Kathleen Long Bostrom and Peter Graystone provide the ultimate to do list: ninety-nine things that everyone should experience during their time on earth. From the sublime (watch the sun rise), to the wonderfully silly (ride a roller-coaster!), the activities presented will breathe new life into readers' lives while opening them up to new spiritual experiences.

Each entry provides a description of the activity, what the reader can expect to gain from it, and how much of a time commitment it will require. Blank space is included to record memories of and thoughts about the experience.

Violence, Trauma, and Memory: Responses to War in the Late Medieval and Early Modern World brings together eight essays that examine medieval and early modern violence and warfare in France, the Hispanic World, and the Dutch Republic through the lens of trauma studies and memory studies. By focusing on warfare, these essays by historians, literary specialists, and historians of visual culture demonstrate how individuals and groups living with the "ungraspable" outcomes of wartime violence grappled with processing and remembering (both culturally and politically) the trauma of war.

Feasting on the Word has quickly become the most popular lectionary commentary series in use today. This series of daily devotionals draws from the wealth of writing in the commentaries to present inspirational reflections for each day of the lectionary year.

Each day of the week contains Scripture passages for the coming Sunday from the Revised Common Lectionary, excerpts from the commentaries for reflection, a response, and a prayer. Additional material is provided for each Sunday.

These handsome volumes are packaged in a soft leather-like cover with rounded corners, a stamped cover, and a sewn-in ribbon to help you keep your place. "Daily Feast" is ideal for daily meditation, journaling, teaching, and worship preparation.

Celebrate the differences that make life richer and more interesting with this inclusive board book about a budding friendship. Making friends is something all children do, but sometimes it can feel scary. They might worry that no one will like them or that they are too different to find a friend. In this sweet board book, the narrator lists all the ways children can be different from a prospective friend: "I wake early. You're up late. My hair's curly. Yours is straight. I can swim, but you can skate. Will you be friends with me?" Instead of worrying that these differences will make friendship impossible, the narrator decides that: "We are different. That's okay! Life is much more fun that way." Perfect for children heading to school or any child in a new situation trying to make friends, this encouraging book reassures readers that diversity is what makes friendship--and life--so interesting.

It's summer, and the Veggies are going camping. But Junior has a problem - he's afraid of the dark. As night falls, his friends reassure him by pointing out the different types of light all around them, from flashlights to campfires to lighthouses. But most importantly, they remind Junior that God lights his path and shines through him to others. This charming tale with the popular Veggie crew will comfort little ones and inspire them to let their light shine.

Kids ages 0-5 will love learning about God's unconditional love through the fun rhymes and cute pictures of the Little Blessings characters. With solid content from Kathy Bostrom and the endearing art of the Care Bears artist, this chunky board book will entertain young children as they learn that God loves them just the way they are--no matter what!

***NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK*** Feasting on the Word is one of the most popular lectionary commentary series in use today. This is the first in a new series of daily devotionals that draws from the wealth of writing in the commentaries to present inspirational reflections, responses, and prayers for each day of the lectionary year. Each day of the week contains Scripture passages for the coming Sunday from the Revised Common Lectionary, excerpts from the commentaries for reflection, a response, and a prayer. Additional material is provided for each Sunday.

Drawing on a rich array of textual and visual primary sources, including medicine, satires, play scripts, dictionaries, natural philosophy, and texts on collecting wonders, this book provides a fresh perspective on monstrosity in early modern European culture. The essays explore how exceptional bodies challenged social, religious, sexual and natural structures and hierarchies in the sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and contributed to its knowledge, moral and emotional repertoire. Prodigious births, maternal imagination, hermaphrodites, collections of extraordinary things, powerful women, disabilities, controversial exercise, shapeshifting phenomena and hybrids are examined in a period before all varieties and differences became normalized to a homogenous standard. The historicizing of exceptional bodies is central in the volume since it expands our understanding of early modern culture and deepens our knowledge of its specific ways of conceptualizing singularities, rare examples, paradoxes, rules and conventions in nature and society.

Best-selling author Kathy Bostrom offers this book of devotions to help women create calm in the chaos of their busy lives. The book comprises twenty-eight days of devotions for each month of the year, so that readers can begin using the book during any month. Each week's devotions, prayers, quotations, and "Spirit Boosters" focus on one Bible passage, which is read each day of that week. Each week ends with a "Sabbath Celebration," a time for quiet prayer, reflection, and renewal. The "Spirit Boosters" for each week are divided into "Reaching In" and "Reaching Out" sections. They offer suggestions for ways to be kind to yourself and to others while nurturing your own faith. This book is ideal for women's prayer groups, to give as a gift, or to give to yourself.

Having a bad day? Having a bad year? With this warm and thoughtful volume, Kathleen Long Bostrom offers one hundred simple exercises that will boost and strengthen your spirit--that essential part of you that connects you to God. These exercises will help readers nurture their souls, a practice too often ignored as we deal with the day to day minutia of our lives. Each imaginative entry contains a practical step to boost the spirit, a relevant Scripture passage and quotation for reflection, a fun fact related to the exercise, and ample space for journaling. More than simply cheering us up, Bostrom's suggestions, thoughtfully undertaken, can create an enduring shift in how we choose to view the inevitable downsides of life.

In The Dark Thread, scholars examine a set of important and perennial narrative motifs centered on violence within the family as they have appeared in French, English, Spanish, and American literatures. Over fourteen essays, contributors highlight the connections between works from early modernity and subsequent texts from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, in which incidents such as murder, cannibalism, poisoning, the burial of the living, the failed burial of the dead, and subsequent apparitions of ghosts that haunt the household unite “high� and “low� cultural traditions. This book questions the traditional separation between the highly honored genre of tragedy and the less respected and generally less well-known genres of histoires tragiques, gothic tales and novels, and horror stories. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.