The highly anticipated third novel in the Searching For series from Jennifer Probst, “one of the most exciting breakout novelists” (USA TODAY), featuring a runaway bride and the man who wants to be more than just her best friend… Genevieve MacKenzie has her life completely under control. About to wed the charming Chief doctor at the local hospital, she’s an up-and-coming surgeon with everything she could ever want. Until an escape through the church window on the day of her wedding sends her life into a tailspin…and flings her right into her best friend’s arms. When Wolfe catches his best friend falling out a window on her wedding day, he doesn’t ask questions. He whisks her away, determined to watch over her and discover the truth behind her desperate escape. But when his feelings turn more than platonic, he realizes he may risk his most important relationship in order to protect his damaged heart, and the woman he loves. Can Genevieve and Wolfe’s friendship turn into something deeper—or is it already too late for true love?

Before it happened... Brynn had a group of best friends, a boyfriend who loved her, a growing talent for pottery. She had a life. And then...she had none. After it happened... Everything was lost. The boy she now knew never loved her. The friends who felt she betrayed their trust. The new life just beginning to grow inside her. Brynn believes her future is as empty as her body until Christian, the boy next door, starts coming around. Playing his guitar and pushing her to create art once more. She meets some new friends at the local community center, plus even gets her dad to look her in the eye again...sort of. But letting someone in isn't as easy as it seems. Now... Can Brynn open up her heart to truly find her life's own beauty, when living for the after means letting go of the before?

While a slender body is a prerequisite for beauty today, plump women were considered ideal in Tang Dynasty China and Heian-period Japan. Starting around the Southern Song period in China, bound feet symbolized the attractiveness of women. But in Japan, shaved eyebrows and blackened teeth long were markers of loveliness. For centuries, Japanese culture was profoundly shaped by China, but in complex ways that are only now becoming apparent. In this first full comparative history of the subject, Cho Kyo explores changing standards of feminine beauty in China and Japan over the past two millennia. Drawing on a rich array of literary and artistic sources gathered over a decade of research, he considers which Chinese representations were rejected or accepted and transformed in Japan. He then traces the introduction of Western aesthetics into Japan starting in the Meiji era, leading to slowly developing but radical changes in representations of beauty. Through fiction, poetry, art, advertisements, and photographs, the author vividly demonstrates how criteria of beauty differ greatly by era and culture and how aesthetic sense changed in the course of extended cultural transformations that were influenced by both China and the West.

The first lie I told was in 1971 (my mother made me rehearse over and over before I walked to school that day). She said, If anyone asks you why youre walking funny, tell them you fell down! I lied to my teacher, school nurse, school counselor, principal, and the police who frequented my bedside at Womens Medical Hospital three to four times a month. My mothers male friend raped me. It was so violent that when he was finished, both hip bones were no longer in their sockets. I was ten then. I lay at home for two more weeks while my mother told my two elder sisters to hold me down and cover my mouth while she slathered Watkins salve all over my legs and attempted to put both hip bones back in their sockets. She told me, No one cares about you. No one is looking for you. But I knew she was lying. I could hear the police knocking on the door from the third floor of our house. After taking the bus to the hospital, she made me walk to the emergency room. Once the doctors x-rayed my legs, they immediately scheduled surgery for the next morning. Each night, I spent time alone in the hospital with no family to care for me for five consecutive years.

Genevieve MacKenzie has her life completely under control. About to wed the charming Chief doctor at the local hospital, she's an up and coming surgeon with everything she could ever want. Until an escape through the church window on the day of her wedding sets her life in a tailspin...and flings her right into her best friend's arms... When Wolfe catches his best friend falling out the window on the day of her wedding, he doesn't ask questions. He whisks her away, determined to both protect and discover the truth behind her desperate escape. But when his feelings turn more than platonic, he realizes he may risk his most important relationship in order to protect his damaged heart, and the woman he loves. Can friendship turn to a forever love, or is too late?

The Bible says that God makes all things beautiful in their time, but when we look around today we see a broken and marred world. Our reality is so often the "not beautiful" that it's hard to trust that God can make our mess into something good. So how do we live with hope for a future redemption of all things? In Searching for Spring, Christine Hoover takes readers on a treasure hunt for beauty in both familiar and unexpected places. Framed by the changing seasons, this journey will heighten readers' senses and awaken their affections for the creator of it all. For all who are in the midst of suffering, who find their faith withering, who are questioning whether God is at work--or even present--as they wait for something in their lives to become beautiful, this book will be a welcome reminder that God never stops his redemptive work and that there is a time for everything under heaven.