Murder, human-rights abuse, drugs, prisoner and child sex slavery, blackmail, extortion, extreme violence, medical maltreatment, and unjustifiable death penalties feature as everyday occurrences in the living hells that are Bangkwang and Klong Prem jails. Sebastian Williams' blistering exposé graphically reveals this shocking reality through the eyes of a long-term inmate who has endured first hand the unimaginable, inhuman nightmare that constitutes the Thai penal system.

    Important elements of early Japanese history persist in present-day Japan more tenaciously than is sometimes realized. Hane traces the key developments of Japanese history in the premodern period, including the establishment of the imperial dynasty, early influences from China and Korea, the rise of the samurai class and the establishment of feudalism, the culture and society of the long Tokugawa period, the rise of Confucianism and Shinto nationalism, and, finally, the end of Tokugawa rule.Although the book is structured around major political developments, Hane also carefully integrates the social, economic, cultural, and intellectual aspects of Japanese history. His revisions incorporate important recent scholarship on this formative period of Japan's history.

    Probing ancient Christian practices for renewal, Almost Holy Mama chronicles one mom's quest to discover an answer to her most pressing question: Can God use the challenges of parenthood to grow your character?You long to spend time with God and catch your spiritual breath, but you find yourself honestly wondering--how and when? Ellis gets its. It's hard to carve out space for a quiet moment with God, let alone a quiet time! Instead of adding more tasks to your plate, Almost Holy Mama will help you integrate your spiritual practices into your daily life. From studying Scripture in the shower to listening in prayer at the foot of Laundry Mountain, Ellis finds that meeting God in sacred disciplines can breathe new life into one of life's most joy-filled and trying seasons.Paperback, 256 pages, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, ISBN 9781628627909. Table of Contents:Running on Empty, Longing for More Car Rides & Contemplation: Finding Jesus on the Freeways Sleepytime & Service: Sacrificial Love at the End of a Long Day Eating & the Examen: Finding God at the Dinner Table Laundry & Listening Prayer: Because Sometimes the Voice of God Sounds a Lot like the Dryer Showering with Scripture: Wash over Me, Lord Fasting from Facebook: Giving Up to Gain Suffering & Stillness: Because Sometimes All You Can Do Is Nothing Getting Ready with Gratitude: Thanksgiving amid Chaos Travel & Pilgrimage: Going Away and Coming Home Ceasing & Celebration: Discovering the Playful God Almost Holy, Fully Loved: Where Do We Go from Here? Perfect for:Parents Gifts for expecting parents Single mother/father groups Foster parents and guardians Pastors and counselors And more About the Author Courtney Ellis serves as associate pastor for spiritual formation and mission at Presbyterian Church of the Master. She holds degrees from Wheaton College, Loyola University of Chicago, and Princeton Theological Seminary, and has been published in Marriage/Partnership, Rock & Ice Magazine, and Christianity Today Women. She's a contributor at The Glorious Table and The Mighty. Courtney is a sought-after speaker for leadership and women's retreats, MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers), and young adult ministries. She's a gifted storyteller with strengths in bringing parents, marrieds, singles, and millennials together. Courtney lives in southern California with her husband (and co-pastor) Daryl and their children.

    Substitute Teaching from A to Z is a one-stop resource, whether you're a full-timer, just breaking in, or starting out as a career educator. Reinforced with true life tales from real substitute teachers and the stories of how they solved their biggest challenges, this book is a comprehensive guide written by a veteran teaching expert who specializes in training subs.You'll learn insider tricks on how to:Show school administrators you have the right stuff for the jobChoose the most appropriate grades, subjects, and school districts for youForge great relationships with everyone you work withLand the best classroom assignmentsFace a new class with confidenceMaintain discipline, work without a lesson plan, and much more

    After their deaths, each year on the anniversary of the broadcast, their souls would return to the Chinese village of their younger days. It’s where they had fought—and survived—a war that shook the world and changed their own lives in unimaginable ways. Now, seventy years later, the pledge is being fulfilled by American missionary Pastor Billy, brash gunner’s mate Ian Ferguson, and local soldier Liu Zhaohu.All that’s missing is Ah Yan—also known as Swallow—the girl each man loved, each in his own profound way.As they unravel their personal stories of the war, and of the woman who touched them so deeply during that unforgiving time, the story of Ah Yan’s life begins to take shape, woven into view by their memories. A woman who had suffered unspeakable atrocities, and yet found the grace and dignity to survive, she’d been the one to bring them together. And it is her spark of humanity, still burning brightly, that gives these ghosts of the past the courage to look back on everything they endured and remember the woman they lost.

    Known as the “Narito Disappearances,” the crime has authorities baffled—until a confession appears on the police’s doorstep, signed by Oda Sotatsu, a thread salesman. Sotatsu is arrested, jailed, and interrogated—but he refuses to speak. Even as his parents, brother, and sister come to visit him, even as his execution looms, and even as a young woman named Jito Joo enters his cell, he maintains his vow of silence. Our narrator, a journalist named Jesse Ball, is grappling with mysteries of his own when he becomes fascinated by the case. Why did Sotatsu confess? Why won’t he speak? Who is Jito Joo? As Ball interviews Sotatsu’s family, friends, and jailers, he uncovers a complex story of heartbreak, deceit, honor, and chance. Wildly inventive and emotionally powerful, Silence Once Begun is a devastating portrayal of a justice system compromised, and evidence that Jesse Ball is a voraciously gifted novelist working at the height of his powers.

    With equal parts humanity, insanity, and profanity, Frank Stepnowski, a twenty year veteran of the academic wars, offers unique insight into a world everybody knows about but very few understand. "Step" as he was re-christened by his students, pulls no punches in the classroom, and takes no prisoners in his writing debut. The title, which comes from a line that the author heard many times throughout his career, is both a confession and a confirmation. "I wanted a book," he explains, "that would make people laugh out loud but also open their eyes to just how insane the teaching profession can get. With that in mind, the book is a riotous success, providing searing insight into the classroom and giving an iconoclastic voice to a profession that often goes unheard. Why Are All the Good teachers Crazy? is a wake up call for some, a rallying cry for others, and an invitation to laugh and learn for everyone.Based on actual events, the vivid imagery, colorful characters, and incendiary dialogue of this nuclear powered novel will take readers on a roller coaster ride that they will be talking about long after the ride is over.

    Seventeen-year-old Naoko Nakamura’s prearranged marriage to the son of her father’s business associate would secure her family’s status in their traditional Japanese community, but Naoko has fallen for another man—an American sailor, a gaijin—and to marry him would bring great shame upon her entire family. When it’s learned Naoko carries the sailor’s child, she’s cast out in disgrace and forced to make unimaginable choices with consequences that will ripple across generations.America, present day. Tori Kovač, caring for her dying father, finds a letter containing a shocking revelation—one that calls into question everything she understood about him, her family and herself. Setting out to learn the truth behind the letter, Tori’s journey leads her halfway around the world to a remote seaside village in Japan, where she must confront the demons of the past to pave a way for redemption.In breathtaking prose and inspired by true stories from a devastating and little-known era in Japanese and American history, The Woman in the White Kimono illuminates a searing portrait of one woman torn between her culture and her heart, and another woman on a journey to discover the true meaning of home.

    1857. It is the height of British Imperialism in India, and the Sepoys are making a stand. This classic history of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 addresses both the causes and consequences of one of the greatest uprisings in the history of the British Empire. With the introduction of cartridges believed to have been greased in cow and pig fat the issue of religious disrespect started to inflame the Sepoys. How much influence did the greased cartridge issue have on the crisis?Were they merely a catalyst for an already turbulent situation?Had trouble long been simmering among the Bengal Army native soldiers?What affect did terms of service, poor pay and lack of promotion prospects have upon the prospect of a mutiny?In this abbreviated history drawn from an earlier six volume work, George Bruce Malleson utlises his military background and first-hand knowledge of India to present an analysis of the underlying causes of this violent mutiny. George Bruce Malleson (1825-1898) was British officer who served in India. He served through the second Burmese War and his first work was published in Calcutta, in the midst of the mutiny, in 1857. His other works include History of the French in India and The Decisive Battles of India. For details of other books published by Albion Press go to the website at www.albionpress.co.uk. Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

    These kids often have violent outbursts, steal, engage in outlandish lying, play with feces, and hoard food. They are broken children who too often break even the most loving of caregivers. Many parents of these children feel utterly isolated as family, friends, and professionals minimize their struggles. Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) - The Essential Guide for Parents is written by a parent who is in the trenches with you. Keri has lived the journey of raising a son with RAD and has navigated the mental health system for over a decade. This is the resource you’ve been waiting for – you won’t find platitudes or false hopes. What you will find is essential information, practical suggestions, and resource recommendations to provide a way forward. If you desperately need help navigating the difficult RAD journey with your child, this book is for you.

    (No one will tell her exactly why.) Alex Thorn, an American psychologist, is mourning his son, a Shizuyama exchange student who was killed in an accident. (No one will tell him exactly how.) Alex has come to this utterly foreign place to find the truth, and now Gaby is serving as his translator and guide. The key to mastering Japanese, she keeps telling him, is understanding what's not being said. And in this "deft and delightful" (Karen Joy Fowler) novel, the unsaid truths about everything from work and love to illness and death cast a deafening silence-and tower in the background like Mount Fuji itself.

    The war was coming to an end at last. The people of Nagasaki knew this as they desperately tried to survive each day's shortages of food and warmth - ordinary people going about their lives as normally as they could manage. People like Nagai, the doctor who'd just been told he had leukemia; Father Tamaya, the obliging Catholic priest, who'd agreed to postpone a return to his rural parish; and Koichi, the mobilised tram driver, who secretly watched the Noguchi sisters sobbing behind the company toilet block. Because the bombing of Hiroshima had been so devastating and there was severe media censorship, they knew nothing of what had befallen that city except for the unbelievable stories told by a few survivors who had just now arrived. Beyond Japan, forces they could never have imagined were mustering as the Americans prepared to drop their next atomic bomb on the armaments manufacturing city of Kokura. Bad weather, however, sent the pilots and their terrible load to Nagasaki, where a small group of 169 POWs, including 24 Australians, were digging air-raid shelters and repairing bridges near what became the bomb's epicentre. And, above the heads of them all, the machinery of wartime politics stumbled on towards its catastrophic finale. In this compelling narrative - based on eye-witness accounts, contemporary diaries, letters and interviews - Craig Collie collects up the stories of the many levels of devastation suffered on that fateful day. We come as close as history will allow us to being there when 80,000 people died as a result of the bomb, half of that number instantaneously. The world had changed forever and the shock waves would ripple right up to the present day, as we continue to contemplate the terrible power of a nuclear future

    In 1997 it had been running for 50 years, with less than one hundred people successfully completing it – only four of which had been non-Japanese. In the same year Scott Langley was at the top of his game, a third degree black belt, captain of the British JKS National Team and JKS European and World Champion. He moved to Japan with a secret plan – to be the fifth foreigner to complete the course. This is the true story of Scott’s Journey, spanning five years, chronicling the highs and lows of facing karate’s toughest challenge and how he learnt to survive and never give in.In Autumn 2013 Scott sent this book to his Sensei in Japan for their approval. They responded immediately declaring the book to be full of lies and misrepresentations of Japan and forbade him to publish it. He was suspended for a month and then affectively expelled in January 2014. Suddenly, his 30 year relationship with Japanese karate had abruptly come to an end. This had been major a part of his entire karate life and he had dedicated himself to its values and rules, running a karate organization in Ireland for over ten years. He never wanted to jeopardize his position or damage the reputation of the group. However, unfortunately, the sacrifices he made during this true story are nothing compared to the sacrifices he has had to make to publish it. About the Author Scott Langley began karate in 1985. Showing a rare combination of aptitude, dedication and love of the art, Scott rose through the grades at a steady rate. In 1991 he gained his black belt. However, this was just the beginning. He quickly began winning national competitions and in 1993 was selected for the Japan Karate Shotorenmei national team. While at university he trained daily at his university club and under the guidance of Sadashige Kato 8th Dan. By the time Scott graduated, he was a 3rd Dan and had become one of the youngest people to win the JKS World Championships. But this was just the foundation of what lay ahead. In 1997 Scott moved to Japan to train full time at the World Headquarters. In 2000 he was invited to enter the elusive instructors’ course and after two years of intensive training, graduated, becoming only the fifth westerner to complete the challenge. He moved to Ireland with a mandate to promote the JKS within the British Isles. Within a decade Scott’s group had become the biggest single style association in the UK and Ireland and was as big at the JKS in Japan. He now teaches fulltime at www.hombudojokarate.com

    Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Yoshida Kenko (c. 1283-1352). Kenko's work is included in Penguin Classics in Essays in Idleness and Hojoki.

    "If a woman knows nothing else, she should know how to be silent. . . . Do not question. Do not fight. Do not resist." Such is eight-year-old Noriko "Nori" Kamiza's first lesson. She will not question why her mother abandoned her with only these final words. She will not fight her confinement to the attic of her grandparents' imperial estate. And she will not resist the scalding chemical baths she receives daily to lighten her shameful skin.The illegitimate child of a Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Nori is an outsider from birth. Though her grandparents take her in, they do so only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. Obedient to a fault, Nori accepts her solitary life for what it is, despite her natural intellect and nagging curiosity about what lies outside the attic's walls. But when chance brings her legitimate older half-brother, Akira, to the estate that is his inheritance and destiny, Nori finds in him the first person who will allow her to question, and the siblings form an unlikely but powerful bond—a bond their formidable grandparents cannot allow and that will irrevocably change the lives they were always meant to lead. Because now that Nori has glimpsed a world in which perhaps there is a place for her after all, she is ready to fight to be a part of it—a battle that just might cost her everything.Spanning decades and continents, Fifty Words for Rain is a dazzling epic about the ties that bind, the ties that give you strength, and what it means to try to break free.