They Are Of Two Kinds

A Friend

What Your Soul Directs

B B King (1925-2015)

We Must Do That Which We Think We Cannot

The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul aka A Cup of Friendship by Deborah Rodriguez

Paperback:  In a little coffee shop in one of the most dangerous places on earth, five very different but extraordinary women come together.

Sunny, the proud proprietor, who needs an ingenious plan - and fast - to keep her cafe and customers safe.

Yasmina, a young pregnant woman stolen from her remote village and now abandoned on Kabul's violent streets.

Isabel, a determined journalist with a secret that might keep her from the biggest story of her life.

Candace, a wealthy American who has finally left her husband for her Afghan lover, the enigmatic Wakil.

And Halajan, the sixty-year-old den mother, whose long-hidden love affair breaks all the rules.

As these five women discover there's more to one another than meets the eye, they form a unique bond that will for ever change their lives and the lives of many others.

The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul aka A Cup of Friendship (2011) is an uplifting debut tale about sisterhood, survival, Afghan culture, empowerment and includes recipes.

About the author:  Deborah Rodriguez is a hairdresser, a motivational speaker, and the author of the bestselling memoir Kabul Beauty School:  An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil (2007) as wel as The House on Carnaval Street (2014) and Margarita Wednesdays:  Making a Life by the Mexican Sea (2014).  She spent five years teaching at and later directing the Kabul Beauty School, the first modern beauty academy and training salon in Afghanistan.  Rodriguez also owned the Oasis Salon and co-owned the Cabul Coffee House.  She is the founder of the non-profit organisation Oasis Rescue, which aims to teach women in post-conflict and disaster-stricken areas the art of hairdressing.  She currently lives in Mexico.

Rating:  5/5

Power Corrupts

Teachers' Day 2015

Short, Medium or Long?

Prophet's Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints by Sam Brower

...but others there are, who, of necessity and by force, are driven to write history, because they are concerned in the facts, and so cannot excuse themselves from committing them to writing, for the advantage of posterity;  nay, there are not a few who are induced to draw their historical facts out of darkness into light, and to produce them for the benefit of the public, on account of the great importance of the facts themselves with which they have been concerned. - Titus Flavius Josephus (37 AD to 100 AD)

Hardback:  From the private investigator who cracked open the case that led to the arrest of Warren Jeffs, the maniacal and self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) - polygamous and extremist offshoot of the traditional Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon LDS church) - comes the compelling, horrifying story of how a rogue sect used sex, money, and power disguised under a facade of religion to further criminal activities and a madman's vision.

The FLDS was founded when its forebears broke away from the mainstream Mormons more than a hundred years ago, after the latter officially renounced the practice of polygamy.

Despite considerable press coverage and many lengthy legal battles, the full story has remained largely untold.

Only one man can reveal the whole, astounding truth:  private investigator Sam Brower, who devoted years of his life to breaking open the secret practices of the FLDS and bringing Jeffs and his inner circle to justice.

"Although polygamy is illegal in all fifty states and more often than not leads to abuse in one form or another, it was not the focus of my investigation.  That focus was child abuse, and my job had taken on a dual purpose:  investigating civil grievances on behalf of my clients and alerting a complacent bureaucracy to the sickening and illegal activities...hidden in plain sight.  I couldn't believe that such a brutal cult could exist, virtually unnoticed, in the United States in the twenty-first century," wrote Brower.

In Prophet's Prey (2011), Brower implicates Jeffs in his own words, bringing to light the contents of Jeffs's personal priesthood journal, discovered in a hidden underground vault, and reveals to readers the shocking inside world of FLDS members whose trust he earned and who showed him the staggering truth of their lives.

Prophet's Prey offers the gripping, behind-the-scenes account of a bizarre world from the only man who knows the full story.

"Warren Jeffs is a tall, bony man with a bulging Adam's apple and a frightening sense of his own perfection in the eyes of God.  The self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), has taken more than seventy women and girls as wives - one of whom was just a few weeks past her twelfth birthday when he commanded her to lie on a ceremonial bed in the sanctum of his massive Texas temple and brutally raped her.  He demands absolute, unquestioning obedience from his ten thousand followers.  He has sodomized children as young as five years old (including his own nephew, who wrote a book about it).  He has destroyed untold hundreds of lives."

"Jeffs conducted his reign of terror with impunity for three decades thanks to a pervasive, Mafia-like code of silence that he systematically instilled in the congregation.  Then, in the winter of 2004, a private investigator named Sam Brower began looking into the FLDS Church.  Shocked by what he uncovered, Brower concluded that Warren Jeffs needed to be put behind bars posthaste.  Thanks in large part to Brower's courageous efforts, in May 2006, Jeffs was placed on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted List," was arrested three months later, and on 25 September 2007, was convicted of two counts of rape as an accomplice.  On 20 November 2007, Jeffs was sentenced to imprisonment for ten years to life and began serving his sentence at the Utah State Prison.  The conviction, however, was overturned by the Utah Supreme Court on 27 July 2010, due to incorrect jury instructions."

"For the better part of five years, I watched with awe (and occasionally provided assistance) as Brower relentlessly tracked Jeffs down, earned the trust of the prophet's victims, and provided state and federal law enforcement agencies with crucial evidence.  A remarkable man on many levels Sam Brower is the real deal.  Readers are apt to find his firsthand account of bringing Warren Jeffs to justice both extremely disturbing and absolutely riveting." - Jon Krakauer, 2011, in the Preface.

In August 2011, Jeffs was extradited by Utah to Texas, where bigamy, sexual assault on a child or aggravated sexual assault of a child carry a life sentence.  It was a place Jeffs had been desperately trying to avoid.  He was found guilty of sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault of children in connection with a raid of the FLDS Church's YFZ Ranch in 2008.

After the jury had deliberated for less than thirty minutes, Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison plus twenty years, to be served consecutively, and a $10 000 fine for sexual assault of both twelve- and fifteen-year-old girls.

Jeffs is presently incarcerated at the Louis C Powledge Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice near Palestine, Texas.  He, Texas Department of Criminal Justice #01726705, will be eligible for parole on 22 July 2038.

About the author:  Raised in the Mormon Church (the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or LDS), private detective Sam Brower is the investigator who pushed forward the long and hard legal battles against the radical FLDS and Warren Jeffs.  He lives in Cedar City, Utah.

The Book of Margery Kempe translated by Barry Windeatt

The story of the eventful and controversial life of Margery Kempe - wife, mother, businesswoman, pilgrim and visionary - is the earliest surviving autobiography in English.

Here, Kempe (c1373-c1440) recounts in vivid, unembarrassed detail the madness that followed the birth of the first of her fourteen children, the failure of her brewery business, her dramatic call to the spiritual life, her visions and uncontrollable tears, the struggle to convert her husband to a vow of chastity and her pilgrimages to Europe and the Holy Land.

Margery Kempe could not read or write, and dictated her remarkable story late in life.

It remains an extraordinary record of human faith and a portrait of a medieval woman of unforgettable character, undeniable courage and unparalleled experience.

Margery Kempe, of well-to-do middle-class parentage in King's Lynn in Norfolk, was married at twenty, had a vision of Christ in her madness following her first childbirth, and, after early failures as a businesswoman, saw visions and felt herself called to a spiritual life.  At about the age of forty, when she had borne fourteen children, she persuaded her husband to join her in a mutual vow of chastity, and then embarked on an eventful life of pilgrimage in England, Europe and the Holy Land, visiting both great and humble religious figures of her day, ceaselessly seeking the counsel of mystics and recluses.

Always a controversial figure, her devotion characteristically expressed itself in loud weeping and cries, which often divided priests, congregations and fellow pilgrims into friends or enemies, and she was several times in danger of being burnt at the stake as a heretic.  Towards the end of her life, she dictated in an account of her travels and visions her spiritual autobiography, and the discovery of a unique fifteenth-century manuscript - which had long been in the possession of an old Catholic family, the Butler-Bowdons - in 1934 has restored to English literature the earliest autobiography in English.

About Barry Windeatt:  Barry Windeatt came to Emmanuel as a College Lecturer in English in 1978.  In the Faculty of English, he has been a University Assistant Lecturer and Lecturer (1983-95), Reader in Medieval Literature (1995-2001), and, from 2001, Professor of English.  In Emmanuel, he has been Director of Studies in English (1979-97) and a Tutor (1983-95).  At various times, he has also acted as Admissions Tutor in Arts, Tutor for Advanced Students, Financial Tutor, Librarian and Archivist.  He is Keeper of Rare Books and Special Collections in the College Library, and since 1990 he has curated the College's collection of portraits and paintings and is preparing a revised catalogue of them.

His translation of The Book of Margery Kempe (1985) makes the text accessible for the modern reader while remaining as close as possible to the original manuscript.  His introduction discusses Kempe's life, the composition of her Book and its striking, down-to-earth style.  The edition also includes notes, a chronology and further reading.

Happy 85th Birthday, Nancy Drew

The Power To Change

What Is The Drive That Keeps You Going