Forced to move with his mother to the US from France, a young man finds a new life and solves the riddles of his past.

Forced to move with his mother to the US from France, a young man finds a new life and solves the riddles of his past.

"What happens when we die? Do we simply cease to exist with our consciousness obliterated for all eternity? Or do we have an enduring soul that can continue to experience awareness and some form of ongoing 'life.' Does God exist? Without a creator, how can the universe exist? What is the purpose of the universe and what is its ultimate fate? Does our behavior in day-to-day life really influence what hapens to us after we die? Why do many people believe in a heaven and a hell? What is the basis of these beliefs? Should we be anxious about our death or just enjoy life in the here-and-now? Can these ultimate mysteries be solved by science? What does science already know about the mysteries of creation? Sooner or later, all of us will face the stark reality of death. Many people go through life with an increasing awareness -- and increasing anxiety -- about their eventual fate. Dr. Don Morse, a scientist who believed in the absolute finality of death, did, too. Then his near-death experience led him on a quest to uncover what science knows about the nature of death. Dr. Morse's subsequent spiritual journey led him through the entire realm of science and religious beliefs until he came to an inescapable conclusion: Some form of an afterlife must exist. Join Dr. Morse as he summarizes the vast research and data leading to this conclusion. Near-death and out-of-body experiences, experiments creating apparitions, research attempting to weight the soul, and the wide range of ancient and modern spiritual concepts are all covered in this masterful, comprehensive scientific quest for truth."--back cover.

"An accessible and engaging exploration of the mysteries of time." -Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe Twenty years ago, Stephen Hawking tried to explain time by understanding the Big Bang. Now, Sean Carroll says we need to be more ambitious. One of the leading theoretical physicists of his generation, Carroll delivers a dazzling and paradigm-shifting theory of time's arrow that embraces subjects from entropy to quantum mechanics to time travel to information theory and the meaning of life. From Eternity to Here is no less than the next step toward understanding how we came to exist, and a fantastically approachable read that will appeal to a broad audience of armchair physicists, and anyone who ponders the nature of our world.

The untold story of the religious figures, philosophers, astronomers, geologists, physicists, and mathematicians who, for more than four hundred years, have pursued the answer to a fundamental question at the intersection of science and religion: When did the universe begin? The moment of the universe's conception is one of science's Holy Grails, investigated by some of the most brilliant and inquisitive minds across the ages. Few were more committed than Bishop James Ussher, who lost his sight during the fifty years it took him to compose his Annals of all known history, now famous only for one date: 4004 b.c. Ussher's date for the creation of the world was spectacularly inaccurate, but that didn't stop it from being so widely accepted that it was printed in early twentieth-century Bibles. As writer and documentary filmmaker Martin Gorst vividly illustrates in this captivating, character-driven narrative, theology let Ussher down just as it had thwarted Theophilus of Antioch and many before him. Geology was next to fail the test of time. In the eighteenth century, naturalist Comte de Buffon, working out the rate at which the earth was supposed to have cooled, came up with an age of 74,832 years, even though he suspected this was far too low. Biology then had a go in the hands of fossil hunter Johann Scheuchzer, who alleged to have found a specimen of a man drowned at the time of Noah's flood. Regrettably it was only the imprint of a large salamander. And so science inched forward via Darwinism, thermodynamics, radioactivity, and, most recently, the astronomers at the controls of the Hubble space telescope, who put the beginning of time at 13.4 billion years ago (give or take a billion). Taking the reader into the laboratories and salons of scholars and scientists, visionaries and eccentrics, Measuring Eternity is an engagingly written account of an epic, often quixotic quest, of how individuals who dedicated their lives to solving an enduring mystery advanced our knowledge of the universe.

From "the world's greatest tour guide," a deeply-researched, captivating journey through the rich history of Christianity and the winding paths of the French and Italian countryside that will feed mind, body, and soul (New York Times). "What a wondrous work! This beautifully written and totally clear-eyed account of his pilgrimage will have you wondering whether we should all embark on such a journey, either of the body, the soul or, as in Egan's case, both." --Cokie Roberts "Egan draws us in, making us feel frozen in the snow-covered Alps, joyful in valleys of trees with low-hanging fruit, skeptical of the relics of embalmed saints and hopeful for the healing of his encrusted toes, so worn and weathered from their walk."--The Washington Post Moved by his mother's death and his Irish Catholic family's complicated history with the church, Timothy Egan decided to follow in the footsteps of centuries of seekers to force a reckoning with his own beliefs. He embarked on a thousand-mile pilgrimage through the theological cradle of Christianity to explore the religion in the world that it created. Egan sets out along the Via Francigena, once the major medieval trail leading the devout to Rome, and travels overland via the alpine peaks and small mountain towns of France, Switzerland and Italy, accompanied by a quirky cast of fellow pilgrims and by some of the towering figures of the faith--Joan of Arc, Henry VIII, Martin Luther. The goal: walking to St. Peter's Square, in hopes of meeting the galvanizing pope who is struggling to hold together the church through the worst crisis in half a millennium. A thrilling journey, a family story, and a revealing history, A Pilgrimage to Eternity looks for our future in its search for God.

“A rich, sensual, bewitching adventure of good vs. evil with love as the prize.” ~Publisher’s Weekly on ETERNITY WINNER: RT Book Reviews: Reviewers Choice Award WINNER: Reviewer's Listserv: Best Paranormal Romance Award WINNER: New Jersey Romance Writers: Golden Leaf Award One of BN.com's "Top 12 Reads of the Year" 300 years ago, Raven St. James was hanged for witchcraft. But she revives among the dead to find herself alive. She is an Immortal High Witch, one of the light. A note from her mother warns that there are others, those of the Dark, who preserve their own lives by taking the hearts of those like her. Duncan Wallace’s forbidden love for the secretive lass costs him his life. 300 years later, he loves her again, tormented by hazy memories of a past that can’t be real. She tells him of another lifetime, claims to be immortal. Though he knows she’s deluded, he can’t stay away. And the Dark Witch after her heart is far closer than either of them know. If you liked OUTLANDER, or HIGHLANDER, you will LOVE this series. Don’t miss Book 2, INFINITY or Book 3, DESTINY. “A hauntingly beautiful story of a love that endures through time itself.” ~New York Times Bestselling Author, Kay Hooper “This captivating story of a love that reaches across the centuries, becomes as immortal as the lover’s themselves, resonates with timeless passion, powerful magic, and haunting heartbreak.” ~BN.com’s official review