Original and inspiring, this unique volume offers readers a collection of creative writings based on Scriptures that relate to the life of Christ. Each episode takes the reader through a cycle of friendship with Jesus-from acquaintance to deeply committed friend. Along the way, the reader will be drawn closer to Jesus through the eyes of characters who literally met him and, in so doing, discovered the likability and lovability of the Master.

Playing the lottery was just for fun, but with the one-billion-dollar win, life gets complicated. It’s been nearly a year since widowed Texas Rancher Ava Tomlinson won the lottery. And while her four adult sons have found love, Ava feels unsettled this Christmas. She’s giving her sons more privacy, but she’s especially lonely due to a rift in her once tight circle of friends. Ava’s not anticipating a romance when a handsome, younger survey geologist arrives at the ranch to work through the holidays. He’s sexy and fun, but only offering temporary. North Rabe’s career keeps him on the road. His plans of working through the holidays are derailed when Ava includes him in family dinners and festive plans in Last Stand. He’s quickly smitten and finally has a glimpse of a family life he lost long ago. Does he dare attempt to lay down roots? And if so, how can he convince Ava and her protective sons he’s after her heart, not her money?

Sharyn Atkinson doesn't claim to have all the answers, but after twelve years of being single in Melbourne, she does have some hilarious—and cringe-worthy—stories to tell. In this light-hearted, playful, and honest account of her romantic experiences, you'll find stories of hope, loss, deception, discovery, sex, and love in all its many forms. Read it cover to cover, or pick a chapter that calls out to you—“Mr. Loaded," "Mr. International Jet Setter," or perhaps the intriguing "Mr. Stripper Electrician.” Though she would love to get married and start a family, Sharyn doesn’t plan to settle for anyone—even if that means navigating the murky waters of dating in your thirties. As she explains, “I don’t want to be someone’s handbag, mother, housemaid, bimbo, friend with benefits, notch on the belt, therapist, ‘bit on the side’, rebound, second wife, ‘cougar’, party girl, provider, or door mat. Call me crazy, but none of that really appeals to me.” Whether you’re single, happily married, or somewhere in between in the dating game, Sharyn’s honest, relatable, and disarming accounts of trying to find “the one” in a vast sea of “not quite” will have you nodding in understanding and considering the various people you’ve decided to make time for—or catch and release.

To Margie Sievers, life in Duluth, Minnesota is a wonderful mixture of excitement and security. Duluth is a city on the rise with everything from simple community gatherings to grand galas in gilded ballrooms. Rich Europeans and Eastern Americans spend summers in their elegant homes along the cool shores of Lake Superior. On Hunter's Hill near her home Margie sketches her dress designs, hoping to publish them in the fashion magazines of the day and to see them transformed from paper to fabric. Into her secure, happy world rides Roman Greyson, a friendly, confident Englishman whose smile leaves level-headed Margie unaccountably flustered. Over the next two years they become good friends, but are they more? And is there a place for him in the plans she has so carefully made on Hunter's Hill?

The Joys and Pitfalls of Online Dating offers a candid and humorous look into the world of modern romance after 30. Author Jackie Devoy shares her personal experiences with online dating, ranging from heartwarming successes to shocking disappointments. This book is a delightful mix of humour, heartache, and honesty, reflecting the complexities and challenges of finding love in the digital age. Jackie’s storytelling, infused with her own sense of humour, provides not only entertainment but also insights that might just help readers in their quest for that special someone.

As an inquiry into engagements with forces of loss and threat, this work explores experimental ways to write about climate crisis in anthropology. From Belize to Ontario and back, this ambitious piece of ethnographic writing set during a time “beyond ruin” in a fictional, ecotourist community in the year 2040. Here, loss is taken up through an inventive form of ethnographic storytelling that brings together people, animals, landscapes, and the weather in a world beyond the climate crisis right now where new entanglements with things which have fallen to ruin emerge in imagined milieus in which loss and life converge.