From a "born storyteller" (Seattle Times), this playful and moving bestselling book of essays invites us into the miraculous and transcendent moments of everyday life.When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of sixty after a bout with brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted readers who regard his writing as one of the best-kept secrets of the twenty-first century. Doyle writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the sanctity of eve...

Sheed & Ward, in partnership with Commonweal magazine, presents the second of two volumes in the groundbreaking series, American Catholics in the Public Square, a project funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Essays by scholars, journalists, lawyers, business and labor leaders, church administrators and lobbyists, novelists, activists, policy makers and politicians address the most critical issues facing the Catholic Church in the United States. Volume 2, American Catholics, American Cultur...

Both intimate and irreverent, The Mighty Currawongs taps into the small truths of what makes a life worth living—from the oddly hilarious to the cherished and pure.A collection of headlong tales by Oregon author Brian Doyle—exploring such riveting and peculiar topics as chess in the Levant, tailors who specialize in holes, how to report stigmata to your attending physician, the intense hilarity of basketball, how to have a bitter verbal marital fight in yo...

In ancient times, warriors followed a code of honor, which granted them a place in Valhalla upon their death if they remained true to it. However, before this code existed, many fought without honor. Then, a man named Krom was born--known for his honor, dignity, and true warrior spirit. His destiny was to bring forth the rise of Valhalla, creating the code of honor and ensuring that every warrior who followed him would have a place to be remembered and honored.

A teenage boy and an American pine marten each embark on the adventure of growing up in the award-winning YA novel by the author of Mink River.Dave is fourteen years old, eager, and precocious. He is about to start high school, which is scary and alluring. Martin is a pine marten, a small, muscled hunter of the deep woods. He is about to leave home for the first time, which is scary and thrilling. Both of these wild animals are setting off into the bruising...

Engage answers the age-old questions:What is it Men are looking for and Need in a Church? andHow do I build this Ministry?Engaging men to lead at the local church level is one of the biggest overlooked opportunities facing America?s churches today. The needs of men in the church are being missed, and the health of churches are at risk.?Engage begins at a macro level, helping to build the vision for...

This lyrical tale of a young man's first foray into adulthood offers "a moving ode to the city of Chicago and the singular nature of its people" ( Booklist, starred review)On the last day of summer, a young college grad moves to Chicago and rents a small apartment on the north side of the city, by the lake. This is the story of the five seasons he lives there in the late 1970s, during which he meets gangsters, gamblers, policemen, a brave and garrulous bus ...

Is Brian Doyle the most passionate Catholic storyteller in America? Here is new evidence that he is. In this brand new compilation of some of his best stories that have appeared in various publications throughout the world, Doyle explores the promise of Catholicism in America that he has experienced and observed from his childhood through today.

Declan O Donnell has sailed out of Oregon and deep into the vast, wild ocean, having had just finally enough of other people and their problems. He will go it alone, he will be his own country, he will be beholden to and beloved of no one. No man is an island, my butt, he thinks. I am that very man. . . .But the galaxy soon presents him with a string of odd, entertaining, and dangerous passengers, who become companions of every sort and stripe. The Plo...

If you love to read, or write, or both, you'll appreciate Brain Doyle—passionate observer of and commentator on all things written. In this ultimate collection of his thoughts on writers and writing and readers and reading, he covered everything from what the books people keep stashed in the cars or sitting on their bookshelves tell you about them, to the pleasures of reading box scores or what's hung on refrigerator doors, to the scent that books and newspapers give off as they age, to li...

"An affectionate homage," this novel of Stevenson's evolution into an adventure writer is "a loving reconstruction of an era of storytelling now lost" ( New York Times).The young Robert Louis Stevenson, living in a boarding house in San Francisco in the nineteenth century while waiting for his beloved's divorce from her feckless husband, dreamed of writing a soaring novel about his landlady's adventurous and globe-trotting husband, John Carson—but he never ...

In these eleven original stories, characters bravely face the challenges of settling into a new life.In this wonderful new short story anthology, eleven of Canada's top children's authors contribute stories of immigration, displacement and change, exploring the frustration and uncertainty those changes can bring. Told in first-person narratives, this collection features a diverse cast of boys and girls, each one living at a different point in Canada's vast...