Velvet Elvis

In order to find an authentic understanding of the Christian faith, Bell frees readers to consider God beyond the picture someone else painted.

The King himself puts in a cameo appearance at a rural Quebec Gas-Bar de la Nuit where the glowing ends of several dozen cigarettes counterpoint an urgent bass line to the syncopated doo-wap of several tens of thousands of fireflies.

Drawing on a lifetime of pastoral experience, The Care of Souls is a beautifully written treasury of proven wisdom which pastors will find themselves turning to again and again. Harold Senkbeil helps remind pastors of the essential calling of the ministry: preaching and living out the Word of God while orienting others in the same direction. And he offers practical and fruitful adviceâ€"born out of his five decades as a pastorâ€"that will benefit both new pastors and those with years in the pulpit. In a time when many churches have lost sight of the real purpose of the church, The Care of Souls invites a new generation of pastors to form the godly habits and practical wisdom needed to minister to the hearts and souls of those committed to their care.

1970s Mexico City: while student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite seeks escape from her humdrum life in the stories of passion and danger filling the latest issue of Secret Romance. She is deeply envious of her neighbour, a beautiful art student apparently living the life of excitement and intrigue Maite craves - so when Leonora disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman, journeying deep into Leonora's secret life of student radicals and dissidents. 'Cements Silvia Moreno-Garcia's incredible versatility as an amazing writer who moves between genres effortlessly. A lush, magnificent trip into a world of danger and discovery. Not to be missed!' S.A. COSBY, author of BLACKTOP WASTELAND But someone else is also looking for Leonora, at the behest of his boss, a shadowy figure who commands goon squads dedicated to squashing political activists. Elvis is an eccentric criminal who longs to escape his own life: he loathes violence and loves old movies and rock 'n' roll. Watching Maite from a distance, he comes to see her as a kindred spirit who shares his love of music and the unspoken loneliness of his heart. As Maite and Elvis come closer to discovering the truth behind Leonora's disappearance, they can no longer escape the dangers threatening to consume their lives, with hitmen, government agents and Russian spies all aiming to find or protect Leonora's secrets - at gunpoint. Velvet Was the Night: an edgy, passionate, simmering noir thriller from a writer at the very top of her game.

Sonny Cantone is having a really bad day. He’s broke. His girlfriend left him. He drinks more than he should and smokes a lot of pot. And now some lunatic stole his car. As an ex-con with little experience in anything other than criminal enterprises and bad decisions, Sonny’s job prospects are not looking good, even in the middle of a blistering summer in the little Cape Cod tourist trap town he calls home. Worse still, he’s sleeping with a shady stripper that works as an informant for a dirty cop that hates him and has a penchant for extreme violence. So when Sonny’s old partner-in-crime and stoner buddy Crash offers to bring him in on a caper to rob a velvet painting vendor that promises to yield some quick money, he has to listen. But nothing has prepared Sonny for the vortex of mayhem and madness he’s about to fall into. In a cloud of marijuana smoke, he and Crash descend into the hot summer night, on the run from an array of crazed characters populating the darkest and seediest corners of Cape Cod after dark. And now, what seemed like an easy score turns instead into a surreal nightmare both horrific and darkly hilarious. Sonny just wants to get home, but it’ll take all night—this night—a crazy night that just keeps getting crazier, and one he’ll need to make right before things spiral so far out of control they’ll never get out alive. Sonny Cantone is having a really bad day. Wait until he sees the next twenty-four hours.

"An exciting vision of the future" --Michael Eric Dyson Everything Is Spiritual is an unexpected and compelling invitation to see your life in a whole new way. We have the great moments of our lives, the highs, those times when we soar, when it all makes sense, when it feels like it all has purpose and meaning. And then there are all those other moments—the lows and aches and failures and struggles and experiences that leave us wondering what the point of it all is. Are our lives ultimately bits and pieces and fragments—you try to find a little peace and hope and then it’s over? Or is there more going on here? In our increasingly polarized and disoriented world, Everything Is Spiritual gives us a radical new take on how it all fits together, how it works, how it’s all connected. Part memoir, part extended riff on the quantum nature of reality, part history of the universe, Rob Bell takes us back through the twists and turns and struggles of his story in order to help us see the larger story so that we can reconnect with our story.

In his second collection, including the iconic and much-referenced title story featured in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark.

There is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building. Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty. This is a book about those two numbers. Jesus Wants to save Christians is a book about faith and fear, wealth and war, poverty, power, safety, terror, Bibles, bombs, and homeland insecurity. It's about empty empires and the truth that everybody's a priest. It's about oppression, occupation, and what happens when Christians support, animate and participate in the very things Jesus came to set people free from. It's about what it means to be a part of the church of Jesus in a world where some people fly planes into buildings while others pick up groceries in Hummers.