Books published by publisher Blackstone

Your God is too small. We like God small. We prefer a God who is safe, domesticated, who thinks like we think, likes what we like, and whom we can manage, predict, and control. A small God is convenient. Practical. Manageable. The truth: God is big. Bigger than big. Bigger than all the words we use to say big. Ironically, many today seem turned off by the concept of an awesome, terrifyingly great God. We assume that a God you would need to fear is guilty of some kind of fault. For us, thinking of God as so infinitely greater and wiser than we are and who would cause us to tremble in his presence is a leftover relic from an oppressive, archaic view of religion. But what if this small version of God we've created is holding us back from the greatest experience of our lives - from genuine, confident, world-transforming faith? In Not God Enough, J. D. reveals how to discover a God who is big enough to handle your questions, doubts, and fears; is not silent; is worthy of worship; wants to take you from boring to bold in your faith; has a purpose and mission for you on earth; and is pursuing you right now. God is not just a slightly better, slightly smarter version of you. God is infinite and glorious, and an encounter with him won't just change the way you think about your faith. It'll change your entire life.

A revised and updated edition (with more than 70% new material) of the classic book about innate differences between boys and girls and how best to parent and teach girls and boys successfully, with new chapters on sexual orientation and on transgender and intersex kids. Back in 2005, the first edition of Why Gender Matters broke ground in illuminating the differences between boys and girls-how they perceive the world differently, how they learn differently, how they process emotions and take risks differently. Dr. Sax argued that in failing to recognize these hardwired differences between boys and girls, we ended up reinforcing damaging stereotypes, medicalizing misbehavior, and failing to help kids to reach their full potential. In the intervening decade, the world has changed, with an avalanche of new research which supports, deepens, and expands Dr. Sax's work. This revised and updated edition includes new findings about how boys and girls interact differently with social media and video games; a new discussion of research on gender non-conforming, LGB, and transgender kids, new findings about how girls and boys see differently, hear differently, and even smell differently; and new material about the medicalization of misbehavior.

Most of what you think you know about writing is useless. It's the harmful debris of your education - a mixture of half-truths, myths, and false assumptions that prevents you from writing well. Drawing on years of experience as a writer and teacher of writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg offers an approach to writing that will change the way you work and think. There is no gospel, no orthodoxy, no dogma in this book. What you'll find here isn't the way to write. Instead, you'll find a way to clear your mind of illusions about writing and discover how you write. Several Short Sentences About Writing is a book of first steps and experiments. They will revolutionize the way you think and perceive, and they will change forever the sense of your own authority as a writer. This is a book full of learning, but it's also a book full of unlearning - a way to recover the vivid, rhythmic, poetic sense of language you once possessed. An indispensable and unique book that will give you a clear understanding of how to think about what you do when you write and how to improve the quality of your writing.

When a human team is sent to scout a few hundred light-years in front of the death wave, it encounters a civilization far in advance of our own, a civilization of machine intelligences.These sentient, intelligent machines have existed for eons and have survived earlier "death waves" - gamma-ray bursts from the core of the galaxy. They are totally self-sufficient, completely certain that the death wave cannot harm them, and utterly uninterested in helping to save other civilizations, whether organic or machine. But now that the humans have discovered them, they refuse to allow them to leave their planet, reasoning that other humans will inevitably follow if they learn of their existence.

A treasure-hunting young boy seeks a relic with the power to defeat dragons. A slave girl breaks her chains and ascends a mountain, unraveling the mystery at the top. Meanwhile, the holy king assembles his legendary cadre of knights - for though the ancient seraphs have returned from the skies, something far more sinister lurks behind the weakening barrier to the north...

In September 1926, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher visits Sybil Sutherby, a school friend now living in Derbyshire as the confidential secretary to a novelist. Suspecting that something is seriously amiss, Sybil has asked Daisy to discretely investigate. Upon arrival, Daisy finds a household of relatives and would-be suitors living off the hospitality of Humphrey Birtwhistle, who had been supporting them through his thrice-yearly, pseudonymous Westerns. When he took ill, though, Sybil took over writing them while he recovered, only to see the sales increase. Now, she fears that someone in the household is poisoning Birtwhistle to keep him ill and Sybil writing the better-paying versions. But before Daisy can even get decently underway, Humphrey Birtwhistle dies under suspicious circumstances and Daisy now faces a death to untangle, a house full of suspects, and a Scotland Yard detective husband who is less than pleased at this turn of events.

This confessional self-help guide explores the complex emotional truth of what it's like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action. Activist author Marissa LaRocca's revelatory tale includes her struggle with her secrets, including sexuality, and how she emerged as an outspoken advocate for gay rights and women's health issues. Many young women and girls struggle with the body image issues that engender eating disorders with elaborate rituals around food, binging, purging, and hiding it all while trying to maintain a face of normalcy to the world. Anorexia and bulimia have become major national health crises, with skyrocketing statistics indicating that between 3 and 5 percent of the population suffer anorexia nervosa alone. Sadly, many never attain the sense of being "normal" and deal with a lifetime of body image and self-esteem issues. This intimate account of courage and the search for truth and meaning will have you rooting for Marissa LaRocca as she unravels the emotional layers of her own battle with food, body image, and sexuality. Readers of this riveting memoir will relate to the coming-of-age story of a young woman confronting some of life's major issues while living, for a time, in two closets: one to hide her eating disorder and one to hide her sexuality and very identity. Echoes of Portia de Rossi's Unbearable Lightness resound in LaRocca's portrait of a life seemingly lived out in the open but, in truth, very much concealed. Through her inspiring triumphs and revelations, activist and author Marissa LaRocca invites readers to confront themselves. She asks, "What if, at the root of all 'disorders', is the refusal to acknowledge or permit certain feelings - feelings that, if witnessed, have the power to free their sufferers? To what extent are 'disorders' actually doorways to helping us understand the truth about our lives?" In addition to her personal story, LaRocca takes a close look at society's role in the development of eating disorders and other mental health challenges, establishing that the prevalence of such "illnesses" represent a collective yearning for connection, acceptance, and emotional nourishment among generations that are starving for so many things. Starving in Search of Me resolves with hope and an abundance of insights, tools, and resources to support eating disorder sufferers and members of the LGBTQ community alike. It's a head-on journey toward total self-acceptance that will nourish the spirit and inspire readers to embrace their differences and nurture their authentic selves.

"After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels." - Ann Richards Women have been instrumental in the success of American cinema since its very beginning. One of the first people to ever pick up a motion picture camera was a woman, as was the first screenwriter to win two Academy Awards, the inventor of the boom microphone, and the first person to be credited with the title film editor. Throughout the entire history of Hollywood women have been revolutionizing, innovating, and shaping how we make movies. Yet their stories are rarely shared. This is what film reporter Alicia Malone wants to change. Backwards and in Heels tells the history of women in film in a different way, with stories about incredible ladies who made their mark throughout each era of Hollywood, from the first women directors to iconic movie stars and present-day activists. Each story shares the inspiring accomplishments of women, while also highlighting the obstacles women have had to face. Backwards and in Heels combines research and exclusive interviews with influential women and men working in Hollywood today, such as Geena Davis, J.J. Abrams, Ava DuVernay, Octavia Spencer, America Ferrera, Paul Feig, and many more, as well as film professors, historians, and experts. Join Alicia as she champions Hollywood women of the past and present, and looks to the future with the hopes of leveling out the playing field.

Set in 1950s Louisiana, Mandy Mikulencak's beautifully written and emotionally moving novel evokes both The Help and Dead Man Walking with the story of an unforgettable woman whose quest to provide meals for death row prisoners leads her into the secrets of her own past. Many children have grown up in the shadow of Louisiana's Greenmount State Penitentiary. Most of them - sons and daughters of corrections officers and staff - left the place as soon as they could. Yet Ginny Polk chose to come back to work as a prison cook. She knows the harsh reality of life within those walls - the cries of men being beaten, the lines of shuffling inmates chained together. Yet she has never seen them as monsters, not even the ones sentenced to execution. That's why, among her duties, Ginny has taken on a special responsibility: preparing their last meals. Pot roast or red beans and rice, coconut cake with seven-minute frosting or pork neck stew...whatever the men ask for Ginny prepares, even meeting with their heartbroken relatives to get each recipe just right. It's her way of honoring their humanity, showing some compassion in their final hours. The prison board frowns upon the ritual, as does Roscoe Simms, Greenmount's warden. Her daddy's best friend before he was murdered, Roscoe has always watched out for Ginny, and their friendship has evolved into something deep and unexpected. But when Ginny stumbles upon information about the man executed for killing her father, it leads to a series of dark and painful revelations. Truth, justice, mercy - none of these are as simple as Ginny once believed. And the most shocking crimes may not be the ones committed out of anger or greed but the sacrifices we make for love.

On the morning of August 15, 1945, Captain Jerry Yellin flew the last combat mission of World War II out of Iwo Jima. Today, Captain Yellin is a sharp, engaging, 93-year-old veteran whose story is brought to life by best-selling author Don Brown (Treason). From April to August of 1945, Captain Jerry Yellin and a small group of fellow fighter pilots flew dangerous bombing and strafing missions out of Iwo Jima over Japan. Even days after America dropped the atomic bombs - on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9 - the pilots continued to fly. Though Japan had suffered unimaginable devastation, the emperor still refused to surrender. Best-selling author Don Brown sits down with Yellin to tell the incredible true story of the final combat mission of World War II. Nine days after Hiroshima, on the morning of August 15, Yellin and his wingman First Lieutenant Philip Schlamberg took off from Iwo Jima to bomb Tokyo. By the time Yellin returned to Iwo Jima, the war was officially over - but his young friend Schlamberg would never get to hear the news. The Last Fighter Pilot is a harrowing first-person account of war from one of America's last living World War II veterans.

On April Fourth, 1945, United States Army units from the 89th Infantry Division and the Fourth Armored Division seized Ohrdruf, the first of many Nazi concentration camps to be liberated in Germany. In the weeks that followed, as more camps were discovered, thousands of soldiers came face to face with the monstrous reality of Hitler's Germany. These men discovered the very depths of human-imposed cruelty and depravity: railroad cars stacked with emaciated, lifeless bodies; ovens full of incinerated human remains; warehouses filled with stolen shoes, clothes, luggage, and even eyeglasses; prison yards littered with implements of torture and dead bodies; and - perhaps most disturbing of all - the half-dead survivors of the camps. For the American soldiers of all ranks who witnessed such powerful evidence of Nazi crimes, the experience was life altering. Almost all were haunted for the rest of their lives by what they had seen, horrified that humans from ostensibly civilized societies were capable of such crimes. Military historian John C. McManus sheds new light on this often-overlooked aspect of the Holocaust. Drawing on a rich blend of archival sources and thousands of firsthand accounts - including unit journals, interviews, oral histories, memoirs, diaries, letters, and published recollections - Hell before Their Very Eyes focuses on the experiences of the soldiers who liberated Ohrdruf, Buchenwald, and Dachau and their determination to bear witness to this horrific history.