The Stone Of Laughter

A novel of the civil war in Lebanon whose protagonist is a homosexual trying to remain neutral. But as he discovers, neutrality in a civil war is not possible. He becomes involved like everyone else and is the better man for the experience gained. The novel won an award in Lebanon.

Surprised by Laughter looks at the career and writings of C. S. Lewis and discovers a man whose life and beliefs were sustained by joy and humor. All of his life, C. S. Lewis possessed a spirit of individuality. An atheist from childhood, he became a Christian as an adult and eventually knew international acclaim as a respected theologian. He was known worldwide for his works of fiction, especially the Chronicles of Narnia; and for his books on life and faith, including Mere Christianity, A Grief Observed, and Surprised by Joy. But perhaps the most visible difference in his life was his abiding sense of humor. It was through this humor that he often reached his readers and listeners, allowing him to effectively touch so many lives. Terry Lindvall takes an in-depth look at Lewis's joyful approach toward living, dividing his study of C. S. Lewis's wit into the four origins of laughter in Uncle Screwtape's eleventh letter to a junior devil in Lewis's The Screwtape Letters: joy, fun, the joke proper, and flippancy. Lindvall writes, "One bright and compelling feature we can see, sparking in his sunlight and dancing in his moonlight, is laughter. Yet it is not too large to see at once because it inhabited all Lewis was and did." Surprised by Laughter reveals a Lewis who enjoyed the gift of laughter, and who willingly shared that gift with others in order to spread his faith.

Creative ideas, real-life stories, and Scriptural guidance for being the family that loves being together. Building Family Ties with Faith, Love, and Laughter is the second of three books in the Faithful Families series where Dave applies his practical, conversational, and humorous approach to the challenge of building strong spiritual ties to each other as a family. Topics include: Contentment, Security, Loyalty, Gratitude, Spontaneity, Communication, and more. Preaching is his gift, but Pastor Dave Stone’s family is his life’s blessing. While raising three kids with his wife, Beth, as well as shepherding the diverse families of his congregation, his heart, and passion for building strong families rings louder than ever. He knows that raising faithful families is a key to the future of the church. "Dave's book is full of no nonsense, common sense suggestions, and biblically inspired truth. As a parent of two "under construction" children still finding their way in a fallen world, I am keenly aware of the importance of living a life of faithful integrity in order to actually teach it to our kids. I, of course, have failed miserably on occasion. But then, I didn't have Dave's book like you do!"—Kathie Lee Gifford

Poet Langston Hughes' only novel, a coming-of-age tale that unfolds amid an African American family in rural Kansas, explores the dilemmas of life in a racially divided society.

Winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize The Melancholy of Resistance, Lszl Krasznahorkai's magisterial, surreal novel, depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town. A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in the dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumours. Word spreads that the circus folk have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manifestation of order they can find - music, cosmology, fascism. The novel's characters are unforgettable: the evil Mrs. Eszter, plotting her takeover of the town; her weakling husband; and Valuska, our hapless hero with his head in the clouds, who is the tender centre of the book, the only pure and noble soul to be found. Compact, powerful and intense, The Melancholy of Resistance, as its enormously gifted translator George Szirtes puts it, 'is a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type.' And yet, miraculously, the novel, in the words of Guardian, 'lifts the reader along in lunar leaps and bounds.'

The first book in the New York Times bestselling epic fantasy trilogy by award-winning author Laini Taylor Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war. Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out. When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

Roland Nair calls himself Scandinavian but travels on a U.S. passport. After ten years’ absence, he returns to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, to reunite with his friend Michael Adriko. They once made a lot of money here during the country’s civil war, and, curious to see whether good luck will strike twice in the same place, Nair allows himself to be drawn back to a region he considers hopeless. Adriko is an African who styles himself a soldier of fortune and who claims to have served, at various times, the Ghanaian Army, the Kuwaiti Emiri Guard, and the American Green Berets. He’s probably broke now, but he remains, at thirty-six, as stirred by his own doubtful schemes as he was a decade ago. Although Nair believes some kind of money-making plan lies at the back of it all, Michael’s stated reason for inviting his friend to Freetown is that Nair should meet Michael’s fiancee, a college girl named Davidia from Colorado. Together the three set out to visit Michael’s clan in the Uganda-Congo borderland—but each of these travellers is keeping secrets from the others. Shadowed by Interpol, the Mossad, and MI-6, Nair gets mired in lust and betrayal in a landscape of frighteningly casual violence as he travels with Adriko and Davidia, gets smuggled into a war zone, kidnapped by the Congo Army, and terrorized by a self-proclaimed god ruling over a dying village. Their journey through a land abandoned by the future leads Adriko, Nair and Davidia to meet themselves not in a new light, but rather in a new darkness. A high-suspense tale of kaleidoscoping loyalties in the post-9/11 world, The Laughing Monsters shows one of our great novelists at the top of his game.

The book's focus is the hominins and how they used the territory in which they lived, along with a glimpse into the experiences of the excavators of the Bau de l'Aubesier.