The first new biography of America's foremost woman of letters in twenty years, No Gifts from Chance presents an Edith Wharton for our times. Far from the emotionally withdrawn and neurasthenic victim of earlier portraits, she is revealed here as an ambitious, disciplined, and self-determined woman who fashioned life to her own desires. Drawing on government records, legal and medical documents, and recently opened collections of Wharton's letters, Shari Benstock's biography offers new information on what have been called the key mysteries of her life: the question of her paternity, her troubled relations with her mother and older brothers, her marriage to manic-depressive Teddy Wharton, and her extramarital affair with Morton Fullerton.

Praise for the first edition (published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1994): "Here, at last, is Edith Wharton in all her power, her ambitions, and her angers. For the first time we have a biography using new material and allowing us to acclaim an accomplished though prejudiced woman, one who was against women's suffrage, who surrounded herself with famous men, yet was the author of insightful, feminist novels. Here is the truth, brilliantly recounted, compelling to read." --Carolyn G. Heilbrun, author of Writing a Woman's Life "This may be the best-written biography of the [1990s]. Evocative, rich in new material, and always focused on Edith Wharton the woman, Benstock's way of telling the woman writer's story is superb. If we thought we knew the Wharton story before, this book proves us wrong." --Linda Wagner-Martin, author of Sylvia Plath: A Biography "It was indeed an age of innocence but it was also an age of experience. Shari Benstock's biography of Edith Wharton captures that world. Beautifully researched and impressively thorough, this new biography is especially interesting about Wharton's family and her relationships. It will benefit all students and lovers of her fiction." --Fred Kaplan, author of Henry James: The Imagination of Genius "Shari Benstock's biography is quite simply the standard biography of Edith Wharton. This is true even though other excellent biographies preceded hers." --Carol J. Singley, author of Edith Wharton: Matters of Mind and Spirit

In Spiritual gifts: Church Under Siege, (This book is part of a 3-book series) Charles laments over how ministry gifts which were intended to prepare saints have been woefully neglected. He argues that believers are granted abilities and leaders are needed who are willing to invest in them. He moans that those with ministry gifts of the Lord Jesus Christ have behaved as if they are not committed to training individual believers. The Black pulpit has ignored the pews in the department of gift identification and developing. He pleads with the leaders as ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ to fulfil the number one functional dynamic in this life. In Your Gift from God the Holy Spirit Matters, (Book 1) Charles takes the reader on a hunt to explore how the individual believer is granted a supernatural gift. He persuades and convinces the believer to discover his individual strategic gifting. He defines and illustrates the gifts and tackles the controversial. Charles says Ministry gifts were given to prepare the saints for the work of service and not to do the work of the ministry. He shows how Pentecostal Evangelicals, Charismatic Evangelicals and Traditional Evangelicals have been uniquely gifted and what must be discovered at the individual level according to the divine strategy of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. In Spiritual Gifts: Welcome to the Church, (Book 2) Charles defines and describes each gift. He persuades the believer to connect with individual gifting, according to the will of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. He urges that every believer is entrusted with a gift that can be known and used to benefit many.

Examining the personal library and the making of self When writer Edith Wharton died in 1937, without any children, her library of more than five thousand volumes was divided and subsequently sold. Decades later, it was reassembled and returned to The Mount, her historic Massachusetts estate. What a Library Means to a Woman examines personal libraries as technologies of self-creation in modern America, focusing on Wharton and her remarkable collection of books. Sheila Liming explores the connection between libraries and self-making in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American culture, from the 1860s to the 1930s. She tells the story of Wharton’s library in concert with Wharton scholarship and treatises from this era concerning the wider fields of book history, material and print culture, and the histories (and pathologies) of collecting. Liming’s study blends literary and historical analysis while engaging with modern discussions about gender, inheritance, and hoarding. It offers a review of the many meanings of a library collection, while reading one specific collection in light of its owner’s literary celebrity. What a Library Means to a Woman was born from Liming’s ongoing work digitizing the Wharton library collection. It ultimately argues for a multifaceted understanding of authorship by linking Wharton’s literary persona to her library, which was, as she saw it, the site of her self-making.

The good-looking and beloved Fr. Alexander Vanos has served his church and community well. But, he’s no ordinary priest. Bored to death with the mundane rituals and routines of priestly life, he studies centuries old church policies and doctrines and asks the question....do they line up with biblical doctrine? Thus begins his quest for truth, leading to a life-changing decision that threatens to destroy close and supportive relationships. As if that wasn’t enough, a chance encounter with an African American Protestant female with her own issues, will dramatically reshape the course of their lives and set them on a collision course with their respective families. Will he choose love, or devotion to God? Can he have both? Will she do the unthinkable? But his decision to accept the challenge to spearhead an organization of ex-priests explodes into an international initiative and proves to be his boldest move yet. Described as a ‘modern day Martin Luther’ by some, Fr. Vanos and this organization embarks on an extraordinary journey, one that threatens the boundaries of family relations, and ultimately...challenges Rome on an international platform, continuing in the sequel The Silent Majority, (available now at on-line book stores, and www.westbowpress.com.)