Bad Things Happen

A gripping novel about a man trying to escape his violent past and soon becomes a murder suspect when a publisher—and the husband of the woman he's having an affair with—turns up dead. The man who calls himself David Loogan is hoping to escape a violent past by living a quiet, anonymous life in Ann Arbor, Michigan. But when he's hired as an editor at a mystery magazine, he is drawn into an affair with the sleek blond wife of the publisher, Tom Kristoll—a man who soon turns up dead. Elizabeth Waishkey is the most talented detective in the Ann Arbor Police Department, but even she doesn't know if Loogan is a killer or an ally who might help her find the truth. As more deaths start mounting up—some of them echoing stories published in the magazine—it's up to Elizabeth to solve both the murders and the mystery of Loogan himself. "Witty, sophisticated, suspenseful and endless fun...the best first novel I've read this year." —Washington Post "A hypnotically readable novel, with...dialog worthy of Elmore Leonard."—Douglas Preston "Fans of Peter Abrahams and Scott Turow will find a lot to like."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Offers an inspirational and compassionate approach to understanding the problems of life, and argues that we should continue to believe in God's fairness.

Mentions some of the bad things that happen in the world and presents some positive ways to respond to them.

A deep and thought-provoking examination of crisis politics and their implications for power and marginalization in the United States. From the climate crisis to the opioid crisis to the Coronavirus crisis, the language of crisis is everywhere around us and ubiquitous in contemporary American politics and policymaking. But for every problem that political actors describe as a crisis, there are myriad other equally serious ones that are not described in this way. Why has the term crisis been associated with some problems but not others? What has crisis come to mean, and what work does it do? In When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People, Dara Z. Strolovitch brings a critical eye to the taken-for-granted political vernacular of crisis. Using systematic analyses to trace the evolution of the use of the term crisis by both political elites and outsiders, Strolovitch unpacks the idea of “crisis” in contemporary politics and demonstrates that crisis is itself an operation of politics. She shows that racial justice activists innovated the language of crisis in an effort to transform racism from something understood as natural and intractable and to cast it instead as a policy problem that could be remedied. Dominant political actors later seized on the language of crisis to compel the use of state power, but often in ways that compounded rather than alleviated inequality and injustice. In this eye-opening and important book, Strolovitch demonstrates that understanding crisis politics is key to understanding the politics of racial, gender, and class inequalities in the early twenty-first century.

If God is good, why does He allow suffering? Popular author Dave Earley provides solid biblical answers in 21 Reasons Bad Things Happen to Good People. Why does God allow bad things to happen to "good" people? Popular author Dave Earley provides twenty-one key reasons, carefully drawn from scripture and accompanied by contemporary, real-life stories. Written in Earley's casual, readable style, 21 Reasons Bad Things Happen to Good People promises hope and encouragement through the pain.

When children learn about something big and bad - even when they hear only bits and pieces - their brains get busy trying to make sense of it. Where did it happen? Why did it happen? And especially, will it happen again? Something Bad Happened guides children ages 6 to 12 and the adults who care about them through tough conversations about national and international tragedies. The non-specific term "bad thing" is used throughout, keeping this a flexible tool, and so children are never inadvertently exposed to events their parents have chosen not to share. Fear, sadness and uncertainty about the "bad thing" all are normalized, and immediately usable coping tools provided. For children and parents to read together, this one-of-a-kind resource by child psychologist and best-selling author Dawn Huebner provides comfort, support and next steps for children learning about troubling world events.

Uniting fresh ideas from Scripture with people's real-life stories, Tabb provides an honest discussion of suffering that explains that God has not abandoned His people, but instead offers comfort in a chaotic world.

A psychiatrist presents a compelling argument for how human purpose and caring emerged in a spontaneous and unguided universe. Can there be purpose without God? This book is about how human purpose and caring, like consciousness and absolutely everything else in existence, could plausibly have emerged and evolved unguided, bottom-up, in a spontaneous universe. A random world--which according to all the scientific evidence and despite our intuitions is the actual world we live in--is too often misconstrued as nihilistic, demotivating, or devoid of morality and meaning. Drawing on years of wide-ranging, intensive clinical experience as a psychiatrist, and his own family experience with cancer, Dr. Lewis helps readers understand how people cope with random adversity without relying on supernatural belief. In fact, as he explains, although coming to terms with randomness is often frightening, it can be liberating and empowering too. Written for those who desire a scientifically sound yet humanistic view of the world, Lewis's book examines science's inroads into the big questions that occupy religion and philosophy. He shows how our sense of purpose and meaning is entangled with mistaken intuitions that events in our lives happen for some intended cosmic reason and that the universe itself has inherent purpose. Dispelling this illusion, and integrating the findings of numerous scientific fields, he shows how not only the universe, life, and consciousness but also purpose, morality, and meaning could, in fact, have emerged and evolved spontaneously and unguided. There is persuasive evidence that these qualities evolved naturally and without mystery, biologically and culturally, in humans as conscious, goal-directed social animals. While acknowledging the social and psychological value of progressive forms of religion, the author respectfully critiques even the most sophisticated theistic arguments for a purposeful universe. Instead, he offers an evidence-based, realistic yet optimistic and empathetic perspective. This book will help people to see the scientific worldview of an unguided, spontaneous universe as awe-inspiring and foundational to building a more compassionate society.

The author considers the different opinions people have before investigating the biblical answers about a crucial topic that needs to be faced by an evangelistic church. He looks at the situation biblical characters faced, the opposition to Jesus himself, and the suffering of the early church.