The Crooked Olive Branch

Stories of heroism and bravery during the Second World War are legend. Many of them have remained secret. This fictional account, inspired by real events, experiences and histories, has all the hallmarks of a spy novel with its many twists and turns. The action switches from a peaceful setting in a sleepy village in the Home Counties to the raw, unyielding terrain of the former Yugoslavia and its demands on the courageous band of partisans to aid a seriously injured British Officer escape a determined Nazi S.S. With, ingenuity, good fortune along with an attached British S.O.E. unit they outwit the occupying German Army.

“Those who lament that the novel has lost its prophecy should pay heed and cover-price: Muck is the future, both of Jerusalem and of literature. God is showing some rare good taste, by choosing to speak to us through Dror Burstein.” —Joshua Cohen, author of Moving Kings and Book of Numbers In a Jerusalem both ancient and modern, where the First Temple squats over the populace like a Trump casino, where the streets are literally crawling with prophets and heathen helicopters buzz over Old Testament sovereigns, two young poets are about to have their lives turned upside down. Struggling Jeremiah is worried that he might be wasting his time trying to be a writer; the great critic Broch just beat him over the head with his own computer keyboard. Mattaniah, on the other hand, is a real up-and-comer—but he has a secret he wouldn’t want anyone in the literary world to know: his late father was king of Judah. Jeremiah begins to despair, and in that despair has a vision: that Jerusalem is doomed, and that Mattaniah will not only be forced to ascend to the throne but will thereafter witness his people slaughtered and exiled. But what does it mean to tell a friend and rival that his future is bleak? What sort of grudges and biases turn true vision into false prophecy? Can the very act of speaking a prediction aloud make it come true? And, if so, does that make you a seer, or just a schmuck? Dramatizing the eternal dispute between poetry and power, between faith and practicality, between haves and have-nots, Dror Burstein’s Muck is a brilliant and subversive modern-dress retelling of the book of Jeremiah: a comedy with apocalyptic stakes by a star of Israeli fiction.

The Art of Connecting With Nature emerged from Mark’s desire to have others experience the “living presence” of the natural world. Within these pages you’ll discover 22 co-authors who have established a relationship with nature that reclaims what indigenous people worldwide express as kinship, centeredness, and the ability to make decisions through the eyes of future generations. The book is divided into four experiential themes: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. We invite you to open to whatever chapter calls to you, since each stands on its own. At the end of each section we’ve provided tools, rituals, and practices to help you develop, or enhance, your own relationship with nature. These are activities that have helped us; but in the end, we each have our own journey that cannot be defined by another’s. Visit our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/TheArtofConnectingWithNature, to share your experiences, ask questions, or interact with the artists, professors, musicians, authors, ministers, and others who’ve contributed to this collection.

“By the time the doctors were ready to do the first round of assisted fertilization, my wife had been to hormonal hell and back. All that remained was to ‘introduce’ the father’s seed to the eggs. "This they did, literally. They introduced a bunch of my sperm cells to one of my wife’s eggs. All those swimmers had to do was swim across the petri dish over to the egg and fertilize it. All that egg required was for one (just one!) of the two million sperm cells to swim over, whisper, ‘Well, hello there, honey’ into the egg’s ear, and—boom!—one pregnant woman. "They couldn’t even manage that. Instead, they swam around aimlessly, like goldfish in a pond, until they ran out of steam and died.” Infertility treatments—along with witches and angels, Catholic school, a life-changing swimming pool incident, Italian hillbillies, and much more—are all part of Pellegrino Riccardi’s at times heartbreaking and at times hilarious recounting of his life. Playful and provocative, this memoir not only entertains but inspires profound conversation about what “masculinity” means today. Riccardi’s writing is witty and lyrical, even when discussing uncomfortable topics. His raw, touching, and admirably revealing account of his strengths and failings as a man, a husband, and a father will open a dialogue many men have been unwilling to explore about vulnerability, strength, gender roles, expressing emotions, and how and why men think and act the way they do. If you’ve ever wanted to eavesdrop on the unspoken thoughts of a man, this book will not disappoint!