastation, and tragedy hit-in quick succession-where will you go and who will you run to? April Katherman-Redgrave is the surviving widow of fallen San Jose Police Motors Officer Michael J. Katherman, who was struck by another vehicle in 2016. Six months later, their dream home was flooded during the 2017 winter storms in Hollister, California-not once but five times-destroying their house and forcing April and her two sons to rely on the kindness of friends, community, and family to pick up the pieces. Through Hell and High Water chronicles unimaginable tragedy, loss, heartbreak, and loneliness, yet also how God faithfully brought her family through the other side of a tunnel where once there was no light to be seen. Told with rawness, transparency, and humor too, this is a story of redemption, courage, strength, forgiveness, and blessing, as God began to make all things new in ways she could never have imagined. Though we may never understand why God allowed these tragedies to happen to the Kathermans, Through Hell and High Water shows He has been and will always be in control, even down to the smallest detail. God's love and purpose is still shining brightly in April, as she shares her beauty-from-ashes, redemptive story to encourage others, honor her husband in heaven, and glorify all God has done in her life. This book speaks to the heart of the grieving, law enforcement families, divorced or blended families, or anyone who has experienced loss and is struggling to find hope in a broken life. May you find encouragement, strength, and purpose through April's story, God's story.

Nola Cespedes, an ambitious young reporter at the Times-Picayune, finally catches a break: an assignment to write her first full-length feature. While investigating her story, she also becomes fixated on the search for a missing tourist in the French Quarter. As Nola's work leads her into a violent criminal underworld, she's forced to face disturbing truths from her own past and is confronted with the question: In the aftermath of devastation, who is responsible for rebuilding what's been broken? Vividly rendered in razor-sharp prose, this haunting thriller is a riveting journey of trust betrayed--and the courageous struggle to rebuild. Fast-paced, atmospheric, and with a knockout twist, Hell or High Water features an unforgettable heroine as fascinating and multilayered as New Orleans itself.

A riveting portrait of a rural Pennsylvania town at the center of the fracking controversy Shale gas extraction—commonly known as fracking—is often portrayed as an energy revolution that will transform the American economy and geopolitics. But in greater Williamsport, Pennsylvania, fracking is personal. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell is a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking account of what happens when one of the most momentous decisions about the well-being of our communities and our planet—whether or not to extract shale gas and oil from the very land beneath our feet—is largely a private choice that millions of ordinary people make without the public's consent. The United States is the only country in the world where property rights commonly extend "up to heaven and down to hell," which means that landowners have the exclusive right to lease their subsurface mineral estates to petroleum companies. Colin Jerolmack spent eight months living with rural communities outside of Williamsport as they confronted the tension between property rights and the commonwealth. In this deeply intimate book, he reveals how the decision to lease brings financial rewards but can also cause irreparable harm to neighbors, to communal resources like air and water, and even to oneself. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell casts America’s ideas about freedom and property rights in a troubling new light, revealing how your personal choices can undermine your neighbors’ liberty, and how the exercise of individual rights can bring unintended environmental consequences for us all.

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection Pranab Chakraborty was a fellow Bengali from Calcutta who had washed up on the shores of Central Square. Soon he was one of the family. From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, a staggeringly beautiful and precise story about a Bengali family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the impossibilities of love, and the unanticipated pleasures and complications of life in America. “Hell-Heaven” is Jhumpa Lahiri’s ode to the intimate secrets of closest kin, from the acclaimed collection Unaccustomed Earth. An eBook short.

Science shamelessly steals from God’s creation, yet refuses to give God the glory! How the glow of a cat’s eyes innovates road reflectors The naturally sticky inspirations for Velcro and barbed wire A fly’s ear, the lizard’s foot, the moth’s eye, and other natural examples are inspiring improvements and new technologies in our lives Engineers and inventors have long examined God’s creation to understand and copy complex, proven mechanics of design in the science known as biomimicry. Much of this inspiration is increasingly drawn from amazing aspects of nature, including insects to plants to man in search of wisdom and insight. We are surrounded daily by scientific advancements that have become everyday items, simply because man is copying from God’s incredible creation, without acknowledging the Creator.