7th Heaven

In accessible, easy-to understand language, 7th Heaven is a spiritual guide for all levels of Shabbat observance.

The bestselling 7th novel in the Women’s Murder Club series __________________________________ A CITY IN FLAMES A string of fatal arson attacks has broken out in San Francisco. The targets have one thing in common: they are all rich, successful, married couples. With four couples dead, Detective Lindsay Boxer is determined to put an end to the killings. A TRAIL GONE COLD When the governor’s son vanished without a trace one evening long ago, the search to find him, dead or alive, went cold very quickly. But now a devastating new lead has changed everything... THE HEAT IS ON Under immense political pressure to crack both cases, Lindsay must race to stop the cold-blooded killers. Despite the help of her fellow Women's Murder Club members - Yuki, a high profile attorney, Claire, a medical examiner and Cindy, a reporter for a San Francisco newspaper - she is soon pushed to breaking point. And then she starts to suspect the two cases are connected... THERE’S NO SMOKE WITHOUT FIRE...

The savage attack on a close friend propels Oregon P.I. Cassidy James through a menacing maze of intrigue and betrayal. The only witness is Cassidy's seductive ex-lover, Erica.

An investigation of the evidence in Talmudic, gnostic, apocalyptic, partristic, and legendary texts concerning immortal, winged beings.

Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Left Behind series are but the latest manifestations of American teenagers' longstanding fascination with the supernatural and the paranormal. In this groundbreaking book, Lynn Schofield Clark explores the implications of this fascination for contemporary religious and spiritual practices. Relying on stories gleaned from more than 250 in-depth interviews with teens and their families, Clark seeks to discover what today's teens really believe and why. She finds that as adherence to formal religious bodies declines, interest in alternative spiritualities as well as belief in "superstition" grow accordingly. Ironically, she argues, fundamentalist Christian alarmism about the forces of evil has also fed belief in a wider array of supernatural entities. Resisting the claim that the media "brainwash" teens, Clark argues that today's popular stories of demons, hell, and the afterlife actually have their roots in the U.S.'s religious heritage. She considers why some young people are nervous about supernatural stories in the media, while others comfortably and often unselfconsciously blur the boundaries between those stories of the realm beyond that belong to traditional religion and those offered by the entertainment media. At a time of increased religious pluralism and declining participation in formal religious institutions, Clark says, we must completely reexamine what young people mean--and what they may believe--when they identify themselves as "spiritual" or "religious." Offering provocative insights into how the entertainment media shape contemporary religious ideas and practices, From Angels to Aliens paints a surprising--and perhaps alarming--portrait of the spiritual state of America's youth.

Named “Television’s First Lady” by Walter Ames of the Los Angeles Times, actress Beverly Garland (1926–2008) is also regarded as a Western and science-fiction film icon. Beverly was TV’s first “police woman” in the landmark series Decoy, and was seen in starring or recurring roles in such popular shows as My Three Sons and Scarecrow and Mrs. King. In addition to more than 700 television appearances, she made more than 55 feature and made-for-television films including the cult classics Not of This Earth, It Conquered the World and The Alligator People. Working with such stars as Sinatra, Bogart, and Bing Crosby, Beverly Garland had fascinating stories to tell about all of them and many more. This comprehensive biography of Beverly’s life and career includes a foreword and afterword by her colleagues Joseph Campanella and Peggy Webber.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 Stealing Our Futures -- 2 Killing Our Culture -- 3 Scaring Us to Death -- 4 Why Is This Happening? Who Is the Gatekeeper? -- 5 What Can Be Done? -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author

Substantial articles on 2000+ Greek words that are theologically significant in the New Testament. Traces usage in classical Greek literature, the Septuagint, intertestamental texts, and the New Testament.

From the mid-90s to the present, television drama with religious content has come to reflect the growing cultural divide between white middle-America and concentrated urban elites. As author Charlotte E. Howell argues in this book, by 2016, television narratives of white Christianity had become entirely disconnected from the religion they were meant to represent. Programming labeled 'family-friendly' became a euphemism for white, middlebrow America, and developing audience niches became increasingly significant to serial dramatic television. Utilizing original case studies and interviews, Divine Programming investigates the development, writing, producing, marketing, and positioning of key series including 7th Heaven, Friday Night Lights, Rectify, Supernatural, Jane the Virgin, Daredevil, and Preacher. As this book shows, there has historically been a deep ambivalence among television production cultures regarding religion and Christianity more specifically. It illustrates how middle-American television audiences lost significance within the Hollywood television industry and how this in turn has informed and continues to inform television programming on a larger scale. In recent years, upscale audience niches have aligned with the perceived tastes of affluent, educated, multicultural, and-importantly-secular elites. As a result, the televised representation of white Christianity had to be othered, and shifted into the unreality of fantastic genres to appeal to niche audiences. To examine this effect, Howell looks at religious representation through four approaches - establishment, distancing, displacement, and use - and looks at series across a variety of genres and outlets in order to provied varied analyses of each theme.

Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel (1882–1936) built an influential and prolific career as film exhibitor, stage producer, radio broadcaster, musical arranger, theater manager, war propagandist, and international celebrity. He helped engineer the integration of film, music, and live performance in silent film exhibition; scored early Fox Movietone films such as Sunrise (1927); pioneered the convergence of film, broadcasting, and music publishing and recording in the 1920s; and helped movies and moviegoing become the dominant form of mass entertainment between the world wars. The first book devoted to Rothafel's multifaceted career, American Showman examines his role as the key purveyor of a new film exhibition aesthetic that appropriated legitimate theater, opera, ballet, and classical music to attract multi-class audiences. Roxy scored motion pictures, produced enormous stage shows, managed many of New York's most important movie houses, directed and/or edited propaganda films for the American war effort, produced short and feature-length films, exhibited foreign, documentary, independent, and avant-garde motion pictures, and expanded the conception of mainstream, commercial cinema. He was also one of the chief creators of the radio variety program, pioneering radio broadcasting, promotions, and tours. The producers and promoters of distinct themes and styles, showmen like Roxy profoundly remade the moviegoing experience, turning the deluxe motion picture theater into a venue for exhibiting and producing live and recorded entertainment. Roxy's interest in media convergence also reflects a larger moment in which the entertainment industry began to create brands and franchises, exploit them through content release "events," and give rise to feature films, soundtracks, broadcasts, live performances, and related consumer products. Regularly cited as one of the twelve most important figures in the film and radio industries, Roxy was instrumental to the development of film exhibition and commercial broadcasting, musical accompaniment, and a new, convergent entertainment industry.

This work brings to readers of English a comprehensive and engaging treatment of one of America’s greatest, if largely forgotten, film directors. Dumont’s celebrated 1993 study, translated from the French by Jonathan Kaplansky, offers complete coverage of Borzage’s entire career—the more than 100 films he made and the effect of those films on movie audiences, especially between 1920 and 1940. Lavishly illustrated with 120 photographs, the book also contains a complete filmography, a chronological bibliography, and an index.

Introduced by a comprehensive account of the factors governing the adaptation of stage plays and musicals in Hollywood from the early 1910s to the mid-to-late 1950s, Screening the Stage consists of a series of chapter-length studies of feature-length films, the plays and musicals on which they were based, and their remakes where pertinent. Founded on an awareness of evolving technologies and industrial practices rather than the tenets of adaptation theory, particular attention is paid to the evolving practices of Hollywood as well as to the purport and structure of the plays and stage musicals on which the film versions were based. Each play or musical is contextualized and summarized in detail, and each film is analyzed so as to pinpoint the ways in which they articulate, modify, or rework the former. Examples range from dramas, comedies, melodramas, musicals, operettas, thrillers, westerns and war film, and include The Squaw Man, The Poor Little Rich Girl, The Merry Widow, 7th Heaven, The Cocoanuts, Waterloo Bridge, Stage Door, I Remember Mama, The Pirate, Dial M for Murder and Attack.

ER, Law & Order, and The Sopranos are just a few of the dramas that launched a new era of television at the tum of the millennium. TV Creators gives scholars and fans alike an exclusive, firsthand account of the lives, philosophies, and contributions of the writers and producers responsible for these and other outstanding prime time programs. James Longworth affords twelve outstanding creators of television drama an open, uncensored forum in which they discuss everything from their work ethic to the political and social issues affecting the television industry.

Helping Christians Understand the Power and Meaning of TV Since its inception, television has captured the cultural imagination. Outside of work and sleep, it is now the primary preoccupation of most Americans. Individuals consume upward of five hours of TV daily, even more when taking into account viewing done online and on mobile devices. TV is so ingrained in the fabric of everyday life that it can't help but function as one of the primary means through which we make sense of our lives and the world. This book shows that television--as a technology, a narrative art form, a commodity, and a portal for our ritual lives--confronts viewers theologically. Whether its content is explicitly spiritual or not, TV routinely invites (and sometimes demands) theological reflection. This book articulates something of the presence and activity of God in the golden age of TV and forges an appropriate response to an ever-changing cultural form. It constructs a theology of television that allows for both celebration and critique, helping Christians more fully understand and appreciate the power and meaning of TV. A supplemental website provides additional resources, conversations, and close readings of TV programs.

Investigating the arson deaths of a wealthy couple, San Francisco detective Lindsay Boxer and Assistant DA Yuki Castellano find the case further complicated by the disappearance of a former governor's son, internal pressure, and the media.

Seeking to characterise the radical shifts in taste that changed American life in the Jazz Age, Jacob documents the fims and film genres that were considered old-fashioned, as well as those considered more innovative, and looks closely at the work of Erich von Stroheim, Charlie Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch, Monta Bell, and others.