A story of loving against the odds, perfect for fans of Five Feet Apart—both the book and movie—looking for their next read! A change is coming, April Lancaster’s fortune cookie reads. Be prepared. But how could she be prepared for the news that she has an inoperable brain tumor? April’s life will never be the same. Then she meets handsome Mark Gianni. Mark has cystic fibrosis, but he also has a passion for life . . . and for April. When he asks April to marry him, she’s happier than she’s ever been. April thought she and Mark would be together forever. But since Mark’s death, April has never felt more alone. Then Brandon Benedict comes into her life. Brandon is lonely and angry—he and April have a lot in common. But April cannot tell Brandon about her illness. When April’s medical problems suddenly return, she must decide what to tell Brandon. Can the love she’s felt before help her now?

In As Long as We Both Shall Love, Karen M. Dunak provides a nuanced history of the American wedding and its celebrants. Blending an analysis of film, fiction, advertising, and prescriptive literature with personal views from letters, diaries, essays, and oral histories, Dunak demonstrates the ways in which the modern wedding epitomizes a diverse and consumerist culture and aims to reveal an ongoing debate about the power of peer culture, media, and the marketplace in America.

8 people - 6 Months - 1 Country - 43 States - 20 Cities - 18 churches visited - 10 homes - 24 campsites - 5 host churches - 2 Bible Conferences - 20 National Parks - 20 Museums - 7 Capitol Buildings - 2 Military Bases - 2 Space Shuttles - 3 Great Bridges - 108 Fridge Magnets - 21, 139 Kilometers (or 13, 138 miles) When Singaporeans, Dan and Sue, decided to take their six homeschooled children on an epic 6-month road trip in the USA, they never did imagine just how tremendous their experience would turn out to be! Traveling with their faithful Pop-up Camper, 6 kids in tow (15- 3 years old), America has left them with a deeply enriching experience. A full colour, 300 page book with many stunning and inspiring photographs taken by their eldest son Asher (who was 15 at the time of the trip), this travelogue attempts to chronologically record the family's epic 43 state journey around the USA. The whole family contributes many candid thoughts and learning moments being on a daily shifting schedule and of their encounters in a vast country so different from their own. As exciting as any unscripted adventure could go- expect the unexpected. There were many ups and downs in the course of their journey. The Ongs give an insight into some of their Christian guiding principles on how their family of eight co-exist together in loving relationships, and how they overcame obstacles and difficulties they encountered. School was everywhere they camped, Education was lived out, America was their textbook, and God, their Master Teacher!

?We tell ourselves stories in order to live,? Joan Didion observed in The White Album. Why is this? Michael Austin asks, in Useful Fictions. Why, in particular, are human beings, whose very survival depends on obtaining true information, so drawn to fictional narratives? After all, virtually every human culture reveres some form of storytelling. Might there be an evolutionary reason behind our species? need for stories? ø Drawing on evolutionary biology, anthropology, narrative theory, cognitive psychology, game theory, and evolutionary aesthetics, Austin develops the concept of a ?useful fiction,? a simple narrative that serves an adaptive function unrelated to its factual one. In his work we see how these useful fictions play a key role in neutralizing the overwhelming anxiety that humans can experience as their minds gather and process information. Rudimentary narratives constructed for this purpose, Austin suggests, provided a cognitive scaffold that might have become the basis for our well-documented love of fictional stories. Written in clear, jargon-free prose and employing abundant literary examples?from the Bible to One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and Don Quixote to No Exit?Austin?s work offers a new way of understanding the relationship between fiction and evolutionary processes?and, perhaps, the very origins of literature.