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Her mother pushed a pinewood washboard against her belly trying to abort Jing Li. At two months old, Jing was left with her resentful peasant grandmother, who had a pair of three-inch bound feet, and had once thrown her own newborn daughter headfirst into the urine pot to drown because she wanted a boy. Running free, playing alone in the wilderness of her remote, impoverished village in Shanxi Province, Northern China's pine forest mountains, Jing's giggling and laughter annoyed her grandmother, who called her a "born stubborn dog," and "tiny slit eyes just like her bad-omen, ugly mother." Jing found her real home in her first-grade classroom with the inspiring teacher, Mr. Shi, a dwarf barely three feet tall. He challenged the rapidly growing young Jing to write Chinese calligraphy and learn mental math. It was her passion to learn and her lasting bond with her first teacher that would eventually provide Jing with a way to prove her self-worth. Her relatively carefree village life abruptly ended when Jing turned eight-she was sent to the faraway city of Taiyuan. A frightened peasant girl in the city, Jing was the tallest girl in school, despite the dire poverty of her early childhood. Living in tenement housing as a servant waiting on her unpredictable violent father, bitterly resentful mother, and two doted-on younger brothers were the darkest era in her growing up years.School again became her refuge, as she excelled and quickly learned the Taiyuan dialect and standard Chinese. But in less than a year, emotionally and physically abused Jing fell apart. Her hands became too weak to button her shirt or hold a pencil to write even one word; her walking gait became so crooked she kicked her ankles bloody; her heart beat wildly like a running horse one minute and stalled the next. It was spring 1965. Jing was barely nine years old. Her near-fatal disease was diagnosed as "heart-disease" and the doctor predicted it would cut her young life short by age twenty-five. But the forty-day hospitalization turned out to be a respite from abuse: The smiling doctors and nurses took good care of Jing while her parents were too busy to visit her. It was a stoke of good fortune that Jing's health broke down in 1965 instead of 1966, the year Chairman Mao launched his vicious Cultural Revolution, when all doctors were denounced as evil counter-revolutionary and forced to become janitors sweeping floors and cleaning toilets.At age ten, Jing was looking forward to another successful school year-her fourth grade. It never came. During the Cultural Revolution, schools were shut down, books burned, teachers beaten, tortured, and many murdered. How Jing became an accomplished English teacher against all odds at Taiyuan's elite high school after the Cultural Revolution, is the incredible story of a young woman's passion for learning and her drive to prove herself worthy. THE RED SANDALS: A Memoir is a story of survival, Jing Li's remarkable journey of human endurance and courage that took her across the ocean to become a teacher in the United States and eventually be reunited with her husband and daughter. THE RED SANDALS: A Memoir is a story of survival, Jing Li's remarkable journey

In twenty connected stories, Sheila Kogan's Found Along The Way takes us on her five-hundred-mile pilgrimage across Spain on the Camino de Santiago.

After Kat Kowalski's husband ditched her, she finds a 19th century Polish peasant in her kitchen. She decides to give her life meaning by helping the woman whose name is Regina and hires Aniela, an affluent Polish émigré, as translator. Regina says she was praying to the Black Madonna for help from her abusive husband when a flash of light brought her to Kat's backyard. Distraught over leaving her family, Regina is horrified to learn Kat is living apart from her own daughter. But Kat is not sure what she wants and gets in her own way. Her marriage and job bored her. Her daughter won't listen to her advice. Instead of loving people as they are, she decides to focus on Regina. But despite English lessons and trips to the mall, Regina is not convinced that life is better in the 21st century. She runs away. Filled with remorse, Kat finds her and vows to help her go back to her family. When Kat and Regina can't find a time portal that works, the exasperated Aniela reveals her true identity: she is Jadwiga, medieval queen of Poland sent by the Black Madonna to help them bring their lives back on course. If she is successful she will be allowed to stay on Earth and experience more of life. Kat now feels she has to help two women, and the responsibility almost overwhelms her. At least she can buy Regina a new pair of shoes to replace her old worn-out boots. No sooner do they arrive at Wal Mart than Regina rescues a girl from assault in the ladies' room and realizes she too was a victim. Lesson learned, she can go back home. Kat decides to follow her and find her happy place in 1825 Poland, where Kat flirts with a handsome widower and gets lost in the forest. Frustrated and alone, she realizes her own behavior has wrecked her life. Before she can travel home to heal her family she needs to forgive herself.

Extraordinary author James Hanna gives us his second collection of short stories--all of them eerily alluring yet packing a humorous or Kafkaesque wallop. Relying on his police and prison experiences, Hanna is able to craft realistic stories involving deviants as well as those who guard them, yet these stories are never police procedurals. Hanna has a Hunter S. Thompson flair that shows both the socially appalling as well as the underbelly of the 21st century and yet he delivers the wry humor to ferry us all across life’s turbulent river.

Tony is an under-loved, over-sexed cropduster who comes to California's Salinas Valley in 1972 in search of a job. In the airport bar, he shares his love of women, guns and yellow airplanes with Bill, a wannabe pilot, and their friendship begins. Tony lands a temporary job as a flight instructor and meets the world's worst pilot, Father Roberto. The priest doesn't understand why Tony compares flying fast and low to making love with a beautiful woman. The truth is, neither man in that cockpit understands love.Imagine the Great Waldo Pepper teaching Mother Theresa how to fly. No one is converting anyone here. In the sub-culture of cropdusting, Tony struggles to maintain “normal” relationships, drink away his pain, and not kill himself.FLYING BLIND is a literary novel about the broken friendship of two cropdusters and the reluctant priest who reconnects them.

The year is 1930. The place: Manila. Douglas MacArthur is the most powerful man in the Philippines, a United States colony. He's fifty years old, divorced, and he falls in love at first sight with a ravishing young Filipino woman. He writes her a love note on the spot. Her name is Isabel Rosario Cooper, an aspiring movie actress. One glance at his note and she thinks of him as my MacArthur.MacArthur pursues his romantic obsession even though he's breaking numerous taboos. She reciprocates his affection because he could open doors for her financially struggling family. That MacArthur happens to be handsome compensates for the fact that he's as old as her father. When MacArthur is appointed the U.S. Army chief of staff, he becomes the youngest four-star general and one of America's most powerful men. Out of hubris, he takes Isabel with him to America without marrying her.Amid the backdrop of the Great Depression, MacArthur and Isabel's relationship persists like "a perilous voyage on turbulent waters," as she describes it. In 1934, after four years of relationship, MacArthur leaves Isabel for fear of a political scandal.The general goes on to become the iconic hero of World War II, liberating the Philippines and rebuilding Japan. Isabel drifts in Los Angeles unable to muster the courage to return to Manila. As he ascends to his special place in American history, she plunges into a dark place, ultimately meeting a tragic death.