Birds, Beasts and Relatives


Book Description

The follow-up to My Family and Other Animals and the inspiration for The Durrells in Corfu: A naturalist’s memoir of his family’s time on a Greek island. In the years before World War II, Gerald Durrell’s family left the gloomy shores of England for the sun-drenched island of Corfu. Against this picturesque backdrop, Durrell fondly recalls his family’s disorderly household and outrageous antics, including their interactions with locals of both human and animal varieties. After a boyhood spent studying zoology and acquiring the island’s exotic insects, reptiles, birds, mammals, and sea creatures as pets, Durrell’s budding naturalism would later bloom into a passion for conservation that would last a lifetime. Filled with clever observations, amusing anecdotes, and childlike wonder, Birds, Beasts and Relatives is half nature guide, half coming-of-age tale, and all charmingly funny memoir. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Gerald Durrell including rare photos from the author’s estate.




The Saints Are Watching Over Me


Book Description

Introduces the Tiny Saints in a fun and memorable way




Saints


Book Description

Combines brief biographies of 137 popular saints with sculpture, fresco, marble and stone relief, stained glass, woodcut, prayer card, plaster, and mosaic images.




The Laughter of the Saints


Book Description

Between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries in Spain, a large number of parodic works were produced that featured depictions of humourous, satirical, and comical saints. The Laughter of the Saints examines this rich carnivalesque tradition of parodied holy men and women and traces their influence to the anti-heroes and picaresque roots of early modern novels such as Don Quixote. The first full-length treatment of the ways in which Spanish writers imitated religious depictions of saints' lives for comic purposes, Ryan D. Giles' erudite study explores the inversion of oaths, invocations, pious legends, and liturgical devotions. Analyzing a variety of texts from Libro de buen amor, to later works such as the Celestina, Carajicomedia, Lozana andaluza, and Lazarillo de Tormes, Giles not only sheds light on Golden Age Spanish literature, but also on the origins of the comic novel. A well-argued and convincing work, The Laughter of the Saints reveals the uproarious results of the collision of official and unofficial methods of storytelling.




Saint's Heaven


Book Description

Heaven is a single mother of two boys with more than her share of baby daddy issues. Her kids’ father, Flex, loves playing the field and throwing his women in Heaven’s face while expecting her to remain single. Heaven still carries feelings for Flex, but still wishes to have a man that does not have her looking stupid in the streets. Saint is a reformed street king who is trying to live life on the straight and narrow. He owns a landscaping company in the Dallas area and spends his day breaking his back to provide for his gold digging girlfriend, Lailani. With his relationship crumbling, a chance sighting of Heaven at a restaurant intrigues Saint and he tries to pursue her, but encounters several challenges along the way. Saint and Heaven face many people in their way as they try to be together. They may not be able to withstand the pressure. Will they fall in love against all odds or crumble under outside pressure?




The Hour is Now


Book Description




A Saint of Our Own


Book Description

What drove U.S. Catholics in their arduous quest, full of twists and turns over more than a century, to win an American saint? The absence of American names in the canon of the saints had left many of the faithful feeling spiritually unmoored. But while canonization may be fundamentally about holiness, it is never only about holiness, reveals Kathleen Sprows Cummings in this panoramic, passionate chronicle of American sanctity. Catholics had another reason for petitioning the Vatican to acknowledge an American holy hero. A home-grown saint would serve as a mediator between heaven and earth, yes, but also between Catholicism and American culture. Throughout much of U.S. history, the making of a saint was also about the ways in which the members of a minority religious group defined, defended, and celebrated their identities as Americans. Their fascinatingly diverse causes for canonization—from Kateri Tekakwitha and Elizabeth Ann Seton to many others that are failed, forgotten, or still under way—represented evolving national values as Catholics made themselves at home. Cummings's vision of American sanctity shows just how much Catholics had at stake in cultivating devotion to men and women perched at the nexus of holiness and American history—until they finally felt little need to prove that they belonged.




Take and Read


Book Description

This book represents Peterson's attempt to rekindle the activity of spiritual reading. The present volume is an annotated list of the books that have stood the test of time and that, for Peterson, are spiritually formative for the Chrisitan life.




Primitive Piety: A Journey from Suburban Mediocrity to Passionate Christianity


Book Description

In Primitive Piety Ian Stackhouse takes us on a journey away from the safe world of suburban piety, with its stress on moderation and politeness, and into the extreme and paradoxical world of biblical faith. As someone who has pastored churches in suburbia for the last twenty years, the author is convinced that so much that passes off as Christian faith falls short of the radicalism or primitivism that we see in the pages of scripture: a primitivism that includes honest lament, dogged prayer, raw emotions and heart-felt desire. In a culture in which there is every danger that we all look the same and speak the same, Stackhouse argues for a more gritty kind of faith - one that celebrates the oddity of the gospel, the eccentricity of the saints, and the utter uniqueness of each and every church.




Desire Me


Book Description

She has no memory of her life before him—or of the danger that threatens her now. Her name is Rae. At least, that’s what the security specialist with the searing hazel eyes and the magnificent body tells her. Saint Solorio, the man she was living with before a car ran her down and she lost all memory of who she is—and who is trying to kill her. Now she needs his help. His protection. But she won’t let him get through her guard again. That’s a mistake she doesn’t dare repeat when anyone around her could be the enemy. Rae knocked Saint off his barstool the first time he spotted her across a crowded room. When she asked him to take her home, he’d growled his acceptance despite knowing a one-night stand wasn’t all he wanted. Not with this woman. Too bad the name she’d given him wasn’t hers. And even worse, he is forced to lie to keep her with him. Now Saint is racing to discover the past of the woman he wants for his own, and uncover the threat that could take her away from him—and also take her life. Southern Nights: Enigma is romantic suspense at its finest: riveting suspense, edge-of-your-seat action, and sizzling romance. Don’t miss these sexy alpha protectors and the women who bring them to their knees. Each book may be read as a standalone. Don’t miss the whole Southern Nights: Enigma series: Come For Me (Book 1) Deceive Me (Book 2) Destroy Me (Book 3) Deny Me (Book 4) Desire Me (Book 5) And see where it all began with the original Southern Nights: Teach Me (Book 1) Trust Me (Book 2) Take Me (A Southern Nights Standalone)