Books published by publisher Family Communications

“There’s nothing you can’t do if you want it bad enough.”I entered the world with a massive defect. I attracted death. Like a magnet. I could feel it all around me. It wrapped its icy fingers tight around my chest, leaving me no room for escape. That was my life before I met Jordan Brewer, the boy I became infatuated with. Obsessed with. The boy that became my everything.I knew he wanted me, too. I saw it. I felt it. But he was older, and wouldn’t act on his feelings. I knew in time I’d make him mine. Just as he promised me a future together, his life was torn apart. He turned away from me and shut me out of his life. Could I convince him to let go of his past and hold on to me? Or would he continue to punish us both for something he couldn’t control?

Jenna Kingsley has a gift. She knows things. With a simple touch she can pick up personal information from jewelry or objects. While at a neighbor’s party, a voice mesmerizes her. Jenna is momentarily frozen as a ring is placed in her hand. White electricity surges through her and a dire prediction is made. “It’s like Romeo and Juliet. You’re going to break my heart.” From the moment they meet, Jenna is enchanted and entranced with Reece Walton. She’s thrilled to learn he’s spending the summer two houses away from hers. Every moment they spend together is magical. But she can’t get the prediction out of her mind. As the summer draws to a close and secrets are revealed, can Jenna get past the fear of being left with a broken heart to live in the moment with Reece or will her fear of being hurt fulfil the prophecy?

In this illuminating and thoughtful book, Will and Ariel Durant have succeeded in distilling for the reader the accumulated store of knowledge and experience from their four decades of work on the ten monumental volumes of "The Story of Civilization." The result is a survey of human history, full of dazzling insights into the nature of human experience, the evolution of civilization, the culture of man. With the completion of their life's work they look back and ask what history has to say about the nature, the conduct and the prospects of man, seeking in the great lives, the great ideas, the great events of the past for the meaning of man's long journey through war, conquest and creation - and for the great themes that can help us to understand our own era.To the Durants, history is "not merely a warning reminder of man's follies and crimes, but also an encouraging remembrance of generative souls ... a spacious country of the mind wherein a thousand saints, statesman, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, lovers, and philosophers still live and speak, teach and carve and sing..."Designed to accompany the ten-volume set of "The Story of Civilization, The Lessons of History" is, in its own right, a profound and original work of history and philosophy.

Named one of the ten best spiritual books of the twentieth century by Philip Zaleski of HarperSanFrancisco, Black Elk Speaks is the acclaimed story of Lakota visionary and healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863–1950) and his people during the momentous, twilight years of the nineteenth century. Black Elk grew up in a time when white settlers were invading the Lakotas' homeland, decimating buffalo herds and threatening to extinguish the Lakotas' way of life. Black Elk and other Lakotas fought back, a dogged resistance that resulted in a remarkable victory at the Little Bighorn and an unspeakable tragedy at Wounded Knee. Beautifully told by the celebrated poet and writer John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks offers much more than a life story. Black Elk's profound and arresting religious visions of the unity of humanity and the world around him have transformed his account into a venerated spiritual classic. Whether appreciated as a collaborative autobiography, a history of a Native American nation, or an enduring spiritual testament for all humankind, Black Elk Speaks is unforgettable.This special edition features all three prefaces to Black Elk Speaks that John G. Neihardt wrote at different points in his life, a map of Black Elk's world, a reset text, a listing of Lakota words newly translated and reproduced using the latest orthographic standards, and color paintings by Lakota artist Standing Bear that have not been widely available for decades.

New Jersey native Kristen Buckley travels through a series of catastrophic detours she calls childhood—one that was anything but normal. Set adrift after her parents divorce, Buckley embarks upon an emotional odyssey through the eerie underworld of northern New Jersey, where perverted gym teachers are as big a threat as the local mobsters, and timbale-playing orangutans wield the power to shape the future. Among the colorful cast of chracaters vividly portrayed are her brilliantlly wry mother; two deaf, adopted siblings from Korea; two Jewish stepsisters; and one pot-smoking runaway. After a childhood spent searching for a place to call home, she ultimately finds it and emerges as a truly unforgettable heroine.