All That Was Promised

A housemaid with a dangerous family secret conspires with a wealthy young abolitionist to help an enslaved girl escape, in volatile pre-Civil War Philadelphia. The rebel . . . the socialite . . . and the fugitive. Together, they will risk everything for one another in this “beguiling story of friendship, deception, and women crossing boundaries in the name of freedom” (Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Friends). Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. After all, Philadelphia is supposed to be the birthplace of American liberty. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they both attempt to hide their identities from slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives. Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her past reappears: Evie, her friend from White Oaks, has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress, and she’s desperate to escape. But as Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue her, in a city engulfed by race riots and attacks on abolitionists, they soon discover that fighting for Evie’s freedom may cost them their own.

Set in modern Shanghai, a debut by a Chinese-American writer about a prodigal son whose unexpected return forces his newly wealthy family to confront painful secrets and unfulfilled promises. After years of chasing the American dream, the Zhen family has moved back to China. Settling into a luxurious serviced apartment in Shanghai, Wei, Lina, and their daughter, Karen, join an elite community of Chinese-born, Western-educated professionals who have returned to a radically transformed city. One morning, in the eighth tower of Lanson Suites, Lina discovers that a treasured ivory bracelet has gone missing. This incident sets off a wave of unease that ripples throughout the Zhen household. Wei, a marketing strategist, bows under the guilt of not having engaged in nobler work. Meanwhile, Lina, lonely in her new life of leisure, assumes the modern moniker taitai-a housewife who does no housework at all. She is haunted by the circumstances surrounding her arranged marriage to Wei and her lingering feelings for his brother, Qiang. Sunny, the family's housekeeper, is a keen but silent observer of these tensions. An unmarried woman trying to carve a place for herself in society, she understands the power of well-kept secrets. When Qiang reappears in Shanghai after decades on the run with a local gang, the family must finally come to terms with the past and its indelible mark on their futures. From a silk-producing village in rural China, up the corporate ladder in suburban America, and back again to the post-Maoist nouveaux riches of modern Shanghai, What We Were Promised explores the question of what we owe to our country, our families, and ourselves.

In this New Studies in Biblical Theology volume, Oren Martin demonstrates how, within the redemptive-historical framework of God's unfolding plan, the land promise to Israel advances the place of the kingdom that was lost in Eden, anticipating the even greater land, prepared for all of God's people, that will result from the person and work of Christ.

Book Two of the Promised Land story, Home and Family, follows the Buechlers as their homesteaded land, "bellies out with life." There is now law and order, co-operation, community, and caring, all of which seems to have appeared with the Buechlers. The family grows and prospers as the land gives them all that they've ever wanted and needed; prosperous farms and businesses, happy homes, intelligent, hard-working children, and herds of healthy livestock. Yet natural disasters, human greed, hate, and power politics continually threaten to destroy all that they've worked so hard to achieve. Is this truly a Promised Land and will it be better for their children? In vivid, evocative prose supported by painstaking research, Promised Land - Home and Family brings history to vibrant, heart-pounding life. It will immerse readers in the courage and ingenuity of the turn-of-the-century pioneers who took on the challenge to carve out hearth and home from the forbidding landscapes of the western Canadian prairies.

"From iconic NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony comes a raw and inspirational memoir about growing up in the housing projects of Red Hook and Baltimore-a brutal world Where Tomorrows Aren't Promised"--

Iconoclast David F. Noble traces the evolution and eclipse of the biblical mythology of the Promised Land, the foundational story of Western Culture. Part impassioned manifesto, part masterful survey of opposed philosophical and economic schools, Beyond the Promised Land brings into focus the twisted template of the Western imagination and its faith-based market economy. From the first recorded versions of ‘the promise’ saga in ancient Babylon, to the Zapatistas’ rejection of promises never kept, Noble explores the connections between Judeo-Christian belief and corporate globalization. Inspiration for activists and students alike.

Since childhood, Lila has been closer to her twin brother Billy than anyone in the world. They even took a vacation together when Lila and her husband Patrick got tenure. To Patrick, his wife's relationship with her twin has always been something of a mystery. He knows Lila and Billy's parents died when they were teenagers, but he doesn't understand why Lila never talks about her parents. He also doesn't understand why books have always been so crucially important to the twins. A math teacher, Patrick is particularly mystified by Lila's obsession with stories. Then one afternoon, Billy points a rifle out the window of a hotel across from an elementary school. Billy is shot, "suicide by police," Lila is told. Billy's death devastates her, but it his reason for wanting to die that both stuns and horrifies her: he'd been charged with child abuse, of endangering the life of his middle child and namesake, eight-year-old William. In the aftermath of her twin's death, Lila falls apart. Soon her job, her marriage, her carefully constructed past-and even her sanity-are put at risk, as she tries to make sense of her life with Billy and the long-buried secrets of their childhood. While Patrick attempts unsuccessfully to save his wife, Lila's slowly comes face to face with who her brother really was-only to realise that there may be another person in danger now. Billy's favourite child, her nephew William, may be about to re-enact the same story Billy taught her to believe in so many years ago: a story of betrayal and lost innocence that must be redeemed by a violent act that could destroy them all.