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In the summer of 1964 Jacksonville, Florida teenager Ronnie Van Zant and some of his friends hatched the idea of forming a band to play covers of the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Yardbirds, and the country and blues-rock music they had grown to love. Naming their band after Leonard Skinner, the gym teacher at Robert E. Lee Senior High School who constantly badgered the long-haired aspiring musicians to get haircuts, they were soon playing gigs at parties, and bars throughout the South.

The Water Is Wide is Pat Conroy’s extraordinary memoir based on his experience as one of two teachers in a two-room schoolhouse, working with children the world had pretty much forgotten. It was a year that changed his life, and one that introduced a group of poor Black children to a world they did not know existed.

When the crew of the Oceanus rescued a man close to death, its captain could barely have guessed at the incredible story that man would come to share. This is the story of Victor Frankenstein: a man obsessed with discovering the secret of life and cheating death; a man who brings to life to a body built from corpses; and a man who rejects this would-be child.... Soon Victor and his creature are entangled in a dangerous game of cat and mouse across Europe. But who is truly the monster?

Former Chicago lawyer Ben Holiday was very proud and quite happy. And why shouldn’t he be? The Magic Kingdom which he ruled as High Lord was finally at peace. He was free to lie back and watch as his new daughter grew. An amalgam of magic and heredity, Mistaya was born a seedling, nourished by soils from Landover, Earth, and the fairy mists, come into being in the dank, misty deadness of the Deep Fell. Ben wished he could enjoy his daughter's childhood and his happy kingdom forever. Alas, those idyllic days were not to last.

DEA Special Agent Garrett Kohl must rescue a CIA officer when she’s kidnapped in Texas by a nefarious band of criminals in this pulse-pounding thriller for fans of C. J. Box.

Everything should have been quiet and pleasant for Ben Holiday, the former Chicago lawyer who became sovereign of the Magic Kingdom of Landover. But it wasn’t. Horris Kew, conjurer, confidence-man, and trickster, had returned to Landover from Ben’s own world. Alas, Horris had not returned of his own volition - he had been sent by the Gorse, a sorcerer of great evil, whom Horris had unwittingly freed from the magic Tangle Box, where it had long ago been imprisoned by the fairy folk. Now it had returned to enslave those who had once dared condemn it.

Daniel Goleman's international best seller Emotional Intelligence forever changed our concept of "being smart," showing how emotional intelligence (EI) - how we handle ourselves and our relationships - can determine life success more than IQ. Now Goleman and company apply that knowledge to leadership in a must-hear presentation.

How are we as Christians called to respond when cancer invades our lives, whether our own bodies or those of our friends and family? On the eve of his own cancer surgery, John Piper writes about cancer as an opportunity to glorify God. With pastoral sensitivity, compassion, and strength, Piper gently but firmly acknowledges that we can indeed waste our cancer when we don’t see how it is God’s good plan for us and a hope-filled path for making much of Jesus.

Home Tonight follows the path of Henri Nouwen's spiritual homecoming. More than three years prior to writing his great classic, The Return of the Prodigal Son, Nouwen suffered a personal breakdown followed by a time of healing solitude when he encountered Rembrandt's famous painting. Within his solitude he reflected on and identified with the parable’s characters and experienced profound and inspiring life lessons.

When the woman he loved was diagnosed with a metastatic cancer, science writer George Johnson embarked on a journey to learn everything he could about the disease and the people who dedicate their lives to understanding and combating it. What he discovered is a revolution under way - an explosion of new ideas about what cancer really is and where it comes from. In a provocative and intellectually vibrant exploration, he takes us on an adventure through the history and recent advances of cancer research that will challenge everything you thought you knew about the disease.

Though Vance puts himself in tradition of popular fantasy writers, one might assume that he had also grown up with Ovid and Herodotus, Homer’s Odyssey, Don Quixote, and Candide. The Cugel tales lack some of the scope and pathos of the great adventure yarns, but, in the 21st century, they may be as close as one gets to the celebration of epic human perseverance.

Now, as more families like Michael's are affected by a growing number of disorders and difficulties ranging from autism to food allergies, the need for programs and paradigm shifts is greater than ever. Beates thus seeks to motivate churches to pursue ministry to children and adults with developmental disabilities. He works through key Bible passages on brokenness and disability to develop helpful principles for believers and churches, teaching them first to embrace their own brokenness and then to embrace those who are more physically and visibly broken.

Granger Westberg's gentle wisdom and acute insight into human nature helps grievers understand the ten identifiable stages of grief. Whether grieving a death or divorce, job loss or disappointment, everyone must move through these stages, and we are changed by the experience. Faith makes a difference during these times.

Geometry defines the world around us, helping us make sense of everything from architecture to military science to fashion. And for over 2,000 years, geometry has been equated with Euclid's Elements, arguably the most influential book in the history of mathematics. In The King of Infinite Space, renowned mathematics writer David Berlinski provides a concise homage to this elusive mathematician and his staggering achievements.

Meet Gerald. Gerald is a griffin - a creature with the body of a lion and the head of an eagle. According to the Code of the Griffins, that means he should be: 1. Brave and fierce in all situations! 2. A guardian of a great treasure! 3. Completely and totally hidden from the human realm! But what if a Griffin isn't brave or fierce? What if he's never found a great treasure (or any treasure, for that matter)? What if he feels like such an embarrassment that the only thing left to do is run away?

We are story-making people. We love reading stories - and we love hearing the personal stories of others. We need stories, or narratives, to make sense of our world. And those stories shape our lives. What is the story you have been told about the Gospel? About God? About the Christian life? About Jesus? About the cross? About yourself? About heaven?

They say that only truck drivers experience the true grandeur and landscape of America. In A Trucker's Tale, Ed Miller gives an inside look at the allure of the work and the colorful characters who haul our goods on the open road. He shares what it was like to grow up in a trucking family, his experience as an equipment officer in Vietnam, and the trials and tribulations of life as a trucker. His tales are often funny, sometimes sad, cringeworthy, or unbelievable. Many are the results of what he calls "just plain stupidity."

One year after witnessing the tragic traffic accident that claimed his beloved wife and unborn child, accountant John Allen Harper seeks to remake his life. When he accepts a position with the Mississippi Choctaw Nation as their cultural liaison, he is tasked with one job: to track down and reclaim the tribe's stolen artifacts dug up from sacred ground and sold on the black market.

When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. Yet the idea of of biology as destiny dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined.

Russo's characters in these four expansive stories bear little similarity to the blue-collar citizens we're familiar with from many of his novels. In "Horseman", a professor confronts a young plagiarist as well as her own weaknesses as the Thanksgiving holiday looms closer and closer: "And after that, who knew?" In "Intervention", a realtor facing an ominous medical prognosis finds himself in his father's shadow while he presses forward - or not.