Smoke has as many different scents as skin. Part of the pleasure is not knowing what it will be -- sulfurous or closer to incense or airier and sweeter as I imagine the smell of clouds.Ella is a connoisseur of fire, a woman enthralled by it as other women are by love. She savors the seductive promise of a spark, the caress of a curling wisp of smoke, the all-consuming hunger of a spreading blaze. Ella's heart seethes with a rage that can be spoken only with tongues of flam...

“Steinke's sense of this small Texas town, with its explosive and interconnected lives and deaths, is absolutely masterful.”—Elizabeth GilbertA big, moving novel of one tight-knit Texas community and the events that alter its residents’ lives forever.Friendswood, Texas, is a small Gulf Coast town of church suppers, oil rigs on the horizon, hurricane weather, and high school football games. When tragedy rears its head with an industrial leak that kills and s...

The first edition of How Your Church Family Works was written nearly thirty years ago, and the reach and velocity of change in the last three decades poses a new challenge for churches. Thirty years ago, churches functioned in a fairly stable environment and focused on growth an expansion. The tide has turned now, though, and supplanted increase with decline. Bowen family systems theory—on which How Your Church Family Works is based—has not changed, but its application ha...

Die drei Freunde Niklas, Linus und Melissa - Mitglieder der Pfadfindergruppe "Pollution Police" - machen während einer Schnitzeljagd im Fürstenwald eine schreckliche Entdeckung: Hunderte Fische sind in einem See aus unerklärlichen Gründen einfach verendet. Als sich Waschbär Einstein, das treue Maskottchen der Clique, nach dem Verzehr eines Fisches plötzlich vor Schmerzen krümmt, bitten die Kids eine Tierärztin um Hilfe. Gemeinsam kommen sie einem Umweltskandal auf die Spur, in den ein groß...