Seen through the eyes of an illiterate twelve-year-old boy, Nava Semel's moving, at times lyrical fiction explores life in the Palestine of the 1930s - a world where a young Jew is prepared to undertake multiple marriages to threatened East European women for patriotic reasons alone; where a boy's closest friends are a dog named after his hero Johnny Weissmuller (the screen Tarzan of blessed memory), his brother's first wife, and the girl next door. Semel weaves a rich evocation of love an...

On the last day of 1999, a survivor grandmother in Tel Aviv shares with her granddaughter her tragic life story as a child hidden in a pit, with only a rat for company. The granddaughter tells the legend of ''Girl and Rat'' to her teacher; in 2009 those who heard it through her classmates establish an internet website with poems. From now on this memory is spread all over the world and becomes a myth. A future anthropologist, researching its mysterious roots in 2099, discovers Father Stanisla...

This novel is inspired by a true historical event. Before Theodore Herzl there was Mordecai Manuel Noah, an American journalist, diplomat, playwright, and visionary. In September 1825 he bought Grand Island, downriver from Niagara Falls, from the local Native Americans as a place of refuge for the Jewish people and called it Ararat.” But no Jews came. What if they had followed Noah’s call? In Nava Semel’s alternate history Jews from throughout the world flee persecution and come to Ararat...

Our perception of God makes a difference in every crevice of our character, from our inner anxieties to our public conversations. It determines whether we're trusting or suspicious, whether we're happy or discontent - and whether or not we can rely on God matters mightily on the day of our death. Mark Buchanan's third book continues his penetrating exploration of the God we worship. Bravely and honestly, he poses the direst question of human existence: Can God be trusted?It's life ...

A poetic portrait of faith, futility, and the joy of this mortal life.In this astoundingly unique book, bestselling author N.D. Wilson reminds each of us that to truly live we must recognize that we are dying. Every second we create more of our past—more decisions, more breathing, more love and more loathing, all of it slides by into the gone as we race to grab at more moments, at more memories made and already fading.We are all authors, creators o...

The remarkable story of one woman's journey from grief to faith to happiness—as she holds her family together in the wake of her husband's death, pursues his dream of becoming a minister, and ultimately finds her calling as a chaplain to search-and-rescue workers.Ten years ago, Kate Braestrup and her husband Drew were enjoying the life they shared together. They had four young children, and Drew, a Maine state trooper, would soon begin training to become a minister...

The eighty-mile journey of a common carpenter and a simple peasant girl is one of the most powerful stories in history. As books go out of print and stories fade from memory, the journey of Joseph and Mary and her delivery inside a common barn continues to bless and inspire hope in people around the world.Accompanied by moving and beautifully rendered illustrations throughout, Donna VanLiere's retelling shows that the story of the Nativity is alive in our modern world.

Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood. She returns to New England and ...

In this otherworldly memoir of extraordinary power, Mark Richard, an award-winning author, tells his story of growing up in the American South with a heady Gothic mix of racial tension and religious fervor.Called a “special child,” Southern social code for mentally—and physically—challenged children, Richard was crippled by deformed hips and was told he would spend his adult life in a wheelchair. During his early years in charity hospitals, Richard observed the dra...

“I finished this book with my heart pounding and grateful, my coffee cold and my smile wide and crying like a baby.” —Daniel HandlerThe characters in Praying Drunk speak in tongues, torture classmates, fall in love, abandon their children, keep machetes beneath passenger seats, and collect porcelain figurines. Ranging from Kentucky to Florida to Haiti, these stories enact the struggle to remain physically and spiritually alive throughout an untamable, turb...

“In The Ruined House a ‘small harmless modicum of vanity’ turns into an apocalyptic bonfire. Shot through with humor and mystery and insight, Ruby Namdar's wonderful first novel examines how the real and the unreal merge. It's a daring study of madness, masculinity, myth-making and the human fragility that emerges in the mix."—Colum McCann, National Book Award-winning author of Let the Great World SpinWinner of the Sapir Prize, Isr...

"I write hungry sentences," Natalie Diaz once explained in an interview, "because they want more and more lyricism and imagery to satisfy them." This debut collection is a fast-paced tour of Mojave life and family narrative: A sister fights for or against a brother on meth, and everyone from Antigone, Houdini, Huitzilopochtli, and Jesus is invoked and invited to hash it out. These darkly humorous poems illuminate far corners of the heart, revealing teeth, tails, and more than a fe...