Mike Mignola: The Quarantine Sketchbook


Book Description

During the coronavirus quarantine, legendary Hellboy creator Mike Mignola posted original pencil sketches online and auctioned off the art to raise money for José Andres' World Central Kitchen. The sketches went viral and were the talk of the comics internet. Now those sketches are published in print for the first time, with all profits going to the World Central Kitchen. This new, oversized hardcover collection is a must have for Mignola readers and art fans alike. The book features an introduction by Christine Mignola, alongside sketches of Hellboy, beloved and unexpected pop culture characters, macabre chess pieces, gothic vegetable creatures, strange vampires, and more.




Quarantine: A Love Story


Book Description

Love can be contagious in this infectiously fun romance by debut author Katie Cicatelli-Kuc. Oliver wants a girlfriend, and there's a girl back home who might be interested in him. The problem is, he has to spend his spring break on a volunteer trip in the Dominican Republic. Flora, on the other hand, isn't really looking for a boyfriend. She just wants to end a miserable spring break visiting her dad and her new stepmom in the D.R.The solution to both their problems? Get back home to New York ASAP. Sadly, they won't be getting there anytime soon. Their hopes are dashed when Flora's impulsiveness lands them in quarantine -- just the two of them. Now, the two teens must come together in order to survive life in a bubble for 30 days. In that time, love will bloom. But is it the real thing, or just a placebo effect? In her debut novel, Katie Cicatelli-Kuc delivers an introspective and witty story about finding love in the most unexpected place.




Systematic Theology through the Spiritual Eye Volume II


Book Description

Systematic theology is a discipline of Christian theology that formulates an orderly, rational, and coherent account of the doctrines of the Christian faith. It addresses issues such as what the Bible teaches about certain topics or what is true about God and his universe. Our intention is to bring ministries into a global virtual reality hybrid school/university system where there is homeschooling, teaching in the assembly, and combining it in the classrooms with on-the-job training. Walking Your Vision University teaching is systematic theology. There are 195 countries in which we will expand this training over the period of five to ten years. The above paragraph is the summation of our mission statement.




The Locked-up Country


Book Description

Donald Horne famously called Australia &‘ the lucky country' . So how did we become the locked-up country and how might the future look different? Australia has changed enormously since Horne' s 1960s, but its response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the enduring truth of his thesis that our &‘ luck' was undeserved and wouldn' t last. By closing its borders and imposing a nationally coordinated lockdown, Australia unexpectedly eliminated COVID-19 in 2020, achieving one of the world' s lowest excess mortality rates. But as governments proceeded to bungle key planks of the pandemic response, by mid-2021, Australia was &‘ locked up' &– closed off to the world and fragmented along state and territory borders, with its major cities enduring repeated and extended lockdowns. It soon became clear that Australia' s regulatory state had let us down. But these failures were not inevitable, and we can manage future crises more successfully. In The Locked-up Country, political experts Tom Chodor and Shahar Hameiri identify the source of Australia' s recent challenges and suggest a better way forward.




The Pandemic Visual Regime


Book Description




The Playful Politics of Memes


Book Description

Memes work as rhetorical weapons and discursive arguments in political conflicts. Across digital platforms, they confirm, contest and challenge political power and hierarchies. They simultaneously create social distortion, hostility, and a sense of community. Memes thus not only reflect norms but also work as a tool for negotiating them. At the same time, memes meld symbolic and cultural elements with technological functionalities, allowing for replicability and remixing. This book studies how memes disrupt and reimagine politics in humorous ways. Memes create a playful activity that follows a shared set of rules and gives a (shared) voice, which may generate togetherness and political identities but also increase polarization. As their template travels, memes continue to appropriate new political contexts and to (re)negotiate frontiers in the political. The chapters in this book allow us to chart the playful politics of memes and how they establish or push frontiers in various political, cultural, and platform-specific contexts. Taken together, memes can challenge and regenerate populism, carve out spaces for new identity formations, and create togetherness in situations of crises. They can also, however, lead to the normalization of racist discourses. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of Media and Communication Studies, Information Studies, Politics, Sociology, and Cultural Studies. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Information, Communication & Society.




Snakehead


Book Description

In the fourth of Peter May's acclaimed China Thrillers, American pathologist Margaret Campbell finds herself back on home soil, only to be faced by a truck full of dead Chinese and an unavoidable confrontation with her past. Beijing detective Li Yan, now based at the Chinese embassy in Washington, is dispatched to find out how his fellow countrymen suffocated in a sealed refrigeration unit in southern Texas - only to find himself face-to-face with the woman who walked out of China, and his life, to return to the U.S. Tasked to work together again to find out who is behind the $100 million trade in illegal Chinese immigrants which led to the tragedy in Texas, they discover that the immigrants were unwitting carriers of a deadly cargo. And still wrestling with the demons of their pasts, Li and Margaret find themselves racing against time to defuse a biological time-bomb that threatens to wipe out not only their future, but that of humankind.




Love Without Borders


Book Description

From the founder of This Gathered Nest YouTube channel, an uplifting story of Angela Braniff's unusual path to becoming the mother to seven children through various methods of adoption and biological approaches, encouraging women and mothers to embrace the unique purpose that God has put in their lives. Angela’s love for life and her family radiates through everything she does. The Braniff household includes their two biological daughters, Kennedy, 12, and Shelby 10; Rosie, 7, who was adopted from China with Down syndrome; Noah, 7, adopted from Congo; Jonah 5, adopted domestically; and finally, Ivy and Amelia, their one year old twins who were adopted as embryos, and implanted in Angela, who gave birth to them. In fact, after the book was finished, they joyfully welcomed a new baby into their home, Benjamin, through adoption, making them now a family of ten! Love Without Borders shares Angela's relatable, humorous, and honest view of motherhood. Angela chronicles her journey to discover God’s purpose for her life. For years she walked the safe, expected path, until one day she could feel God calling her to boldly step out and follow him into new places, which led her to raise a large, non-traditional family that looked different than she ever imagined. It was a winding path to motherhood, complete with heartbreak from failed adoptions, challenging pregnancies, and secondary infertility, but through it all Angela found the unique adventure God had for her. She has shared her family’s stories on her popular YouTube channel, This Gathered Nest, and now invites us in to go deeper and listen to where God might be calling us to go and who we’ve been tasked with loving, no matter how unusual (or just plain crazy) it may sound! The beauty of God’s plan is he uses imperfect people to bring about perfectly beautiful stories.