Uncertain Journey

Thomas the apostle was a contradiction. He willingly took up the mantel and followed Jesus during his ministry, yet when called on to take the message to others, he resisted. Questioning another’s rationale was in his DNA. However, his path was almost always true, and his goals were honorable. Using church traditions, local history, and various apocryphal writings, this novel is the telling of Thomas’s journey to the Indian subcontinent, where the apostle disseminated the teachings of Jesus in a land of unfamiliar customs and ingrained, ancient beliefs. The journey was not easy—made all the more complicated by Thomas’s own doubts of his abilities. He suffered servitude, imprisonment, a shipwreck, and other life-threatening challenges as he struggled to fulfill his commitment to Christ. Nevertheless, his determination was resolute, and eventually his mission was accomplished. Today, millions of Christians look on Thomas as a cornerstone of their faith.

One of Buzzfeed's 29 Books We Couldn't Put Down This Year “Every page of this novel is a point of no return; once you’ve read Karolina Waclawiak's Life Events, you will never see life, death, grief, and healing the same way.”—Saeed Jones, author of How We Fight for Our Lives A woman at a crossroads learns the only way to reclaim her life is to help others die Karolina Waclawiak’s breakout novel, Life Events, follows Evelyn, who, at thirty-seven, is on the verge of divorce and anxiously dreading the death of everyone she loves. She combats her existential crisis by avoiding her husband and aimlessly driving along the freeways of California looking for an escape—one that eventually comes when she discovers a collective of “exit guides.” Evelyn enrolls in their training course, where she learns to provide companionship and a final exit for terminally ill patients seeking a conscious departure. She meets Daphne, a dying woman still full of life; Lawrence, an aging porn king; and Daniel, who seems too young to die and whom Evelyn falls for, despite knowing better, not to mention the exit guide code. Each client opens something new in Evelyn, allowing her a chance to access her own grief and confront the self-destructive ways she suppresses her pain. When Evelyn travels through the Southwest to an afterlife convention to further her death education, she must finally face her complicated relationship with her alcoholic father and reconcile her life choices. Sensitively observed and darkly funny, Life Events is a moving, enlivening story of the human condition: the doldrums of loneliness, the consuming regret of past mistakes, and the thrill, finally, of finding meaning—and love—where you least expect it.

After a turbulent year, Michelle Sevigny heard it as she ran seaside: do more of this. After researching long-distance coastal routes, she prepared to solo hike the 509-kilometre Lycian Way. The journey doesn't take her where she planned, but as she camps in the wild, gets lost without water and confronts charging sheepdogs, it guides her to exactly where she needs to be. Breaking the Fourth Wall: An Uncertain Journey on Turkey's Lycian Way is a story about learning to embrace uncertainty, of both destination and self, and discovering an answer to the universal question: who are we? "With elegant prose, sometimes verging on poetic, and Sevigny's clever, multilingual word play, Breaking the Fourth Wall establishes Sevigny as a serious and dynamic author of travel writing. This isn't a book just about Turkey, or even just about travel, making Breaking the Fourth Wall a book with universal appeal." -- Self-Publishing Review

Tells the stories of eleven South Americans, Central Americans, Mexicans, and Caribbean Islanders who entered the United States to work as illegal aliens and overcame many physical and financial ordeals.

In this provocative walking meditation, writer and former park ranger William Tweed takes us to California’s spectacular High Sierra to discover a new vision for our national parks as they approach their 100th anniversary. Tweed, who worked among the Sierra Nevada’s big peaks and big trees for more than thirty years, has now hiked more than 200 miles along California’s John Muir Trail in a personal search for answers: How do we address the climate change we are seeing even now—in melting glaciers in Glacier National Park, changing rainy seasons on Mt Rainer, and more fire in the West’s iconic parks. Should we intervene where we can to preserve biodiversity? Should the parks merely become ecosystem museums that exhibit famous landscapes and species? Asking how we can make these magnificent parks relevant for the next generation, Tweed, through his journey, ultimately shows why we must do just that.

Fleeing the disapproval of Earth's patrician families, Jason and Mish Kennerin have come to Aerie; distant, insular, inhabited by the enigmatic kasirene. Here they carve out a new life for themselves and their growing family, until the death of a nearby planetary system forces them to open their world, and their lives, to the chaos of change and the genesis of an empire they both crave and resist.