All his life, President Jimmy Carter has been a courageous exemplar of faith. Now he shares the lessons he learned. He writes, "The issue of faith arises in almost every area of human existence, so it is important to understand its multiple meanings. In this book, my primary goal is to explore the broader meaning of faith, its far-reaching effect on our lives, and its relationship to past, present, and future events in America and around the world....

"Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily...

Emmy is West Texas through and through: she loves the land, she loves her hometown, she loves football, both professional and her town's high school team, the 'Stangs. She also knows she's a lesbian, and in her Southern Baptist evangelical community, that's going to be an issue, both for Emmy and her amicably separated parents, Lucy and Steve. After a disastrous conversation with her dad, Emmy meets Cameron, a whip-smart grad student from Massachusetts...

Attorney Sophie Maxwell has come to Savannah to be with her new husband, Will. But nothing throws cold water on a hot relationship faster than a dead body. Worse for Sophie, no one believes the body she knows she saw is real. Fortunately, Sophie has a good friend in Faith Fairchild. With teenage Amy being bullied by mean girls and husband Tom contemplating a major life change that will affect all the Fairchilds, Faith is eager for distraction in the...

In mid-thirteenth century Provence, Dolssa de Stigata is a fervently religious girl who feels the call to preach, condemned by the Inquisition as an "unnatural woman," and hunted by the Dominican Friar Lucien who fears a resurgence of the Albigensian heresy; Botille is a matchmaker trying to protect her sisters from being branded as gypsies or witches--but when she finds the hunted Dolssa dying on a hillside, she feels compelled to protect her, a...

"Since 1666, [Rene] Descartes' bones have been fought over, stolen, and sold--by adherents to both religious and scientific doctrine. But why? The answer lies in Descartes' legendary expression, 'I think, therefore I am, ' which prompted the notion that knowledge can be found in facts, not church teachings. With that seemingly innocuous phrase, Descartes presented skepticism to the world--and profoundly changed the course of humankind."--Container....

In a story of liberation and self-empowerment, the author shares her hauntingly intimate coming-of-age narrative of growing up in and escaping from the Children of God, an oppressive, extremist religious cult. Growing up on an isolated farm in Macau, Jones was raised to be part a religious army preparing for the End Times. Thousands of members strong, the cult followers of the Children of God looked to her grandfather as their guiding light. Over...

"This enchanting and eye-opening new novel from Caine Prize winner Leila Aboulela follows an embattled young woman coming of age during the Mahdist War in nineteenth-century Sudan, and illuminates the tensions that shape her course: between Britain and Sudan, Christianity and Islam, colonizer and colonized. In River Spirit, Aboulela gives us the unforgettable story of a people who--against the odds and for a brief time--gained independence from foreign...

Annie Marlow has been through the worst. Rocked by tragedy, she heads to the one place that makes her happy: Oceanside in the Pacific Northwest, the destination of many family vacations when Annie was a teenager. Once there, Annie begins to restore her broken spirit, thanks in part to the folks she meets: a local painter, Keaton, whose large frame is equal to his big heart, and who helps Annie fix up her rental cottage by the sea; Mellie, the reclusive,...