Religious Refugees

Questioning our faith and spiritual beliefs, while leaving the familiarity of our religious homeland, can be excruciatingly painful. Loneliness, isolation, and fear of rejection - from God and others - can give rise to shame, guilt, anger, and sadness. In Religious Refugees, therapist and ordained pastor Mark Karris explores this disorienting faith shift through the lens of cutting-edge psychological research, theology, philosophy, and, most importantly, the real world experiences of those who are going through - and have gone through - this arduous and confusing journey.

How do you cope when facing life-threatening illness, family conflict, faltering relationships, old trauma, obsessive thinking, overwhelming emotion, or inevitable loss? If you're like most people, chances are you react with fear and confusion, falling back on timeworn strategies: anger, self-judgment, and addictive behaviors. Though these old, conditioned attempts to control our life may offer fleeting relief, ultimately they leave us feeling isolated and mired in pain. There is another way.

Whether dethroned royalty, delusional, or something else—she’s knock-out gorgeous. And I'm way out of my depth. Swapping combat boots for cowboy boots, I'm limping through life at Southern Refuge. Then Ellie storms in—a mix of innocence and arrogance. An icy diva dressed for dumpster diving, barking orders like I'm her servant. Was she stunning? Oh, yeah. And the chemistry? Instant combustion. She lit a fire I thought long dead. I vow to keep my distance to avoid the inevitable heartbreak. But when her mask slips, revealing a wounded heart, I'm smitten. Then Ellie’s secret explodes....

To keep the people she loves safe, Sara left everything she knew behind. She soon learns this new world is nothing like her old one, and she struggles to make a place for herself among the Mohiri. But it soon becomes apparent to Sara and to everyone one around her that she is not your typical warrior. As the weeks pass, Sara builds new relationships, copes with her new trainers, and tries to manage her ever-changing powers while keeping her unique heritage a secret.

Early one morning in 1929, Mary Seneca Steele spontaneously packs a suitcase, gathers up her son and daughter, and drives away in her abusive and dissolute husband’s brand-new Auburn Phaeton automobile, leaving her privileged life in Charleston behind. It is the beginning of a journey of enlightenment that leads Mary “Sen” to the mountains and mysteries of Appalachia, where she will learn unexpected family secrets, create a new life for herself and her children, and finally experience love and happiness before tragedy will once again test her.

This Very Short Introduction covers a broad range of issues around the causes and impact of the contemporary refugee crisis for both receiving states and societies, for global order, and for refugees and other forced migrants themselves. Gil Loescher discusses the identity of refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons and how they differ from other forced migrants. He also investigates the long history of the refugee phenomenon and how refugees became a central concern of the international community during the 20th and 21st centuries.

Refuge seeks to restore moral purpose and clarity to refugee policy. Rather than assuming indefinite dependency, Collier - author of The Bottom Billion - and his Oxford colleague Betts propose a humanitarian approach integrated with a new economic agenda that begins with jobs, restores autonomy, and rebuilds people's ability to help themselves and their societies.

In 1987, Nathaniel Nyok, tormented by thoughts of missing parents and siblings, fled a bloody scene and a burning village in Sudan. At eight, he had just capitulated to an orphan-like life with a new title, A Lost Boy of Sudan, living in a refugee camp for 14 years. As he battled the loss of home and family, he chose education over revenge as the road to freedom, a road that eventually brought him to America, land of freedom and rules, welcomes and prejudices. This story portrays his transition to American culture as a time of both confusion and hope.

In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s.

With the coruscating gaze that informed The Sympathizer, in The Refugees Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will.

Ever since she was a child, Audrey wanted her life to be extraordinary. But as the daughter of a viscount born in late 14th-century England, the only thing expected of her was to marry - until an act of malice by her sister, Maris, four years ago damaged her face and her prospects. Though Maris was sent away, 20-year-old Audrey is still suffering the scars of her sister’s cruelty. When her father announces his plans to marry off his damaged daughter and bring Maris home, Audrey decides to flee in search of her true destiny.

GOLD MEDAL WINNER 2107 ILLUMINATION AWARDS “… an enthralling story.” – RT Book Reviews For anyone whose faith has ever faltered… Scotland 1072 The Norman Conqueror robbed Steinar of Talisand of his noble father and his lands, forcing him to seek refuge in Scotland while still recovering from a devastating wound. At the royal court, Steinar becomes scribe to the unlettered King of Scots while secretly regaining his skill with a sword. The first time Steinar glimpses the flame-haired maiden, Catrìona of the Vale of Leven, he is drawn to her spirited beauty. She does not fit among ...

For the first time, music legend Rudy Pérez shares his remarkable journey from a poor refugee kid in Miami to composing the greatest hit songs on the world stage. Named the most successful Latin songwriter in history, Rudy Pérez is the creator behind some of the best-selling records of Beyoncé, Julio Iglesias, Christina Aguilera, and IL Divo.

Underground Railroad conductor Hudson Wallace is surprised when heiress Jorgine Emerson asks him to transport her deceased father’s slaves to freedom. But it is a trap? Jorgine accepts that her fate lies in an unwanted marriage arranged by her heartless uncle, but she must protect her father’s slaves, particularly her friend, Sally from her lecherous fiancé. Can her deep conviction win Hudson over?

An Iranian girl escapes to America as a child, but her father stays behind. Over 20 years, as she transforms from confused immigrant to overachieving Westerner to sophisticated European transplant, daughter and father know each other only from their visits: four crucial visits over two decades, each in a different international city. The longer they are apart, the more their lives diverge, but also the more each comes to need the other's wisdom and, ultimately, rescue.

The small town of Refuge is the perfect hideaway for Patrick Lahm and the Freys. Miles away from the Kurtain Motel, Refuge promises both tranquility and ease of mind. The mundane routine of working in the local post office and buying groceries is all Patrick could hope for. For the first time in his life, things are finally looking up. But one can only escape from his sins for so long. Occasional nightmares, visions of the dead, and a priest hell-bound on confessions leave the survivors feeling that it is only a matter of time before the darkness catches up.

A dying world, shattered by a broken machine. A desperate flight, their only hope for refuge. A robotic race, ally and destroyer alike. The Republic of Exilium has grown in strength and confidence at the far end of the galaxy from the rest of mankind, sending out scout ships to survey the worlds around them as they try to learn more about the mysterious Construction Matrix AIs. Finding one of the genocidal rogues of that mysterious “race” in the process of destroying an inhabited world, Captain Octavio Catalan takes his ship into a desperate battle.

In this “jewel of a novel” (The Observer), Hilary Byrd flees his demons and the dark undercurrents of contemporary life in England for a former British hill station in south India. Charmed by the foreignness of his new surroundings and by the familiarity of everything the British have left behind, he finds solace in life’s simple pleasures, travelling by rickshaw around the small town with his driver Jamshed and staying in a mission house beside the local presbytery where, after a chance meeting, the Padre and his adoptive daughter Priscilla take Hilary under their wing.

Will the danger that stalks them destroy their life together before it begins? When Rachel dared Beth to answer a personal ad in The Ranchers Journal, she never thought her citified friend would become a bona fide rancher's wife. Now Rachel, too, is falling in love with the glorious valley and Dirk Tanner, a rugged rancher who makes it his home.

Nine hundred Vennans undertake a cultural exchange to Tradepoint, a space station where aliens from different worlds meet to do business. A young and gifted Speaker, Gredin, is translator and diplomat for the happy occasion. But a horrific vision shatters her first night’s sleep on Tradepoint. Venna, their home world, has been destroyed. Now the safety of the delegation, the only Vennans left in all of time and space, rests on Gredin’s young shoulders.