It’s the end of the Age of Kali and our world is dying, its bounds shrunken to encompass a single city. In the Earth's final days, lonely young Jay Grant finds his first love in the arms of his neighbor Michèle. Together with six other survivors, they break through the eggshell-thin walls of the world to find a mythical land where the ultimate power of creation resides. Washed ashore from an ocean of milk, they confront personages seemingly out of legend: Ananta Sesha, the lord of the Nagas; Varuna, whose eyes are the stars; Indra, king of the devas; and the tormented being who calls himself the Preserver. Jay and Michèle want nothing more than a life together, but the gods themselves stand in their way. Separated by divine malice and tormented by falsified memories, Jay and Michèle struggle to reunite, transforming themselves into beings beyond the merely human to confront the demiurge responsible for Earth's destruction.

This book is from the perspective of someone who was belittled for her weight, stuttering, and learning disability. This book is from my gut on a level that I thought would never surface after being stifled for so long. It's a look at how I managed to emerge as a successful teacher and human being regardless of what others thought of me and how they treated me. The title "scapegoat" has followed me since a very young age. It was made to be okay to treat me badly; not anymore. This book is a representation and a guide to let people know that they do not bring you down without you lifting your way up and out from their influences, and words of negativity. I am doing this my way on my own terms without permission from anyone uninhibitedly.

Already a bestseller with more than 100,000 copies sold, Adams' comforting words are now accompanied by D. Morgan's exquisite watercolors that summon the very sounds and scents of the ocean. Words of wisdom and peaceful images bring encouragement to those buffeted by life's storms.

Following the trails of Hawai‘i’s snails to explore the simultaneously biological and cultural significance of extinction. In this time of extinctions, the humble snail rarely gets a mention. And yet snails are disappearing faster than any other species. In A World in a Shell, Thom van Dooren offers a collection of snail stories from Hawai‘i—once home to more than 750 species of land snails, almost two-thirds of which are now gone. Following snail trails through forests, laboratories, museums, and even a military training facility, and meeting with scientists and Native Hawaiians, van Dooren explores ongoing processes of ecological and cultural loss as they are woven through with possibilities for hope, care, mourning, and resilience. Van Dooren recounts the fascinating history of snail decline in the Hawaiian Islands: from deforestation for agriculture, timber, and more, through the nineteenth century shell collecting mania of missionary settlers, and on to the contemporary impacts of introduced predators. Along the way he asks how both snail loss and conservation efforts have been tangled up with larger processes of colonization, militarization, and globalization. These snail stories provide a potent window into ongoing global process of environmental and cultural change, including the largely unnoticed disappearance of countless snails, insects, and other less charismatic species. Ultimately, van Dooren seeks to cultivate a sense of wonder and appreciation for our damaged planet, revealing the world of possibilities and relationships that lies coiled within a snail’s shell.

Afghan-American Nadia Hashimi's literary debut novel is a searing tale of powerlessness, fate, and the freedom to control one's own fate that combines the cultural flavor and emotional resonance of the works of Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Lisa See. In Kabul, 2007, with a drug-addicted father and no brothers, Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school, and can rarely leave the house. Their only hope lies in the ancient custom of bacha posh, which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of marriageable age. As a son, she can attend school, go to the market, and chaperone her older sisters. But Rahima is not the first in her family to adopt this unusual custom. A century earlier, her great-great grandmother, Shekiba, left orphaned by an epidemic, saved herself and built a new life the same way. Crisscrossing in time, The Pearl the Broke Its Shell interweaves the tales of these two women separated by a century who share similar destinies. But what will happen once Rahima is of marriageable age? Will Shekiba always live as a man? And if Rahima cannot adapt to life as a bride, how will she survive?

In a poignant memoir flush with humor and regret, the author looks back on the curious journey which brought him to a high school seminary on the University of Notre Dame campus in 1964 to study for the priesthood. There, in the boarding schools cloistered setting, each day was occupied by prayer, studies, silence, and labor, providing a straight and narrow path to ordination. Still, his better angels were unable to distance him from juvenile lapses, ranging from mindless mischief to egregious misconduct. Spotting the troublemaker, the priests bestowed absolution and encouragement, but after two years, the clerics had seen enough. Expulsion and banishment followed, pushing him into the cold embrace of secular society. Years later, he returned to the same campus to conclude his educational sojournthis time in the prestigious law school. With the benefit of maturity and hindsight, the author reflects on the failings of his past and the lessons learned.

A genuinely new insight into the lives of shell-shocked soldiers both during and after the Great War. >