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At the end of 1884, the tiny 25 year old servant of granite dealer, Robert McClenahan, walked out of his kitchen in Port Deposit, Maryland and started a new life as Mary Ellen Murray Murray, "that second Murray being her ticket to independence."Born to Irish Catholic immigrants to America, Mary Ellen would instead be cooking for her husband, William Murray, the blacksmith at Shop #1 in the quarry. In 1897, their fourth son, Jerome was born. Since childhood when he fell through the outhouse into Rock Run, he was destined to be near water - and to tell stories.Steps follows the path of four generations of the Murrays, who lived and worked in the "quaint" riverside town of Port Deposit. From starving and poorly literate, emerged families who found gainful employment in the quarries and first class schooling in the town. You will enjoy these true stories of the young men and women of the Murray family as they journey in and out of the town's homes and buildings during a historically unique period!

It’s 2015; Louis Fields is a 46 year old high-school English teacher whose wife died in a freak accident six years ago; his son’s moved to college, and he feels like he has nothing left to live for.An old friend of Lou’s, Ashley Tate, and her husband, Leonard, re-enter Louis’s life to reveal that Ash has fallen ill with cancer. While supporting Ash in her fight against the disease, Lou serves as an adjunct instructor at a creative writing seminar at the University of Pennsylvania, where four freshman students from across the spectrum of life come together to explore what makes someone a ‘good friend,’ detailing stories of beauty, tragedy, and resilience.An unlikely bond forms between Ash’s son Tyler and Lou, due to the fact, at age 16, Tyler’s mother is fighting cancer at the same age Lou lost his own mother to the disease. Through the novel’s depiction of hardship, Lou understands the true value of compassion.

Matt Hohner's Thresholds and Other Poems is a poetry of loss, violence, beauty and love. In this collection, Hohner addresses the toll and joy of living, head-on and honestly. Facing rough social and political headwinds blowing at home and abroad, Hohner speaks with full voice against the storm of malevolence that so often seems the norm. In this terror, though, there is a desperate clinging to love, which Hohner returns to simply and elegantly. Perhaps it is in his reaching for solace that Hohner's poems offer their greatest strength, while promising something more relatable: catharsis. The value of Thresholds and Other Poems is not in the path to peace this collection seeks, but in the pressure release valve it gives the reader from a tumultuous world. Friendship and marriage, the sensual act of eating an oyster, a hike in the woods at dusk-all find celebration in these pages. There is hope in these poems, and you will laugh and smile, too. Thresholds takes us to that frontier at the edge of the darkness, where the light lives.

To talk about values and ideals is easy. To live them is much more difficult, because no one is perfect. Like all good things, it requires effort. At times we all fall short of our ideals and values. The question is: Do we have ideals and values? I hope this book will be used by individuals, families and schools as a starting point for discussing character ideals in personal development. Values and ideals are as important as any other subject taught in school because without them your other skills may bring little personal satisfaction.Although I’ve called this a book about values, it is really about personal happiness. Your happiness will come from the values and ideals you choose for yourself. If you choose wisely, your values will bring you strength and a foundation to build a satisfying life. Your values will shape your life.This book is not intended to “teach” you values and ideals. Family, culture and faith traditions may be the best teachers. Rather, it is intended to share with you values and ideals that men and women have respected as long as history has been recorded, and to encourage discussion about them.

"e;The Wilderness is new-to you. Master, let me lead you."e;Emily Dickinson wrote these words to her mentor shortly after his wife died, inviting him to trust her intimate knowledge of grief's landscape. In Grief's Compass, Patricia McKernon Runkle takes Dickinson for her guide after the devastating loss of her brother. As she charts a path through the holy madness of grief and the grace of healing, she finds no stages. Instead, she finds points on a compass and lines from Dickinson that illuminate them. Gently suggesting that you can take your time healing, she becomes your patient companion. "e;The 'hand you stretch me in the Dark,' I put mine in,"e; Dickinson wrote. Here is Patricia's hand, reaching for yours.

Acclaimed writer and literary critic Ellen Prentiss Campbell's debut novel is a moving, intimate story inspired by an unusual chapter in the history of the Bedford Springs Hotel in southern Pennsylvania. During the summer of 1945, the resort served as the detainment center for the Japanese ambassador to Berlin, his staff, and their families. The novel tells Hazel Shaw's story as a young Quaker woman working at the hotel among the Japanese, and the further story of the reverberating lifelong consequences of that experience. The final events of the war challenge Hazel's beliefs about enemies and friends, victory and defeat, love and loyalty. In the ensuing years she remains haunted by memories. Long after the end of the war, an unexpected encounter brings Hazel back to the hotel and she must confront her past, come to terms with her present life, and determine her future. Like the precious bowl she is given, broken centuries before and mended with golden glue, Hazel comes to understand that "e;even that which is broken is beautiful."e;

A lyrical, philosophical, and tender exploration of the various voices of grief, including those of the broken, the healing, the son-become-father, and the dead, Disinheritance acknowledges loss while celebrating the uncertainty of a world in constant revision. From the concrete consequences of each human gesture to soulful interrogations into "e;this amalgam of real / and fabled light,"e; these poems inhabit an unsteady betweenness, where ghosts can be more real than the flesh and blood of one's own hands. "e;In John Sibley Williams' "e;amalgam of real /and fabled light"e; one is able to believe again in the lyric poem as beautiful-if difficult-proof of private space. Disinheritance contends intimately with loss, to be sure - but it also proposes the poem as a way to remember, to persist, to be oneself, to believe. And to persist when belief may not be possible within the bounds of the shores the seas impose upon us."e;-Joan Naviyuk Kane"e;There is eternal longing in these poems of John Sibley Williams. A yearning for what cannot be understood. A song for what simply is. A distance beyond human measurement. A series of profound losses giving birth to words no different from medicine."e;-Zubair Ahmed"e;There is a hunger in these poems, one of an empty handed wise man who wants to sing. And sing he does. Let these poems sing to you too. Let them hold you in thatraw place of hope, let them beships mooring us to the wild / bottomless sea."e;-Daniela Elza"e;In John Sibley Williams' moving, somber collection, the power of elegy, reverie, and threnody transcends the disinheritance caused by separation. These compellingly atemporal poems form the locus wherein generations of a family can gather. Here, Williams' lyric proto-language-elemental, archetypal, primordial-subsumes barriers of time and space. His poems create their own inheritance."e;-Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita

The poems in Heritage reflect two threads: One offers new commentaries on some texts and stories in the Hebrew Bible. The other explores experiences encountered in mainstream American Judaism.  Taken together they constitute one person’s effort to make sense of life as a contemporary American Jew.

This book grew out of the overwhelming response requesting a companion volume to Father Brown’s book, Psalms and Consolations: A Jesuit’s Journey through Grief. In this volume on forgiveness and reconciliation, Father Brown continues to turn to the Book of Psalms for inspiration. Included are prayers and reflections meant to help all who are searching for a compassionate and healing path to forgiveness