They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They're completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home—a home that is silent and suffocating. As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city, where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father’s authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins’ laughter rings throughout the house. When they return home, tensions within the family escalate, and Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together.Purple Hibiscus is an exquisite novel about the emotional turmoil of adolescence, the powerful bonds of family, and the bright promise of freedom.

    Here, women live within stringently enforced doctrines of wifely submission and male headship, and live by the Quiverfull philosophy of letting God give them as many children as possible so as to win the religion and culture wars through demographic means.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    The Secret Mother puts a face on the label Made in China - the bittersweet story of a girl - like millions of others - willing to risk everything.

    Packed with the warmth and the wry, sidelong wit that made Ferber one of the best-loved writers of her time, the novel charts Fanny's emotional growth through her relationship with her mother, the shrewd, sympathetic Molly Brandeis. You could not have lived a week in Winnebago without being aware of Mrs. Brandeis, Ferber begins, and likewise the story of Fanny Brandeis is inextricable from that of her vigorous, enterprising mother. Molly Brandeis is the owner and operator of Brandeis' Bazaar, a modest general store left to her by her idealistic, commercially inept late husband. As Fanny strives to carve out her own sense of herself, Molly becomes the standard by which she measures her intellectual and spiritual progress. toward her gift for sketching and drawing, and her inspired success as a businesswoman all contribute to the flesh-and-blood complexity of Ferber's youthful, eminently believable protagonist. She is accompanied on her journey by impeccably drawn characters such as Father Fitzpatrick, the Catholic priest in Winnebago; Ella Monahan, buyer for the glove department of the Haynes-Cooper mail order house; Fanny's brother, Theodore, a gifted violinist for whose musical education Molly sacrifices Fanny's future; and Clarence Heyl, the scrappy columnist who never forgot how Fanny rescued him from the school bullies. Ferber's only work of fiction with a strong autobiographical element, Fanny Herself showcases the author's enduring interest in the capacity of strong women to transcend the limitations of their environment and control their own circumstances. Through Fanny's honest struggle with conflicting values-financial security and corporate success versus altruism and artistic integrity-Ferber grapples with some of the most deeply embedded contradictions of the American spirit.

    His parents Annie and Levi are struggling to make ends meet, both suffering with illness and poverty. Freddie is an outsider at school, misunderstood and angry. They need their luck to change.Unbeknown to his parents, Freddie holds the key to their future. He has a gift, a gift he has told no one about. If he can learn how to ovecome his fears, he could use it to change all their lives for ever ... Searching to overcome hardship and prejudice, can Freddie find love and happiness or will mistrust ruin his life?For fans of nostalgic saga, this is a gripping saga from the bestselling author of Solomon's Tale.

    Or so she thinks. An unimaginable betrayal by those she loves causes her to flee her home and family one snowy night. Crushed and heartbroken, Ruby vows that despite the odds stacked against her she will not only survive, but one day will show the ones she left behind that she’s succeeded in making something of herself. Brave words, but the reality is far from easy. Dangers Ruby could never have foreseen and more tragedy threaten her new life, and love always seems just out of reach. Can a happy ending ever be hers?

    This Bible study book serves as a road map for the beginner to develop an appreciation of the Bible and make it a part of their daily living. All 66 books of the Bible are covered in detail, including: • Author of each book and the time frame in which it was written • Key themes for each book • Summary of the message in each book • A devotion for contemplation and further exploration Immerse yourself in the stories, prophecies, and messages of the Bible and discover anew the awe-inspiring force, mercy, and healing power of God and Jesus Christ. Graceful and inspiring, Bible Study for Beginners brings the reader back to the basics and opens the way to a direct relationship with the living Word of God.

    After receiving a teaching degree during the civil war—a rare achievement for any Afghan woman—Kamila was subsequently banned from school and confined to her home. When her father and brother were forced to flee the city, Kamila became the sole breadwinner for her five siblings. Armed only with grit and determination, she picked up a needle and thread and created a thriving business of her own.The Dressmaker of Khair Khana tells the incredible true story of this unlikely entrepreneur who mobilized her community under the Taliban. Former ABC Newsreporter Gayle Tzemach Lemmon spent years on the ground reporting Kamila's story, and the result is an unusually intimate and unsanitized look at the daily lives of women in Afghanistan. These women are not victims; they are the glue that holds families together; they are the backbone and the heart of their nation.Afghanistan's future remains uncertain as debates over withdrawal timelines dominate the news. The Dressmaker of Khair Khana moves beyond the headlines to transport you to an Afghanistan you have never seen before. This is a story of war, but it is also a story of sisterhood and resilience in the face of despair. Kamila Sidiqi's journey will inspire you, but it will also change the way you think about one of the most important political and humanitarianissues of our time.

    You already know David as the legendary warrior king of Israel, husband of Bathsheba, and father of Solomon; now meet David as he really was: the cocky Jewish kid, the plagiarized poet, and the Jewish father. Listen as David tells his own story, a story both relentlessly ancient and surprisingly modern, about growing up and growing old, about men and women, and about man and God. It is quintessential Heller.

    . . A LARD raised his head. It was a pleasant voice, though a little drunken, and the words came clearly enough, a trifle blurred about the con sonants, to the high window of the Maison du Poirier. The window was open, for the June night was hot, and there were few noises after ten oclock in the Place du Parvis Notre Dame. Time goes by, And naught do I. Time comes again, . . . Et ne fais rien Abelards smile broadened. I am very sure, my friend, said he, that you do not. But at any rate he had found a good tune. The listeners ear was quick. He began not ing it on the margin of his manuscript, while his brain busied itself fitting Latin words to the original a pity to waste so good a tune and so profound a sentiment on a language that was the breath of a day, Fugit hora, Absque mora, Nihil facio . . . Not to that tune. The insinuating, if doomed, vernacu lar lilted again. Abelard realized that he was spoiling the 3 PETER ABELARD margin of his Commentary on Ezekiel, and turned back resolutely. Now, as Augustine says, our concern with any man is not with what eloquence he teaches, but with what evidence. But the thread of his argument was broken he got up and came over to the window. The singing had stopped, but he could see the tonsured head below him, glimmeringlike a mushroom in the dusk, while the legs tacked uncertainly across the broad pavement of the Parvis Notre Dame on their way to the cheerful squalors of the Petit Pont. Suddenly they halted the moon had come out from a drifting haze, and the singer, pausing on the edge of a pool of light, peered at it anxiously, and then lifted up his eyes. The voice rose again, chastened, this time in the venerable cadences of the hymn for dawn Jam lucis orto sidere Statini oportct bibere. The blasphemous pup, said Abelard. He leaned out, to hear the rest of it Now risen is the star of day. Let us arise and drink straightway. That we in peace this day may spend, Drink we and drink, nor make an end. This was a better parody, because a simpler, than the one he had made upon it himself ten years ago, to illus trate for his students the difference between the acci dents and the essential, the accidents being the words, the essential the tune. Lord, the Blessed Gosvins face when he began singing it Doubtless he would be the Blessed Gosvin some day so holy a youth could not fail of a 4 THE CLOISTER OF NOTRE DAME sanctified old age. St. Gosvin perhaps the youngster was Prior already at ... he had forgotten where. The im pudent, smooth-faced prig. Abelards mind was running down a channel it knew and did not like the moment in the classroom at St. Genevieve, when Gosvins reedy treble had interrupted the resonant voice from the rostrum with those innocent questionings, answered contemptuously, the masters eyes half averted and his mind less than half attentive, till the sudden horrid silence brought him to his senses and he realized that he was trapped, even as he had so often trapped that good old goat, William of Champeaux. He had recovered, magnificently but for the moment he had felt the hounds at his throat. And the cheering had been too vehement they knew. Somebody on the lie de Cite that night made a song about David and Goliath, not a very good song, but the name had stuck to him since, though not many remembered the origin of it. A pity, all the same, that Gosvin took to the cloister. It w r ould be very pleasant to have him lecturing to empty benches at St. Genevieve, while at Notre Dame the stu dents wedged open the doors and stood thick on the stairs...

    Fans of Jennifer Haigh’s Faith, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, and Katrina Kittle’s The Kindness of Strangers will be captivated by Umrigar’s The World We Found—a moving story of bottled secrets, unfulfilled dreams, and the acceptance that can still lead to redemption, from a writer whom the New York Times calls “perceptive and often piercing.”

    They were the men who came to your father in his hour of need. They were the men who fought with him. They were men, and that is the highest that can be written of them…”Eliahba is a mere boy who has been thrust into Saul’s army as it hopelessly defends the mountains of Gilboa against a Philistine onslaught. He must endure the unthinkable in order to survive…and one day become a member of the elite Giborrim.The Hall of the Mighty Men is a companion series to the Lion of War novels about the wars of King David. Narrated by Jehoshaphat, the historian of King Solomon, this collection of short stories expands the Lion of War literary universe and contains epic battles and adventures unable to be included in the novels.

    It is a moving, almost biblical story of a father possessed by his hope for his only son; of a son who rebels against his father’s ideals, yet sacrifices himself to preserve what his father most prizes; and of a grandson who must reconcile the flaws in his inheritance.

    Twenty years old and in love, Phyllis Chesler, a Jewish-American girl from Brooklyn, embarked on an adventure that has lasted for more than a half-century. In 1961, when she arrived in Kabul with her Afghan bridegroom, authorities took away her American passport. Chesler was now the property of her husband's family and had no rights of citizenship. Back in Afghanistan, her husband, a wealthy, westernized foreign college student with dreams of reforming his country, reverted to traditional and tribal customs. Chesler found herself unexpectedly trapped in a posh polygamous family, with no chance of escape. She fought against her seclusion and lack of freedom, her Afghan family's attempts to convert her from Judaism to Islam, and her husband's wish to permanently tie her to the country through childbirth. Drawing upon her personal diaries, Chesler recounts her ordeal, the nature of gender apartheid--and her longing to explore this beautiful, ancient, and exotic country and culture. Chesler nearly died there but she managed to get out, returned to her studies in America, and became an author and an ardent activist for women's rights throughout the world. An American Bride in Kabul is the story of how a naive American girl learned to see the world through eastern as well as western eyes and came to appreciate Enlightenment values. This dramatic tale re-creates a time gone by, a place that is no more, and shares the way in which Chesler turned adversity into a passion for world-wide social, educational, and political reform.

    Based on historical events about a group of girls who were slave laborers at the munitions factory in Auschwitz.