What It Means to Burn

Sasha expects another humid summer filled with family hikes and sleepovers with her best friend Leah – a comforting recapitulation of many past summers, save for her new job. Yet in the weeks before senior year, both romance and bloodshed blaze trails through Sasha’s life with unprecedented intensity. One false step could endanger those she holds most dear or even spell her own demise.

As Sasha navigates love and loss, she finds the stakes higher than ever amidst the languid days of a familiar season suddenly turned treacherous. Long-held assumptions about her sleepy hometown fade away as quickly as innocence slips through her fingers. Survival means learning hard lessons about trust and betrayal before summer’s end – but not everyone will live to see the cooler days of autumn.

Ibn Khaldun’s Ilmual-Umran Pioneering Paradigm in the World Pyramids of Social Sciences

The author of this book has a sociological imagination that has made him consider the huge world volume of social sciences like several pyramids built through the ages, where Ibn Khaldun inaugurated the building of the first pyramid in his famous book, The Muqaddimah. Ibn Khaldun’s innovative social science work is the outcome of multiple factors, among which are his creative personality that allowed him to perceive and capture the dynamics of latent and manifest features of Muslim societies, particularly in North Africa, which other scholars failed to do.

Furthermore, his scholarly vision had set his path to achieve great success in being the social science pioneer in the entire world. He had a critical view of Arab Muslim historiography: Arab and Muslim historians had pitfalls in their methodology and in the analysis of historical events. In the views of Ibn Khaldun and Thomas Kuhn, their works were hardly credible. Thus, there was a pressing need to solve the Arab Muslim historiography’s crisis. The Muqaddimah’s new sociological perspective, according to both Yves Lacoste and Arnold Toynbee, is an exceptional intellectual piece of work. Professor Dhaouadi believes that The Muqaddimah constitutes a new paradigm to meet that crisis.

In Kuhn’s terms, The Muqaddimah sets the pace for reforming the science of Arab Muslim Historiography by shifting from what Kuhn calls normal science to revolutionary science. Ibn Khaldun’s sociological approach is inclusive (it stresses the influence of both latent and manifest factors in shaping society and individual behaviours); he was unlike Positivist contemporary social scientists, who give prominent role to manifest factors. They are rather exclusive social scientists. One may claim that The Muqaddimah has revolutionized the relation between the disciplines of history and sociology in North Africa and the Arab Muslim world by affirming that ‘good historians must be first of all good sociologists.’

Welcome to Grandpa and Grandma's House

Do you like to swing from a very tall oak tree? How about getting on a saddle with cowboy boots? Do you like to swim with sharks? What is your favorite birthday cake? Well, c’mon with me, and let’s take an adventure to Grandpa and Grandma’s house and see what we will find!

The Athlete

A novel about a young Amish man who may be the greatest natural athlete ever. He is discovered by a disgraced former major league baseball player who introduces him to others in Major League Baseball management to start him on his way. But the player wants to protect his identity and shield his community from this effort to play professional sports. An assumed name is used. His exploits become legendary, first in baseball and then as he migrates to football and later basketball. He learns lessons about modern fame and riches while also learning lessons about intrigue and betrayal. As successful as he becomes, he struggles over a decision about what he really wants for his life and for those he loves. While the public tries to learn who this mystery athlete really is, he is led to make a stark choice about his future.

Life Threads – A Memoir

The core of this illuminating memoir consists of threads of consistency and learning that have emerged through Carol’s life experiences. We learn, as she and her sister Linda did, of the constructive optimism of their parents and how that mindset underlies successfully facing life’s struggles. Mistakes can be overcome. The burdens lift. Life is meant for living.With well-balanced sensitivity and striking honesty, she frankly reveals the false starts in her career and her love life and how things worked out in the end. We gain perspective, as she did, through spirited tales of her life experiences.Heart-wrenching events mix with moments of light, hope, and relief. Even the death of loved ones, people, and dogs doesn’t have to be a downward pull, as Carol learned from her dad.Carol has found that angels have an impact on our experiences, too. Although she has never seen an angel, her dogs saw several one evening.Her experiences in finally finding and settling into her career, her love life, and several events that didn’t seem significant, and some that did, all seem to fit together to form those surfacing life threads.

Suitcase of Memories

I was destined to be a peacemaker. Doesn’t every family have one?

My family, with its traditional values, loving grandparents, and family heirlooms, has always provided a comfortable base and a home. My expectations were that my home and family would be safe, cozy, and unwavering.

What of words translated by a peacemaker, certain it was for me too? No protests, make a loving family, keep the peace. I was convinced it would be mine.

What of words from love, prideful of my values, celebrating my accomplishments, joyful for my happiness, and hopeful for my future?

Seasons change, years pass. I remember joyous moments of splendid solace with so much hopeful anticipation. I’ve learned one can search for serendipity, but it cannot be contrived. I remain hopeful beyond possibility.

What of words of hurtful intention—stinging, humiliating, torturous, and demeaning, as intended?

I am the peacemaker.

I must not be defeated.

The House Built On A Hill

This is a humorous story about a moose who decides to move in and take over a boy’s house that the boy built where the moose was living.

The moose and other animals decided they had had enough with humans polluting and taking over their lands, squeezing them out of their natural habitat.

The humans, realizing what they had done, try to make it right by cleaning up the land and learning to share the territory and all nature with the animals.

Look Back Detective

Twenty-five years after Hatchel Breeze’s most infamous homicide case, another one is thrust upon him, and this one involves his family. As he investigates, he comes to believe it has the marks of the first case and revenge all over it. But things are not always as they seem. Detective Hatchel Breeze, a hometown boy and lifelong cop and detective and now assistant chief about to retire, is called to investigate his last case. What he finds is a family he does not know and enemies all around. One misstep and his most cherished family members’ lives could end. Yet as always, he persists to find the killer before his final retirement date, revisiting his mistakes and lost loves along the way.This is the second of three Hatchel Breeze detective novels.

All My Wishes For You

“I have found that a majority of our wishes do come true, but we have forgotten them because we have found other wishes that are more recent.”

All My Wishes For You, is the story that gently brings to the mind of any mother or child the wishes they make as well as the magic of a dream’s eventual fruition.

As a mother and child read through this story together, it can start a conversation about their current wishes and thus create a deeper bond by sharing all they are thinking and dreaming about. No characters in the book are named, allowing a mother and child to personalize the story as they read along with each other.

The Timkens of San Diego

Rising from a blacksmith’s apprentice to become king of the roller bearing, Henry Timken was one of the 19^th century’s greatest inventors.

His early engineering of axles, springs, and ball bearings for horse-drawn carriages made him rich. But his 1898 patent of a tapered roller bearing revolutionized transportation and made the German immigrant and his family uber rich.

In 1887, with his greatest invention still ahead of him, Timken retired to San Diego with his wife, Fredericka, and four of their five children. All would become wealthy from his patents and lead lives that often cast them in the nation’s headlines.

The three daughters made their niche in the art world.

Amelia founded the San Diego Museum of Art and resuscitated the symphony. Georgia studied art in Paris and St. Louis and married her art teacher. Eight of her paintings hang in the National Gallery of Art.

Cora became an ardent painter and a major collector of art from Persia, China, and India. The Metropolitan Museum of Art lists 133 objects from her. At age 47 she married an osteopathic doctor-scientist 15 years younger who was obsessed with the idea of curing illnesses through electromagnetism.

The sons, H.H. and W.R., took turns running the Timken empire and expanding it globally. H.H. became one of the wealthiest men in America.

Seven Brief Lessons on Computing

Have you ever looked down at your phone and wondered, “What’s going on in there?” If you’ve ever wondered how modern computers and digital devices work, Seven Brief Lessons on Computing takes you through an entertaining and educational journey of mankind’s desire to count, compare, and compute our world.

Martita and the Last of the Muldoon Dragons

Stephanie Rivera tells a beautiful story of pride and forgiveness. Brave seven-year-old Martita and her new diminutive friend step in to help a young dragon discover courage he didn’t know he had. Excitement and friendship abound in this heartwarming story—complete with breathtaking illustrations by Brooke Musselman—that preserves the honorable lineage of the Muldoon Dragons.