The Furnace

Focusing on the intersection of Christianity and politics in the American penitentiary system, Jennifer Graber explores evangelical Protestants' efforts to make religion central to emerging practices and philosophies of prison discipline from the 1790s through the 1850s. Initially, state and prison officials welcomed Protestant reformers' and ministers' recommendations, particularly their ideas about inmate suffering and redemption. Over time, however, officials proved less receptive to the reformers' activities, and inmates also opposed them. Ensuing debates between reformers, officials, and inmates revealed deep disagreements over religion's place in prisons and in the wider public sphere as the separation of church and state took hold and the nation's religious environment became more diverse and competitive. Examining the innovative New York prison system, Graber shows how Protestant reformers failed to realize their dreams of large-scale inmate conversion or of prisons that reflected their values. To keep a foothold in prisons, reformers were forced to relinquish their Protestant terminology and practices and instead to adopt secular ideas about American morals, virtues, and citizenship. Graber argues that, by revising their original understanding of prisoner suffering and redemption, reformers learned to see inmates' afflictions not as a necessary prelude to a sinner's experience of grace but as the required punishment for breaking the new nation's laws.

The novel begins in the mid-1880s with the naive, blundering career of Djuro Kracha. It tracks his arrival from the old country as he walked from New York to White Haven, his later migration to the steel mills of Braddock, and his eventual downfall through foolish financial speculations and an extramarital affair.

Timely and heartfelt, Prentis Rollins’s graphic novel debut The Furnace is a literary science fiction glimpse into our future, for fans of Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone One decision. Thousands of lives ruined. Can someone ever repent for the sins of their past? When Professor Walton Honderich was a young grad student, he participated in a government prison program and committed an act that led to the death of his friend, the brilliant physicist Marc Lepore, and resulted in unimaginable torment for an entire class of people across the United States. Twenty years later, now an insecure father slipping into alcoholism, Walton struggles against the ghosts that haunt him in a futuristic New York City. With full-color art and a cutting-edge critique of our increasingly technological world, The Furnace speaks fluently to the terrifying scope of the surveillance state, the dangerous allure of legacy, and the hope of redemption despite our flaws. “Surreal and evocative, The Furnace is a great critique of technology and the human condition.” —John Jennings, illustrator for the New York Times #1 bestseller Octavia Butler’s Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

When fourteen-year-old Alex is framed for murder, he becomes an inmate in the Furnace Penitentiary, where brutal inmates and sadistic guards reign, boys who disappear in the middle of the night sometimes return weirdly altered, and escape might just be possible.

A truck driver is ensnared by satanic forces in a small town in the Appalachians. He is Josh Spiller and his ordeal begins when a woman pushes a carriage with a baby under the wheels of his truck. The police say it was an accident, but Spiller knows she did it on purpose.

My husband died the day after Christmas, leaving four children, ages two to nine. Anxious how we would manage without him, too young to understand, my children asked, "Why my daddy?" While vacationing at my brother's lake cabin, in Michigan's Northern Wood, we watched a mother raccoon and her babies feeding daily at the stump outside our kitchen window when the idea came to write my stories through the eyes of animals. The first book in The Waddodles of Hollow Lake series, Law of the Woodland, is built on family values, tales of courage, love, hope and trust in each other. The second series book, The Waddodles of Hollow Lake: Calamity on East Bay features more exciting adventures with The Waddodles and their friends, highlighting many episodes with their enemies, The Ruffin twins, Old Mr. Grump and "The Beast" Big Casey, the meanest black bear in all the territories circling Hollow Lake. Will the Raccoon Waddodle Family have to move from their rock den on East Bay to a safe new home? How will The Waddodles have the courage to leave the only home they have ever known and loved? Who will protect Harriet and her children now that Theodore is gone forever? Read it to find out?

Dead Space, 2401 AD Kyle Tanner is about to die. Alone, floating in a vacsuit only a few million kilometers from a massive, uncaring sun, he has barely enough time or juice to get out a distress signal before either his oxygen runs out or he succumbs to the radiation. When the CCF sent investigator Kyle Tanner to SOLEX One, a solar energy harvester past Mercury, he thought it would be an open-and-shut murder case. A crew member was found dead, minus his head and hands. Not the worst Tanner has ever seen, but the deeper he delves, the more nightmarish it becomes. A shadowy figure, bleeding from his hands, assaults Tanner in his quarters. Then two more turn up dead, missing their heads and hands as well. With no one to trust and everyone a suspect—even the intriguing chief engineer, Shaheen—Tanner must navigate a crew on the brink of madness to uncover a conspiracy that could threaten the whole of the human race. Even if it means making the ultimate sacrifice… 115,000 words

When life turns up the heat, you have two choices. You can bend and break, or you can step boldly into the furnace and let your soul catch fire. Into The Furnace explores the inner workings of bravery, hope, and passion. These themes are framed against the backdrop of the Badwater Ultramarathon - a 135 mile race across the hottest place on the planet, Death Valley. Cory Reese has walked into the furnace. He has faced adversity, both in running and in life. His book captures the essence of what it means to suffer, what it means to persevere, and ultimately, what it means to create a life of clarity and purpose.

Horror fiction has long celebrated and explored the twin engines driving human existence. Call them what you like: Sex and Death, Love and Destruction, Temptation and Terror. While many may strive to reach the extremes, few authors manage to find the beauty that rests in the liminal space between these polar forces, the shuddering ecstasy encased within the shock. And then there's Livia Llewellyn, an author praised for her dark, stirring, evocative prose and disturbing, personal narratives. Lush, layered, multifaceted, and elegant, the thirteen tales comprising Furnace showcase why Livia Llewellyn has been lauded by scholars and fans of weird fiction alike, and why she has been nominated multiple times for the Shirley Jackson Award and included in year's best anthologies. These are exquisite stories, of beauty and cruelty, of pleasure and pain, of hunger, and of sharp teeth sinking into tender flesh.