![]() It began as a bureau in the Treasury Department whose job it was to suppress widespread counterfeiting, something it still tries to do. ![]() Some history: The Secret Service began in 1865, after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. “By telling their story,” she says, “they hope to revive the Service they love.” ![]() Leonnig is in awe of these people “willing to risk their careers” because they know the Service is broken and needs fixing. What needs fixing? Lots these include what she calls a toxic work culture, outdated equipment and resentment in the ranks with leaders protecting its image without fixing its flaws. She does this by interviewing current and former agents, government officials and whistle blowers who put their jobs on the line to speak about a hobbled agency in desperate need of reform. ![]() Leonnig’s power and authority in Zero Fail is in the marriage of the big picture with details that put a stamp of ‘true’ on her analysis. ![]()
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![]() ![]() This woman who we know from centuries of paintings and scripture as the docile, loving, silent, long-suffering, obedient, worshipful mother of Christ becomes a tragic heroine with the relentless eloquence of Electra or Medea or Antigone, in a portrait so vivid and convincing that our image of Mary will be forever transformed. She does not agree that her son is the Son of God nor that his death was "worth it" nor that the "group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye," were holy disciples. They are her keepers, providing her with food and shelter and visiting her regularly. ![]() Nobody could remember a time that this window was not boarded. The setting for the story, a frontier town in the early to mid 1800s, is also reflective of his adventuresome lifestyle. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel. The story opens with an unnamed narrator recalling years past. The Boarded Window is one of many Ambrose Bierce stories in which he explores a fascination with the macabre. In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son's crucifixion. Meryl Streep’s performance of Colm Tóibín's acclaimed portrait of Mary is hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “an ideal audiobook,” presenting the three-time Academy Award-winner in “yet another great role.” Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Colm Tóibín's The Testament of Mary presents Mary as a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the events that become the narrative of the New Testament and the foundation of Christianity. ![]() ![]() ![]() Hays says curiosity is her greatest virtue, and she recounts learning how to share the good news with people who are half her age and intensely skeptical. ![]() Like its founder, Galileo is deeply uncool and deeply devout, and always straining ahead to see what God will do next. Told in funny, poignant, and short vignettes, Galileo’s story is not one of how to be cool for Christ. Now well-established, Galileo Church “seeks and shelters spiritual refugees” in the suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas especially young adults, LGBTQ+ people, and all the people who love them. In We Were Spiritual Refugees, Katie Hays, planter-pastor of Galileo Church, shares the story of departing the traditional church (on good terms, though!) for the frontier of the spiritual-but-not-religious and building community with Jesus-loving (or at least Jesus-curious) outsiders. ![]() Galileo Church is not a cool, hip, exotic breed it’s just church, reimagined for a new day. ![]() ![]() ![]() “But that night, Oma shares her story of Holocaust survival, the brass monkey charm that she was given in the camp, and a message of kindness and perseverance in the face of disaster.Īs Monique describes it, o n May 24, 1943, her mother was sitting on a stoop crying when someone tapped her on the shoulder. “People have survived worse,” says her mother ― Oma survived World War II, and never speaks of it. The story revolves around Tali, who is staying at her Oma’s (grandmother) apartment after a storm demolishes their house. Over the next few months Monique will be making other school visits. ![]() In it she tells the story of a gift from a perfect stranger that her mother (the late Celien Spier) received on her 14th birthday while a prisoner at the Nazi concentration camp in Czechoslovakia called Theresienstadt during the Holocaust. This marks her first picture book for children. As part of Holocaust Education Month, author Monique Polak visited two elementary schools – Our Lady of Pompei in Ahuntsic and Westmount Park to read from The Brass Charm. ![]() ![]() Bad lead vamp Zillah, with the gorgeous green eyes, takes a special liking to Jessy. Impregnations are few and far between, and the women who carry them in their wombs, (frequently human women), usually die in childbirth. ![]() Unlike the myths, vampires are not made by a bite from the undead. A thin adolescent girl, pretty Jessy, had long been waiting for the three, or their like. Molochai, Twig and Zillah, younger by a few centuries, are also vampires. Christian, the bartender and owner, is a four hundred year-old vampire. Drunk on Chartreuse, their mouths full of candy, they make their way to a tiny bar with stained glass windows in the French Quarter. ![]() ![]() Molochai, Twig and Zillah, three androgynous Goth vagabonds all resembling rock stars, roll into New Orleans ready for Mardi Gras. ![]() ![]() ![]() It was a time of broken treaties and cynical promises, forced marches, racial subjugation in the name of white supremacy, a type of ethnic cleansing, and perhaps a form of genocide. ![]() ![]() Rather, it was a state-sponsored mass deportation of "unimaginable violence." It was a land grab by wealthy planters. Indian emigration was not voluntary by any stretch of the imagination, nor was it humanitarian. Jackson's signature policy of "Indian Removal," as its proponents called it, would "define his presidency," says Claudio Saunt, in his meticulous account of one of the most shameful episodes in American history. When Andrew Jackson was inaugurated as president on March 4, 1829, he promised that "it will be my sincere and constant desire to observe toward the Indian tribes within our limits a just and liberal policy, and to give that humane and considerate attention to their rights and their wants which is consistent with the habits of our Government and the feelings of our people." Nine months later, in his first message to Congress in December 1829, he called for the "voluntary" emigration of 80,000 Native Americans to lands west of the Mississippi River. ![]() Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (New York: W.W. ![]() ![]() ![]() Housed in a custom clamshell box.įirst edition of the collected Writings of Thomas Paine, featuring the first collected American edition of The Crisis, with this very scarce variant issue, differing only in the arrangement of his works, the first to arrange Paine's works chronologically, leading with Common Sense and concluding with Rights of Man Parts I & II and Letter to Dundas. Octavo, contemporary full brown sheep, burgundy morocco spine label. The Writings of Thomas Paine, Secretary for Foreign Affairs to the Congress of the United States of America, in the Late War. “THESE ARE THE TIMES THAT TRY MEN’S SOULS”: RARE ALBANY EDITION OF THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE, CONTAINING THE FIRST COLLECTED AMERICAN EDITIONS OF THE CRISIS AND COMMON SENSE, ALONG WITH RIGHTS OF MAN PARTS I & II, VERY SCARCE IN CONTEMPORARY SHEEP ![]() ![]() Covey's newly revised and updated paperback edition of the New York Times bestseller that offers precious lessons in creating and sustaining a strong family culture in a turbulent world. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families is Stephen R. ![]() Lewis George Orwell Mary Pope Osborne LeUyen Pham Dav Pilkey Roger Priddy Rick Riordan J. ![]()
![]() ![]() The player interacts with the game by making decisions through ethical dilemmas that deal with issues such as insanity, rape, paranoia, and genocide.Įllison wrote the 130-page script treatment himself alongside David Sears, who decided to divide each character's story with their own narrative. It takes place in a dystopian world where a mastermind artificial intelligence named "AM" has destroyed all of humanity except for five people, whom he has been keeping alive and torturing for the past 109 years by constructing metaphorical adventures based on each character's fatal flaws. The game is based on Ellison's short story of the same title. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a 1995 point-and-click adventure game developed by Cyberdreams and The Dreamers Guild, co-designed by Harlan Ellison, published by Cyberdreams and distributed by MGM Interactive. ![]() ![]() ![]() Told mostly in the voice of Yasodhara-who, like the author herself, is displaced to the far shores by the threat of danger-Island of a Thousand Mirrors never fails to register the trials of the Tamils, even though the bulk of it is narrated from a Sinhalese perspective. “I took the risk, decided to not have a day job, and write the book," says Munaweera. ![]() Until her best friend, who lives in Nigeria, urged her to give it a go. ![]() “After it was rejected by several publishers, I shelved it and decided to focus on graduate studies."īut while working on her dissertation, she kept getting distracted by the novel. “It took me five years to write the book," she says. In all of 226 pages, Munaweera evokes decades of troubled history and creates characters who grow on the reader. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of her craft is brevity. The effect is reminiscent of the novels of Shyam Selvadurai, one of Munaweera’s literary inspirations, whose recent novel, The Hungry Ghosts, mediates deftly between the common tragedies of the Sinhala and the Tamil people."įinding this balance was a formidable ambition, but Munaweera has grappled with it gracefully. Intense emotions are leavened by a sobering spirit of resilience. Lovers are torn asunder, allegiances are tested, and families are split by the force of circumstances. In her novel, too, tragedies happen, but are also absorbed into the mundane rhythms of life. ![]() |