Butterfly Tears

When I lost my four-year-old granddaughter due to a car accident, my world came to a complete stop. My friends gave me books on grief, but nothing I read helped me, so I decided to write this book. It is raw and tells everything I went through, with no filter. I wanted to bring the process of grieving out into the open and not dance around topics that others don’t want to discuss, such as anger, severe depression, and thoughts of suicide. Grieving is a series of missteps, misinterpretations, and good intentions gone awry. This book is about not only grieving but also healing, which is sometimes just as difficult. Letting go of guilt and other burdens we sometimes carry can be daunting, but if we try really hard, we can find our way through to the light at the end of the tunnel..

On the Divine Martial Continent, the strong were respected. The youth Xiao Yun had obtained the mysterious sword embryo, cultivated the supreme sword dao, refined the invincible sword technique, and battled against the heaven's pride of tens of thousands of clans without being defeated! Seven feet of sword qi filled the desolate lands, within ten square days, I am invincible..

Something strange and wonderful was happening to me in this place. I began to write with hunger and passion, I was like a mad woman. Every hour of my day, with all my sorrow and pinned-up pain, I wrote. I got down on my knees in the prison dorm, right in the midst of chaos. I prayed and I asked, the Lord if I wasn't asking to much, to make me his poet. I looked around to see if anyone could hear what I was saying in my prayer, even the Lord himself. I felt stupid and worthless, but I had to try and see if I could get his attention. To see if he really loved me and cared for me. The women encouraged me so much, they loved my writing and said they wanted to see a book. I received more respect in Niantic than I did on the street. I was told by several CO.'s that I was a model prisoner, and yes I took the compliments. Some of the women came to me for prayer and told me not to let go of God because he looks good on me. I served eight months for violation of probation, from June 1996 through Feb 1997.This was the longest stay and the last. Now15yrs later, here's the finished book. When you stick close to God he always performs his word. Every woman has a hidden treasure, and you never know, where you’ll discover it..

From the authors of the inspiring true story 90 Minutes in Heaven In 1989, Don Piper died in a car accident. Ninety minutes later, as a minister prayed over him, he returned to life-and remembered... For millions of readers around the world, Don Piper's account of his experience, 90 Minutes in Heaven, offers an inspirational, exciting, and fulfilling message of hope-and has become an international phenomenon. Now, he continues his message of hope and faith with a book of devotionals for all of those who want to experience the joy and contentment of his message every day. With ninety devotionals within, this unique collection directly addresses the everyday hardships we all endure, offering solace and guidance for all those who wish to lead happier, more virtuous lives..

A quirky collection of Earth’s most compelling animals who give mythical creatures a run for their money The Modern Bestiary: A Curated Collection of Wondrous Wildlife mirrors the medieval tradition of an encyclopedia of incredible beasts, only this charming book with ornamental illustrations features 100 real animals who are stranger than fiction. Organized by the elements Earth, Water, and Air, the book introduces both unfamiliar creatures, like deep-sea harp sponges who catch prey in their barbs and digest them whole, as well as ones that have made headlines, such as cicadas who emerge from the ground in noisy broods every thirteen or seventeen years. Step right up and meet these delightful, unbelievable, and deliciously horrific animals, including: The endearing: same-sex albatross mothers who raise chicks together tarantulas who keep frogs as pets zebra finches who sing to their eggs to warn them of hot weather The ruthless: flukes who manipulate their host into getting eaten by a final host horned lizards who squirt blood through their eyes to distract predators southern grasshopper mice who harness scorpion venom as a painkiller And the just plain weird: antechinuses who mate themselves to death pearlfish who live, fight, and mate in sea cucumber butts immortal jellyfish who reverse their aging process when stressed Funny, entertaining, and illuminating, The Modern Bestiary is a book for anyone who wants to become more familiar with the natural world and all its astounding creatures..

The Kitten and the Butterfly is a story of friendships, love, and learning. Two kittens at Keller Farms love to spend their time playing with butterflies, tree frogs and buggies. On this day, Mikey finds a yellow and black bug that he mistakenly thinks is a butterfly but is not. He learns a lesson about heeding the warnings from others..

This book describes about 30 years of theoretical, empirical, and experimental work on butterfly sperm competition. It considers the reproductive morphology and sperm utilisation interests of males and females, which shape the mating tactics of each sex. Females of most butterfly species mate multiple times throughout their lives. The reasons are explored, as well as the numerous adaptations males have developed to prevent future mating and fertilisation by the sperm of other males. In particular, this volume focuses on the role of apyrene sperm. Eupyrene and apyrene sperm dimorphism is most likely a key factor in sperm competition, and the study in butterflies promotes understanding of sexual selection across animal species with sperm polymorphism. This book, describing the evolutionary causes and consequences of the sperm competition in butterflies, is a recommended read for students of behavioural ecology..

Leading scholar Paul G. Pickowicz traces the dynamic history of Chinese filmmaking and discusses its course of development from the early days to the present. Moving decade by decade, he explores such key themes as the ever-shifting definitions of modern marriage in 1920s silent features, East-West cultural conflict in the movies of the 1930s, the strong appeal of the powerful melodramatic mode of the 1930s and 1940s, the polarizing political controversies surrounding Chinese filmmaking under the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in the 1940s, and the critical role of cinema during the bloody civil war of the late 1940s. Pickowicz then considers the challenging Mao years, including chapters on legendary screen personalities who tried but failed to adjust to the new socialist order in the 1950s, celebrities who made the sort of artistic and political accommodations that would keep them in the spotlight in the post-revolutionary era, and insider film professionals of the early 1960s who actively resisted the most extreme forms of Maoist cultural production. The book concludes with explorations of the highly cathartic films of the early post-Mao era, edgy postsocialist movies that appeared on the eve of the Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989, the relevance of the Eastern European “velvet prison” cultural production model, and the rise of underground and independent filmmaking beginning in the 1990s. Throughout its long history of film production, China has been embroiled in a seemingly unending series of wars, revolutions, and jarring social transformations. Despite daunting censorship obstacles, Chinese filmmakers have found ingenious ways of taking political stands and weighing in—for better or worse—on the most explosive social, cultural, and economic issues of the day. Exploring the often gut-wrenching controversies generated by their work, Pickowicz offers a unique and perceptive window on Chinese culture and society..

"May be the nearest thing to an American Ulysses . . . wildly funny and infinitely sad." —Fintan O'Toole, The Irish times Focusing on the lives of more than a dozen characters—among them the Oregon rave boy Skeeter; the progressive-thinking octogenarian Violet, remembering her life from her bohemian youth in prewar Paris to her jazz-clubbing in postwar Greenwich Village; and the street-smart prostitute Bushie, holding forth on the profanity of the world—Heather Woodbury has forged a unique kind of fiction that combines the immediacy of performance art with the narrative structure and subtle characterization of a traditional novel. Taking off from her acclaimed one-woman show of the same title, Woodbury continually surprises in this novel with her ability to create new forms while always locating the unique, resonant humanity that links all the characters to one another—and to the reader..

`Mike Doyle's collection A Steady Hand takes shape in dialogue with the texts of other poets and artists (for example, Anna Akhmatova, Max Ernst, Cesar Vellejo, W.S. Merwin), with diaries, journals, biographies, and pieces by and about painters -- particularly Klee. A Steady Hand tends to converse internationally. If that sounds very general, the particularity of this poet's community is that it is so literary/artistic; it is not easy to assign it any other sense (e.g., geographic) of community. One gets the strong sense of language itself being his home and native land.' --Laurel Boone, Canadian Literature.

This inspiring and compelling narrative weaves together stories of sixty successful women from all walks of life and throughout the world. The author spent several years in eight countries interviewing dynamic female role models: businesswomen, CEOs, a Congresswoman, a governor, an ex-Prime Minister, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a winemaker, artists, doctors, nurses, and many others. The author calls these women "Iron Butterflies" because they meld a will of iron with the gentle, nurturing touch of a butterfly. With disarming candor, these women talk about their struggles, their fallibilities, and their strengths in the journey to the top of their professions. Forging their leadership from an amalgam of masculine and feminine skills, all of these Iron Butterflies have transformed themselves and in doing so they are contributing to a larger social transformation. A key to this personal and social transformation rests in their ability to address vulnerability in themselves and those around them, and transform it into a crucible of healing, growth, and innovation. Knowing how to deal with vulnerability, in ourselves and with others, evokes feminine skills and values and is a key to the societal change so many are seeking. Critiquing the command-and-control style of leadership, derived from the gladiator concept of male invulnerability, the author convincingly demonstrates how traditional feminine skills and values—such as inclusion, empathy, a holistic perspective, relational skills, and emotional strength—can be applied to empower more people than ever before. Like the sixty Iron Butterflies profiled, leaders in the 21st century will paradoxically embrace vulnerability and durability, creating better working and living relationships for us all..

Shakespearean symbolism. An occasional prefigurement and echo was hardly unknown before Shakespeare. But the vast echoism -- continuing forward and backward references -- employed in some of Shakeapeare's tragedies, was rare if not unknown before him. Who, even now, sets up networks of metaphoric and symbolic vibrations underneath the surface story? thereby stressing themes and characterizations poetically, economically, subliminally. The phenomenon of Metaphoric Resonance is described wi ....

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In 1867, an American merchant ship, the Rover, sank off the coast of southern Taiwan. Fourteen sailors reached the shore, where almost all were killed by indigenous people. In retaliation, the United States launched two disastrous military operations against local tribes. Eventually, the U.S. consul to Amoy, Charles Le Gendre, negotiated a treaty with Tauketok, the chief of the eighteen tribes of the area, that secured safe passage for shipwrecked sailors. Yao-Chang Chen’s historical novel Puppet Flower retells the story of the Rover incident, bringing to light its pivotal role in Taiwanese history. Merging documented events and literary imagination, the novel vividly depicts Tauketok, Le Gendre, and other historical figures alongside the story of Butterfly, a young woman of mixed ethnic heritage who serves as an interpreter and mediator during the crisis. Chen deftly reconstructs the multiethnic and multilingual society of southern Taiwan in the second half of the nineteenth century from multiple perspectives, portraying local people’s daily struggles for survival and their interactions with Han Chinese settlers, Qing dynasty bureaucrats, and Western officials, tradesmen, and adventurers. The novel explores nineteenth-century Sino-American and Sino-indigenous relations and emphasizes the centrality of Taiwanese indigenous cultures to the island’s history. A gripping work of historical fiction, Puppet Flower is a powerful revisionist narrative of a formative moment in Taiwan’s past. It was recently adapted into a popular Taiwanese TV miniseries, Seqalu: Formosa 1867..

Catherynne M. Valente enchanted readers with her spellbinding In the Night Garden. Now she continues to weave her storytelling magic in the next book of Orphan’s Tales—an epic of the fantastic and the exotic, the monstrous and mysterious, that will transport you far away from the everyday. . . . Her name and origins are unknown, but the endless tales inked upon this orphan’s eyelids weave a spell over all who listen to her read her secret history. And who can resist the stories she tells? From the Lake of the Dead and the City of Marrow to the artists who remain behind in a ghost city of spice, here are stories of hedgehog warriors and winged skeletons, loyal leopards and sparrow calligraphers. Nothing is too fantastic, anything can happen, but you’ll never guess what comes next in these intimately linked adventures of firebirds and djinn, singing manticores, mutilated unicorns, and women made entirely of glass and gears. Graced with the magical illustrations of Michael Kaluta, In the Cities of Coins and Spice is a book of dreams and wonders unlike any you’ve ever encountered. Open it anywhere and you will fall under its spell. For here the story never ends and the magic is only beginning. . . ..

Aja Minor goes undercover. The target, an international child trafficking ring. When her cover is blown, the mission and her life are in jeopardy. Fresh off of the Peace Sign Killer case, Aja Minor is asked to join a joint CIA-FBI task force based in New York City. Their aim? To take down the Fountain of Youth network – an international child trafficking and exploitation ring. When Aja is asked to go undercover for the first time, all doesn’t go as planned. Her cover is blown, her back-up is shot, and the police detail supposed to protect her inexplicably left the scene. Aja wakes up strapped to a bed, only to learn she is in the clutches of the Fountain of Youth organizers. Dazed and drugged, with no way to use her powers or communicate her location, she is at the mercy of the most merciless of the network’s perverted predators. Will this be the ignoble end to Aja’s brief FBI career and young life? Aja Minor: Fountain of Youth is the second book in the Aja Minor psychic crime thrillers series, including Aja Minor: Gifted or Cursed and Aja Minor: Predatorville. Fans of fierce female protagonists with unique powers who overcome adversity to bring depraved criminals to justice will find a home with this series. A portion of the proceeds from this series is donated to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, established in 1984 to help find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation, and prevent child victimization..

A Butterfly's Journey offers a unique approach to enduring the loss of a child, with the author’s diverse perspective as a multiple bereaved parent and support group facilitator. In this gripping memoir that commences with the day she got "the call" alerting her that her 21-year-old son had been seriously injured in a motorcycle accident, Hopkinson bares her soul in moving through a journey of grief that changed her life forever. She also gives families a reason to believe in their child's continued spiritual existence. With great skill, Hopkinson's approach helps bereaved parents and families understand the variety of ways grief can be felt, expressed and supported. For example, genders grieve differently and infant loss can be as traumatic as the death of an older or adult child. She gently reminds us to be tolerant: we all grieve in our own way and on our own schedule. Courageously sharing the impact of grief in her own life, Hopkinson reveals that her 30-year-marriage did not survive the untimely death of her adult son. Additionally, while going through a divorce that dramatically altered her lifestyle, her remaining son flunked out of college as a result of the loss of his brother. Like many bereaved parents, Hopkinson briefly contemplated suicide after these and other unexpected events. In A Butterfly's Journey, she details finding an inner strength she now believes has prepared her to handle any life challenge with greater ease. She also models how she found love, hope and happiness again by turning outward and helping others..