Divine By Choice

Finally settled into her new world and role as the Goddess Epona’s Chosen, Shannon finds herself loving her life of luxury and service more and more each day. Her handsome husband is due to return from his travels soon, and the temple and its people have recovered from the terrible war months before. Even though the evil has been banished from the land and all is calm, Shannon can’t seem to shake the cloud of uneasiness (and nausea) she’s been feeling, even after she receives the wonderful news of her forthcoming bundle of joy. But when a routine ride through the countryside turns dangerous, Shannon is once again pulled across the divide—back to the rolling green of Oklahoma. Sensing the darkness growing in her former world and driven by Epona’s steady hand, she must rely on the tempting and sexy Clint Freeman to help her defeat the all-too-familiar evil that lurks in the shadows before she can return to her real home—Partholon.

It’s the beginning of summer break, and high school English teacher Shannon Parker is ready to relax poolside with some red wine and a good book. She’s friggin’ earned it! But first—a little shopping, a la fancy estate auction. Surrounded by old folks and even older artifacts, Shannon never expects to find something that shocks her down to her very core: an ancient vase, complete with a beautiful painting of a goddess that looks just like her. And just as she’s stealing away with her seriously suspicious purchase, she’s magically thrown into the world of Partholon, where not only has she taken the place of Rhiannon, Goddess Incarnate and Epona’s Chosen, but she’s due to be married to a surly (but oh-so-handsome) High Shaman centaur, ClanFintan. But serving as Epona’s Chosen isn’t just luxury baths and buff horse-guys. A dark power grows in the wastelands to the north, and Rhiannon will need much more than just the favor of Epona to protect the land—and the man—she’s grown to love.

Eighteen-year-old Morrigan has always felt different, like she didn’t belong in small-town Oklahoma where she grew up. But on an outing with her friends to the deep, gem-filled Alabaster caves, Morrigan discovers that she’s much more than just different, she’s magical. When she learns the dark truth about her ancestry from her grandparents, a devastating accident transports grief-stricken Morrigan to Partholon and into the keep of the Sidetha, where she is regarded as the Light Bringer, the Goddess Adsagsona’s Chosen One. Luckily for her, many strangely familiar priestesses and otherworldly beings are there to offer her guidance in her new world, including a brazen, handsome centaur High Shaman named Kegan. As she tries to make sense of the powers swirling inside her—and confront her growing feelings for Kegan—she must fight against the lurking darkness that threatens to permeate her very soul.

This fresh study from an internationally respected scholar of the Reformation and post-Reformation eras shows how the Reformers and their successors analyzed and reconciled the concepts of divine sovereignty and human freedom. Richard Muller argues that traditional Reformed theology supported a robust theory of an omnipotent divine will and human free choice and drew on a tradition of Western theological and philosophical discussion. The book provides historical perspective on a topic of current interest and debate and offers a corrective to recent discussions.

USA TODAY BESTSELLER Truth of the Divine is the latest alternate-history first-contact novel in the Noumena series from the instant New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times bestselling author Lindsay Ellis. The human race is at a crossroads; we know that we are not alone, but details about the alien presence on Earth are still being withheld from the public. As the political climate grows more unstable, the world is forced to consider the ramifications of granting human rights to nonhuman persons. How do you define “person” in the first place? Cora Sabino not only serves as the full-time communication intermediary between the alien entity Ampersand and his government chaperones but also shares a mysterious bond with him that is both painful and intimate in ways neither of them could have anticipated. Despite this, Ampersand is still keen on keeping secrets, even from Cora, which backfires on them both when investigative journalist Kaveh Mazandarani, a close colleague of Cora’s unscrupulous estranged father, witnesses far more of Ampersand’s machinations than anyone was meant to see. Since Cora has no choice but to trust Kaveh, the two must work together to prove to a fearful world that intelligent, conscious beings should be considered persons, no matter how horrifying, powerful, or malicious they may seem. Making this case is hard enough when the public doesn’t know what it’s dealing with—and it will only become harder when a mysterious flash illuminates the sky, marking the arrival of an agent of chaos that will light an already-unstable world on fire. With a voice completely her own, Lindsay Ellis deepens her realistic exploration of the reality of a planet faced with the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence, probing the essential questions of humanity and decency, and the boundaries of the human mind. While asking the question of what constitutes a “person,” Ellis also examines what makes a monster.

From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and The Swimmers, this commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese American incarceration camps that is both a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and a resonant lesson for our times. On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her home, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family's possessions. Like thousands of other Japanese Americans they have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty incarceration camp in the Utah desert. In this lean and devastatingly evocative first novel, Julie Otsuka tells their story from five flawlessly realized points of view and conveys the exact emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats of heroism. When the Emperor Was Divine is a work of enormous power that makes a shameful episode of our history as immediate as today's headlines.

DIVINE BEGINNINGS Rediscover the origins of the Partholon stories in this prequel novella by #1 New York Times bestselling fantasy author P.C. Cast. Something isn’t right at Guardian Castle, and Aine can’t figure out what. As Healer, she’s supposed to be making things better, but there’s a darkness that can’t be brightened. And then Aine finds an injured Fomorian—winged, dark, blood-thirsty and inherently evil. Or is he? Because there’s something about Tegan that Aine can’t resist...and once they’ve shared blood, Aine realizes that everything she’s always believed is going to be cast aside... Originally published in 2009

All her life, Elphame never felt like she belonged. From birth she was always set apart, infinitely different from her family and the people of Partholon, because she had so obviously been touched by the great Goddess Epona. When she feels the call of the ancient and crumbling MacCallan Castle, deserted since the Formorian war over a century ago, Elphame knows that she belongs to its impressive walls, fated to be its keeper. With the help of many others seeking a new home and fresh start to life, Elphame and her newfound clan begin to rebuild the great halls of the castle. But after she is rescued in the surrounding forest by a mysterious, extraordinary, and uniquely handsome man whose painful origin threatens the safety of her people, she must choose between the life she fought to create—and the love for him that grows within.