Hundreds of voices compete for our attention every day, both online and in our increasingly diverse communities. For Christians, it can be difficult to hear the voice of God amid all the noise. Some inadvertently give ear to these competing voices—while others are entirely led astray.Theologian Steven Félix-Jäger takes on the many challenges the church faces today, such as post-truth secularism, pluralism, political tribalism, and the anxiety of living with unanswered questions to ...

In a world dominated by men, Marian McPartland distinguished herself as one of the greatest jazz pianists of her age.Born in the UK as Margaret Marian Turner, Marian McPartland learned to play classical piano, but was passionately attracted to the rhythms of American jazz. Entertaining troops in WWII Europe, she met her future husband, Jimmy McPartland, a cocky young trumpet player who was the protege of the great Bix Beiderbecke. They were married and, together, they made jazz his...

In a world where mental health issues and loneliness are at an all-time high, it's more important than ever to find ways to cultivate joy, community, and meaning in our lives. Many of us feel trapped, struggling to find a way out of our own negative thoughts and emotions. Author and psychologist Richard Beck (Hunting Magic Eels) argues that we are struggling because our shape is "curved inward." We are self-focused, self-absorbed, ruminative. We're trapped inside ourselves. And we...

Metal music is heavy, but what does that mean? Heaviness is not just a timbre or quality of sound-it's an experience of impact that listeners help create. This book combines methodologies from musicology, music theory, cognitive science, and performance studies to define heaviness as a cross-sensory experience and aesthetic practice. Heaviness is shaped by what we do when we listen, how we think about metal music, and how we relate to the people who make and listen to it.Despite me...

Why is it that in a world demanding constant connectedness, we somehow feel lonelier, more burned out, and more disengaged? Busy Idiots explores how and why we find ourselves constantly busy—but getting nothing done. This book will show you how to break free from unhealthy habits and focus on what counts. You'll discover strategies to help you manage technology, navigate daily demands, and collaborate more effectively. You'll learn how to boost efficiency, foster real connections,...

Jesus calls us to make disciples of all the nations. Many Christians believe this means enlisting soldiers in a culture war. But putting faith in the service of politics risks remaking God in our own image. How can the church help bring God's kingdom to earth without relying on the political structures of this world?Critiquing our idolization of the values of classical Western liberalism, Steven Félix-Jäger seeks a renewal of the church's public witness. He points out the pitfalls ...

Clad in black with dark shades, Roy Orbison had a mystique, style, and voice that were unmistakable and singularly different from his famous peers of the 1950s and '60s. Born in Vernon, Texas, Roy was the son of a guitar-playing oil worker. Already a music fan by age six, Roy went on to form a high school band. Honky-tonk gigs followed. Then a contract at Elvis Presley's label, Sun Records, where Roy found mentors and friends among the likes of Carl Perkins. Following a shift to Monument R...

Trent Strong is back home in his northern Minnesota lake community after spending ten years working on a Chicago daily newspaper as an investigative journalist covering heinous crimes and traveling to war-torn countries. Sick of all the deaths, and content with returning to a slower pace, Trent buys the local weekly newspaper. But Trent is in town for only one week when an old friend asks him to investigate the Mammoth Paper Mill, which he suspects is polluting a small trout stream. Since ...

An enormous, mysterious box descends upon small-town Minnesota, spelling trouble for the world, in this classic adventure from a Science Fiction Grand Master.Forestry student Jerry Conklin is fly-fishing when something huge lands on his car, crushing it into the earth. It looks like a big black box—about fifty feet high and two hundred feet long—and the object stirs up quite a commotion among the townspeople of Lone Pine, Minnesota. One of them even shoots at it—an...

Still living out of the back of his Ford pickup truck in the Pacific Northwest, Tony Caruso is hired to find his old Navy buddy, missing for a week in the Puget Sound area of Washington. Tony is on the case for less than a day when someone blows up a forest service building, killing a man, and attracting the attention of FBI special agent Bob McCallum, Tony's old nemesis, who was now in charge of the Seattle office. Curious as usual, Tony goes to the fire site with his bomb-sniffing giant ...

Private Investigator Tony Caruso lives out of his rolling office, an old Ford pickup truck, with his German-trained bomb-sniffing dog, Panzer, a Giant Schnauzer. Tony retired after twenty years in the Navy as an aviation ordnanceman, but this training might not be enough when he is hired by an old friend to look into a murder suicide in Bend, Oregon, a resort Boom Town in the high desert east of the Cascades. Was it a murder suicide as the local sheriff thinks? Or has this idyllic communit...

The author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Gates of the Alamo, the sweeping Texas history Big Wonderful Thing, and decades of incisive journalism, Stephen Harrigan is an adept writer skilled in crafting memorable characters. From this singular voice now comes a collection of essays tackling the most personal, and yet most expansive, themes of all: identity, memory, and time itself.An Anchor in the Sea of Time unfolds individual storie...