Until a knock comes at the door. In a research facility hidden deep in the Maine woods, Jenn and her fellow scientists have been trying to prepare for a possible bioterror attack. But that's not how the end comes. It comes in blooms of mushroom clouds covering the globe. With eleven people, plenty of water, and some food, they may be able to survive for eight weeks, perhaps just long enough to survive the worst of the fallout. But the people inside unravel quickly. And things go from bad to worse when fists pound on the outer door. Warning: there are scenes in this book that might disturb some readers

    But her commitments escalate as she deals with defiant behavior from five-year-old Ben and takes a niece into her home. Toni cuts her hours temporarily to part-time, terrified of "losing herself completely" to her family. Then she discovers that Ben has been photographed and molested by a child pornographer. Toni must finally make a choice that's not really a choice: "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it" (Mark 8:35, NIV).

    The bad news is that these turn out to be the very things most discouraged by contemporary culture. This knotty dilemma is the subject of The Age of Absurdity - a wry and accessible investigation into how the desirable states of wellbeing and satisfaction are constantly undermined by modern life. Michael Foley examines the elusive condition of happiness common to philosophy, spiritual teachings and contemporary psychology, then shows how these are becoming increasingly difficult to apply in a world of high expectations. The common challenges of earning a living, maintaining a relationship and ageing are becoming battlegrounds of existential angst and self-loathing in a culture that demands conspicuous consumption, high-octane partnerships and perpetual youth. In conclusion, rather than denouncing and rejecting the age, Foley presents an entertaining strategy of not just accepting but embracing today's world - finding happiness in its absurdity.

    When she swaps life as she knows it for an uncertain future on a sailboat, she succumbs to seasickness and a growing desire to be alone.Guided by impulsiveness and the joys of an alternative lifestyle, she must navigate personal storms, trouble with US immigration, adverse weather conditions, and doubts about her newfound love.Does Liesbet find happiness? Will the dogs outlast the man? Or is this just another reality check on a dream to live at sea?

    But her spirit lives today.Jezebel was the most wicked woman in the Bible, a powerful seductress who killed the prophets, led Israel into idolatry and immorality, and emasculated men. She was seductive and determined to snuff out the voices coming against her, because these voices were calling out for repentance.In twenty-first-century America, Jezebel is not a person. But it’s as if the spirit of Jezebel is alive again today. The influence of the same demonic force is being felt in the massive increase of pornography and sexual temptation, the militant spirit of abortion, the rise of radical feminism, and most importantly, in the attempt to silence prophetic voices. Just as Jezebel clashed with strong men almost three thousand years ago, the demonic spirit of Jezebel is powerful in America, and it is going after the church.This eye-opening book not only unveils the satanic plot to destroy America, beginning with an all-out assault on the church, but it will equip every believer with tools to defeat the enemy in their own personal lives as well as in the nation. This book will show you how the spirit of Jezebel is active in America today and teach you how to protect the church.OTHER BOOKS BY MICHAEL L. BROWN, PHD:Playing With Holy Fire (2018) ISBN-13: 978-1629994987The Power of Music (2019)ISBN-13: 978-1629995953Breaking the Stronghold of Food (2017) ISBN-13: 978-1629990996

    When a convoy halts to investigate a possible roadside bomb, stay in the vehicle and scan five meters in every direction. A bomb inside five meters cuts through the armor, killing everyone in the truck. Once clear, get out and sweep twenty-five meters. A bomb inside twenty-five meters kills the dismounted scouts investigating the road ahead.Fives and twenty-fives mark the measure of a marine's life in the road repair platoon. Dispatched to fill potholes on the highways of Iraq, the platoon works to assure safe passage for citizens and military personnel. Their mission lacks the glory of the infantry, but in a war where every pothole contains a hidden bomb, road repair brings its own danger.Lieutenant Donavan leads the platoon, painfully aware of his shortcomings and isolated by his rank. Doc Pleasant, the medic, joined for opportunity, but finds his pride undone as he watches friends die. And there's Kateb, known to the Americans as Dodge, an Iraqi interpreter whose love of American culture-from hip-hop to the dog-eared copy of Huck Finn he carries-is matched only by his disdain for what Americans are doing to his country.Returning home, they exchange one set of decisions and repercussions for another, struggling to find a place in a world that no longer knows them. A debut both transcendent and rooted in the flesh, Fives and Twenty-Fives is a deeply necessary novel.

    In short, he shows what a marvel it is - part of a series of twelve books tied to the twelve lines of the London Underground.In John Lanchester's inimiatable style, he unravels the various mysteries of the Underground and explores its true significance for both London and the wider world. Like, what's the difference between the Underground and the Tube? How do tube drivers get to work to start driving the tubes when the tube lines aren't running? And where can you get your hands on driver-point-of-view videos?

    While Ally has four children and a cozy home life, Miranda is child-free, married to a millionaire, and living in an astounding show home. Ally gave up trying to compete years ago, so she is shocked when Miranda asks her if she will help provide the one thing that is missing from her perfect life: a baby. Ally has every sympathy for Miranda's infertility problems, but she wonders if she can have a baby and hand it over to someone else, even if that person is her own sister.

    The Song of the Nibelungen tracks the collapse of a Germanic kingdom on the edge of the Roman Empire. Both the French Song of Roland and the Serbian Kosovo Cycle emerged from devastating conflicts between Christian and Muslim powers. Beowulf, the only surviving Old English epic, and the great Icelandic Saga of Burnt Njal, respond to times of great religious struggle - the shift from paganism to Christianity. These stories have stirred passions ever since they were composed, motivating armies and revolutionaries, and they continue to do so today.Reaching back into the ancient and medieval eras in which these defining works were produced, and investigating their continuing influence today, Epic Continent explores how matters of honour, fundamentalism, fate, nationhood, sex, class and politics have preoccupied the people of Europe across the millennia. In these tales soaked in blood and fire, Nicholas Jubber discovers how the world of gods and emperors, dragons and water-maidens, knights and princesses made our own: their deep impact on European identity, and their resonance in our turbulent times.

    Three years later, the case was still haunting him, so he returned to the subject to examine its impact on a more personal level. More than anything, Morrison wanted an answer as to why the murder happened. He had started out (naively) believing that this was a question the trial would answer, and was dismayed to find that it was the one issue the court never addressed. Do the boys themselves know why? "I don't think they'll ever know," Morrison writes. "The further they go from it and the more they talk to therapists, the more they will develop a story about what happened. But whether that's a true story is very debatable... There isn't going to be the single answer that we all crave." And so Morrison turned inward to look for answers, mulling over his own experiences of being a child and being a parent. As If (named from the expression he hears his children using to express skepticism) is an extended personal essay on the nature of childhood, including aggressive and sexual feelings that children have and those that other people have toward children. With its flurry of quotations and ruminations, this book won't be to everyone's taste, but it does illustrate an intriguingly personal approach to understanding a crime. --Fiona Webster

    Natural disasters. Domestic crackdowns. Economic collapse. Riots. Wars. Disease. Starvation.What can you do when it all hits the fan?You can learn to be self-sufficient and survive without the system."I've started to look at the world through apocalypse eyes." So begins Neil Strauss's harrowing new book: his first full-length work since the international bestseller The Game, and one of the most original-and provocative-narratives of the year.After the last few years of violence and terror, of ethnic and religious hatred, of tsunamis and hurricanes–and now of world financial meltdown–Strauss, like most of his generation, came to the sobering realization that, even in America, anything can happen. But rather than watch helplessly, he decided to do something about it. And so he spent three years traveling through a country that's lost its sense of safety, equipping himself with the tools necessary to save himself and his loved ones from an uncertain future.With the same quick wit and eye for cultural trends that marked The Game, The Dirt, and How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, Emergency traces Neil's white-knuckled journey through today's heart of darkness, as he sets out to move his life offshore, test his skills in the wild, and remake himself as a gun-toting, plane-flying, government-defying survivor. It's a tale of paranoid fantasies and crippling doubts, of shady lawyers and dangerous cult leaders, of billionaire gun nuts and survivalist superheroes, of weirdos, heroes, and ordinary citizens going off the grid.It's one man's story of a dangerous world–and how to stay alive in it.Before the next disaster strikes, you're going to want to read this book. And you'll want to do everything it suggests. Because tomorrow doesn't come with a guarantee...

    It's home to all sorts of people, with all the stresses and joys of modern life, but with a town square and a proper butcher's. It also has, for our purposes, a rash of gory murders ...  Jess Castle is running away. Again. This time she's running back home, like she swore she never would.   Castle Kidbury, like all small towns, hums with gossip but now it's plagued with murder of the most gruesome kind. Jess instinctively believes that the hippyish cult camped out on the edge of town are not responsible for the spate of crucifixions that blights the pretty landscape. Her father, a respected judge, despairs of Jess as she infiltrates the cult and manages, not for the first time, to get herself arrested.  Rupert Lawson, a schooldays crush who's now a barrister, bails her out. Jess ropes in a reluctant Rupert as she gatecrashes the murder investigation of DS Eden. A by-the-book copper, Eden has to admit that intuitive, eccentric Jess has the nose of a detective.   As the gory murders pile up, there’s nothing to connect the victims. And yet, the clues are there if you look hard enough.

    Following on his compelling prior volume, Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity, Professor Esolen returns, this time in defense of boys and an experience of boyhood that is on the wane, if not extinguished in many quarters of the modern world—and to illuminate the threats our precious sons face from harridans, harpies, and all purveyors and promoters of political correctness and of the misguided and ultimately doomed-though not before it has done much mischief-project of blurring the distinctions between boys and girls.   Drawing on his own, in many ways all-American boyhood, Esolen, at times wistfully, at times, playfully, and at times prophetically—in the literal sense of employing the thunder of an Old Testament prophet, details what a good boyhood once was and what it can be again. He does so in chapters inspiringly titled:   The Arena to Enter Brothers to Gather Mountains to Climb The Man to Follow Work to Do Songs to Sing Enemies to Slay Life to Give   Anthony Esolen prescribes a return to sanity to an insane world. He may not be able to change the world, but enter into the world of boyhood with him and he just might change you and the lives of the boys you love.

    With their beautiful 3.75 square-island constantly in the media glare, Palm Beachers protect their impossibly rich society from outside scrutiny with vigilant police, ubiquitous personal security staffs, and screens of tall hedges encircling every mansion.To this bizarre suspicious, exclusive world, New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler brought his charm, insight, and award-winning investigative skills, and came to know Palm Beach, its celebrated and powerful residents, and its exotic social rituals as no outside writer ever has. In this colorful, entertaining, and compulsively readable book. Kessler reveals the inside story of Palm Beach society as it moves languidly through the summer months, quickens in the fall, and shifts into frenetic high speed as the season begins in December, peaks in January and February, and continues into April.When unimaginable wealth combines with unlimited leisure time oil an island barely three times the size of New York's Central Park, human foibles and desires, lust and greed, passion and avarice, become magnified and intensified. Like laboratory rats fed growth hormones, the 9,800 Palm Beach residents—87 percent of whom are millionaires—exhibit the most outlandish extremes of their breed.To tell the story, Kessler follows four Palm Beachers through the season. These four characters—the reigning queen of Palm Beach society, the night manager of Palm Beach's trendiest bar, a gay "walker" who escorts wealthy women to balls, and a thirty—six-year-old gorgeous blonde who says she "can't find a guy in Palm Beach"—know practically everyone on the island and tell what goes on behind the scenes.Interweaving the yarns of these unfor-gettable figures with the lifestyle, history, scandals, lore, and rituals of a unique island of excess, The Season creates a powerful, seamless, juicy narrative that no novelist could dream up.

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