Showing results by narrator "Pam Ward" in All Categories

Today it is known as Roosevelt Island. In 1828, when New York City purchased this narrow, two-mile-long island in the East River, it was called Blackwell's Island. There, over the next hundred years, the city would build a lunatic asylum, prison, hospital, workhouse, and almshouse. Stacy Horn has crafted a compelling and chilling narrative told through the stories of the poor souls sent to Blackwell's, as well as the period's city officials, reformers, and journalists (including the famous Nellie Bly). Damnation Island re-creates what daily life was like on the island....

Using her expertise in ancient Israelite society and economy as well as in biblical theology, Richter walks listeners through passages familiar and not-so-familiar, showing how significant environmental theology is in the Bible's witness. She then calls Christians to apply that message to today's environmental concerns. Richter is a master Bible scholar. Each chapter in this timely book draws out a biblical mandate about care for the land, for domestic and wild animals, for people at the margins, and more. She is also a master storyteller. 

In 1932, the city of Natchez, Mississippi, reckoned with an unexpected influx of journalists and tourists as the lurid story of a local murder was splashed across headlines nationwide. Two eccentrics, Richard Dana and Octavia Dockery, enlisted an African American man named George Pearls to rob their reclusive neighbor, Jennie Merrill, at her estate. During the attempted robbery, Merrill was shot and killed.

Living in the Woods in a Tree is an intimate glimpse into the turbulent life of Texas music legend Blaze Foley (1949-1989), seen through the eyes of Sybil Rosen, the woman for whom he wrote his most widely known song, "If I Could Only Fly". It captures the exuberance of their fleeting idyll in a tree house in the Georgia woods during the countercultural 1970s. Rosen offers a firsthand witnessing of Foley's transformation from a reticent hippie musician to the enigmatic singer/songwriter who would live and die outside society's rules.

Demons wage war against families because families are vital to God's plan of salvation. This stark reality requires that your family members become well-trained spiritual warriors who actively secure your home and fight to keep it off-limits to demonic activity. Kathleen Beckman offers you potent advice from her 12 years of active participation on an exorcist's team. She shows you how to clean up your household by cultivating in your family a civilization of love - and how to withstand the spiritual attacks that inevitably come to destroy the harmonious family life you create.

In A Most Peculiar Book, Kristin Swenson addresses the dirty little secret of biblical studies that the Bible is a weird book. It is full of surprises and contradictions, unexplained impossibilities, intriguing supernatural creatures, and heroes doing horrible deeds. It does not provide a simple worldview: What "the Bible says" on a given topic is multi-faceted, sometimes even contradictory.

Does your happiness depend on someone else's affection and presence in your life? Are your thoughts consumed by another person? If so, the relationship has become skewed - get help before it becomes a prison! Through 31 daily readings with reflection questions and practical action steps, Ellen Mary Dykas helps you to strengthen your relationship with Christ - embracing him as your true refuge - and to cultivate godly relationships with others from a place of confidence and peace.

The daughter of a Swedish minister growing up in Colorado, Thea Kronborg's musical talent sets her apart from her contemporaries. Driven by her determination to satisfy her artistic impulse, she moves to Chicago, where she falls in love with a wealthy married man. Her ability to resolve the tensions between her personal and professional lives and to communicate through her art makes her an unusual and thoroughly modern heroine.

In this first book of a three-book series, author Vannetta Chapman brings a fresh twist to the popular Amish fiction genre. She blends the familiar components consumers love in Amish books - faith, community, simplicity, family - with an innovative who-done-it plot that keeps readers guessing right up to the last stitch in the quilt. When two women - one Amish, one English - each with different motives, join forces to organize a successful on-line quilt auction, neither expects nor wants a friendship.

This book is a dialogue between two spiritual seekers - one a Trappist monk and the other a married professional woman. It is two people "stuttering to articulate life's universal questions from diverse contexts and perspectives."

Loneliness knows no season. It can strike during times of busyness and a full social calendar just as easily as it can when plans are canceled and friends are far off. And we may be surprised just how common loneliness is among our friends, family, and colleagues. But it isn't inevitable and it isn't forever. As a single adult for many years, Ruth Graham understands loneliness.

Love Is a Verb takes his teaching to the next level. Rather than a typical marriage self-help book filled with lengthy explanations of principles and techniques, it is a compilation of true stories displaying love in action. These stories - written by everyday people - go straight to the hearts of readers, who often say that illustrations are the most effective parts of a book. Gary Chapman adds a "Love Lesson" to each story, showing readers how they can apply the same principles to their own relationships.

Every town has at least one beloved if misunderstood eccentric, and Beanie Bradsher belongs to Mayhew Junction. Some - LouWanda Crump, for example - would call Beanie a spectacle, but Beanie just marches - and dresses - to the beat of a different drum.

Popular culture has taught us to picture the Old West as a land of men, whether it's the lone hero on horseback or crowds of card players in a rough-and-tumble saloon. But the taming of the frontier involved plenty of women, too - and this book tells their stories. At first, female pioneers were indeed rare - when the town of Denver was founded in 1859, there were only five women among a population of almost a thousand. But the adventurers arrived, slowly but surely. 

What are little boys made of? It used to be frogs, snails, and puppy dog tails, but today it is MTV, ADD, and STDs. So how do parents raise their sons to be respectful and responsible young men in a toxic culture that relentlessly undermines masculine virtues such as moral strength, self-restraint, and respect for women? By letting boys be boys.

Even without the right to vote, members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy proved to have enormous social and political influence throughout the South - all in the name of preserving Confederate culture. Karen L. Cox's history of the UDC, an organization founded in 1894 to vindicate the Confederate generation and honor the Lost Cause, shows why myths surrounding the Confederacy continue to endure.

We all know someone who is dissatisfied with their career but feels trapped in their current trajectory. What's not always clear is how they got there, or, more importantly, how we can avoid the same fate as we develop our own careers. In a competitive job market, we need concrete, field-tested advice to help us ace the interview, land the job, and launch a career we love. Enter Dee Ann Turner. After more than three decades leading teams and coaching staff members at Chick-fil-A, she knows what it takes to build a fulfilling career.

For Brenda Spahn, entrepreneur and businesswoman, wealth was a lifestyle - until a brush with the law threatened to send her to prison. In those dark moments, Brenda made a promise to God.

Spared incarceration, a renewed Brenda glimpsed into the lives of women serving time in one of the worst places in America - the JuliaTutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama. What she saw prompted a God-inspired vision. With a heart to help and a will that couldn't be crushed, Brenda fought the system and overcame tremendous obstacles to take ex-cons into her home.

Why do Christians - even mature Christians - still sin so often? Why doesn't God set us free? We seem to notice more sin in our lives all the time, and we wonder if our progress is a constant disappointment to God. Where is the joy and peace we learn about in the Bible?

Collected here are 10 Western short stories by Richard S. Wheeler, the award-winning author who makes storytelling look easy. In "Mugs Birdsong's Crime Academy", celebrated criminal Mugs Birdsong decides to found an academy that will instruct lawmen on the ways and means of lawlessness. "The Last Days of Dominic Prince" is the tragic tale of a cattle baron and his final conflict with the forces of political correctness. "Dead Weight" introduces us to a coffin maker who constructs a work of art.