Beyond These Walls

Do you have a plan for the apocalypse? Rhys doesn't. But as he watches chaos spill from the Alpha tower, he knows one thing for sure ... He must get to his son before the virus does. If you like high stakes and edge of your seat action in a post-apocalyptic world, then The Alpha Plague is for you. Get it now to join Rhys at ground zero as he tries to save his loved ones and survive a disaster that will leave the world changed forever.

Fairytale endings aren't for everyone. Will Jude and Lailah get theirs? Happily ever after. That was what we were supposed to have. Pudding cups, sandy toes and a lifetime of making each and every one of our dreams come true—that is the future I’d promised her. I could see it in my dreams, hold it in my hands, but then I watched as all of our hopes and wishes suddenly slipped through my fingers like sand. I thought the worst was behind us, but what if we’d just delayed the inevitable? They say love can overcome any obstacle. But can it survive death? The breathtaking love story of Lailah and Jude concludes in Beyond These Walls.

An account of the Holocaust experiences of Chanah Kaufman (née Zucker), born in 1929 to an Orthodox Jewish family, related from the viewpoint of the young girl that she was at the time. In Brussels, her parents paid a non-Jew to hide Chanah in her basement. Subsequently she was taken to the Misericorde convent in Leuven, where she and other Jewish girls were hidden throughout the war. The nuns pressured her to convert, convincing her that otherwise the Nazis might kill her along with those who gave her shelter. However, inwardly she always remained Jewish. When the war ended, the nuns did not inform their wards, hoping that the Jewish children they saved would remain Catholics. Chanah was eventually taken to a Jewish orphanage, the Tiefenbrunner Home. Her parents and brother did not survive. She immigrated to Israel after the war. An appendix on pp. 322-344 discusses the role of the general and Jewish undergrounds in Belgium in hiding Jewish children and returning them to their people after the war.

Within these walls, he became my solace, my sanctuary and my strength. I am not strong. I am just a survivor of circumstance. Isn’t that what we all do? Survive? Each of us has our own set of circumstances to muddle through. Mine are just more...complicated. Born with a severe heart defect, I’ve seen the inside of a hospital room more than my own bedroom. I was drowning, a prisoner to the illness that owned me, until he appeared. He thinks he’s blocked out the world with his tattoos and hard exterior, but I see the real Jude, the one he so desperately wants to forget. But is he the answer to my prayers or will he break my already damaged heart forever? My name is Lailah Buchanan, and this is our story of hope, redemption and sacrificing it all for the one you love.

From an author of the best-selling women’s health classic Our Bodies, Ourselves comes a bracingly forthright memoir about a life-long friendship across racial and class divides. A white woman’s necessary learning, and a Black woman’s complex evolution, make These Walls Between Us a “tender, honest, cringeworthy and powerful read.” (Debby Irving, author, Waking Up White.) In the mid-1950s, a fifteen-year-old African American teenager named Mary White (now Mary Norman) traveled north from Virginia to work for twelve-year-old Wendy Sanford’s family as a live-in domestic for their summer vacation by a remote New England beach. Over the years, Wendy's family came to depend on Mary’s skilled service—and each summer, Mary endured the extreme loneliness of their elite white beachside retreat in order to support her family. As the Black “help” and the privileged white daughter, Mary and Wendy were not slated for friendship. But years later—each divorced, each a single parent, Mary now a rising officer in corrections and Wendy a feminist health activist—they began to walk the beach together after dark, talking about their children and their work, and a friendship began to grow. Based on decades’ worth of visits, phone calls, letters, and texts between Mary and Wendy, These Walls Between Us chronicles the two women’s friendship, with a focus on what Wendy characterizes as her “oft-stumbling efforts, as a white woman, to see Mary more fully and to become a more dependable friend.” The book examines obstacles created by Wendy’s upbringing in a narrow, white, upper-class world; reveals realities of domestic service rarely acknowledged by white employers; and draws on classic works by the African American writers whose work informed and challenged Wendy along the way. Though Wendy is the work’s primary author, Mary read and commented on every draft—and together, the two friends hope their story will incite and support white readers to become more informed and accountable friends across the racial divides created by white supremacy and to become active in the ongoing movement for racial justice.

In When Everything Beyond the Walls Is Wild, Lilace Mellin Guignard draws from emblematic moments and relationships in her own life to explore issues of gender, recreation, and environmental conservation. Born into a suburban family, Guignard wanted to get up close and personal with iconic American landscapes, but social pressures and cautionary tales told her that these spaces were not meant for her as a woman. Reflecting on the ways our culture socializes women to remain indoors, Guignard shares her own struggles with finding her place outdoors. Refusing to stay indoors and “safe,” Guignard drove cross-country with her dog, worked as a river guide, and set out to climb Mount Whitney. She recounts navigating outdoor interactions with male friends and strangers that range from wonderful to awkward to frightening. Now that she is settled with her own family, Guignard writes about how it is still more difficult for women than men to prioritize outdoor recreation time. These stories expose how cultural messages about women shape their experiences and interactions when backpacking, paddling, rock climbing, and bicycling. They broaden readers’ notions of what adventure is, what places are considered wild and worth our care, and what types of people enjoy the outdoors. Drawing upon the art of the memoir—and informed by analysis from women’s studies and ecological literature—Guignard makes an impassioned case for why women and marginalized members of society should have the opportunity to experience nature. The self-reliance and connection with the natural world that outdoor recreation fosters are qualities we all need in order to do the work required by the environmental challenges ahead.

In this wise and lyrical book about landscapes of the desert and the mind, Edward Abbey guides us beyond the wall of the city and asphalt belting of superhighways to special pockets of wilderness that stretch from the interior of Alaska to the dry lands of Mexico.

Features poems that combine passion and simplicity with sophistication.