There’s a fine line between the living and the dead, and Marshall is determined to cross it in this gut-wrenching debut novel. Ever since the car accident that killed his identical twin brother, Marshall Windsor has been consumed with guilt and crippled by the secrets of that fateful night. He has only one chance to make amends and set things right. He must find a thin space—a mythical point where the barrier between this world and the next is thin enough for a person to step through to the other side. But when a new girl moves into the neighborhood, into the exact same house Marsh is sure holds a thin space, she may be the key—or the unraveling of all his secrets. As they get closer to finding a thin space—and closer to each other—March must decide once and for all how far he’s willing to go to right the wrongs of the living…and the dead.

This guide for modern-day spiritual seekers draws wisdom from Celtic spiritual practices and leads readers through a pilgrimage of the soul to create space for grace.

An Indie Next Selection for April 2022 An Indies Introduce Selection for Winter/Spring 2022 A Junior Library Guild Selection Both a celebration of the natural world and a memoir of one family’s experience during the Troubles, Thin Places is a gorgeous braid of “two strands, one wondrous and elemental, the other violent and unsettling, sustained by vividly descriptive prose” (The Guardian). Kerri ní Dochartaigh was born in Derry, on the border of the North and South of Ireland, at the very height of the Troubles. She was brought up on a council estate on the wrong side of town—although for her family, and many others, there was no right side. One parent was Catholic, the other was Protestant. In the space of one year, they were forced out of two homes. When she was eleven, a homemade bomb was thrown through her bedroom window. Terror was in the very fabric of the city, and for families like ní Dochartaigh’s, the ones who fell between the cracks of identity, it seemed there was no escape. In Thin Places, a luminous blend of memoir, history, and nature writing, ní Dochartaigh explores how nature kept her sane and helped her heal, how violence and poverty are never more than a stone’s throw from beauty and hope, and how we are, once again, allowing our borders to become hard and terror to creep back in. Ní Dochartaigh asks us to reclaim our landscape through language and study, and remember that the land we fight over is much more than lines on a map. It will always be ours, but—at the same time—it never really was.

Thin Space is a love story with a twist. It tells the story of two people who fall in love and are true soul mates, and about what happens when their life choices challenge the course of destiny. Can we ever find our way back to each other after going separate ways? Should we? Or is it something that is beyond our control?

Enigmatic for many years, cosmic rays are now known to be not rays at all, but particles, the nuclei of atoms, raining down continually on the earth, where they can be detected throughout the atmosphere and sometimes even thousands of feet underground. This book tells the long-running detective story behind the discovery and study of cosmic rays, a story that stretches from the early days of subatomic particle physics in the 1890s to the frontiers of high-energy astrophysics today. Writing for the amateur scientist and the educated general reader, Michael Friedlander, a cosmic ray researcher, relates the history of cosmic ray science from its accidental discovery to its present status. He explains how cosmic rays are identified and how their energies are measured, then surveys current knowledge and theories of thin cosmic rain. The most thorough, up-to-date, and readable account of these intriguing phenomena, his book makes us party to the search into the nature, behavior, and origins of cosmic rays—and into the sources of their enormous energy, sometimes hundreds of millions times greater than the energy achievable in the most powerful earthbound particle accelerators. As this search led unexpectedly to the discovery of new particles such as the muon, pion, kaon, and hyperon, and as it reveals scenes of awesome violence in the cosmos and offers clues about black holes, supernovas, neutron stars, quasars, and neutrinos, we see clearly why cosmic rays remain central to an astonishingly diverse range of research studies on scales infinitesimally small and large. Attractively illustrated, engagingly written, this is a fascinating inside look at a science at the center of our understanding of our universe.

When Psychologist Rocky Devos lost his wife to cancer, he also lost his faith in the fairness of God. For over a year, he lived in the thin space between his love for God and his hatred for what he believed God did. Each night, he banged on heaven's gate demanding an explanation. "Why Rachel, Lord? Why would you let her suffer like that? Why didn't you do something? Why didn't you give us a miracle?" The longer his prayers went unanswered the more frustrated he became. Eventually, he meets God's silence with a silence of his own. But then, a year and four months later, the answer arrives disguised as a homeless vagabond who claims to be the apostle Paul. Clearly, Rocky believes he was delusional. But in their court-appointed sessions, he finds a kindred spirit. As Paul unpacks the pain of losing his wife in childbirth the two men connect. Rocky believes he's there to help Paul. Paul believes the opposite. The book explores the thin space between faith and doubt. Rocky's questions are our questions. At some point we will all lose someone we love. When we do, we will find comfort in the company of those who have walked the path of suffering before us. Rocky invites us to join him on his journey of redemption. His conversations with Paul will not only change the way he thinks about God, they may do the same for you as well.

In her moving spiritual memoir, Mary DeMuth traces the winding path of “thin places” in her life—places where she experienced longing and healing more intensely than before. As DeMuth writes, “Thin places are snatches of holy ground, tucked into the corners of our world, where we might just catch a glimpse of eternity. They are aha moments, beautiful realizations, when the Son of God bursts through the hazy fog of our monotony and shines on us afresh.”From losing her earthly father to discovering a heavenly Father who never leaves, from singing Olivia Newton-John songs to the sky to worshiping God under a French sun, from surviving abuse as a latchkey kid to experiencing the joy of mothering three children, DeMuth’s story calls readers to a deeper understanding of their own story. With unusual spiritual wisdom, she looks for God in the past so that she might experience him more profoundly in the present. Her powerful words invite readers to know God in a new way—a God ready to break through any ordinary day or extraordinary pain and offer a glimpse of eternity.