After his father dies, 13 year old Louie Hollander and his mother must move away from their old home and find a way to make a living. They are hired as keepers of Two Tree Island Lighthouse on Windlass Bay - temporarily. In order to keep the job, Louie and his ma must prove that they can handle the hard work. Tending to the urgent task of protecting sea-going vessels from storm and fog keeps Louie scrambling, especially when equipment breaks down. And even with visits from mainland friends, island living is lonely. An injured sea gull becomes an unexpected pet and a visiting preacher becomes a new fishing buddy. But Louie grieves for his father and misses his best friend Charlie. Then Louie receives wonderful news. Charlie plans to spend the month of August on Two Tree Island. August can't come quickly enough. But, Louie finds that Charlie has changed a lot. Suddenly Louie must face difficult choices, especially when Charlie's behavior endangers the operation of the lighthouse. "Manning the Light maintains family values and spiritual foundations that are important in my family's life today. As a homeschooling mom, I recommend this book as part of a literature based American history curriculum." Elizabeth Giles Griner

Winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, a lyrical meditation on family, place, and inheritance Names for Light traverses time and memory to weigh three generations of a family’s history against a painful inheritance of postcolonial violence and racism. In spare, lyric paragraphs framed by white space, Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint explores home, belonging, and identity by revisiting the cities in which her parents and grandparents lived. As she makes inquiries into their stories, she intertwines oral narratives with the official and mythic histories of Myanmar. But while her family’s stories move into the present, her own story—that of a writer seeking to understand who she is—moves into the past, until both converge at the end of the book. Born in Myanmar and raised in Bangkok and San Jose, Myint finds that she does not have typical memories of arriving in the United States; instead, she is haunted by what she cannot remember. By the silences lingering around what is spoken. By a chain of deaths in her family line, especially that of her older brother as a child. For Myint, absence is felt as strongly as presence. And, as she comes to understand, naming those absences, finding words for the unsaid, means discovering how those who have come before have shaped her life. Names for Light is a moving chronicle of the passage of time, of the long shadow of colonialism, and of a writer coming into her own as she reckons with her family’s legacy.

New York City, 1973 and the city is falling apart under the weight of crime and degradation. Al loves Trudy but doesn't understand her or how to be a man in this world. He hopes that angry Mike, a courageous and selfless father to a mentally crippled son, can enlighten and inspire him. But Mike, who spends his nights manning a spotlight outside Broadway theaters, has a dark side. He can keep those beams licking the dark heavens and he can fix any broken appliance you hand him, but he can't fix his broken son and it is killing him. The two men forge a friendship and try to work out their frustrations, paranoia, and rage as they grope for some standing in a city buried in uncollected garbage and uncontrolled vermin. Meanwhile, Mike's wife, Arlene, a classically trained actress, becomes a New York City folk hero portraying a distraught housewife in a television commercial trying to battle an onslaught of cockroaches. With passion, authenticity, and insight," along with wild humor and relentless humanity, Light Man digs into the psyche of a city on the edge and two men whose lopsided versions of heroism take them to the brink of catastrophe and their own contorted versions of redemption.

After his father dies, 13 year old Louie Hollander and his mother must move away from their old home and find a way to make a living. They are hired as keepers of Two Tree Island Lighthouse on Windlass Bay - temporarily. In order to keep the job, Louie and his ma must prove that they can handle the hard work. Tending to the urgent task of protecting sea-going vessels from storm and fog keeps Louie scrambling, especially when equipment breaks down. And even with visits from mainland friends, island living is lonely. An injured sea gull becomes an unexpected pet and a visiting preacher becomes a new fishing buddy. But Louie grieves for his father and misses his best friend Charlie. Then Louie receives wonderful news. Charlie plans to spend the month of August on Two Tree Island. August can't come quickly enough. But, Louie finds that Charlie has changed a lot. Suddenly Louie must face difficult choices, especially when Charlie's behavior endangers the operation of the lighthouse. "Manning the Light maintains family values and spiritual foundations that are important in my family's life today. As a homeschooling mom, I recommend this book as part of a literature based American history curriculum." Elizabeth Giles Griner

With The Gone and the Going Way, Pulitzer finalist Maurice Manning returns us to the beloved and lamented lives and landscape of the hill people of his native Kentucky.

It has been over twenty years since the publication of The Ragamuffin Gospel, a book many claim as the shattering of God’s grace into their lives. Since that time, Brennan Manning has been dazzingly faithful in preaching and writing variations on that singular theme – “Yes, Abba is very fond of you!” But today the crowds are gone and the lights are dim, the patches on his knees have faded. If he ever was a ragamuffin, truly it is now. In this his final book, Brennan roves back his past, honoring the lives of the people closest to him, family and friends who’ve known the saint and the sinner, the boy and the man. Far from some chronological timeline, these memories are witness to the truth of life by one who has lived it – All Is Grace.

The Book Before Revelations is a modern-day religious fantasy starring angels and demons that wage the ultimate battle. Meet Nate, a young adolescent who has survived nothing but the worst from an abusive family and bullying at school. He meets an angel named Angie, who has experienced similar betrayals in heaven. The two begin to bond on an unusual level. As their friendship grows, Angie hears about an unstoppable war that hell plans to unleash on earth. There is no way heaven stands a chance of victory … unless the believers on earth can stop it with their heavenly yet human bodies opposing hell’s angels and demons. The young boy who was a non-believer begins training one on one with the angel. On Nate and Angie’s journey, will they find happiness, love, friends, and peace in a time of war?