From the church librarian to the garage mechanic, folks in Crook Mountain, Tennessee seem to be either hindering or helping an old missing-person investigation. And a certain waitress who’s fairly new in town may have more at stake than any of them. Now, throw in Joan Ryan, a semi-retired dietitian from Atlanta who arrives on the scene by pure happenstance. Joan may be the secret ingredient in a recipe of comedy, resourcefulness, and danger! “Such interesting characters I would like to meet. I am praying that this novel will be shared with many hungry readers.” Natalie G. “You have a gift with words and I was very aware of every descriptive word that is so much a part of your style. They kept my mind alive!” Jeanne W. I truly enjoyed the story and meeting all these new “friends”—well, some not so friendly! I so admire the talent it takes to imagine a plot, complete with all the characters, scenery, etc., and then put it all together with dialogue and all the details needed to make an appealing, interesting story. I’m looking forward to reading the sequel! Millie E.

Jesus Told Us Where to Find Him. Just Look for an Outcast. His first followers knew that Jesus could be found with the fatherless, the widows, and the hungry and homeless. He said that he himself was a stranger, and commended those who welcomed him. If he really meant these things, what would happen if you opened your door to every person who came with a need? Jonathan and Leah Wilson-Hartgrove decided to find out. The author and his wife moved to the Walltown neighborhood in Durham, North Carolina, where they have been answering the door to anyone who knocks. When they began, they had little idea what might happen, but they counted on God to show up. In Strangers at My Door, Wilson-Hartgrove tells of risks and occasional disappointments. But far more often there is joy, surprise, and excitement as strangers become friends, mentors, and helpers. Immerse yourself in these inspiring, eye-opening accounts of people who arrive with real needs, but ask only for an invitation to come in. You will never view Jesus and the people he cares about the same way again.

From New York Times bestselling author Joan Johnston, the thrilling seventh novel in the Bitter Creek series featuring passion and intrigue mixed with an explosive, spine-tingling tale of murder, wrongful imprisonment, and a woman who counts no cost too high to see a killer brought to justice. FBI Special Agent Breed Grayhawk has the hottest sex in his life with a stranger who calls herself Grace Smith, only to discover early the next morning that she’s a convicted double murderer who broke her parole a year ago and disappeared. Now she’s his prime suspect in an assassination plot against the US president. Grace Caldwell—a.k.a. Grace Smith—is determined to find the killer who framed her for the murder of her father and stepmother—and make him pay. She burgles the home of her number one suspect and nets a surprising haul: a hot-pink, silk-covered diary—the record of a sex-addicted wife’s adventures—which suggests that Grace’s top suspect is a serial killer. But her theft has been caught on tape, and the man she’s been chasing becomes the hunter…with Grace as his prey.

This volume presents a collection of current research on pedagogies, practices and perspectives in the field of second language acquisition. It brings together different aspects of learning, teaching and researching a second language with chapters covering a range of topics from emotional communication, pragmatic competence, transformative pedagogy, inclusion, reflective teaching and innovative research methodologies. The authors address a global audience to offer insights into contemporary theories, research, policies and practices in second language acquisition. This collection of work is aimed at students, teachers and researchers wishing to reflect on current developments and identify potential research directions.

Provides the most comprehensive collection of scholarship on the multiethnic literature of the United States A Companion to the Multiethnic Literature of the United States is the first in-depth reference work dedicated to the histories, genres, themes, cultural contexts, and new directions of American literature by authors of varied ethnic backgrounds. Engaging multiethnic literature as a distinct field of study, this unprecedented volume brings together a wide range of critical and theoretical approaches to offer analyses of African American, Latinx, Native American, Asian American, Jewish American, and Arab American literatures, among others. Chapters written by a diverse panel of leading contributors explore how multi-ethnic texts represent racial, ethnic, and other identities, center the lives and work of the marginalized and oppressed, facilitate empathy with the experiences of others, challenge racism, sexism, homophobia, and other hateful rhetoric, and much more. Informed by recent and leading-edge methodologies within the field, the Companion examines how theoretical approaches to multiethnic literature such as cultural studies, queer studies, ecocriticism, diaspora studies, and posthumanism inform literary scholarship, pedagogy, and curricula in the US and around the world. Explores the national, international, and transnational contexts of US ethnic literature Addresses how technology and digital access to archival materials are impacting the study, reception, and writing of multiethnic literature Discusses how recent developments in critical theory impact the reading and interpretation of multiethnic US literature Highlights significant themes and major critical trends in genres including science fiction, drama and performance, literary nonfiction, and poetry Includes coverage of multiethnic film, history, and culture as well as newer art forms such as graphic narrative and hip-hop Considers various contexts in multiethnic literature such as politics and activism, immigration and migration, and gender and sexuality A Companion to the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States is an invaluable resource for scholars, researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers studying all aspects of the subject

Pushing intimacy to its limits in prose of unearthly beauty, Vauhini Vara explores the nature of being a child, parent, friend, sibling, neighbour or lover, and the relationships between self and others. A young girl reads the encyclopedia to her elderly neighbour, who is descending into dementia. A pair of teenagers seek intimacy as phone-sex operators. A competitive sibling tries to rise above the drunken mess of her own life to become a loving aunt. One sister consumes the ashes of another. And, in the title story, an experimental artist takes on his most ambitious project yet: constructing a life-size ark according to the Bible's specifications. In a world defined by estrangement, where is communion to be found? The characters in This Is Salvaged, unmoored in turbulence, are searching fervently for meaning, through one another.

'The Wicked Sister is massively thrilling and altogether unputdownable' KARIN SLAUGHTER A startling novel of psychological suspense, as two generations of sisters try to unravel their tangled relationships between nature and nurture, guilt and betrayal, love and evil. You have been cut off from society for fifteen years, shut away in a mental hospital as punishment for the terrible thing you did when you were a child. But what if nothing about your past is as it seems? For a decade and a half, Rachel Cunningham has chosen to lock herself away in a psychiatric facility, tortured by gaps in her memory and the certainty that she is responsible for her parents' deaths. But when she learns new details about their murders, Rachel returns, in a quest for answers, to the place where she once felt safest: her family's sprawling log cabin in the remote forests of Michigan. As Rachel begins to uncover what really happened on the day her parents were murdered, she learns - as her mother did years earlier - that home can be a place of unspeakable evil, and that the bond she shares with her sister might be the most poisonous of all...