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The Birth of Modern Belief: Faith and Judgment from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment
by Ethan H. ShaganAn illuminating history of how religious belief lost its uncontested status in the WestThis landmark book traces the history of belief in the Christian West from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, revealing for the first time how a distinctively modern category of belief came into being. Ethan Shagan focuses not on what people believed, which is the normal concern of Reformation history, but on the more fundamental question of what people took belief to be.Shagan shows how religious belief enjoyed a special prestige in medieval Europe, one that set it apart from judgment, opinion, and the evidence of the senses. But with the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation, the question of just what kind of knowledge religious belief was—and how it related to more mundane ways of knowing—was forced into the open. As the warring churches fought over the answer, each claimed belief as their exclusive possession, insisting that their rivals were unbelievers. Shagan challenges the common notion that modern belief was a gift of the Reformation, showing how it was as much a reaction against Luther and Calvin as it was against the Council of Trent. He describes how dissidents on both sides came to regard religious belief as something that needed to be justified by individual judgment, evidence, and argument.Brilliantly illuminating, The Birth of Modern Belief demonstrates how belief came to occupy such an ambivalent place in the modern world, becoming the essential category by which we express our judgments about science, society, and the sacred, but at the expense of the unique status religion once enjoyed.
The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil's Biblical Roots
by Gregory Mobley T. J. WrayOf all the demons, monsters, fiends, and ogres to preoccupy the western imagination in literature, art, and film, no figure has been more feared—or misunderstood--than Satan. But how accurate are the popular images of Satan? How--and why--did this rather minor biblical character morph into the very embodiment of evil? T.J. Wray and Gregory Mobley guide readers on a journey to retrace Satan's biblical roots. Engaging and informative, The Birth of Satan is a must read for anyone who has ever wondered about the origins of the Devil.
The Birth of The Prophet Muhammad: Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam (Culture and Civilization in the Middle East)
by Marion Holmes KatzIn the medieval period, the birth of the Prophet Muhammad (the mawlid) was celebrated in popular narratives and ceremonies that expressed the religious agendas and aspirations of ordinary Muslims, including women. This book examines the Mawlid from its origins to the present day and provides a new insight into how an aspect of everyday Islamic piety has been transformed by modernity. The book gives a window into the religious lives of medieval Muslim women, rather than focusing on the limitations that were placed on them and shows how medieval popular Islam was coherent and meaningful, not just a set of deviations from scholarly norms. Concise in both historical and textual analysis, this book is an important contribution to our understanding of contemporary Muslim devotional practices and will be of great interest to postgraduate students and researchers of Islam, religious studies and medieval studies.
The Birth of Thought in the Spanish Language: 14th century Hebrew-Spanish Philosophy (Philosophical Studies Series #127)
by Ilia Galán DíezThis book takes readers on a philosophical discovery of a forgotten treasure, one born in the 14th century but which appears to belong to the 21st. It presents a critical, up-to-date analysis of Santob de Carrión, also known as Sem Tob, a writer and thinker whose philosophy arose in the Spain of the three great cultures: Jews, Christians, and Muslims, who then coexisted in peace. The author first presents a historical and cultural introduction that provides biographical detail as well as context for a greater understand of Santob's philosophy. Next, the book offers a dialogue with the work itself, which looks at politics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and theodicy. The aim is not to provide an exhaustive analysis, or to comment on each and every verse, but rather to deal only with the most relevant for today’s world.Readers will discover how Santob believed knowledge must be dynamic, and tolerance fundamental, fleeing from dogma, since one cannot avoid a significant dose of moral and aesthetic relativism. Subjectivity, within its own codes, must seek a profound ethics, not puritanical but which serves to escape from general ill will. Santob offers a criticism of wealth and power that does not serve the people which appears to be totally relevant today. In spite of the fame he achieved in his own time, Santob has largely remained a vestige of the past. By the end of this book, readers will come to see why this important figure deserves to be more widely studied. Indeed, not only has this medieval Spanish philosopher searched for truth in an unstable, confused world of contradictions, but he has done so in a way that can still help us today.
The Birth of the Living God: A Psychoanalytic Study
by Ana-Marie Rizzuto M.D.Utilizing both clinical material based on the life histories of twenty patients and theoretical insights from the works of Freud, Erikson, Fairbairn, and Winnicott, Ana-Maria Rizzuto examines the origin, development, and use of our God images. Whereas Freud postulated that belief in God is based on a child's idea of his father, Rizzuto argues that the God representation draws from a variety of sources and is a major element in the fabric of one's view of self, others, and the world.
The Birthday Card: Snapshots of a Man's Grief
by Bruce L. ParkIt is a sickening feeling to experience the death of someone who is precious to you. To be hit full in the face with the reality that a person whose life is intricately interwoven in yours has been forcibly removed from it and you will never, never see them on this planet again. You will not be able to talk to them, or hug them. All you will ever have for the rest of your life will be memories, which no matter how hard you try to hold onto them, will fade. Photographs, birthday cards, videos and journal entries will all become two-dimensional and lose their authenticity, because the person they represent is no longer accessible. No matter what you do, you can no longer interact with the image, for the connection with the real person is severed, and there is no making it better, no turning back the clock. And when all of this gut-wrenching, cold, reality is jam-packed into one single moment ... a blink of the eye, no wonder your fuse can blow, and you break and crumple like a dried-up piece of pottery. The Birthday Card is an attempt to give testimony to God's grace and presence with us in the darkest of moments ... even when we can't see him, let alone feel him.
The Birthright
by Ken Gire John SheasbyIf you're one of the millions of Christians weighed down by the guilt of things done, and undone, feeling you are falling short of God's expectations, The Birthright is a liberating, life-changing celebration of your birthright as a child of the King. Whether you are of Reformed, grace-based roots, or Arminian, works-driven traditions, you may have a gnawing sense that you are failing to please the Father. The Birthright will liberate you from the drudgery of 'doing' and help you discover the joy of 'being' -- moving out of the servant's quarters and into the Father's house where you are loved, accepted and celebrated . . . simply because you are His child.
The Birthright (Song of Acadia #3)
by Janette Oke T. Davis BunnThe Thread Binding Them Together As Sisters Is All Too Fragile...<P><P> The bittersweet reunion of the Robichaud family and the Harrows in the land of the Acadians has brought two mothers and two daughters full circle. They rekindle those early bonds and experience restoration of those lost years, but time and tragedy have left their indelible imprints on all who have endured the decades of separation and uncertainty. Moving forward with their lives now means further farewells--not as devastating as the one long ago, but no less heart wrenching.<P> Their connection, which goes beyond that of "sisters" to best friends, will be tested by the coming Revolution and the lure of England--parted again, the reunited, but for how long...? Can their friendship sustain the startling revelation concerning...The Birthright?
The Bishop Reformed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages (Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West)
by Anna Trumbore JonesIn the period following the collapse of the Carolingian Empire up to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the episcopate everywhere in Europe experienced substantial and important change, brought about by a variety of factors: the pressures of ecclesiastical reform; the devolution and recovery of royal authority; the growth of papal involvement in regional matters and in diocesan administration; the emergence of the "crowd" onto the European stage around 1000 and the proliferation of autonomous municipal governments; the explosion of new devotional and religious energies; the expansion of Christendom's borders; and the proliferation of new monastic orders and new forms of religious life, among other changes. This socio-political, religious, economic, and cultural ferment challenged bishops, often in unaccustomed ways. How did the medieval bishop, unquestionably one of the most powerful figures of the Middle Ages, respond to these and other historical changes? Somewhat surprisingly, this question has seldom been answered from the bishop's perspective. This volume of interdisciplinary studies, drawn from literary scholarship, art history, canon law, and history, seeks to break scholarship of the medieval episcopacy free from the ideological stasis imposed by the study of church reform and episcopal lordship. The editors and contributors propose less a conventional socio-political reading of the episcopate and more of a cultural reading of bishops that is particularly concerned with issues such as episcopal (self-)representation, conceptualization of office and authority, cultural production (images, texts, material objects, space) and ecclesiology/ideology. They contend that ideas about episcopal office and conduct were conditioned by and contingent upon time, place and pastoral constituency. What made a "good" bishop in one time and place may not have sufficed for another time and place and imposing the absolute standards of prescriptive ideologies, medieval and modern, obfuscates rather than clarifies our understanding of the medieval bishop and his world.
The Bishop and the Missing L Train
by Andrew M. GreeleyMillions of Blackie Ryan fans will be thrilled with his return in this exciting novel of mystery and suspense. Bestselling novelist Andrew M. Greeley has captured the imagination of the mystery reading public with the improbable Bishop Blackie Ryan, who works for the aristocratic, haughty, sometimes arrogant but often slyly good humored Sean Cardinal Cronin, the Archbishop of Chicago. The Vatican has just assigned auxiliary Bishop Gus Quill to the Archdiocese of Chicago over the violent protests of Archbishop Sean Cronin, and the not so silent protests of Bishop Blackie. Bishop Quill is under the illusion, one might say delusion, that he has been sent from Rome to replace the good Cardinal when in fact Rome was dying to get rid of him because of his incompetence. Immediately on arriving in Chicago, he manages to disappear while riding the L Train and it is up to Blackie to find him. As the Cardinal says, "The Vatican does not like to lose bishops, even auxiliaries. " And thus begins the search for the missing bishop who no one really wants to find. Of course, none of this is too much for the intrepid little Bishop Ryan. He faces these problems squarely and, with the kind of deductive mind reminiscent of G. K Chesterton's Father Brown, manages to find solutions to some of the most baffling mysteries he has ever encountered.
The Bishop in the West Wing (Father Blackie Ryan #13)
by Andrew M. GreeleyAndrew M. Greeley's bestselling sleuth meets The West Wing. Blackie Ryan in the White House? Yes! Sent there by his estimable but irascible boss, the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, Sean Cronin. Blackie gets a call from his friend, the newly elected Democratic president, Jack Patrick McGurn whom the media has seen fit to call Machine Gun McGurn but of course the call is interrupted by the autocratic Cardinal Cronin. Cronin, without consulting Blackie, sends him off to the White House to solve a poltergeist problem. Ghosts in the White House? Of course. Blackie encounters a great deal more than ghosts; an evil spirit out to get the President, a right wing conspiracy, and four beautiful women, any one of whom could be contributing to the mischief in the West Wing. How Blackie solves the problem of the ghosts and the conspiracy, and perhaps even finds a beautiful wife for the lonely, recently widowed President makes The Bishop in the West Wing the best Blackie Ryan mystery yet.
The Bishop of Rome in Late Antiquity
by Geoffrey D. DunnAt various times over the past millennium bishops of Rome have claimed a universal primacy of jurisdiction over all Christians and a superiority over civil authority. Reactions to these claims have shaped the modern world profoundly. Did the Roman bishop make such claims in the millennium prior to that? The essays in this volume from international experts in the field examine the bishop of Rome in late antiquity from the time of Constantine at the start of the fourth century to the death of Gregory the Great at the beginning of the seventh. These were important periods as Christianity underwent enormous transformation in a time of change. The essays concentrate on how the holders of the office perceived and exercised their episcopal responsibilities and prerogatives within the city or in relation to both civic administration and other churches in other areas, particularly as revealed through the surviving correspondence. With several of the contributors examining the same evidence from different perspectives, this volume canvasses a wide range of opinions about the nature of papal power in the world of late antiquity.
The Bishop's Daughter
by Tiffany L. WarrenDarrin Bainbridge is your typical playboy in need of love, but not yet ready. He is a freelance journalist trying to break his big story. After a visit from his mother, Darrin gets an idea. He has heard all kinds of stories about "Hollywood" ministers who hold their church services on television, live in nice houses, drive nice cars, and have lots of money and women. Darrin is disgusted by it all especially when his mother Priscilla starts shouting praises for Atlanta Bishop Kumal Prentiss. Darrin decides to go to Atlanta, become a member of the bishop's church, and expose him for the hustling fraud that he believes he is. He just never planned on falling in love with the Bishop's daughter. Darrin suddenly finds himself torn between his new found friend and his possible big break.
The Bishop's Daughter: A Sweet Amish Romance
by Patricia JohnsIn this poignant, beautifully written novel, a faithful young Amish widow is reunited with her wayward first love . . . As a bishop’s daughter and good Amish mother, widowed Sadie Hochstetler teaches her young son that God blesses those who try their best to please Him. But her brief marriage taught her that life is infinitely more complicated than that. Older, and serious, her late husband seemed a sensible choice—especially compared to Elijah Fisher, the spirited boy with whom she butted heads and hearts. Then Elijah abruptly left for the Englisher world, taking Sadie’s beloved brother along with him—a double betrayal she still strives to forgive. Especially now that Elijah has returned . . . Elijah plans to stay in the Amish community only as long as he’s needed, helping his family and working for Sadie’s ailing father. The outside world has changed him, leading him to question rules and restrictions that others take on faith. Once, he’d been head over heels in love with the bishop’s daughter—a girl he was judged unworthy of courting. Nine years have changed so much between them. Yet something remains—a spark that, for all their differences, might light the way home again . . .
The Bishop's Mantle
by Agnes Sligh TurnbullThe Bishop dies, and a new rector steps in. He see things like the renting of pews that needs to stop, he wants to get married, and his new wife wants to have social parties at the Rectory. He also wants to be more active in the community, especially with the less well-healed-- which of course all new ideas annoy the Church elders. Will the church of St. Matthew change? What's the answer? You will not expect the ending.
The Bishop's Son: The Beekeeper's Son, The Bishop's Son, The Saddle Maker's Son (The Amish of Bee County #2)
by Kelly IrvinTwo men offer Leila two very different futures. Will she choose with her heart or with her faith?Leila Lantz has been in love with Jesse Glick from the day she first saw him at his father&’s store, but she can&’t make sense of his intentions. One day he wants to come courting, the next he seems to be putting distance between them.Jesse may be the bishop&’s son, but his faith has been wavering of late. If he is so unsure, is it fair to give Leila false hope for a future he doubts he can provide?Then there&’s Will, Jesse&’s cousin. He has been trying to keep his feelings for Leila a secret, but he also knows Jesse is wrestling with his faith. Would declaring his feelings for Leila be in her best interest or simply serving his own selfish desires?Leila knows she can choose Will and be secure in her own future. But when her heart speaks, it&’s Jesse&’s name she hears. When will God make His will known to her? Could leaving everything she knows—even her own faith—be a part of God&’s plan?
The Bishop's Wife
by Mette Ivie HarrisonIn the predominantly Mormon city of Draper, Utah, some seemingly perfect families have deadly secrets. Linda Wallheim is a devout Mormon, the mother of five boys and the wife of a bishop. But Linda is increasingly troubled by her church's structure and secrecy, especially as a disturbing situation takes shape in her ward. One cold winter night, a young wife and mother named Carrie Helm disappears, leaving behind everything she owns. Carrie's husband, Jared, claims his wife has always been unstable and that she has abandoned the family, but Linda doesn't trust him. As Linda snoops in the Helm family's circumstances, she becomes convinced that Jared has murdered his wife and painted himself as a wronged husband.Linda's husband asks her not to get involved in the unfolding family saga. But Linda has become obsessed with Carrie's fate, and with the well-being of her vulnerable young daughter. She cannot let the matter rest until she finds out the truth. Is she wrong to go against her husband, the bishop, when her inner convictions are so strong?Inspired by a chilling true crime and written by a practicing Mormon, The Bishop's Wife is both a fascinating look at the lives of modern Mormons as well as a grim and cunningly twisted mystery.From the Hardcover edition.
The Bitter Sea: Coming of Age in a China Before Mao
by Charles N. LiThis haunting, illuminating memoir tells the remarkable true story of a young Chinese man’s coming-of-age during the tumultuous early years of the People’s Republic of ChinaIn this exceptional personal memoir, Charles N. Li brings into focus the growth pains of a nation undergoing torturous rebirth and offers an intimate understanding of the intricate, subtle, and yet all-powerful traditions that bind the Chinese family.Born near the beginning of World War II, Li Na was the youngest son of a wealthy Chinese government official. He saw his father jailed for treason and his family's fortunes dashed when Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists came to power in 1945. He watched from his aunt's Shanghai apartment as the Communist army seized the city in 1948. He experienced the heady materialism of the decadent foreign "white ghosts" in British Hong Kong and starved within the harsh confines of a Communist reform school. Over the course of twenty-one tumultuous years, he went from Li Na, the dutiful Chinese son yearning for a stern, manipulative father's love, to Charles, an independent Chinese American seeking no one's approval but his own.Lyrical and luminous, intense and extraordinary, The Bitter Sea is an unforgettable tale of one young man and his country.
The Black Christ of Esquipulas: Religion and Identity in Guatemala
by Douglass Sullivan-GonzalezOn the eastern border of Guatemala and Honduras, pilgrims and travelers flock to the Black Christ of Esquipulas, a large statue carved from wood depicting Christ on the cross. The Catholic shrine, built in the late sixteenth century, has become the focal point of admiration and adoration from New Mexico to Panama. Beyond being a site of popular devotion, however, the Black Christ of Esquipulas was also the scene of important debates about citizenship and identity in the Guatemalan nation throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In The Black Christ of Esquipulas, Douglass Sullivan-González explores the multifaceted appeal of this famous shrine, its mysterious changes in color over the centuries, and its deeper significance in the spiritual and political lives of Guatemalans. Reconstructed from letters buried within the restricted Catholic Church archive in Guatemala City, the debates surrounding the shrine reflect the shifting categories of race and ethnicity throughout the course of the country’s political trajectory. This “biography” of the Black Christ of Esquipulas serves as an alternative history of Guatemala and sheds light on some of the most salient themes in Guatemala’s social and political history: state formation, interethnic dynamics, and church-state tensions. Sullivan-González’s study provides a holistic understanding of the relevance of faith and ritual to the social and political history of this influential region.
The Black Christian Singles Guide To Dating and Sexuality
by Chris Jackson“More than a book, it’s a ministry in print . . . touching areas that the church has long covered up or overlooked.” (Jerry Adkisson, Singles Ministry President, The Temple Church, Nashville, Tennessee)Between the onset of puberty and marriage, every man and woman faces the issues of being single. How do you handle the weekends alone—or with a dating partner? How do you build a healthy relationship? How can you tell when it’s the relationship of a lifetime? Anwhat about sex—Why say no when your body is screaming yes? Chris Jackson knows the promise and the pitfalls of singleness for African Americans. In this book, he offers frank, down-to-earth wisdom on such topics as practical ways to make the single life a better life; making the most of The differences between the sexes; how your family history affects your dating relationship. Jackson also covers the silent issues: masturbation, date rape, and homosexuality; Breaking up without breaking down; knowing when a relationship is marriageable . . . And much more If you want to order your dating life according to the Bible’s prescription for fulfillment, The Black Christian Singles Guide to Dating and Sexuality is an invaluable guidebook. It’s easy to read, and it offers real-life answers for your real-life issues.“Dr. Chris Jackson gives us a fresh and creative approach to the standards, hopes, and possibilities for Christians who are single. He challenges singles to seek wholeness and fulfillment in Christ. It is a very good book.” —Dr. John H. Corbitt, National Dean, National Baptist Congress of Christian Education, Greenville, South Carolina
The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song
by Henry Louis GatesFrom the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and one of our most important voices on the African American experience comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. <P><P>The companion book to the upcoming PBS series. <P><P>For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. <P><P>In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. <P><P>But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community's most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear. <p><p><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
The Black Cloister: A Novel
by Melanie DobsonOn Elise Friedman's eighth birthday, she lost her mother and any connection to her mysterious past. Raised by her loving stepfather, Elise has spent years trying to learn the truth about her mother, Catrina, and her birth family in Germany, but still knows very little. Now a young woman in college, Elise is traveling to her homeland of Germany to uncover her family's past, but what she finds is much more harrowing than she ever suspected.
The Black Coptic Church: Race and Imagination in a New Religion (Religion, Race, and Ethnicity)
by Leonard Cornell McKinnis IIProvides an illuminating look at the diverse world of Black religious life in North America, focusing particularly outside of mainstream Christian churchesFrom the Moorish Science Temple to the Peace Mission Movement of Father Divine to the Commandment Keepers sect of Black Judaism, myriad Black new religious movements developed during the time of the Great Migration. Many of these stood outside of Christianity, but some remained at least partially within the Christian fold. The Black Coptic Church is one of these. Black Coptics combined elements of Black Protestant and Black Hebrew traditions with Ethiopianism as a way of constructing a divine racial identity that embraced the idea of a royal Egyptian heritage for its African American followers, a heroic identity that was in stark contrast to the racial identity imposed on African Americans by the white dominant culture. This embrace of a royal Blackness—what McKinnis calls an act of “fugitive spirituality”—illuminates how the Black Coptic tradition in Chicago and beyond uniquely employs a religio-performative imagination. McKinnis asks, ‘What does it mean to imagine Blackness?’ Drawing on ten years of archival research and interviews with current members of the church, The Black Coptic Church offers a look at a group that insisted on its own understanding of its divine Blackness. In the process, it provides a more complex look at the diverse world of Black religious life in North America, particularly within non-mainstream Christian churches.
The Black Humanist Tradition in Anti-Racist Literature: A Fragile Hope (Studies in Humanism and Atheism)
by Alexandra HartmannThis book presents an intellectual history and theoretical exploration of black humanism since the civil rights era. Humanism is a human-centered approach to life that considers human beings to be responsible for the world and its course of history. Both the heavily theistic climate in the United States as well as the dominance of the Black Church are responsible for black humanism’s existence in virtual oblivion. For those who believe the world to be one without supernatural interventions, human action matters greatly and is the only possible mode for change. Humanists are thus committed to promoting the public good through human effort rather than through faith. Black humanism originates from the lived experiences of African Americans in a white hegemonic society. Viewed from this perspective, black humanist cultural expressions are a continuous push to imagine and make room for alternative life options in a racist society. Alexandra Hartmann counters religion’s hegemonic grasp and uncovers black humanism as a small yet significant tradition in recent African American culture and cultural politics by studying its impact on African American literature and the ensuing anti-racist potentials. The book demonstrates that black humanism regards subjectivity as embodied and is thus a worldview that is characterized by a fragile hope regarding the possibility of progress – racial and otherwise – in the country.
The Black Khan: Book Two of the Khorasan Archives (The Khorasan Archives #2)
by Ausma Zehanat KhanKhan has created a rich, well-crafted world that will appeal to readers of S.A. Chakraborty’s The City of Brass (2017) or Erika Johansen’s The Queen of the Tearling -- BooklistThe second novel in Ausma Zehanat Khan’s powerful epic fantasy quartet, a series that lies "somewhere between N. K. Jemisin and George R. R. Martin" (Saladin Ahmed), in which a powerful band of women must use their magic to defeat an oppressive dark regime.To fight against the cruel and superstitious patriarchy known as the Talisman, members of the resistance group known as the Companions of Hira have risked their lives in a failed attempt to procure the Bloodprint—a dangerous text that may hold the secret to overthrowing the terrifying regime. Now, with their plans in ashes, the Companions of Hira have scattered, and the lives of two brave women at the center of the plot—Arian and Sinnia—face unprecedented danger.Yet a spark of hope flickers in the darkness—the Bloodprint has survived. It is hidden in Ashfall, the seat of Rukh, the Black Khan, whose court is ruled by intrigue and conspiracy. Treacherous enemies ruthlessly maneuver for power behind the throne, including the autocratic Grand Vizier; the deadly and secretive Assassin; the Khan’s deposed half-brother; and the commander of Ashfall’s army, who is also Rukh’s oldest friend.The Companions of Hira must somehow reunite, break through Talisman lines, and infiltrate Ashfall. A master of treachery himself, the Black Khan joins forces with these powerful women to manipulate them for his own ends. But as Ashfall comes under siege, he is forced to make a deadly calculation . . . one that could cause irrevocable damage to the Companions and their fight for freedom.