Twenty-one brief, theme-based chapters squarely address the challenges each of us face as we pass through difficult times to take to the skies again. This book offers no pat answers or easy solutions, just the battle-tested wisdom of a woman who lived her greatest nightmare and came through it more convinced of God's grace than ever before.

    The society is made up of homes and it is the origin. The home is life and the life is society. If the home is strong and morally sound, it will reflect in the larger society. Whatever the home is made up of that is the reflection that will be seen in the society. When the society is morally bankrupt it should be traced to the home. To rescue our society from destruction the home needs to be rebuilt on sound footings. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said:"Happiness has four elements; a good wife, a spacious house, a good neighbour and a good riding beast." (Ibn Hibbaan)From this hadeeth, it can be seen that three out of the four elements of happiness concern the home This book highlights the means and processes of building a Muslim home which guarantees sakeenah (tranquility). [an-Nahl (16):80]

    In a world where women were silenced, she found her voice.From New York Times bestselling author Patti Callahan comes an exquisite novel of Joy Davidman, the woman C. S. Lewis called “my whole world.” When poet and writer Joy Davidman began writing letters to C. S. Lewis—known as Jack—she was looking for spiritual answers, not love. Love, after all, wasn’t holding together her crumbling marriage. Everything about New Yorker Joy seemed ill-matched for an Oxford don and the beloved writer of Narnia, yet their minds bonded over their letters. Embarking on the adventure of her life, Joy traveled from America to England and back again, facing heartbreak and poverty, discovering friendship and faith, and against all odds, finding a love that even the threat of death couldn’t destroy.In this masterful exploration of one of the greatest love stories of modern times, we meet a brilliant writer, a fiercely independent mother, and a passionate woman who changed the life of this respected author and inspired books that still enchant us and change us. Joy lived at a time when women weren’t meant to have a voice—and yet her love for Jack gave them both voices they didn’t know they had.At once a fascinating historical novel and a glimpse into a writer’s life, Becoming Mrs. Lewis is above all a love story—a love of literature and ideas and a love between a husband and wife that, in the end, was not impossible at all.

    When their lives begin to intersect in powerful and unexpected ways, they discover that the answers one needs might be the other’s only chance for peace. Each woman’s intensely personal journey reverberates with universal themes about the connections between love, marriage, truth, and forgiveness that no reader will forget.

    Maybe you feel you’ve been sold a bill of goods, that success and happiness are not possible through the vocation to motherhood. Many moms quietly resign themselves to the idea that success, happiness and fulfillment are things they will need to find in spite of motherhood, not because of it. In Momnipotent, Danielle Bean understands all this first-hand and meets women where they are. With great wit, wisdom, and compassion, she provides much-needed encouragement to all women and beautifully resonates with their feminine hearts. Momnipotent empowers women to take control of their lives by providing tried and true direction on how to make important changes—changes that will help them find lasting happiness in their vocation and satisfaction in their relationships.

     The Bradleys see the world as a place where miracles are possible, and where nothing is more important than family. This is their story.   It is the story of Ian Bradley—husband, father, math teacher, and Mormon bishop—and his unshakeable belief that everything will turn out all right if he can only endure to the end, like the pioneers did. It is the story of his wife, Claire, her lonely wait for a sign from God, and her desperate need for life to pause while she comes to terms with tragedy.   And it is the story of their children: sixteen-year-old Zippy, experiencing the throes of first love; cynical fourteen-year-old Al, who would rather play soccer than read the Book of Mormon; and seven-year-old Jacob, whose faith is bigger than a mustard seed—probably bigger than a toffee candy, he thinks—and which he’s planning to use to mend his broken family with a miracle.   Intensely moving, unexpectedly funny, and deeply observed, A Song for Issy Bradley explores the outer reaches of doubt and faith, and of a family trying to figure out how to carry on when the innermost workings of their world have broken apart.

    Streisand. Dylan. Pavarotti. McCartney. Sting. Madonna. What do these musicians have in common besides their super-stardom? They have all worked with legendary music producer Phil Ramone. For almost five decades, Phil Ramone has been a force in the music industry. He has produced records and collaborated with almost every major talent in the business. There is a craft to making records, and Phil has spent his life mastering it. For the first time ever, he shares the secrets of his trade.Making Records is a fascinating look "behind the glass" of a recording studio. From Phil's exhilarating early days recording jazz and commercial jingles at A&R, to his first studio, and eventual legendary producer status, Phil allows you to sit in on the sessions that created some of the most memorable music of the 20th century -- including Frank Sinatra's Duets album, Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Ray Charles's Genius Loves Company and Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years. In addition to being a ringside seat for contemporary popular music history, Making Records is an unprecedented tutorial on the magic behind what music producers and engineers do. In these pages, Phil offers a rare peek inside the way music is made . . . illuminating the creative thought processes behind some of the most influential sessions in music history. This is a book about the art that is making records -- the way it began, the way it is now, and everything in between.

    Sister Hinckley looked at life with a twinkle in her eye. Her genuine interest in others made them care a little more for each other. Her quiet, constant support of her husband showed what an eternal partnership could be like here and now. Most of all, her shining faith was a beacon of hope for thousands, even millions of people across the world. Sister Hinckley's legacy of love and faith and humor is preserved, in large part, in the many letters she wrote over the course of the years. Letters is a sampling of those marvelous communications, a look behind the scenes at the life of an extraordinary but somehow delightfully "real" woman, wife, and mother. The letters run the spectrum of experience: her trials as a young mother, her musings sent to adult children, her observations on her travels, her words of love to grandchildren. In them, a portrait emerges of a woman whose life is not so different from our own, a woman who took the everyday experiences of her world and made of them something beautiful and lasting. "Of all the things that she left behind when she passed away at the age of ninety-two," write her five children in the introduction to this book, "we treasure nothing more then her letters and postcards. We hear her voice; she returns to our circle and helps us remember earlier times. In the touch of the paper and the tidy, small handwriting we are tangibly connected again." Readers everywhere will appreciate the opportunity for this final, tangible connection with a much-loved friend.

    

    The survivor, Isabelle, is left to pick up the pieces, not only of her own life but of the lives of the devastated husband and fragile son that the other woman, April, has left behind. Together, they try to solve the mystery of where April was running to, and why. As these three lives intersect, they are left to ask, How well do we really know those we love--and how do we forgive the unforgivable?

    From the author of the bestselling Snow Falling on Cedars comes a compelling new novel about youth and idealism, adulthood and its compromises, and two powerfully different visions of what it means to live a good life.

    She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter Laura’s best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past, since he took his childhood summer vacations here, his parents’ respite from the hated Midwest. And the Cape is where he and Joy honeymooned, in the course of which they drafted the Great Truro Accord, a plan for their lives together that’s now thirty years old and has largely come true. He’d left screenwriting and Los Angeles behind for the sort of New England college his snobby academic parents had always aspired to in vain; they’d moved into an old house full of character; and they’d started a family. Check, check and check.But be careful what you pray for, especially if you manage to achieve it. By the end of this perfectly lovely weekend, the past has so thoroughly swamped the present that the future suddenly hangs in the balance. And when, a year later, a far more important wedding takes place, their beloved Laura’s, on the coast of Maine, Griffin’s chauffeuring two urns of ashes as he contends once more with Joy and her large, unruly family, and both he and she have brought dates along. How in the world could this have happened?That Old Cape Magic is a novel of deep introspection and every family feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged man confronting his parents and their failed marriage, his own troubled one, his daughter’s new life and, finally, what it was he thought he wanted and what in fact he has. The storytelling is flawless throughout, moments of great comedy and even hilarity alternating with others of rueful understanding and heart-stopping sadness, and its ending is at once surprising, uplifting and unlike anything this Pulitzer Prize winner has ever written.From the Hardcover edition.

    Ginny Young is on a plane, en route to see her mother, whom she hasn't seen or spoken to for thirty-five years. She thinks back to the summer of 1958, when she and her sister, Sharla, were young girls. At that time, a series of dramatic events--beginning with the arrival of a mysterious and sensual next-door neighbor--divided the family, separating the sisters from their mother. Moving back and forth in time between the girl she once was and the woman she's become, Ginny at last confronts painful choices that occur in almost any woman's life, and learns surprising truths about the people she thought she knew best. Emotional honesty and a true understanding of people and relationships are combined in this moving and deeply satisfying new book by the novelist who "writes with humor and a big heart about resilience, love and hope. And the transcendence that redeems" (Andre Dubus).

    But he needed one…Emily and her husband Sandy Portman seemed to live a gracious if busy life in an old-world, Upper West Side apartment in the famous Dakota building.  But one night on the way to meet Emily, Sandy dies in a tragic accident.  The funeral isn't even over before Emily learns she is on the verge of being evicted from their apartment.  But worse than the possibility of losing her home, Emily is stunned when she discovers that her marriage was made up of lies.  Suddenly Emily is forced on a journey to find out who her husband really was . . . all the while feeling that somehow he isn't really gone.  Angry, hurt, and sometimes betrayed by loving memories of the man she lost, Emily finds comfort in a scruffy dog named Einstein.  But is Einstein's seemingly odd determination that she save herself enough to make Emily confront her own past?  Can he help her find a future—even after she meets a new man?

    Sure, she knew Mormons didn't drink caffeine (cough), and they never swore (double cough), but life with family-centered folks would be cozy and wonderful. She could smell the fresh-baked bread just thinking about it. Join her as she honestly, humorously, and lovingly describes her quest to find someone with a real panty line problem, requests her LDS friends baptize her-after she dies-and considers her dad's suggestion to become a Jack Mormon. Although not a convert, Chrisy develops an understanding and respect for a widely misunderstood religion and has found a comfortable spot in her town, the community and the culture.