A victim not just of its geography but also of the political and strategic choices of its neighbours, Afghanistan's security predicament is analysed in a book that is particularly relevant to recent developments in Central Asia

On Sunday April 27, 2003, 27-year old Aron Ralston set off for a day's hiking in the Utah canyons. Dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, Ralston, a seasoned climber, figured he'd hike for a few hours and then head off to work. 40 miles from the nearest paved road, he found himself on top of an 800-pound boulder. As he slid down and off of the boulder it shifted, trapping his right hand against the canyon wall. No one knew where he was; he had little water; he wasn't dressed correctly; and the boulder wasn't going anywhere. He remained trapped for five days in the canyon: hypothermic at night, de-hydrated and hallucinating by day. Finally, he faced the most terrible decision of his life: braking the bones in his wrist by snapping them against the boulder, he hacked through the skin, and finally succeeded in amputating his right hand and wrist. The ordeal, however, was only beginning. He still faced a 60-foot rappell to freedom, and a walk of several hours back to his car - along the way, he miraculously met a family of hikers, and with his arms tourniqued, and blood-loss almost critical, they heard above them the whir of helicopter blades; just in time, Aron was rescued and rushed to hospital. Since that day, Aron has had a remarkable recovery. He is back out on the mountains, with an artificial limb; he speaks to select groups on his ordeal and rescue; and amazingly, he is upbeat, positive, and an inspiration to all who meet him. This is the account of those five days, of the years that led up to them, and where he goes from here. It is narrative non-fiction at its most compelling.

You know the story: God told Abraham he would become a great nation. Then he told him to sacrifice his own (and only) son, Isaac. Abraham obeyed God and was about to kill Isaac—when God intervened. This is a classic 'between a rock and a hard place' situation. So how was Abraham able to obey in the face of losing it all? Or to bring it closer to home—what would you have done? In this powerful book, Tony Evans reveals what to do when your love for God is tested. According to Evans, “When you don’t know God, or when you either forget or dismiss what is true about Him, then you don’t know how to respond…” Moving through passages in both the Old and New Testaments, Evans makes a powerful case for obedient living as the key to an abundant life.

Autobiography of Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield.

A wilderness trek becomes a life-and-death situation in this riveting tale by the award-winning author of Up Country and Dogwolf. When their canoe tips, two boys--one of whom is diabetic--lose all their supplies and must depend on sheer wits and courage to survive.

Public theology is an increasingly important area of theological discourse with strong global networks of institutions and academics involved in it. Elaine Graham is one of the UK's leading theologians and an established SCM author. In this book, Elaine Graham argues that Western society is entering an unprecedented political and cultural era, in which many of the assumptions of classic sociological theory and of mainstream public theology are being overturned. Whilst many of the features of the trajectory of religious decline, typical of Western modernity, are still apparent, there are compelling and vibrant signs of religious revival, not least in public life and politics - local, national and global. This requires a revision of the classic secularization thesis, as well as much Western liberal political theory, which set out separate or at least demarcated terms of engagement between religion and the public domain. Elaine Graham examines claims that Western societies are moving from 'secular' to 'post-secular' conditions and traces the contours of the 'post-secular': the revival of faith-based engagement in public sphere alongside the continuing - perhaps intensifying - questioning of the legi¬timacy of religion in public life. She argues that public theology must rethink its theological and strategic priorities in order to be convincing in this new 'post-secular' world and makes the case for the renewed prospects for public theology as a form of Christian apologetics, drawing from Biblical, classical and contemporary sources.

As the U.S.S. "Enterprise" searches a distant nebula for a missing starship, the crew discovers a long-forgotten colony of humans that is fighting a civil war over whether or not imagination should be legal--Novelist