In 2003, Methodists celebrated the 300th anniversary of the birth of their founder, John Wesley. Today, there are more than 300 Methodist denominations in 140 nations. Covering the activities of this group that plays an important role in the ecumenical movement through its many social and charitable activities in world affairs, this book offers more than 400 entries that describe important events, doctrines, and the church founders, leaders, and other prominent figures who have made notabl...

Beatris lives by herself. She desperately wants to not be alone. Then one day while walking through the forest she finds an answer to her loneliness.

Rabbi Jesus interpreted the teachings of Torah to his followers. The Prophet Mohammad received a divine revelation centuries later that returned his people to the faith of Abraham. The holy texts of all three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, teach compassion, generosity, and nonviolence. While culture and politics often speak one understanding of "wisdom," each of these faith traditions asks very different and difficult behavior of their followers, i.e., loving enemies, ...

Have you ever noticed how the word ambulance is written backwards on the front of the emergency vehicle? The reason is so that when you sit in your car and look behind you in your mirror you can read it and know that help and hope is on the way for some one who is hurting or in need of help. In life sometimes as we sit and look behind us we can see many things unfold that have happened. As Barbara Ann sat and thought about the events that have happened in her life she realized how many thi...

Death is not the end but the beginning of something wonderful. Dr. Barbara Baron-Campbell, who has spent almost twenty years working with the dying as a spiritual care coordinator and bereavement coordinator in hospice, knows that quite well. She has been a part of numerous supernatural events that prove that death is not the end. She highlights her experiences with patients she has served as a chaplain in this eye-opening book, illustrating their experiences during the dying process. Her ...

An eminent psychologist offers a major new theory of human cognition: movement, not language, is the foundation of thoughtWhen we try to think about how we think, we can't help but think of words. Indeed, some have called language the stuff of thought. But pictures are remembered far better than words, and describing faces, scenes, and events defies words. Anytime you take a shortcut or play chess or basketball or rearrange your furniture in your mind, you've done ...

In 1950, China claimed sovereignty over Tibet, leading to decades of unrest and resistance, defining the country today. In Eat the Buddha, Barbara Demick chronicles the Tibetan tragedy from Ngaba, a defiant town on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau where dozens of Tibetans have shocked the world since 2009 by immolating themselves. Following the stories of the last princess of the region, of Tibetans who experienced the struggle sessions of Mao's Cultural Revolution, of the recent ge...

Rich in history, color, and imagination, a remarkable novel that pairs the seductive lost world of a creative legend with the coming of age of a young girl guided by an artistry all her ownIn Barbara Quick’s luminous novel, eighteenth-century Venice comes to life in all its splendor and decadence. The Grand Inquisitor’s spies lurk everywhere, and yet the city’s inhabitants abandon themselves to the revelry and masques of Carnival for half the year. This is the worl...

Ritual murder. Archaic clues. A visionary killer. In this heart-stopping novel by the Wall Street Journal and Amazon Charts bestselling author of the Sydney Rose Parnell series, words can kill.On the muddy banks of the Calumet River, a body has been found posed next to a series of mysterious glyphs and bearing wounds from a ritualistic slaying. Chicago detective Addie Bisset knows only one man who can decipher the message left by the killer: her friend Dr....

Barbara Ehrenreich's first book of satirical commentary, The Worst Years of Our Lives, which was about the Reagan era, was received with bestselling acclaim. The one problem was the title: couldn't some prophetic fact-checker have seen that the worst years of our lives—far worse—were still to come? Here they are, the 2000s, and in This Land Is Their Land, Ehrenreich subjects them to the most biting and incisive satire of her career.Taking the measure of what we ar...

A recent murder is ancient history in a breathtaking novel about a sacred lost treasure and poisonous retribution by the Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of At First Light.What an exotic way to die in Chicago.When esteemed historian Elizabeth Lawrence is found in her car, killed by a cobra’s bite, only a brilliant professor of semiotics, Dr. Evan Wilding, can see the signs around her strange death. As he helps homic...

An ancient creature of Greek mythology drives a killer’s unspeakable motives in a pulse-pounding thriller by the Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Dark of Night.On a stormy Chicago night, renowned semiotician Dr. Evan Wilding and his brother, River, who’s back from an archaeological dig, reunite in a mystery. A package addressed to both of them contains a hand-drawn maze, an ancient Cretan coin, and a cryptic greeting: