This edited volume presents the foremost scholarly thinking on why the US invaded Iraq in 2003, a pivotal event in both modern US foreign policy and international politics.In the years since the US invasion of Iraq it has become clear that the threat of weapons of mass destruction was not as urgent as the Bush administration presented it and that Saddam Hussein was not involved with either Al Qaeda or 9/11. Many consider the war a mistake and question why Iraq was invaded. A majori...

Alice Grantham lost her fiancé and her job, so she’s had to come home to Willow Park to live with her parents. To recover some sense of independence and security, she’s cobbled together different part-time jobs, including one as assistant to the pastor of her hometown church. Nothing seems to be going right for her. Even Micah, the pastor’s brother and the first boy she ever loved, is standoffish with her now.Micah has always been a prodigal son, but now he’s trying to put that lif...

Abigail has been separated from her husband for almost two years. After a marriage that brought her only insecurity, she seeks a life now of peace and independence with their six-year-old daughter. Thomas wants to put their marriage back together, because he liked the wife he used to have, but she never wants to be that person again.She might need his help with their daughter and start to enjoy his company again, but she just can't trust him with her heart. Even when she discovers ...

For years, Lydia has dreamed of overseas mission work, the way some women dream of getting married. How ironic that she needs a husband to finally make it happen.She's always been practical, however—even if it means a marriage-of-convenience so she can finally do the work she’s called to do. Gabe needs a wife at exactly the right time. Plus, he’s kind of hot.After a spectacularly failed marriage, Gabe isn't looking for a wife. He and his nine-year-old daughter are doing jus...

After years of dreaming, Jessica is finally getting married, but the marriage isn't exactly what she thought.Daniel is her best friend, and she's known him all her life, but he's never gotten over losing his wife two years ago. His dream is to become the pastor of the church in their hometown, but the small-town congregation keeps balking over calling an unmarried minister. Since Daniel needs a wife and Jessica wants a husband and family, she proposes an arrangement that benefits b...

"You get to the point where you can just say it. There was never anything special about me, except my father is rich and important. That's why it happened.It was just a normal Tuesday afternoon. I was twenty-three and thinking about my new designer boots. They kidnapped me for ransom. They raped me before I was rescued. My therapist says that talking about it means I'm starting to heal.I don't really think I am.It's even harder to talk about Gideon. He couldn’t save...

After being married for just six months, Sophie's journalist husband, Mark, was captured by a Syrian rebel group and held for more than two years. Now that he has finally returned home, he's like a different person. She hardly knows him anymore, and he keeps pulling away from her.She tries to be patient and support Mark in any way he needs, but it just gets harder and harder. With another Christmas in Willow Park fast approaching, Sophie and her husband need to get to know each oth...

A highly anticipated collection of wildly imaginative short stories from "one of contemporary fiction's true mad scientists" (Necessary Fiction). In the weird and wonderful tradition of Kelly Link and Karen Russell, Amber Sparks's dazzling new collection bursts forth with stories that render the apocalyptic and otherworldly hauntingly familiar. In "The Cemetery for Lost Faces," two orphans translate their grief into taxidermy, artfully arresting the passage of time. The anchoring novella, ...

"Radio Iris has a lovely, eerie, anxious quality to it. Iris's observations are funny, and the story has a dramatic otherworldly payoff that is unexpected and triumphant." -Deb Olin Unferth, The New York Times Book Review "A noirish nod to the monotony of work." -O: The Oprah Magazine "Kinney is a Southern California Camus." -Los Angeles Magazine "'The Office' as scripted by Kafka." -Minneapolis Star-Tribune "[An] astute evocation of office weirdness and malaise." -The Wall Street Journal ...

When her acceptance to Columbia is revoked just weeks before graduation, Kassandra Black is desperate. She hastily enrolls in the summer program at Henley University under the watchful eye of her great-uncle Brian. She figures successfully assisting him in his H.E.A.R. program (Henley Engineering Anomalies Research), will get her into college somewhere. As Kass gets to know the four other H.E.A.R. students, she realizes that she overlooked the “Anomalies” part of their acronym. They’ve all...

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • The Guardian • Kirkus Reviews • The fiction of multiple award–winning author China Miéville is powered by intelligence and imagination. Like George Saunders, Karen Russell, and David Mitchell, he pulls from a variety of genres with equal facility, employing the fantastic not to escape from reality but instead to interrogate it in provocative, unexpected ways.London awakes one m...

A gleeful and exhilarating tale of global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, rollicking adventure, and the secret to eternal life—mostly set in a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco bookstoreThe Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone—and serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumb...