Gordon is a poor black man in America. While he doesn't exactly have a clean slate, he isn't bad enough to be chased down and arrested by the police-but it still happens. Two hours later, he dies in the police car, driven by two white officers, one of who has an immense hatred for black people. Gordon's death is ruled an accident. Police officer Anthony supports white supremacy. He believes black people should be slaves to the white man, so he feels no guilt when Gordon dies, even though he knows it wasn't an accident. Gordon was murdered. His death is questioned all over the United States, but there is no justice since the police department suppresses the truth. Instead of receiving hate, Anthony is greeted with love and called a hero. It appears he has gotten away with his crime. He concealed the truth from society ... but will he be able to conceal the truth from his own conscience? Due to his actions, Anthony's soul is irrevocably bruised.

Woody’s Last Laugh explores a simmering controversy amid scientists, conservationists, birders and the media: the supposed “extinction” of American ivory-billed woodpecker. Among the first to identify rampant mental errors inside conservation and environmental professions, the book identifies 53 distinct kinds of cognitive blunders, psychological biases, and logical fallacies on both sides of the woodpecker controversy. Few species have ever provoked such social rancor. Why are rumors of its persistence so prevalent, unlike other near or recently extinct animals? Why are we so bad mannered with each other about a mere bird? How is it that we cannot agree even on whether a mere bird is alive or dead? Woody’s Last Laugh uncovers why such mysteries so mess with our heads. By exploring uncharted borders between conservation and mental perception, new ways of evaluating truth and accuracy are opened to everyone. Author Dr. J. Christopher Haney is a biologist, conservation scientist and lifelong birder. For 12 years he was Chief Scientist at Defenders of Wildlife. In 2010, following the Deepwater Horizon oil blowout, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service invited him to lead the largest pelagic study of marine birds ever conducted in the Gulf of Mexico. Since 2013 he has been president of Terra Mar Applied Sciences, an independent public-interest conservation research firm which he founded. If there is one lesson Dr. Haney hopes his book delivers, it is to not overvalue our thinking skills. Human reason is fallible, even among scientists and technical experts. To improve our essential relationship with nature, conservation practices will need to devote as much attention to the unbridled thoughts as the unswerving sentiments. Dead or alive, however, the ivory-bill got the last laugh on us all.

For scholars of film and readers who love cinema, these essays will be rich and playful inspiration.

The time frame is June through September of 1863. The characters were real people. The story follows the lives of five men who defended their homeland in America’s most costly war. The novel is set in Northwest Georgia. A heavily researched book about brave people making their way through impossible circumstances, and about families torn apart. Their lives were not easy, and this event made life unbearable, and impossible to stay in their homes. The main character, Spillbsy Dyer, at thirty-five had to remain faithful in his duty as an officer, and resist the temptation to desert the Army, knowing his nearby family was in harm’s way. Other characters were part of a mass movement by rail, of troops stationed in Richmond, Virginia and transported to Northern Georgia. They were among the ones who historian Mary Chesnut wrote about when she recorded, “At Kingsville, N.C., I caught a glimpse of our army. God Bless these brave fellows. Not one man intoxicated, not one rude word did I hear. It was a strange sight. Miles of platform cars-soldiers rolled in their blankets, lying in rows, heads covered and fast asleep. In their gray blankets, packed in regular order, they looked like swathed mummies. All these fine fellows going to kill or be killed. Why?” These men were part of the 132,000 soldiers who descended on the farm land of Northwestern Georgia, from all areas of this young country, in the drought ridden summer of 1863.

Since we humans have evolved into the dominant species on this planet, we sometimes fail to recognize--and respect--the ever-present threat posed by the animals we love or fear, hunt or fight to protect. Many of nature's most lethal residents have combative skills that have been honed by millions of years of adaptive survival, and it takes only a second for an otherwise evolved individual to become a helpless victim. WHEN MAN IS THE PREY is a one-of-a-kind collection of real-life encounters between man and beast that explores the uneasy relationship that humanity has with its native habitat. From bears, boars, and black dogs to swimming with sharks and dancing with wolves, the stories in WHEN MAN IS THE PREY offer a fascinating, frightening, and enlightening look at the natural world and its many creatures.

"I stood on the bridge just before midnight, the wind from the ocean arriving in violent blasts, as if saying under its breath, ‘Jump, motherf***er, jump.’ This was the last of a string of attempted departures, most orchestrated in my tired mind. Always a bitter reminder of all that had been lost and destroyed by my foolishness." When suicide feels like your best option, you know something has gone horribly wrong – and that’s just how Matt Thomson felt. He had lost everything: his wife, his children, his job, all his money, and his front door key. But everything changes when he meets Joey Murphy, ex-Merchant Marine, entrepreneur, teacher, and wild man, an enigmatic mixture of Forrest Gump, Merlin, and a long-lost best friend. Upon hearing Matt’s woes, Joey offers Matt a life-changing deal he can’t resist: "The life you know has been completely predetermined by automatic habits, both your triumphs and your failures. If you are really at the end of your rope, these habits will drop away, and you will be free . . . I give you ten days, starting today. I will show you all you need to see. It is up to you." And with the deal struck, Joey leads Matt on the roller-coaster ride of his life: a ten-day adventure filled with dodging cop cars, playing Blind Man’s baseball on the edge of a cliff, finding heaven in a Taco Bell, and learning how to open the hearts of total strangers. Joey introduces Matt to "the True Teacher," but also leads him to face his own deepest darkness and despair.

Best Books of the Month: Wall Street Journal, Kirkus Reviews From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Gulf, a sweeping cultural and natural history of the bald eagle in America. The bald eagle is regal but fearless, a bird you’re not inclined to argue with. For centuries, Americans have celebrated it as “majestic” and “noble,” yet savaged the living bird behind their national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, a snatcher of babies. Taking us from before the nation’s founding through inconceivable resurgences of this enduring all-American species, Jack E. Davis contrasts the age when native peoples lived beside it peacefully with that when others, whether through hunting bounties or DDT pesticides, twice pushed Haliaeetus leucocephalus to the brink of extinction. Filled with spectacular stories of Founding Fathers, rapacious hunters, heroic bird rescuers, and the lives of bald eagles themselves—monogamous creatures, considered among the animal world’s finest parents—The Bald Eagle is a much-awaited cultural and natural history that demonstrates how this bird’s wondrous journey may provide inspiration today, as we grapple with environmental peril on a larger scale.

Humor in the Gospels is the most comprehensive resource on Gospel humor to date. Terri Bednarz reviews and critiques a 150 years of biblical scholarship on the subject from little known journal articles and out-of-print books to the most well respected classical works of today. She covers a range of scholarly discussions on the various forms and functions of Gospel humor from frivolity to witty allusions to satirical barbs. She examines the barriers of associating humor with the Gospel depictions of Jesus, the difficulties of identifying humor in ancient biblical texts, and the advances of literary, contextual, and rhetorical approaches to recognizing Gospel humor. This important work includes an extensive bibliography for further study of Gospel humor in particular, and Biblical humor in general.

Jeffrey Raines is a hellhound. A ghostly bounty hunter for Death. He reaps the wandering spirits that harm the living, ensuring the balance between life and death are kept. When Dominic Stone discovers a way to live past his expiration date, he begins to grow unnaturally powerful. Death recognizes this imbalance as a threat to the natural world, both living and dead, and gives Jeffrey an impossible task. Reap one of the living. But Jeffrey soon finds a major roadblock. Dominic has partnered with a strange creature unlike anything Jeffrey has seen before and it's able to devour spirits. Jeffrey saves a young woman named Cara from becoming Dominic's next victim and the two become unlikely partners. With the two worlds hanging in the balance, Jeffrey Raines does what he does best. Hunt and reap.