The stories of girls of color are often overlooked, unseen, and ignored rather than valued and heard. In Parable of the Brown Girl, minister and youth advocate Khristi Lauren Adams introduces readers to the resilience, struggle, and hope held within these stories. Instead of relegating these young women of color to the margins, Adams bring their stories front and center where they belong. By sharing encounters she's had with girls of color that revealed profound cultural and theological truths, Adams magnifies the struggles, dreams, wisdom, and dignity of these voices. Thought-provoking and inspirational, Parable of the Brown Girl is a powerful example of how God uses the narratives we most often ignore to teach us the most important lessons in life. It's time to pay attention.

WHEN DORA, ELENA’S older sister, is diagnosed with depression and has to be admitted to the hospital, Elena can’t seem to make sense of their lives anymore. At school, the only people who acknowledge Elena are Dora’s friends and Jimmy Zenk—who failed at least one grade and wears blackevery day of the week. And at home, Elena’s parents keep arguing with each other. Elena will do anything to help her sister get better and get their lives back to normal—even when the responsibility becomes too much to bear.

An engineer by vocation, Jason is used to having control over things in his life. He knows he's lucky to be married to Lauren, a sporty, daring, beautiful blonde - but she's the one thing he can't predict with certainty, and so he never dares to share some of his darkest secrets with her. There are events in her past that wave him off, and Jason doesn't like risks he can't fully assess, or outcomes he can't predict. When Lauren gets a dark, handsome new client at her gym, Jason's demons rear their heads. He turns to the internet for support, but his failure to delete his history leads Lauren to encounter his secrets. But how much does she know? And most importantly: what will she do?

Every day, corporations are connecting the dots about our personal behavior—silently scrutinizing clues left behind by our work habits and Internet use. The data compiled and portraits created are incredibly detailed, to the point of being invasive. But who connects the dots about what firms are doing with this information? The Black Box Society argues that we all need to be able to do so—and to set limits on how big data affects our lives. Hidden algorithms can make (or ruin) reputations, decide the destiny of entrepreneurs, or even devastate an entire economy. Shrouded in secrecy and complexity, decisions at major Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms were long assumed to be neutral and technical. But leaks, whistleblowers, and legal disputes have shed new light on automated judgment. Self-serving and reckless behavior is surprisingly common, and easy to hide in code protected by legal and real secrecy. Even after billions of dollars of fines have been levied, underfunded regulators may have only scratched the surface of this troubling behavior. Frank Pasquale exposes how powerful interests abuse secrecy for profit and explains ways to rein them in. Demanding transparency is only the first step. An intelligible society would assure that key decisions of its most important firms are fair, nondiscriminatory, and open to criticism. Silicon Valley and Wall Street need to accept as much accountability as they impose on others.

The Black Box is not a tale of a great man. This story is about someone like you: a human being endeavoring to make tomorrow better than today. Each chapter recounts a formative experience and concludes with a 'Black Box': an explanation of how a given situation helped me develop the mindset required to thrive in that type of environment.An airplane's black box records all circumstantial things occurring around and within the aircraft, as well as the voices (and radio transmissions) in the head of the airliner. When an airplane crashes engineers look into the black box to study what went wrong. However, black boxes also have stories of success, but we rarely look to them for those narratives. Memories, like a black box, are nearly permanent records. Black boxes are stored in reinforced shells designed to survive 30 minutes in 2000-degree Fahrenheit heat as well as submersion in 20,000 feet deep water.Your black box is filled with helpful memories, but so often you fail to look into your black box to pull wisdom from it. Sometimes we do not want to open the black box and look in because it means seeing our hardships replayed, seeing things that cause us fear and pain. As you peer into my black box, it will inspires you to look into your own. Our black boxes are filled with explanations of why we crash as well as stories of how we have soared above turbulence.Most of these chapters have been developed as self encapsulated stories from which a moral can be drawn without reference to previous chapters. I share the story of my life knowing that my achievements outstrip those of the average person by only a modest margin. The validity of this work lies in the distance between my starting point and where I stand today. This book is about you. It should drive you to consult your black box as you adventure through life, and to use the experience, strength and resolve that you already have to make your journey easier and more enjoyable.

"A Pioneer Story for Lauren" is a historical narrative set in the lush central part of Pennsylvania's wilderness. Chris Reardon, a woodsman, meets lovely Amy Whitehill on a wagon train traveling east. They fall in love and marry to face the strain of many frontier incidents. The happy couple respects each other, their neighbors, the land, and their God. It is a wholesome story for the whole family. A little about myself: I am an 80 years old, retired dental receptionist/assistant, homemaker (married 62 years), and have two lovely OR nurse daughters, a son-in-law, and a college student granddaughter. I've been a "born again" Christian for 45 years. I enjoy frontier history.

John knight had a ordinary life, until he was wrongly convicted to be a cop killer, sentenced to life in prison. But life changed, when John and other inmates were exposed to an unknown experiment giving them superpowers, leading to a prison breakout. A powerful supervillain, is on the loose, causing trouble in Ventral City, murdering both meta-humans and people in the neighborhood. Will John be able to confront this supervillain and other threats to save Ventral City and clear his innocence?