Imagine a time not so far away and yet so long ago . . . It is the 1970s, deep South, rural Eastern North Carolina, once the world capital of the tobacco farming industry. On the Coastal Plains, nestled along the Pamlico River, is a tiny town called Chocowinity. The characters are original and southern. Donnas father is a haunted artist and gifted carpenter. Her mother, Pam, a full-time mom, with three children by the age of twenty who attempts to keep it together in a poor family where alcohol and substance abuse became the norm. When her fathers alcoholism worsens, Donna begins to resent him. Finally, on a night when violence reached its terrifying worst, the young family is spirited away for protection, and her parents divorced. Soon her fathers demons re-emerge and he falls into depression characterized by more substance abuse. Several times, their loving extended family comes to the rescue. Among the layers and human elements of this story, there lies an ominous secret. Donna has known it as long as she can remember. She keeps it hidden, as this might change everything. What unfolds is a funny, touching story of a Generation X tomboy growing up in 1970s and 1980sbefore car seat belts were required and shoes were still optional in the grocery store. This unique story is autobiographical. Funny, original, and bittersweet, it is full of Southern culture and generational relevance. This is not just one girls story of growing up in a stormy relationship with her father, and their life in poverty. It is a story of coming of age. A must-read for everyone.

No one remembered the books but her. Alistair Mead only remembers one thing from the year she went missing as a child: A series of books that don’t exist. After years of searching, she stumbles on a clue that proves the books were real but were somehow erased from existence. Desperate for answers, Alistair is drawn into an ancient literary underworld whose members believe she might be the key to unraveling the books, and the altered history of the world. Ben Kriminger hasn’t written in a year. Traumatized by the fanatical reaction to his novel about unsolved disappearances, Ben is still trying to undo the bloody damage caused by his writing and the unhinged reader who couldn’t tell fiction from fact. When book pages about a young woman named Alistair begin showing up on Ben’s doorstep, he finds that her story mirrors events in his own ill-fated novel. Still unsure if what he’s reading is fiction, Ben can’t help but act when the pages depict the same people who destroyed his life turning their twisted attention on Alistair. As their parallel paths spiral toward an impossible revelation, Ben and Alistair learn that seeing this story through may damn the world to darkness before the final page is turned. The Book of Briars is a reality-smashing tale of fiction and fate, a story that explores what happens when the lines that separate memory, magic, and the mundane world are shattered beyond repair.

Julius Caesar Hendrix's biography, Transformation: 'Drums of Thunder' chronicles his struggle with the dark shadows of success in the music industry, personal tragedies and the ultimate triumph of reaching out with music to troubled youth. Born in Savannah, Georgia, Julius got his first drum set at eight and has entertained audiences ever since. At 15 he started his first band. At 17 they began to play Savannah's lounge circuit under the name 'Special Edition' and quickly rose to become a national touring success in the '80s and '90s. Lessons learned from thirty years in the music industry gave Julius a rich perspective on life. His enduring faith in God transcended struggles with drug addiction and homelessness. Today, he is a self-proclaimed 'Reacher' to at-risk youth, sharing a hope-filled testimony of recovery and redemption. His message: There is no hope in dope. Reverend Hendrix's ministry speaks to young people tempted by drugs and the lure of the music industry as easy escapes from inner city challenges.

A Christian SAT Preparation Expert Coaches You into College Getting ready for college includes performing well on the SAT. The SAT score helps determine acceptance into college and the acquisition of scholarships. In the new expanded edition of the SAT & College Preparation Course for the Christian Student, Dr. James Stobaugh offers the Christian student a unique opportunity to be well prepared for the test. Also, students will focus on the spiritual disciplines of Bible reading, study, Scripture meditation and memorization, and prayer. A former SAT scorer, Stobaugh reports, “the best SAT scores come from students who have serious, disciplined prayer and devotional lives.” For this reason, the introduction to each lesson includes Scripture reading and a devotional journaling exercise. Critical thinking and essay writing are major themes within the SAT. Stobaugh coaches the Christian student who might otherwise passionately respond to a leading essay question without hitting the marks that the test is measuring.

Jarmon (English, U. of Tennessee, Martin) studies the history and attempts to trace the origins of several prevalent themes in African American folklore, using folk tale collections from the US and Africa. The themes link subjects with symbolic content, such as tar baby with binding and transcription and the skull with presence and propriety. An introduction presents Jarmon's methodology; her thesis is that these narratives are a type of modal discourse that is symbolized by the motifs of the wishbone and crossroads which she sees as emblematic of the concept of margins and reflective of a mood of indeterminacy. ^^^^ Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

"I've been a philosopher for all my adult life and the three most profound books of philosophy that I have ever read are Ecclesiastes, Job, and Song of Songs." These are the opening lines of Kreeft's Three Philosophies of Life. He reflects that there are ultimately only three philosophies of life and each one is represented by one of these books of the Bible-life is vanity; life is suffering; life is love. In these three books Kreeft shows how we have Dante's great epic The Divine Comedy played out, from Hell to Purgatory to Heaven. But it is an epic played out in our hearts and lives, here and now. Just as there is movement in Dante's epic, so there is movement in these books, from Ecclesiates to Job, from Job to Song of Songs. Love is the final answer to Ecclesiastes' quest, the alternative to vanity, and the true meaning of life. Finally, Kreeft sees in these books the epitome of theological virtues of faith, hope and love and "an esstential summary of the spiritual history of the world".

The tie-in novel for the Trolls new Christmas television special.

How I Got This Way chronicles the true story of growing up in the 1950's on a primitive farm. With very little knowledge of his own ancestor's history, the author was inspired to record his own life history so that future generations of his family would understand How I Got This Way.' He also felt that it was important to preserve a record of what it was like to grow up in a rural primitive farm setting so that a unique and important time in American history would not be lost forever. The lessons he learned throughout his childhood infl uenced the man he became through his years in the Navy and later as a Telephone Man.' While some may feel that the farm life experienced was cruel and unforgiving, he would say that it taught him the values of hard work, responsibility, and a sense of ethics that provided great strength of character that served him well throughout his life. His story telling' is mixed with humor and honesty as it uniquely describes his childhood experiences through the tender perspective of a child. It is the story of overcoming and loving life amid sometimes great diffi culties and trials. How I Got This Way' is a poignant story of a life that few will have the opportunity to experience in the future.

With their labile and rapidly developing brains, adolescents are particularly susceptible to addiction, and addiction leads to anxiety and depression. What few parents will know is that what we think of as the most typical addictions and problematic teen behaviours - smoking, drinking, drug taking, sex leading to teenage pregnancy - are on the decline. The bad news is that a whole raft of addictions has taken their place. Whereas once the dopamine-hungry brain of a teenager got its fix from smoking a joint or sculling a Bundy and coke, it is now turning to electronic devices for the pleasure jolt that typically comes from online playing games and engaging with social media. What is doubly troubling is that, unlike drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, electronic devices are not illicit. Quite the contrary. They are liberally distributed by schools and parents, with few restrictions placed on their use. And, to add fuel to the fire, emerging research shows that if addictive pathways are activated during the teen years, they are there for life, and that what starts as a screen addiction can lead to major substance abuse later in life.

The notion of community entails more than just shared space in the here-and-now moment. For African Americans especially, communal engagement is a sacred experience that stretches from the mundane to the spectacular in a cyclical historical pattern. DeWayne R. Stallworth illumines the broadness of this African American religious experience by looking back to the first shared experience of unbiased community that occurred during slavery. He then explores the difficulties of maintaining such a unity under the threat of supremacy as experienced through systemic structures of both white and black privilege. Most important, Stallworth unpacks how the black religious leader, although caricatured as uncouth and ignorant, remained the moral compass for community progression and uplift until the civil rights era. This provocative book is essential reading for anyone with a desire to obtain a broader and deeper understanding of what it means to be black, religious, and American in the twenty-first-century United States.