A Glorious Dark


Book Description

On Thursday as they ate the Passover meal with Jesus, the disciples believed that the kingdom was coming and they were on the front end of a revolution. Then came the tragedy of Friday and, somehow even worse, the silence of Saturday. They ran. They doubted. They despaired. Yet, within the grave, God's power was still flowing like a mighty river beneath the ice of winter. And then there was Sunday morning. Real, raw, and achingly honest, A Glorious Dark meets readers in the ambiguity, doubt, and uncertainty we feel when our beliefs about the world don't match up to reality. Tackling tough questions like Why is faith so hard? Why do I doubt? Why does God allow me to suffer? and Is God really with me in the midst of my pain? A. J. Swoboda puts into sharp focus a faith that is greater than our personal comfort or fulfilment. He invites readers to develop a faith that embraces the tension between what we believe and what we experience, showing that the very tension we seek to eliminate is where God meets us.




The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All


Book Description

From singer-songwriter Josh Ritter, a lyrical, sweeping novel about a young boy's coming-of-age during the last days of the lumberjacks. In the tiny timber town of Cordelia, Idaho, ninety-nine year old Weldon Applegate recounts his life in all its glory, filled with tall tales writ large with murder, mayhem, avalanches and bootlegging. It’s the story of dark pine forests brewing with ancient magic, and Weldon’s struggle as a boy to keep his father’s inherited timber claim, the Lost Lot, from the ravenous clutches of Linden Laughlin. Ever since young Weldon stepped foot in the deep Cordelia woods as a child, he dreamed of joining the rowdy ranks of his ancestors in their epic axe-swinging adventures. Local legend says their family line boasts some of the greatest lumberjacks to ever roam the American West, but at the beginning of the twentieth century, the jacks are dying out, and it’s up to Weldon to defend his family legacy. Braided with haunting saloon tunes and just the right dose of magic, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All is a novel bursting with heart, humor and an utterly transporting adventure that is sure to sweep you away into the beauty of the tall snowy mountain timber.




Glorious


Book Description

Even people who don't know football know who 'Gazza' is. The man born as Paul John Gascoigne to a working-class family in the North-East has found headlines on the front pages almost as often as the back pages throughout his life, thanks in great part to his more than colourful lifestyle. But it is for his time as a footballer of the very highest order that Gazza's name will forever live in sporting history. During a career that spanned more than ten different clubs, among them Newcastle United, Tottenham, Lazio and Rangers, and which included countless unforgettable England performances, Gazza established himself as one of the sport's all-time greats: a master of skill, flair and invention like none that his country had produced before nor perhaps ever will again. Told in Gazza's own unique voice and fully illustrated with hundreds of photos from the moments that he feels defined his career,Glorious: My World, Football and Meis a celebration, offering an unrivalled insight into the mind of this greatest of footballers.




Glorious Weakness


Book Description

As a girl, Alia Joy came face to face with weakness, poverty, and loss in ways that made her doubt God was good. There were times when it felt as if God had abandoned her. What she didn't realize then was that God was always there, calling her to abandon herself. In this deeply personal exploration of what it means to be "poor in spirit," Joy challenges our cultural proclivity to "pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps." She calls on readers to embrace true vulnerability and authenticity with God and with one another, showing how weakness does not disqualify us from inclusion in the kingdom of God--instead, it is our very invitation to enter in. Anyone who has struggled with feeling inadequate, disillusioned, or just too broken will find hope. This message is an antidote to despair, helping readers reclaim the ways God is good, even when life is anything but.




The Dark Manual


Book Description

Susie Sakamoto, an Irishwoman in Japan, spends her days drinking heavily and cursing the home robot that takes care of all her domestic needs. She despises the thing her dead husband designed and is under the impression that it is about to do her harm. To escape the overwhelming grief of her missing family, she takes to the nighttime and the lawless section of the city, loitering in seedy bars with her wild, drug-fuelled, hypersexual friend, Mixxy. Are Susie's persecutions merely a result of her own paranoia? Can the parliament of owls gathering eerily in the trees outside be of any significance, any assistance? Or will she have to search for the mythic Dark Manual, to find a way to finally switch off the homebot and end her litany of woes? ...it might already be too late...the machines are on the rise. Japan-based award-winning Irish writer Colin O'Sullivan couples his usual lyrical flourishes with tense and often terrifying noir-ish scenes, to present before us an unsettling vision of an anxious woman teetering in an anxious time. Fans of "Black Mirror," the dark humour of early Haruki Murakami, and even Asimov or Aldiss, will be keen to sample another frantic foray into a near and nervy future.




The Dusty Ones


Book Description

Through every turn of the biblical story, God's people are a wandering people. When they are rescued from slavery in Egypt, God sends them into the desert, where they wander for a generation. Jesus and his disciples wander from town to town. In fact, some of God's most important truths are imparted to people with dusty feet as they travel on the road. With his trademark thoughtful introspection, A. J. Swoboda boldly suggests that wandering is not an absence of faith but a central component of faith. In The Dusty Ones, he leads the restless, the frustrated, and the curious on a spiritual journey to uncover the answers to questions like - Do I wander because I'm failing or because God has left me? - Is the desert something I can overcome? - Why is God sometimes "hidden" in the Bible? - What do I do when the end seems nowhere in sight? This compassionate and contemplative book offers hope and peace to Christians and seekers alike as they make their way down the winding road of faith.




Learning to Walk in the Dark


Book Description

In this long awaited follow-up to the best-selling An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor explores ‘the treasures of darkness’ that the Bible speaks about. What can we learn about the ways of God when we cannot see the way ahead, are lost, alone, frightened, not in control or when the world around us seems to have descended into darkness?




Glorious Rock Bottom


Book Description

DARK, HONEST, UPLIFTING. THIS IS A SOBRIETY MEMOIR LIKE NO OTHER. 'This is a book that tears down walls.' Marian Keyes 'Bryony Gordon is a terrific, compassionate writer whose razor-sharp honesty slices through every sentence of this compelling memoir.' Liz Day 'Poetic, raw and very important.' Fearne Cotton Bryony Gordon is a respected journalist, a number-one bestselling author and an award-winning mental health campaigner. She is also an alcoholic. In Glorious Rock Bottom Bryony opens up about a toxic twenty-year relationship with alcohol and drugs and explains exactly why hitting rock bottom - for her, a traumatic event and the abrupt realisation that she was putting herself in danger, time and again - saved her life. Known for her trademark honesty, Bryony re-lives the darkest and most terrifying moments of her addiction, never shying away from the fact that alcoholism robs you of your ability to focus on your family, your work, your health, your children, yourself. And then, a chink of light as the hard work begins - rehab; twelve-step meetings; endless, tedious, painful self-reflection - a rollercoaster ride through self-acceptance, friendship, love and hope, to a joy and pride in staying sober that her younger self could never have imagined. Shining a light on the deep connection between addiction and mental health issues, Glorious Rock Bottom is in turn, shocking, brutal, dark, funny, hopeful and uplifting. It is a sobriety memoir like no other.




Your God is Too Glorious


Book Description

Most of us are regular people who have good days and bad days. Our lives are radically ordinary and unexciting. That means they're the kind of lives God gets excited about. While the world worships beauty and power and wealth, God hides his glory in the simple, the mundane, the foolish, working in unawesome people, things, and places.In our day of celebrity worship and online posturing, this is a refreshing, even transformative way of understanding God and our place in his creation. It urges us to treasure a life of simplicity, to love those whom the world passes by, to work for God's glory rather than our own. And it demonstrates that God has always been the Lord of the cross--a Savior who hides his grace in unattractive, inglorious places.Your God Is Too Glorious reminds readers that while a quiet life may look unimpressive to the world, it's the regular, everyday people that God tends to use to do his most important work.




Dark Messiah


Book Description

After the nuclear holocaust was over, the real killing began. Phoenix was a survivor, an expert with any weapon, a master at hand-to-hand combat. He forged his way across what was left of the U.S., driven by hatred and thirsting for revenge against the supreme ruler of an almost extinct world--Dark Messiah.