Broken Mary

In 2008, Kevin Matthews, a well-known ABC and CBS radio personality in Chicago, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. As the drive-time radio host for seventeen years and also the voice of his sports commentator, Jim Shorts, and other characters, Matthews entertained ten million listeners weekly, sold out every appearance in the Midwest, and performed in front of 65,000 fans at Grant Park. He traveled around the world, met the famous, had babies named after him, and helped countless charities. He entertained hundreds of thousands of people inside prisons, army bases, and backyards. His promotions included comedy jams, a band, barbeque throw downs, and golf outings. Broken Mary is Matthews' story of his early years in radio and stand-up comedy, his successful career, his struggle with MS, his awakening to the dignity of women, and, importantly, his chance encounter with a broken statue of Mary left next to a dumpster and all that happened as a result. Told with Matthews' signature good humor, this confession of the brokenness of mankind is touchingly honest, personally inspiring, and full of hope.

In the summer of 1995, Mary Earle returned from a vacation feeling refreshed and restored from her time away. A few days later, all that changed, when she was rushed to the emergency room with a case of acute and life-threatening pancreatitis. Being ill, she discovered, forces you to learn to live in whole new ways, ones often marked by limitation and fragility. As a priest and spiritual director, Earle began to explore ways in which her own prayer life might help her build a different relationship with her illness. Using the Benedictine practice of lectio divina, or sacred reading, she began to "read" her own illness, and discovered a way of befriending and helping to heal--if not cure--her body and her life. In Broken Body, Healing Spirit, Earle introduces this strategy to others who are hungry to find ways of living more fully despite chronic or serious illness or pain. Her practical, step-by-step approach to "reading the text of our illnesses," and learning to listen to what our bodies are trying to tell us will be of help to those who are currently suffering with disease or limitations, as well as to those who are caregivers and counselors.

Dirt is a story about the places where we start. From a single-wide trailer in the mountains of rural West Virginia to the halls of Yale Law School, Mary Marantz's story is one of remembering our roots while turning our faces to the sky. From growing up in that trailer, where it rained just as hard inside as out and the smell of mildew hung thick in the air, Mary has known what it is to feel broken and disqualified because of the muddy scars leaving smudged fingerprints across our lives. Generations of her family lived and logged in those hauntingly treacherous woods, risking life and limb just to barely scrape by. And yet that very struggle became the redemption song God used to write a life she never dreamed of. Mixed with warmth, wit, and the bittersweet, sometimes achingly heartbreaking places we go when we dig in instead of give up, Dirt is a story of healing. With gut-wrenching honesty and hard-won wisdom, Mary shares her story for anyone who has ever walked into the world and felt like their scars were still on display, showing that you are braver, better, and more empathetic for what you have survived. Because God does his best work in the muddy, messy, and broken--if we'll only learn to dig in.

In this collaborative memoir, a parent and a transgender son recount wrestling with their differences as Donald Collins undertook medical-treatment options to better align his body with his gender identity. As a parent, Mary Collins didn’t agree with her trans son’s decision to physically alter his body, although she supported his right to realize himself as a person. Raw and uncensored, each explains her or his emotional mindset at the time: Mary felt she had lost a daughter; Donald activated his “authentic self.” Both battled to assert their rights. A powerful memoir and resource, At the Broken Places offers a road map for families in transition.

The Body of Christ is a traumatised body because it is constituted of traumatised bodies. This monograph explores the nature of that trauma and examines the implications of identifying the trauma of this body. Constructing new ways of thinking about the narratives at the heart of the Christian faith, 'Broken Bodies' offers a fresh perspective on Christian theology, in particular the Eucharist, and presents a call to love the body in all its guises. It offers new pathways for considering what it means to ‘be Christian’ and explores the impact that the experience of trauma has on Christian doctrine.

Although Tessa had the voice of an angel it was her twin sister Tania who always seemed to be in the limelight. And now it looked as though beautiful, bewitching Tania would even rob shy Tessa of the man she loved -- Quentin Otway.

Longing for recognition and adventure, and with the prompting from friends and a few bottles of wine, Gwendolyn Johnson buys herself a piece of property in England and the prominent title of Lady. She gets more than she bargained for when she encounters two men, a gentleman and a thief. Bramwell Avery Price, the twelfth Duke of Whitethorn's last job for Scotland Yard is to follow a jewel thief from New York to London. However, when Piers Paxton is taken into custody and the jewels aren't found, Bram is assigned to investigate the American, tourist, Lady Gwendolyn. When true identities are revealed and Gwen disappears, Bram fears he can't protect her from a desperate man who has been pushed to the edge.

Essence® bestselling author Travis Hunter tells the story of a young woman who takes control of her own destiny after lifelong abuse. Zola Zaire has not had an easy life. She was raped at thirteen by her mother’s boyfriend—with her mother’s permission. Her mother and the man went to prison for the crime, and Zola, damaged from the experience, spent years running wild. Abuse was all she’d known, and she got comfortable as a bottom dweller. Even after she gave birth to a son, she couldn’t get herself together, and her son was sent to a foster home. Now Zola is living with Andre, a wealthy man who has given her a more stable and luxurious life. Things are far from perfect, however, because Andre has started to use Zola as his punching bag. One night, as she races out of the house to escape from another beating, she is rescued by Ian DeMarco, a stranger who is driving by the scene. Ian and Zola’s chance encounter sets off a chain of events that neither of them could have foreseen. Ian finds himself needing help from the father he rejected long ago, and an unexpected murder leaves Zola fearing that she will be framed for the crime. An unlikely ally helps uncover the shocking truth about a deadly game of revenge that has left them both in danger.