From author J. Todd Scott comes a haunting thriller about a young plane crash survivor and a mysterious hiker who venture into the wilderness to escape a dark and vengeful force. A small white plane hurtles from the sky, vanishing into the wilderness. Hiker Maggie Roby watches its final descent, certain that no one could have survived. But to her shock, a fifteen-year-old girl emerges from the wreckage, wounded but miraculously, impossibly alive. Maggie approaches with trepidation; she has secrets of her own, a past she can’t escape. Saving the girl means risking her future, but she can’t just abandon her, can she? With the young survivor, Maggie embarks on a dangerous trek through the remote Appalachian backcountry, joining up with two veterans from the local sheriff’s department who know the land better than anyone. But even as Maggie charts their course through the mountains, she can sense someone—or something—else watching and waiting. Their journey is about more than enduring the elements. It’s about escaping a sinister presence that makes a vast wilderness feel like it’s closing in.

Accomplished theologian J. Todd Billings recovers the biblical theme of union with Christ for today's church, making a fresh contribution to the theological discussion with important applications for theology and ministry. Drawing on Scripture and the thought of figures such as Augustine, Calvin, Bavinck, and Barth, Billings shows how a theology of union with Christ can change the way believers approach worship, justice, mission, and the Christian life. He illuminates how union with Christ can change the theological conversation about thorny topics such as total depravity and the mystery of God. Billings also provides a critique and alternative to the widely accepted paradigm of incarnational ministry and explores a gospel-centered approach to social justice. Throughout, he offers a unique and lively exploration of what is so amazing about being united to the living Christ.

At the age of thirty-nine, Christian theologian Todd Billings was diagnosed with a rare form of incurable cancer. In the wake of that diagnosis, he began grappling with the hard theological questions we face in the midst of crisis: Why me? Why now? Where is God in all of this? This eloquently written book shares Billings's journey, struggle, and reflections on providence, lament, and life in Christ in light of his illness, moving beyond pat answers toward hope in God's promises. Theologically robust yet eminently practical, it engages the open questions, areas of mystery, and times of disorientation in the Christian life. Billings offers concrete examples through autobiography, cultural commentary, and stories from others, showing how our human stories of joy and grief can be incorporated into the larger biblical story of God's saving work in Christ.

A celebrated standard for architects, planners, and hospital administrators, Hospital and Healthcare Facility Design has introduced three generations of students and professionals to the state-of-the-art practice of creating structures that are healing environments for those who are ill, while promoting wellness and comfort for all who use them. The third edition of this comprehensive work includes all new case studies and updated text providing innovative ideas and practical guidelines for planning and designing facilities in the rapidly changing landscape of the healthcare world. Drawing on some fifty years of experience at one of the country s leading healthcare architecture firms Earl Swensson Associates (ESa) authors Richard L. Miller, FAIA, Earl S. Swensson, FAIA, and J. Todd Robinson, AIA, explore the current and emerging trends in medical care, technology, and delivery as practiced in a rich cross section of examples of healthcare facilities from around the country. In this new edition they touch on such topics as Lean and LEED practices, evidence-based design, Planetree design, and other important issues facing contemporary and future designers. They expand coverage of the increasingly important topics covered in previous editions, such as women s and children s healthcare and care for the elderly. This new edition also explores the latest thinking on everything from vast new medical campuses to continuous-care retirement communities and from freestanding facilities to template designs for networks of hospitals. In short, the authors take a fresh look at the latest advances in the field and explain how these advances are affecting the design of hospitals and other healthcare facilities and the resulting impact for the future."

From J. Todd Scott comes a chillingly engrossing thriller about a cult survivor who must confront the horrors of her past to ensure the safety of the future. Ten years after a fiery raid kills her family, former cult member Sybilla "Billie" Laure has a completely new identity. She's settled in rural Colorado with her daughter, hoping for a quieter life. But the world has other plans. With wildfires raging and birds dropping from the sky, Billie wonders if her cult leader father's apocalyptic predictions are finally coming true. When an intruder murders her husband and kidnaps her daughter, Billie has no choice but to confront the secrets of her past. But Billie's journey has other perils, too-namely, a police chief hot on her trail, determined to expose the dangers of the defunct doomsday cult. To save her daughter, Billie will have to go back to where it all began-to the ruined compound in New Mexico where the real threat is the truth.

There is no doubt nowadays that numerical mathematics is an essential component of any educational program. It is probably more efficient to present such material after a reasonable competence in (at least) linear algebra and calculus has already been attained - but at this stage those not specializ ing in numerical mathematics are often interested in getting more deeply into their chosen field than in developing skills for later use. An alternative approach is to incorporate the numerical aspects of linear algebra and cal culus as these subjects are being developed. Long experience has persuaded us that a third attack on this problem is the best and this is developed in the present two volumes, which are, however, easily adaptable to other circum stances. The approach we prefer is to treat the numerical aspects separately, but after some theoretical background. This is often desirable because of the shortage of persons qualified to present the combined approach and also because the numerical approach provides an often welcome change which, however, in addition, can lead to better appreciation of the fundamental con cepts. For instance, in a 6-quarter course in Calculus and Linear Algebra, the material in Volume 1 can be handled in the third quarter and that in Volume 2 in the fifth or sixth quarter."

There is no doubt nowadays that numerical mathematics is an essential component of any educational program. It is probably more efficient to present such material after a strong grasp of (at least) linear algebra and calculus has already been attained -but at this stage those not specializing in numerical mathematics are often interested in getting more deeply into their chosen field than in developing skills for later use. An alternative approach is to incorporate the numerical aspects of linear algebra and calculus as these subjects are being developed. Long experience has persuaded us that a third attack on this problem is the best and this is developed in the present two volumes, which are, however, easily adaptable to other circumstances. The approach we prefer is to treat the numerical aspects separately, but after some theoretical background. This is often desirable because of the shortage of persons qualified to present the combined approach and also because the numerical approach provides an often welcome change which, however, in addition, can lead to better appreciation of the fundamental concepts. For instance, in a 6-quarter course in Calculus and Linear Algebra, the material in Volume 1 can be handled in the third quarter and that in Volume 2 in the fifth or sixth quarter.

We're all going to die. Yet in our medically advanced, technological age, many of us see death as a distant reality--something that happens only at the end of a long life or to other people. In The End of the Christian Life, Todd Billings urges Christians to resist that view. Instead, he calls us to embrace our mortality in our daily life and faith. This is the journey of genuine discipleship, Billings says: following the crucified and resurrected Lord in a world of distraction and false hopes. Drawing on his experience as a professor and father living with incurable cancer, Billings offers a personal yet deeply theological account of the gospel's expansive hope for small, mortal creatures. Artfully weaving rich theology with powerful narrative, Billings writes for church leaders and laypeople alike. Whether we are young or old, reeling from loss or clinging to our own prosperity, this book challenges us to walk a strange but wondrous path: in the midst of joy and lament, to receive mortal limits as a gift, an opportunity to give ourselves over to the Lord of life.

This book, the first on these topics, addresses the problem of finding an ellipsoid to represent a large set of points in high-dimensional space, which has applications in computational geometry, data representations, and optimal design in statistics. The book covers the formulation of this and related problems, theoretical properties of their optimal solutions, and algorithms for their solution. Due to the high dimensionality of these problems, first-order methods that require minimal computational work at each iteration are attractive. While algorithms of this kind have been discovered and rediscovered over the past fifty years, their computational complexities and convergence rates have only recently been investigated. The optimization problems in the book have the entries of a symmetric matrix as their variables, so the author's treatment also gives an introduction to recent work in matrix optimization.* Provides historical perspective on the problems studied by optimizers, statisticians, and geometric functional analysts.* Demonstrates the huge computational savings possible by exploiting simple updates for the determinant and the inverse after a rank-one update.* Highlights the difficulties in algorithms when related problems are studied that do not allow simple updates at each iteration.* Gives rigorous analyses of the proposed algorithms, MATLAB codes, and computational results.

Can Christians and churches be both catholic and Reformed? In this volume, two accomplished young theologians argue that to be Reformed means to go deeper into true catholicity rather than away from it. Their manifesto for a catholic and Reformed approach to dogmatics seeks theological renewal through retrieval of the rich resources of the historic Christian tradition. The book provides a survey of recent approaches toward theological retrieval and offers a renewed exploration of the doctrine of sola scriptura. It includes a substantive afterword by J. Todd Billings.

"[So] good I wish I'd written it. The poetic and bloody ground of west Texas has given birth to a powerful new voice in contemporary western crime fiction." --Craig Johnson, New York Times-bestselling author of the Walt Longmire series In this gritty crime debut set in the stark Texas borderlands, an unearthed skeleton will throw a small town into violent turmoil. Seventeen-year-old Caleb Ross is adrift in the wake of the sudden disappearance of his mother more than a year ago, and is struggling to find his way out of the small Texas border town of Murfee. Chris Cherry is a newly minted sheriff's deputy, a high school football hero who has reluctantly returned to his hometown. When skeletal remains are discovered in the surrounding badlands, the two are inexorably drawn together as their efforts to uncover Murfee's darkest secrets lead them to the same terrifying suspect: Caleb's father and Chris's boss, the charismatic and feared Sheriff Standford "Judge" Ross. Dark, elegiac, and violent, The Far Empty is a modern Western, a story of loss and escape set along the sharp edge of the Texas border. Told by a longtime federal agent who knows the region, it's a debut novel you won't soon forget.