The Lamp

A New York Times Notable Crime Book and Favorite Cozy for 2011 A Publishers Weekly Best Mystery/Thriller books for 2011 With A Trick of the Light, Louise Penny takes us back to the deceptively peaceful village of Three Pines in this brilliant novel in her award-winning, New York Times bestselling series featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. "Hearts are broken," Lillian Dyson carefully underlined in a book. "Sweet relationships are dead." But now Lillian herself is dead. Found among the bleeding hearts and lilacs of Clara Morrow's garden in Three Pines, shattering the celebrations of Clara's solo show at the famed Musée in Montreal. Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide at the Sûreté du Québec, is called to the tiny Quebec village and there he finds the art world gathered, and with it a world of shading and nuance, a world of shadow and light. Where nothing is as it seems. Behind every smile there lurks a sneer. Inside every sweet relationship there hides a broken heart. And even when facts are slowly exposed, it is no longer clear to Gamache and his team if what they've found is the truth, or simply a trick of the light. "Penny has been compared to Agatha Christie [but] it sells her short. Her characters are too rich, her grasp of nuance and human psychology too firm...." --Booklist (starred review)

Life is a blast when you have your very own genie. But when Parker Quarry is shipped from sunny Los Angeles to live with relatives in a quiet New Hampshire college town and releases a 2,000 year-old jinn from an ancient canister "borrowed" from the university building where his uncle works, the biggest blasts comes from the millennia old power struggle he reignites. Now it is up to Parker, his mild-mannered cousin, Theo, and their wiz-kid classmate, Reese, to stop a battalion of battle-ready jinn from re-starting an all-out war ??? one with humanity in the crosshairs

With six teachers, no books, and thirty-two students, Old Main opened its doors to the first pupils of the University of Arizona in 1891. A rugged beacon among the cacti, the campus emerged from a forty-acre donation from two gamblers and a saloonkeeper. The Lamp in the Desert is Douglas D. Martin’s history of the first seventy-five years of the University of Arizona. From early football wins by Coach McKale to the work of celebrated scholars, this is a story of the places and the people whose names are still visible reminders of the early innovators that helped to build a world-class institution.

In a landmark work, a leading scholar of the eighteenth century examines the ways in which an understanding of the nature of history influenced the thinking of the founding fathers. As Jack P. Greene has observed, " The Whig] conception saw the past as a continual struggle between liberty and virtue on one hand and arbitrary power and corruption on the other." Many founders found in this intellectual tradition what Josiah Quincy, Jr., called the "true old English liberty," and it was this Whig tradition--this conception of liberty--that the champions of American independence and crafters of the new republic sought to perpetuate. Colbourn supports his thesis--that "Independence was in large measure the product of the historical concepts of the men who made it"--by documenting what books were read most widely by the founding generation. He also cites diaries, personal correspondence, newspapers, and legislative records. Trevor Colbourn is President Emeritus of the University of Central Florida. Please note: This title is available as an ebook for purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes.

While volcanoes spew golden lava around the world, djinn twins John and Philippa, with their parents, Uncle Nimrod, and Groanin, face evil more powerful than ever before when they try to stop the wicked djinn trying to rob the grave of Genghis Khan.

The World of The Prophets as You’ve Never Experienced It Before The Age of Prophecy series transports you back 3000 years, to the epic battle between the Israelite Kings and Prophets. Lev, an orphaned shepherd boy, begins a journey of discovery when he’s hired to play as a musician before the prophets. He soon learns that his father’s knife holds a deadly secret about his hidden past. As he is drawn deeper into the world of prophecy, Lev fights to unearth his true self while the clouds of war gather around him. Authors Dave Mason and Mike Feuer spent years researching the Oral and Kabbalistic traditions detailing the inner workings of prophecy and the world of Ancient Israel. The backdrop for The Age of Prophecy is the greatest of Biblical conflicts, the Battle between King Ahav and the Prophet Eliyahu (more commonly known as Ahab and Elijah in English). Learn the inner story of the battle, in a way that will reframe all you've ever heard about the Israelite< Kings and Prophets.

“The relationship between a mother and daughter is one of the most complicated and meaningful there is. Kimberly Williams-Paisley writes about her own with grace, truth, and beauty as she shares her journey back to her mother in the wake of a devastating illness.” —Brooke Shields Many know Kimberly Williams-Paisley as the bride in the popular Steve Martin remakes of the Father of the Bride movies, the calculating Peggy Kenter on Nashville, or the wife of country music artist, Brad Paisley. But behind the scenes, Kim was dealing with a tragic secret: her mother, Linda, was suffering from a rare form of dementia that slowly crippled her ability to talk, write and eventually recognize people in her own family. Where the Light Gets In tells the full story of Linda’s illness—called primary progressive aphasia—from her early-onset diagnosis at the age of 62 through the present day. Kim draws a candid picture of the ways her family reacted for better and worse, and how she, her father and two siblings educated themselves, tried to let go of shame and secrecy, made mistakes, and found unexpected humor and grace in the midst of suffering. Ultimately the bonds of family were strengthened, and Kim learned ways to love and accept the woman her mother became. With a moving foreword by actor and advocate Michael J. Fox, Where the Light Gets In is a heartwarming tribute to the often fragile yet unbreakable relationships we have with our mothers.

A Publishers Weekly Notable Book 49th Shelf Recommended Read A modern gay memoir exploring love, death, pain, and community that will resonate long after the last page. “This is an embodied story of love, loss, and recovery — raw, candid, and filled with a sense of awe at human resilience.” — Shelf Awareness “A timely story so human, so beautiful, so bravely told with heart and humour.” — Rosie O’Donnell A lifetime of finding punchlines in his heartache comes to a shuddering stop when comedian and writer Shawn Hitchins loses two great loves, five months apart, to sudden death. In this deeply poignant memoir that combines sober self-portrait with tender elegy, Hitchins explores the messiness of being alive: the longing and desire, scorching-earth anger, raw grief — and the pathway of healing he discovers when he lets his heart remain open. Never without an edge of self-awareness, The Light Streamed Beneath It invites the reader into Hitchins’s world as he reckons with his past and stays painfully in the present. As he builds an embodied future, he confronts the stories that have shaped him, sets aside his ambition, and seeks connection in what he used to deflect with laughter — therapy, community and chosen family, movement, spirituality, and an awareness of death’s ever-presence. A heartrending and hope-filled story of resilience in the wake of death, The Light Streamed Beneath It joyfully affirms that life is essentially good, as Hitchins weaves his tale full of tenacious spirit, humor, kindness, and grit through life’s most unforgiving challenges.