When The Stars Fall To Earth

This is a novel about people who find themselves in the middle of a horrific conflict and how they survive. Their choices affect their families, the people they love, and the course of their lives. Their stories start before the events in Sudan touch them, following them through challenges and triumphs, as they rebuild their lives. What they have in common with the rest of us is that their journeys are about finding out what kind of people they are: Should they try to draw strength from their anger or should they let it go? Is it better to stick with what you know or find the courage to change?

A “poignant [and] powerful” novel about a 1920s Midwestern community in the aftermath of a devastating tornado (The New Yorker). In March 1925, the worst tornado in the nation’s history will descend without warning on the small town of Marah, Illinois. By nightfall, hundreds will be homeless and hundreds more will lie in the streets, dead or grievously injured. Only one man, Paul Graves, will still have everything he started the day with—his family, his home, and his business, all miraculously intact. This “absolutely gorgeous” novel follows Paul Graves and his young family in the year after the storm as they struggle to comprehend their own fate and that of their devastated town (The New York Times). They watch helplessly as Marah tries to resurrect itself from the ruins and as their friends and neighbors begin to wonder how one family, and only one, could be exempt from terrible misfortune. As the town begins to recover, the family miscalculates the growing resentment and hostility around them with tragic results, in an “extraordinarily moving” portrayal of survivor’s guilt and the frenzy of bereavement following a disaster (Financial Times). “All the big themes are here—chance, fate, loyalty, revenge, guilt, jealousy . . . Inspired by actual events surrounding the 1925 Tri-State tornado, the worst in U.S. history, Southwood’s poignantly penetrating examination of the psychic cost of survival is breathtaking in its depth of understanding.” —Booklist (starred review) “What’s most exciting about Southwood’s debut is her prose, which is reminiscent of Willa Cather’s in its ability to condense the large, ineffable melancholy of the plains into razor-sharp images.” —The Daily Beast

A “persuasive . . . heartfelt and vividly written” call to counter systemic racism and build national solidarity in America (Publishers Weekly). The American Promise enshrined in our Constitution states that all men and women are inherently equal. And yet racism continues to corrode our society. If we cannot overcome it, Theodore Johnson argues, the promise that made America unique on Earth will have died. In When the Stars Begin to Fall, Johnson presents a compelling blueprint for the kind of national solidarity necessary to mitigate racism. Weaving together history, personal memories, and his family’s multi-generational experiences with racism, Johnson posits that solutions can be found in the exceptional citizenship long practiced in Black America. Understanding that racism is a structural crime of the state, he argues that overcoming it requires us to recognize that a color-conscious society—not a color-blind one—is the true fulfillment of the American Promise. Fueled by Johnson’s ultimate faith in the American project, grounded in his family’s longstanding optimism and his own military service, When the Stars Begin to Fall is an urgent call to undertake the process of overcoming what has long seemed intractable.

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

Shivya Nath quit her corporate job at age twenty-three to travel the world. She gave up her home and the need for a permanent address, sold most of her possessions and embarked on a nomadic journey that has taken her everywhere from remote Himalayan villages to the Amazon rainforests of Ecuador. Along the way, she lived with an indigenous Mayan community in Guatemala, hiked alone in the Ecuadorian Andes, got mugged in Costa Rica, swam across the border from Costa Rica to Panama, slept under a meteor shower in the cracked salt desert of Gujarat and learnt to conquer her deepest fears. With its vivid descriptions, cinematic landscapes, moving encounters and uplifting adventures, The Shooting Star is a travel memoir that maps not just the world but the human spirit.

One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year New York Times bestselling author Danielle Trussoni's unforgettable memoir of her wild and haunted father, a man whose war never really ended. From her charismatic father, Danielle Trussoni learned how to rock and roll, outrun the police, and never shy away from a fight. Spending hour upon hour trailing him around the bars and honky-tonks of La Crosse, Wisconsin, young Danielle grew up fascinated by stories of her dad's adventures as a tunnel rat in Vietnam, where he'd risked his life crawling head first into narrow passageways to search for American POWs. A vivid and poignant portrait of a daughter's relationship with her father, this funny, heartbreaking, and beautifully written memoir, Falling Through the Earth, "makes plain that the horror of war doesn't end in the trenches" (Vanity Fair).

Nineteen-year-old Jenny is more content staring at the night sky than joining her friends on a night on the town. She's only known them two months, since classes began for her second year at university, but she's already head over heels with one of her housemates, Dale. Every conversation she's had with Dale has ended with her stuttering out an excuse to escape. Then the first meteor blazes through the night, landing close enough to shake the house. Suddenly, she's the one with all the answers, the one her friends and Dale turn to. Having spent so much time glued to a telescope, they expect her to know what's happening. But Jenny's never seen a meteor big enough to impact, and certainly never the thing that rises from the crater. It's a man who glows with a light so hot, everything in its path is disintegrated. Soon after, the night sky is turned to day, coming alive with hundreds more, all with one mission: rid Earth of that which is killing her. Earth has been watched, and the things watching have decided that the human race's time is up. Too much damage has been done, and they have decided that it's time to let Earth recover, to start again. The only way they see that happening is by wiping out the human race. Jenny knows another way, one that will save both Earth and humanity. But it isn't simply a case of finding the nearest official and explaining everything. No one wants to listen to a nineteen-year-old and her friends. They must take their idea directly to the Stars and somehow convince them to listen. But to get there they first have to survive, and survival comes at a price.

The book's focus, from which the title is derived, is taken from Revelation 11:18, and opens with "The Wrath of God," continues with "The Judgment of Mankind" and closes with "The Reward of the Saints." A Jewish, Biblical Scholar, Nativ brings a unique, often startling perspective to the Book of Revelation. Basing his theories in Hebraic concepts, not doctrine or dogma, Nativ takes the reader on an exciting, step-by step journey through the Hebrew texts, the original language of the Bible, and through painstaking analysis, breathes new life into the words of the Old Testament prophets, the apostles, and Jesus. Take for example, the word "Armageddon." Long interpreted as the ultimate battle between good and evil, Nativ uses his extensive Hebrew knowledge to show it is a place, not a battle, and introduces the ancient Hebrew concept of a "place of refuge" as proof. Should Nativ be correct, not only will he change the theology, but dictionary definitions as well. Equally startling is his discussion of Revelation, Chapter Nine, regarding the opening of the bottomless pit and the release of the awesome creatures within. Nativ not only explains what they are, their origins and their purpose, but, most surprising, the creatures' present location, as they await the ending of the Age. Perhaps most controversial of all is Nativ's answer to the long-asked question regarding the identity of the "Beast" and the meaning of the number "666." Not only will the reader be dumbfounded by the simplicity of Nativ's answer, but horrified by the proximity. Nativ is not dogmatic. He does not expect everyone to agree with his study's conclusions, but instead challenges the reader to prove him biblically incorrect. Neither prophet nor the recipient of a great revelation from God, Nativ's only claim is the wisdom from God to unveil the meaning of the Book of Revelation in all its complexities.