Inprint - New Books of interest

Letting Go of the Person You Used To Be by Lama Surya Das. (Broadway Books, $25.00, Hardcover.)

For many people, recent years have been characterized by profound change, whether it relates to financial upheaval, political shifts, or even massive losses of life to disease and violence. Even on the personal level, each person must confront the curves life throws his or her way. Buddhism has a great deal to say about change and impermanence and how to meaningfully deal with them. Change, whether on a large or small scale, provides our most important opportunity for learning about ourselves and the nature of reality. From this insight, Lama Surya Das has crafted a fulfilling and important path to understanding and healing ourselves and finding peace.

Full of personal stories, anecdotes, practical exercises, guided meditations and reflections, and pithy original aphorisms, Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be addresses life’s most universal difficulties in a way that is accessible to all. Surya Das reminds readers that hiding from change and loss is futile. Learning to consciously accept and embrace change leads to a better understanding of ourselves and our innate divine light.

Awakening From Grief: Finding the Way Back to Joy by John E. Welshons. (Inner Ocean Publishing, $14.95, Paperback.)

Coping with the diagnosis of an illness, or the loss of a family member or loved one, are without a doubt two of life’s most painful experiences. While most of us will face some sort of loss in our lives, many of us don’t have the skills to cope with dying and grief. Awakening From Grief provides the tools you need to get back to life.

John Welshons combines years of training with personal experience to offer insight into overcoming dramatic life change and loss. A student of grief expert Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, he offers heart-warming stories that offer wisdom, hope, and compassion to anyone who is experiencing one of life’s most challenging emotions or for anyone who wants to simply be better prepared to handle it. Written to give the reader tools for finding love and joy in spite of all life’s unwanted, unexpected changes, this book offers reassuring wisdom on dealing with grief, finding the inner gifts that promote healing, and more.

Pictures From the Heart: A Tarot Dictionary by Sandra A. Thomson. (St. Martin’s Press, $16.95, Paperback.)

For centuries, people have turned to the tarot for guidance and focus in seeking answers to life’s many questions. Although millions use the tarot, much of its symbolism, lore, and history remain obscure, making it difficult for the user to get the deepest possible reading. Complicating matters is the vast array of different decks available, drawing on several major and divergent traditions, which can make finding the right deck, the one that the individual user will find most sympathetic to his or her deeds, desires, and goals, an arduous task.

Pictures From the Heart provides hundreds of entries detailing the symbolism of the tarot, comparing and contrasting the qualities of many of the most important and commonly used decks, as well as issues, figures, and topics central to the tarot and its use. For both the experienced and knowledgeable practitioner, as well as the tarot neophyte, this comprehensive tarot dictionary is an essential resource.

Jerusalem’s Rain by D. S. Lliteras. (Hampton Roads, $19.95, Hardcover.)

A revisionist look at a pivotal moment in history, Jerusalem’s Rain examines the life of Simon Peter, the man. Taking place after the crucifixion, the novel explores the flaws, triumphs, and failures of Jesus’ beloved disciple and asks the question, Once you have betrayed your Lord, where do you turn?

Through Peter’s story, D. S. Lliteras brings to life Roman-occupied Jerusalem in its darkest hour, a time of transition where the old order was ending and a new one beginning. He offers an unflinching look at what it really meant to be a follower of Jesus in a time of persecution, when admitting to being a Christian could mean your life. It is the tale of a simple man caught in extraordinary circumstances and how his life was changed forever.

The third of Lliteras’ novels set in Biblical times (his others are The Thieves of Golgotha and Judas the Gentile), Jerusalem’s Rain brings life not only to Peter, but also the followers of Jesus — the men and women and the role they played in the early days of Christianity, making it a story that will intrigue people from all walks of life and beliefs.

Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt by Graham Phillips. (Bear & Company, $20.00 Paperback.)

In Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt, Graham Phillips explores the excavation of a mysterious and ritually desecrated tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Tomb 55, which he contends holds the key to the true history of the destruction of Atlantis. Unlike other Egyptian tombs designed to keep intruders out, Tomb 55 was constructed to keep something imprisoned within, specifically the spirit of Sekhmet, the Egyptian goddess of destruction, who was believed to have incarnated in Smenkhkare, the older brother of Tutankhamun. It was Sekhmet who, under the reign of Amonhotep III, was attributed with causing the plagues of the Exodus. The forensic findings from Tomb 55 coupled with compelling new evidence from the polar ice caps provide sensational evidence that the parting of the Red Sea, the deaths of the first born, and the other plagues that afflicted Egypt were all actual historical events.

Core samples from the polar ice caps indicate that a gigantic volcanic eruption took place in the eastern Mediterranean around the time of Amonhotep’s reign. Other research suggests this to have been the time of the eruption that destroyed the Greek island of Thera, one of the likely locations of Atlantis, and that the subsequent cataclysm may explain the unusual lack of resistance to the new monotheistic religion installed by Amonhotep’s son, Akhenaten, when he took power several years later.