"Vesper Wright is in hell. The night she gets fired from her unglamorous restaurant job, she comes home to find an envelope waiting on her doorstep. There's no return address, but she knows exactly who it's from--her estranged family. Inside the envelope is an invitation to the wedding of Vesper's cousin and childhood best friend Rosemary, the one person she regrets losing touch with. She's getting married at the family home. A home that, according...

"Extremes of religious belief within our own borders, taking readers inside isolated American communities where some 40,000 Mormon Fundamentalists still practice polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God. At the core of Krakauer's book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from...

To the warrior-monks known as the Redeemers, who rule over massive armies of child slaves, "the last four things" represent the culmination of a faithful life. Death. Judgement. Heaven. Hell. The last four things represent eternal bliss-or endless destruction, permanent chaos, and infinite pain. Perhaps nowhere are the competing ideas of heaven and hell exhibited more clearly than in the dark and tormented soul of Thomas Cale. Betrayed by his beloved...

In the final season, Vala, a former Goa'uld host turned freedom figther, joins SG-1in their battle to defend the galaxy from the holy war of Ori. Meanwhile, relations between Jaffa and Earth continue to be strained.

DESCRIPTION In the city of Egunu, Nigeria, fifteen year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a somewhat cloistered life. Their father is a wealthy businessman, they live in a beautiful home, and attend private school. But, through Kambili's eyes, we see that their home life is anything but harmonious. Her father, a fanatically religious man has impossible expectations of his children and his wife, and if things don't go his way he becomes physically...

Fifteen-year-old Sara and her beautiful sister, Rachel, are too young to legally drive a car-but are approaching spinsterhood in Utah's secret polygamist Blood of the Lamb community. Having long since reached the "age of preparedness," they will soon be married off to much older men chosen by the hidden sect's revered Prophet. As Sara, chosen to become her uncle's fifth wife, grows more distraught over her impending incestuous marriage, she begins...

When Harden Campbell wakes cold and beaten in a dirt-floor cell, he finds only three other things in the room with him: the mutilated body of his good friend, an ancient typewriter, and a stack of blank paper, the top sheet of which has a single, typed sentence. He knows the message is from Coyote, his brilliant, megalomaniacal roommate whose lust for power and reverence has recently revealed him for the true sociopath he is. Now, as the founder of...

Baz and Ray, survivors of an apocalyptic flood, win places on X-Isle, an island where life is rumored to be better than on the devastated mainland, but they find the island to be a violent place ruled by religious fanatic Preacher John, and they decide they must come up with a weapon to protect themselves from impending danger.

Centuries ago, the human race fought its first great war against an alien race and lost. A tiny population of human beings fled to distant Safehold. Centuries later, their descendants have forgotten their history; for them, life has been an eternal Middle Ages, ruled by the Church of God Awaiting, whose secret purpose is to prevent the re-emergence of industrial civilization. But not all of Safehold's founders were on board with this plan. Those dissidents...