First we thought we could go around the world in 4 years. Then we were convinced that we could do it in 7. When we got to the sixth year of travel, we felt that 10 was a good round number. Almost 20 years later we are still on the road. And there's still half the planet left to explore. "I'll never forget that Monday when I put the barrel of a gun to my head and fired until I was out of bullets, without stopping to think of what I was doing so I wouldn't have a chance to change my mind. It was my resignation to a future which I already knew, a farewell to a secure job, an adieu to a brilliant career in advertising, the microcosm where I had lived for the last twelve long years. It was ten minutes after ten in the morning and my last words were, more or less 'keep the corpse, I'm leaving.' My body collapsed and I walked out the door" The Book of Independence, is a journey through some of the world's worst backcountry roads with a 4 4 truck transformed into a house on wheels.

Another knockout in the grand tradition of "Knock Your Socks Off Service"!

A Man, A Woman, A Word of Love is a new collection of sermons by two of the finest preachers in the Episcopal Church today. They also happen to be married to each other. Beautifully written, compassionate, theologically astute, and oftentimes very funny, these sermons provide fresh insight into the inexhaustible riches of God's Word. Following the unfolding story of God's love in Scripture and tradition, Pagano and Richter lift up different dimensions of God's love celebrated in the different seasons of the church year. Informed by the pastoral sensitivity that comes from years of serving congregations, the wisdom that comes from years of study, and the grace and wit that comes from years of marriage, Pagano and Richter offer powerful sermons that glory in the reconciling love of God and invite us into the ongoing adventure of being known, redeemed, and transformed by that love. These are sermons for everyone who wants to know and love the God who already knows and loves each and every one of us.

“A lighthearted, entertaining trip down Memory Lane” (Kirkus Reviews), Don’t Make Me Pull Over! offers a nostalgic look at the golden age of family road trips—before portable DVD players, smartphones, and Google Maps. The birth of America’s first interstate highways in the 1950s hit the gas pedal on the road trip phenomenon and families were soon streaming—sans seatbelts!—to a range of sometimes stirring, sometimes wacky locations. In the days before cheap air travel, families didn’t so much take vacations as survive them. Between home and destination lay thousands of miles and dozens of annoyances, and with his family Richard Ratay experienced all of them—from being crowded into the backseat with noogie-happy older brothers, to picking out a souvenir only to find that a better one might have been had at the next attraction, to dealing with a dad who didn’t believe in bathroom breaks. Now, decades later, Ratay offers “an amiable guide…fun and informative” (New York Newsday) that “goes down like a cold lemonade on a hot summer’s day” (The Wall Street Journal). In hundreds of amusing ways, he reminds us of what once made the Great American Family Road Trip so great, including twenty-foot “land yachts,” oasis-like Holiday Inn “Holidomes,” “Smokey”-spotting Fuzzbusters, twenty-eight glorious flavors of Howard Johnson’s ice cream, and the thrill of finding a “good buddy” on the CB radio. An “informative, often hilarious family narrative [that] perfectly captures the love-hate relationship many have with road trips” (Publishers Weekly), Don’t Make Me Pull Over! reveals how the family road trip came to be, how its evolution mirrored the country’s, and why those magical journeys that once brought families together—for better and worse—have largely disappeared.

In a city of chemical warehouses and entropic factories, viral DJ's and anarchist skatepunks share the streets with nihilistic video game junkies and makeshift revolutionaries, whilst pirate broadcasters battle against one another and renegade paramedics hijack the dead and dying for profit . . . Pretty Little Things to Fill Up the Void is the story of four characters and their constantly-intertwining lives as they search for meaning and purpose in a place that seems to deny either: Elisabeth Afterlife, a renegade documentarist, haunted by the ghost of a bloody girl; Catalina Rodriguez, a fiery teenager and thrill-seeker; and the artists-lovers Camille and Auguste. And alongside all of them there is the mysterious Shiva, lurking in her complex of workshops, and moving devious chemical hands that will soon encompass all of the characters in an explosive point of singularity . . .