Search Results for: mani

This is Patrick Leigh Fermor’s spellbinding part-travelogue, part inspired evocation of a part of Greece’s past. Joining him in the Mani, one of Europe’s wildest and most isolated regions, cut off from the rest of Greece by the towering Taygettus mountain range and hemmed in by the Aegean and Ionian seas, we discover a rocky central prong of the Peleponnese at the southernmost point in Europe.

Bad communications only heightening the remoteness, this Greece – south of ancient Sparta – is one that maintains perhaps a stronger relationship with the ancient past than with the present. Myth becomes history, and vice versa.

Leigh Fermor’s hallmark descriptive writing and capture of unexpected detail have made this book, first published in 1958, a classic – together with its Northern Greece counterpart, Roumeli.

‘There are a few rare occasions in life, when events seem to conspire in a profound and extraordinary way. In those moments God pulls back the curtain on his plans and you get to see a glimpse of what he has in store in you. In the end you are clearer on your life’s purpose and destiny. This was one of those moments.’

AS MANY AS THE STARS tells the story of how one man moved with his wife and six young children from the UK to China to follow God’s call. Robert Glover was a social worker in the East of England who went on to radically transform Chinese government’s policy on care welfare. In conversations with the Chinese government Robert fought to show that family-based fostering and adoption was a better alternative to the system of state-sponsored orphanages.

In 1998, Robert pioneered the first small pilot project in Shanghai. In the same year Care for Children was founded as a charity as the first joint venture social welfare project between the British and Chinese governments. The goal was to provide skills and knowledge to local staff that could eventually impact many thousands of orphans in China. Robert had a big vision but continued to trust God in his plans.

Now Robert’s charity Care for Children has reached their goal of getting ONE MILLION children fostered or adopted, which is 85% of the children in the state-run institutions and they have since expanded into Thailand and Vietnam.

Told with humour & simplicity AS MANY AS THE STARS gives a deeper understanding of the importance of families in God’s plan; God’s deep concern for the plight of the orphan and the poor; how to live with greater compassion, generosity and courage to share the love of Christ with a needy world.

This vibrant journalling Bible not only provides readers with extra-wide blank margins for journalling, but also includes 48 pages of illustrations from Thea Muir, author of I Am So Many Things. Each charming image is accompanied by an ‘I am’ statement derived from Bible truths that Thea repeated to herself in the mirror while she recovered from an eating disorder. The devotional pages propose activities and challenges to help the reader recognise their identity in God’s eyes.

Readers are invited to meditate on the images and declarations such as, ‘I am outrageously loved’, ‘I am fearfully and wonderfully made’, or ‘I am a child of God’ and journal their response to each one in the wealth of space provided for creativity.

This NIV Bible has 9PT British Text, presented in a clear, easy-to-read, double-column layout. This is an ideal Christian Mother’s Day gift.

While cancer causes more than one in four deaths in the UK, many cancers are increasingly chronic diseases, and holistic management is common. Up to a half of all cancer patients admit to visiting CAM providers; more use complementary therapies. Holistic health isn’t a quick fix, but many CAMs are now established, respected and effective parts of the treatment journey in cancer, and indeed many cancer drugs come from plants. This book is a balanced, informative look at how holistic methods may help in the cancer journey. Topics include:
Understanding cancer
Why does cancer arise?
Common symptoms
How holistic methods may help
Diet
CAM treatments such as acupressure, acupuncture and moxibustion, art therapy, aromatherapy,
An anti-cancer lifestyle
Spirituality and healing
How to ensure treatment is safe – never trust anyone who claims to cure cancer

Communication styles and patterns differ vastly among people from different cultures. Every culture has a “communication style norm” and when that style mixes with another, stereotypes and misperceptions arise. 52 Activities for Improving Cross-Cultural Communication explores cross-cultural communication issues with an eye toward increasing understanding and effectiveness. 52 Activities for Improving Cross-Cultural Communication is a practical trainer’s manual that includes applications from many sectors, such as business, diversity, cross-cultural fields, and from many trainers in the U.S., Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Exercises are organized according to audience, time required to perform and the risk level for participants, a unique feature created by the authors, and are easily adaptable to the user’s particular need and situation. Many of the exercises are written with instructions that address requirements for a specific audience (e.g., gender or generation). There is something for everyone: those who like hands-on, practical activities; those who prefer experiential exercises; and those who learn best through reflection.

George Mackay Brown is recognised as one of Scotland’s greatest twentieth-century lyric poets. His work is integral to the flowering of Scottish literature over the last fifty years. Admired by many fellow poets, including Seamus Heaney and Douglas Dunn, his poems are deeply individual and unmistakable in their setting: ‘the small green world’ of the Orkney Islands where he lived for most of his life with its elemental forces of sea and sky and Norse and Icelandic ancestry, is brought vividly and memorably to life.

Here, his rich resonant poetry is collected in one volume, making available again many poems that are otherwise out of print.

When we seek God’s voice, God is far from silent.

In this profound spiritual testimony, Joyce Huggett draws on many years’ experience of prayerfully listening to God to offer practical guidance and advice for anyone seeking a new dimension of prayer.

Offering encouragement to start out on the journey, she tackles common difficulties honestly, and points towards a thrilling new relationship with God.

This book, described as ‘a spiritual classic’ has over thirty years provided invaluable help to many thousands of people seeking greater depth in their spiritual life. This edition contains a chapter looking at what we can learn from the different streams of Christian spirituality.

The average person has 70,000 thoughts every day, and many of those thoughts trigger a corresponding emotion. No wonder so many of us often feel like we’re controlled by our emotions. Our lives would be much improved if we controlled them.In LIVING BEYOND YOUR FEELINGS, Joyce Meyer examines the gamut of feelings that human beings experience. She discusses the way that the brain processes and stores memories and thoughts, and then – emotion by emotion – she explains how we can manage our reactions to those emotions. Through this, she gives the reader a toolbox for managing the way we react to the onslaught of feelings that can wreak havoc on our lives.

A new baby presents many firsts, from first nappy change, feed and bath, to first smile along with the first of many sleepless nights! As GP and mother of three, Dr Dawn takes you through the steep learning curve that presents when you become a parent, taking you through the basics of feeding, changing and bathing. This reassuring book tells you what to expect, covering everything from nappy rash and sore nipples to premature babies, twins and emergencies. Other topics include:
New mother – taking care of yourself
Sleeping
Travelling with your baby
Teething
Developmental checks and milestones
Vaccinations and the diseases they protect against
Infant ailments
Medicines and first aid
Safety in and around the home

Rabindranath R Maharaj was descended from a long line of Brahmin priests and trained as a Yogi. He meditated for many hours each day, but gradually disillusionment set in. In DEATH OF A GURU he describes vividly and honestly Hindu life and customs, tracing his difficult search for meaning and his struggle to choose between Hinduism and Christ.

At a time when Eastern mysticism and religion fascinate many in the West, Maharaj offers fresh and important insights from the perspective of his own experience.



DEATH OF A GURU has long been an excellent seller on HCB’s backlist. It is the best-known Hindu to Christianity conversion story and has been used widely for evangelistic purposes. This edition carries an exciting new cover.

It’s cool. But so what? This is the billion-dollar question that leading companies such as Samsung, Starbucks and American Express ask Fahrenheit 212 to answer for them whenever they develop new technologies.

Many companies are good at acquiring new product prototypes but bad at working out what they would do when they arrived at the front door. Many just give up, lacking the ‘How’ to go with the ‘Wow’. Using a unique two-sided approach to innovation involving both the Money and the Magic and in the process turning traditional orthodoxies about brainstorming on their head, Mark Payne reveals how to explore every potential idea with the end goal in mind-bringing an innovative product to market in a way that will transform a company’s business and growth.

The Dignitas clinic in Switzerland may be a long way away. But the issues around euthanasia can suddenly become very close to home. To many, it seems remarkable that in a society where freedom of choice is eulogised, thousands of people find that there is one last choice that they are not free to make. But as this book will show, euthanasia is an issue at the intersection of new technology, old laws, and timeless ethical quandaries, so that even apparently clear-cut cases have many contradictions. Drawing on the latest research and cases from around the world, Richard Huxtable drills deep into the key issues around euthanasia. His is a new, balanced look at an important issue, and it will appeal to lawyers, medical students and – most importantly – those who find themselves or their relatives faced with end of life dilemmas.

Many of the places, people, legends and seasons that formed Brown’s vision and work are presented here, with poems appearing among the prose. Included are memoirs of his parents, friends and passing strangers with legends and stories of the places.

Many conditions that cause chronic pain cannot be cured, or the process of treatment is a long one. This title does not focus on a cure, rather on managing the pain to allow the patient to become more active and to improve the quality of life.

In Buddhism: All That Matters, Dr Engelmajer gives us a glimpse of what being a Buddhist in today’s world entails, and how this links back to the historical and doctrinal development of the many Buddhist traditions extant today.

The narrative follows the religious lives of four fictional characters, representative of four Buddhist traditions (Theravada, Chinese Pure Land, Japanese Zen and Tibetan) in their daily lives, describing what being a Buddhist today entails: religious and devotional practices, dietary requirements, ethical principles, and religious and philosophical beliefs. Grounded in the latest scholarship, this book offers a live picture of Buddhism as it is: a variety of practices and beliefs that stem from common doctrines and have developed in many ways across time and space.

This accessible and concise book will appeal to both students and general readers, giving a fascinating introduction book will appeal to both students and general readers, giving a fascinating introduction.

‘An exhilarating story of freedom and constraint, told with a confident and unwavering verve. This is a journey driven by boundless curiosity, and by the desire for connection – across borders, across languages, across time’ MALACHY TALLACK

When Esa Aldegheri and her husband left their home in Orkney, Esa didn’t know that their eighteen-month motorbike adventure would take them through twenty international frontiers – between Europe and the Middle East, through Pakistan, China and India – many of which are now impassable.

Charting a story of shrinking and expanding liberties and horizons, of motherhood, womanhood, xenophobia and changing geopolitical situations, Free to Go examines the challenges of navigating a world where many assume that women ride pillion, both on a motorbike and within relationships. Part around-the-world adventure, part-literary exploration of womanhood, Free to Go is about the journeys that shape and transform us.

When we hear the word addiction, we tend to think of unbreakable habits involving drugs or alcohol. But many people struggle each day with a different kind of addiction: a deep need for the approval of others. Their unquenchable thirst for love and acceptance often causes people to suffer in relationships, give up on their dreams, and even forfeit their destinies.

The key to breaking free from approval addiction, and the people-pleasing that goes along with it, is to understand and embrace the love of God and others and to be able to love yourself.

In The Approval Fix, best-selling author Joyce Meyer offers the practical insights and lessons necessary to find freedom from the need for approval. Anyone who wants to enjoy life and build healthy relationships, but struggles to feel accepted, will benefit immensely from this book, which is full of proven principles from Meyer’s years of experience helping people find freedom in many areas of their lives.

‘We feasted on love, every mode of it – solemn and merry, romantic and realistic, sometimes as dramatic as a thunderstorm, sometimes as comfortable and unemphatic as putting on your soft slippers.’ C. S. Lewis

The celebrated scholar and writer C. S. Lewis achieved great success in his life – yet to many he remained an engima. Although he had many friends, few if any ever saw the real, private Lewis and for six decades of his life he remained a confirmed bachelor.

Then, at the age of sixty, Lewis met Joy Davidman. Davidman, an unconventional American divorcee, turned his world upside down. It was with her that Lewis truly found love and was drawn out of his shell.

This is the story of their brief but incandescent love, its tragic end and a faith that endures beyond even the deepest grief.

This updated edition contains a new Introduction by author Brian Sibley and a Preface by the UK’s leading Lewis scholar, Alister McGrath.

Good friendships can help you through the trials of life as well as provide company and entertainment. However many people need help making new friends or maintaining current friendships. Shyness or other factors can interfere with the ability to form rewarding relationships.

From the No. 1 bestselling author of What If? – the man who created xkcd and explained the laws of science with cartoons – comes a series of brilliantly simple diagrams (‘blueprints’ if you want to be complicated about it) that show how important things work: from the nuclear bomb to the biro.

It’s good to know what the parts of a thing are called, but it’s much more interesting to know what they do. Richard Feynman once said that if you can’t explain something to a first-year student, you don’t really get it. In Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe takes a quantum leap past this: he explains things using only drawings and a vocabulary of just our 1,000 (or the ten hundred) most common words.

Many of the things we use every day – like our food-heating radio boxes (‘microwaves’), our very tall roads (‘bridges’), and our computer rooms (‘datacentres’) – are strange to us. So are the other worlds around our sun (the solar system), the big flat rocks we live on (tectonic plates), and even the stuff inside us (cells). Where do these things come from? How do they work? What do they look like if you open them up? And what would happen if we heated them up, cooled them down, pointed them in a different direction, or pressed this button?

In Thing Explainer, Munroe gives us the answers to these questions and many, many more. Funny, interesting, and always understandable, this book is for anyone — age 5 to 105 — who has ever wondered how things work, and why.

Where is Home?

This question troubles many of us. We may live far from where we grew up, away from those we love or in a culture not our own. But we all need somewhere to belong, to find a sense of home in this world.

Jo Swinney was born in the UK, but grew up in Portugal and France. She went to an English boarding school, did a gap year in southern Africa and in her twenties studied theology in Canada, where she met her American husband. Now back in the UK, she’s had more reason than most to wonder what ‘home’ really means.

Is home where you come from – where you live now – where the people you love are – or what?

Interweaving a frank and poignant retelling of her own story with theological and psychological insights, Jo’s original and authentic exploration of home in all its many and varied forms is a heartfelt call to find our home in the things that are truly of most value.

‘It is tremendously good fun winding up the Scots. It is terribly easy, particularly Scottish politicians. They can take things far too seriously.’ Jeremy Paxman

*

It’s 700 years since England fought Scotland at the Battle of Bannockburn. Miraculously – we still don’t understand how – the Scots actually won. It’s pretty much the only time they’ve ever beaten us at anything. So has there ever been a better opportunity to celebrate seven centuries of winding up the Scots?

Exploring everything from food, class, the empire and the weather to language, love and landscape, Thistle vs Rose is a hilarious miscellany of Anglo-Scots rivalry. Introduced by bestselling popular historian Albert Jack, it features quotes, jokes and trivia from Stephen Fry, Bill Bryson, Jimmy Carr, George Mikes, Michael McIntyre and many, many others.

* published alongside Susan’s Morrison’s rival Ebook 700 YEARS OF WINDING UP THE ENGLISH (9781473604933) *

A love of landscape and countryside lies at the very heart of British life, yet most of us have long lost touch with our rural roots. In this heart-warming and affectionate celebration of the countryside, cousins Sir Richard Heygate (the Bart) and Mike Daunt (the Bounder), countrymen themselves, travel the length and breadth of the British Isles chronicling the stories of an ‘endangered species’ – the gamekeepers, farmers, fishermen, poachers, rogues and vagabonds who share their passion for this fast-disappearing way of life.


Along the way, the Bart and the Bounder eat hedgehog with the Romany, tickle a trout, meet the White Witch of Cornwall, go rat-catching in Yorkshire, wildfowling in Norfolk, boar-hunting in Sussex and celebrate an uproarious Christmas in Ireland. They also sample a good many pints of ale and tell many tall tales in the course of giving triumphant voice to a largely unheard, forgotten, yet still-vibrant community.


Eccentric, affectionate, humorous and touching in turn, Endangered Species stands as a glorious record of our country traditions.

Krish Kandiah wants us all to take seriously Jesus’s call to ‘suffer the little children’ by engaging with the needs of the many thousands of children up and down the country who are in care and whom the church could and should be helping.

Krish and his wife Miriam have adopted and fostered children themselves and their experience – and that of the many others in this book – is very different from the popular myth which suggests social services seek to prevent Christians from getting involved. Krish argues that whatever the state’s stance may be, it is a part of our calling as God’s church to get involved where it’s hardest, and to help these children out of the tough realities they find themselves in.

Filled with stories from people who have adopted or were adopted themselves, alongside practical advice on how it all works and the challenges that will come, this book makes a compelling case that the church can and must make a difference in these children’s lives, and asks us all to consider our response.