Cassandra Raven has an agile mind. She reads auras, sees visions, and rides streamers of light to explore the secrets of heaven with her dead friend Danny Begay. But the out-of-body riding unhinges Cass's balance and she's learned to guard her psyche better by keeping her feet solidly on the ground. This doesn't mean she can't enjoy the vivid glimpses her mind provides of the universe. She simply has to curtail the exotic means she uses to travel its boundaries. In Circle of Light, the farms, fields, and forests across Montana are exploding in flames. Grieving for dying creatures, Cass stumbles into a bizarre candle-burning ceremony on a tinder dry mountainside. Suspicious of the teenage perpetrators, but with no time to defend herself, she's struck down by what everyone thinks is lightning. Only surviving because Danny intervenes, Cass warns that her attacker is a devil spirit bent on revenge for a past wrong; a monster wolf who has escaped the eternal veil and now possesses all the power he needs to destroy her home and family-not to mention the broad swaths of landscape he's targeting. And when her sister locks Cass away in a hospital for crazy people, not even God seems to believe her-or care.

In the eighteenth century, French women were active in a wide range of employments-from printmaking to running whole-sale businesses-although social and legal structures frequently limited their capacity to work independently. The contributors to Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century France reveal how women at all levels of society negotiated these structures with determination and ingenuity in order to provide for themselves and their families. Recent historiography on women and work in eighteenth-century France has focused on the model of the ""family economy,"" in which women's work existed as part of the communal effort to keep the family afloat, usually in support of the patriarch's occupation. The ten essays in this volume offer case studies that complicate the conventional model: wives of ship captains managed family businesses in their husbands' extended absences; high-end prostitutes managed their own households; female weavers, tailors, and merchants increasingly appeared on eighteenth-century tax rolls and guild membership lists; and female members of the nobility possessed and wielded the same legal power as their male counterparts. Examining female workers within and outside of the context of family, Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century France challenges current scholarly assumptions about gender and labor. This stimulating and important collection of essays broadens our understanding of the diversity, vitality, and crucial importance of women's work in the eighteenth-century economy.

Carry the Light offers a glimpse into the paranormal world of Cassandra Raven, a caretaker of animals who reads auras, sees visions, and- for the sheer joy of it- hitches rides on streamers of light. Grieving the death of a beloved friend, she even travels to the brink of eternity to say goodbye. But these out-of-body excursions unbalance her mind, and after stints in mental hospitals and treatment with numbing drugs, she's learned to guard her psyche better. It doesn't mean she can't enjoy the vivid glimpses her mind provides of the universe. She simply has to curtail the exotic means she uses to travel its boundaries. In Carry the Light, Cass is nurturing orphan bear cubs in the snowy mountains of Montana when she suddenly sees her sister Lee's car careen into the icy Flathead River. Within hours of the accident, Lee is accused of driving drunk and killing a good friend. Cass knows better. No alcohol flows in Lee's veins, and now a real murderer is poised to blow up Lee's house-with both sisters in it. But who's listening to a crazy woman? Certainly not Lee. Cass must appeal to both sides of the spiritual veil for answers, and fears no one will believe her-in time or even at all.

You will laugh and cry your way through the pages of Do You Believe Me Now? It is a collection of short stories inspired by the author's personal experiences. Do You Believe Me Now? takes you on a journey of joy and tragedy through snippets of true life. In the eyes of a child in the 1950s you will experience the wonderment of innocence. In the eyes of a nave teenager and young adult in the 1960s, you will feel the freedom of youth and experience exciting and comical adventures. You will suffer through the consequences of blind trust, emotional humiliation, and the struggle of accepting an untimely death. Years later, in the eyes of an adult, you will know the power of love.

The Soul of Frannie Cooper is a true story, drawn from the documents of history. In 1894, with Idaho a new and tempestuous state, Frannie's conflict-ridden husband, John Hurst, shot a man in the back and killed him. Knowing the community was on the verge of hanging John, Frannie admitted to infidelity in a court of law. That lie destroyed her reputation and severed the most precious bonds a woman will ever forge-the bonds with her children. Mormon Church records say Frannie was born in 1864 in a Cache Valley settlement north of Salt Lake City. Within a few years, gossipers began questioning whether the dark eyed beauty was a true daughter of the LDS family which raised her. She may have been the half-breed child of a Scotsman fur trapper and his Indian mistress. But Frannie never doubted her family heritage, nor did she lose her resolve to fight for her children-and a man to love them all.

Longing to end a quarrel which has lasted for twenty years, Utah sisters Gayle and Caroline Mackenzie plan a joyful reunion in Caroline's New Mexico home. But Caroline, who has just become the third wife of a fundamental Mormon polygamist, doesn't show. Disillusioned and angry, Gayle searches for whys and finds a strange tale of religious conversion in journals her sister left behind. And when the family claims their new and wealthy member disappeared in a storm on her wedding night, Gayle is caught in a web of deceit spun by Navajo spirits of the dead. After a treacherous attack which spills her blood in the red desert sand of the mesa, deceptions unravel in an ancient rite of blood atonement as the fundamentalist family suffer celestial consequences for old sins buried way too long.

Jesus said, I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Matt. 16-19. God has given us the keys to His kingdom to bind and loose; to unlock doors, so we can enter into the rooms He has waiting for us to explore. The writings in this book are a reflection of my experience as to how you can enter into the rooms of His kingdom to explore the treasure He has waiting for you! This is a documentary of my vision. THE DOOR IS OPEN, I know your spirit will be encouraged as you walk with me through these rooms. The Author

The Sung Dynasty (960-1279) was a paradoxical era for Chinese women. This was a time when footbinding spread, and Confucian scholars began to insist that it was better for a widow to starve than to remarry. Yet there were also improvements in women's status in marriage and property rights. In this thoroughly original work, one of the most respected scholars of premodern China brings to life what it was like to be a woman in Sung times, from having a marriage arranged, serving parents-in-law, rearing children, and coping with concubines, to deciding what to do if widowed. Focusing on marriage, Patricia Buckley Ebrey views family life from the perspective of women. She argues that the ideas, attitudes, and practices that constituted marriage shaped women's lives, providing the context in which they could interpret the opportunities open to them, negotiate their relationships with others, and accommodate or resist those around them. Ebrey questions whether women's situations actually deteriorated in the Sung, linking their experiences to widespread social, political, economic, and cultural changes of this period. She draws from advice books, biographies, government documents, and medical treatises to show that although the family continued to be patrilineal and patriarchal, women found ways to exert their power and authority. No other book explores the history of women in pre-twentieth-century China with such energy and depth.