Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion by Janet Reitman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is $2.99
Quote:
Book Description:
Scientology, created in 1954 by a prolific sci-fi writer named L. Ron Hubbard, claims to be the world’s fastest growing religion, with millions of members around the world and huge financial holdings. Its celebrity believers keep its profile high, and its teams of “volunteer ministers” offer aid at disaster sites such as Haiti and the World Trade Center. But Scientology is also a notably closed faith, harassing journalists and others through litigation and intimidation, even infiltrating the highest levels of the government to further its goals. Its attacks on psychiatry and its requirement that believers pay as much as tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars for salvation have drawn scrutiny and skepticism. And ex-members use the Internet to share stories of harassment and abuse.
Now Janet Reitman offers the first full journalistic history of the Church of Scientology, in an evenhanded account that at last establishes the astonishing truth about the controversial religion. She traces Scientology’s development from the birth of Dianetics to today, following its metamorphosis from a pseudoscientific self-help group to a worldwide spiritual corporation with profound control over its followers and even ex-followers.
Based on five years of research, unprecedented access to Church officials, confidential documents, and extensive interviews with current and former Scientologists, this is the defining book about a little-known world.
|
The Yellow House: A Novel by Patricia Falvey (Hachette Book Group) is $2.99
Quote:
Book Description:
THE YELLOW HOUSE delves into the passion and politics of Northern Ireland at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Eileen O’Neill’s family is torn apart by religious intolerance and secrets from the past. Determined to reclaim her ancestral home and reunite her family, Eileen begins working at the local mill, saving her money and holding fast to her dream. As war is declared on a local and global scale, Eileen cannot separate the politics from the very personal impact the conflict has had on her own life.
She is soon torn between two men, each drawing her to one extreme. One is a charismatic and passionate political activist determined to win Irish independence from Great Britain at any cost, who appeals to her warrior’s soul. The other is the wealthy and handsome black sheep of the pacifist family who owns the mill where she works, and whose persistent attention becomes impossible for her to ignore.
|
High, Wide and Lonesome by Hal Borland (Open Road) is $2.83
Quote:
Book Description:
In this memoir of a lost America, Hal Borland tells the story of his family’s migration to eastern Colorado as homesteaders at the turn of the twentieth century.
On an unsettled and unwelcoming prairie landscape, the Borlands build a house, plant crops, and eke out a meager existence. While life is difficult—and self-reliance is necessary with no neighbors for miles—the experience brings the family close and binds them closer to the terrible and beautiful natural patterns that govern their lives.
Borland would grow up to study journalism and become an acclaimed nature writer, and it was these childhood years on the prairie that shaped the author’s heart and mind.
|
House by Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker (Thomas Nelson) is $2.99
Quote:
Book Description:
A mind-bending supernatural thriller from the creators of This Present Darkness and Saint.
Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker—two of the most acclaimed writers of supernatural thrillers—have joined forces for the first time to craft a story unlike any you’ve ever read. Enter House—where you’ll find yourself thrown into a killer’s deadly game in which the only way to win is to lose . . . and the only way out is in.
The stakes of the game become clear when a tin can is tossed into the house with rules scrawled on it. Rules that only a madman—or worse—could have written. Rules that make no sense yet must be followed.
One game. Seven players. Three rules. Game ends at dawn.
|
The Big Exit by David Carnoy (Penguin Publishing) is $2.99
Quote:
Book Description:
By the acclaimed author of the remarkable debut novel, Knife Music, The Big Exit is a suspenseful crime novel that keeps the surprises coming right up to the end.
Richie Forman is freshly out of prison. By night, he makes a living impersonating Frank Sinatra in San Francisco’s lounges and corporate parties. But then his ex-best friend—the man who stole his fiancée while he was in prison—is found hacked to death in his garage, and Richie is the prime suspect. In a murder mystery with the twists and turns of a microchip, Carnoy weaves his characters like a master. He has written an authentic, unputdownable thriller that is sure to chill and delight.
|
The Naturally Clean Home: 150 Super-Easy Herbal Formulas for Green Cleaning by Karyn Siegel-Maier (Storey Publishing) is $2.51
Quote:
Book Description:
You don’t need to pay a fortune for expensive “green” commercial cleaning products. It’s easy and inexpensive to mix up effective, nontoxic alternatives using basic kitchen staples — baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice, herbs, and borax — plus a handful of easy-to-find essential oils.
Karyn Siegel-Maier offers 150 all-natural recipes for cleaning everything in your home — from bathrooms to bedding, carpets to cabinetry. The formulas are so simple that anyone can make them, but they are at least as effective as the commercial options.
Try making your own Rosemary-Geranium Floor Wipes for electrostatic floor mops, Weekend Warrior Wicker Wash, Telephone Dirty Talk Tamer, Clear the Air Room Spritzer, or Lavender Lift Automatic Dishwasher Soap.
|
The Maytrees by Annie Dillard (HarperCollins) is $2.99
Quote:
Book Description:
Toby Maytree first sees Lou Bigelow on her bicycle in postwar Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her laughter and loveliness catch his breath. Maytree is a Provincetown native, an educated poet of thirty. As he courts Lou, just out of college, her stillness draws him. Hands-off, he hides his serious wooing, and idly shows her his poems.
In spare, elegant prose, Dillard traces the Maytrees’ decades of loving and longing. They live cheaply among the nonconformist artists and writers that the bare tip of Cape Cod attracts. When their son Petie appears, their innocent Bohemian friend Deary helps care for him. But years later it is Deary who causes the town to talk.
In this moving novel, Dillard intimately depicts willed bonds of loyalty, friendship, and abiding love. She presents nature’s vastness and nearness. Warm and hopeful, The Maytrees is the surprising capstone of Dillard’s original body of work.
|
The Radix by Brett King (Thomas & Mercer) is $0.99
Quote:
Book Description:
A US agent has been hired to locate the legendary Radix, a relic with sacred healing powers, but the Knights of Malta will stop at nothing to get the relic for their own use and gain favor with the Pope.
|