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 Book Review : Izegbuwa Izevbaye on 9jabook 

'Lifechoice novels: An intriguing world of christian fiction'. The prices are 1)Blooms among Thorns: N600 (2) The Stolen Years - N700 (3)Fit for a Crown: N700. Read More

Book Review :

'Lifechoice novels: An intriguing world of christian fiction'. The prices are 1)Blooms among Thorns: N600 (2) The Stolen Years - N700 (3)Fit for a Crown: N700. Dats Nigerian price. For the ebooks and through Amazon

1)    THE STOLEN YEARS

A story about the ripple effects in a family torn apart by their parent’s greed.

Adenizen is the perfect school in every sense except for one thing. On the outskirts of its campus, there is a student villa where the female residents are fair game for any man who can pay the price. Madam Ofilia runs the villa and will go to any length to take the most promising girls under her wings, as long as they live up to their side of the bargain.

But when the ladies of A16 at Noble Hall become her next target, events take an unexpected turn. With each of these girls running her own agenda, it seems Madam Ofilia has bitten off more than she can chew. Things go awry and she is brought face to face with a buried past that might eventually cause her to meet her waterloo.

2)                BLOOMS AMONG THORNS

Like most ladies in the prime of their lives, Imade is determined to make a success of herself. She arms herself with everything that is necessary for this quest including a prestigious degree, a promising banking career and Dapo, her perfect man.

But she never anticipated that setbacks could occur along the way and is distraught when her perfect man walks out of her life and leaves her expecting his child. Then, just when she is learning to get along fine as a single mother, Dapo resurfaces; and it's not because he has missed her. Before long, Imade finds herself embroiled in one battle after the other as the ideal future she has mapped out, begins to fall apart. But though her dream of a perfect life is shattered, her faith in the perfect God is not. It is in her most dismal hours, that she discovers that God is able to turn her frustrations into triumphs if only she would yield to His transforming grace.

3. FIT FOR A CROWN

Three African women from three different eras are bonded together by a thin, fragile thread.

• Iyogie is the soft spoken matriarch of the Idusefe family. A lone figurehead in a community of ancient traditions, she practices her faith quietly.  But like a lamp which burns in a dark room, her inner strength cannot be hidden and she offers hope to those close to her.

• Ifueko: Living in the era of colonial transition, her destiny seems to have been decided by the men who rule the world in which she lives. But when these same men are subdued during the foreign invasion, Ifueko must take her destiny in her hands by deciding whether to go the way she has always known or to follow the road less travelled.

• Stella is a modern day beauty queen, living life in the fast lane. When her life begins to spin out of control, she realizes that she may need to apply the brakes before she crashes. In a bid to reverse some of her hasty decisions, she takes a trip into the past to discover what exactly has been holding her back and what she must let go, if she is to lay hold of the true essence of life.

These women swim against the tides of their time, each one drawing inspiration from her forerunner as a legacy of true royalty is passed down from one generation to the next.

Izegbuwa Izevbaye on facebook 

Naijastories.com is the leading community for Nigerian writers and book lovers, combining elements of a writing critique website and a social networking site. Of Tears and Kisses, Heroes and Villains is Volume 1 of the ‘Best of NaijaStories’ series. The 30 stories featured in this anthology were all originally published on this website between March 2010 and March 2011.

Read on NAIJASTORIES.COM – 200 NSpoints per story

Buy Paperback from the NaijaStories Createspace Store

Buy in Kindle format and Print from Amazon.com

Buy the NOOK version from Barnes&Noble online

Buy the eBook from Smashwords.com

**If you live in Nigeria and want the book delivered in PDF to your inbox, please contact admin@naijastories.com for payment details (via Zenith Bank and GTBank).

REVIEWS

These are stories about us or about our neighbours or something we’ve encountered in the news. They are what our friends tell us, their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice. I enjoyed lots of the stories not just because of their simplicity and brevity but also for freshness they bring to storytelling and public discourse.
- Sylva Nze Ifedigbo. (Author, The Funeral Did Not End)

Here we are, with our abortions, our bereavement, our lust, our petty showdowns, our pederasts, our In-Law wahala, our problems chatting up girls in the diaspora, our memories of childhood, our fights, our incest, our love, our examination stress, our metafictional accounts, our encounters with university campus cults, our broken families, our… well, you get the idea. We rob banks, but we also eat salty beans to show our children we love them.
- Tade Thompson (Writer/Editor)

These short stories are not constrained by the need to attain fame. They all are, first of all, good works written with sharp perspectives that are related to various societal issues. There is a unique allure in every story. They have not been sifted through a Western colander. Support this anthology and show that there is a worthiness of effort in putting it together. This anthology is indeed the birth of writers that have newly been empowered. Go get a copy for yourself.
- Joseph Omotayo (Blogger/Book Critic)

Rosh Hashanah (Hebrew: ראש השנה‎, literally "head of the year," Israeli: Hebrew pronunciation: [ˈʁoʃ haʃaˈna], Ashkenazic: ˈɾoʃ haʃːɔˈnɔh, Yiddish:[ˈrɔʃəˈʃɔnə]) is a Jewish holiday commonly referred to as the "Jewish New Year." It is observed on the first day of Tishrei, the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar.[1] It is ordained in the Torah as "Zicaron Terua" ("a memorial with the blowing of horns"), in Leviticus 23:24. Rosh Hashanah is the first of the High Holidays or Yamim Noraim ("Days of Awe"), or Asseret Yemei Teshuva (Ten Days of Repentance) which are days specifically set aside to focus on repentance that conclude with the holiday of Yom Kippur.

Rosh Hashanah is the start of the civil year in the Hebrew calendar (one of four "new year" observances that define various legal "years" for different purposes as explained in the Mishnah and Talmud). It is the new year for people, animals, and legal contracts. The Mishnah also sets this day aside as the new year for calculating calendar years and sabbatical (shmita) and jubilee (yovel) years. Jews believe Rosh Hashanah represents either analogically or literally the creation of the World, or Universe. However, according to one view in the Talmud, that of R. Eleazar, Rosh Hashanah commemorates the creation of man, which entails that five days earlier, the 25 of Elul, was the first day of creation of the Universe.[2]

The Mishnah, the core text of Judaism's oral Torah, contains the first known reference to Rosh Hashanah as the "day of judgment." In the Talmud tractate on Rosh Hashanah it states that three books of account are opened on Rosh Hashanah, wherein the fate of the wicked, the righteous, and those of an intermediate class are recorded. The names of the righteous are immediately inscribed in the book of life, and they are sealed "to live." The middle class are allowed a respite of ten days, until Yom Kippur, to repent and become righteous; the wicked are "blotted out of the book of the living."[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosh_Hashanah

For secular Jews

It would happen each fall around the Jewish new year. At the very time when renewal was in the autumn air, Arnold Barnett, an engineer from Moorestown, would go into a mild funk. His wife eventually figured it out: He was less than enamored with high holiday synagogue services.

"He simply wasn't engaged by what went on inside our Reform synagogue, or with the traditional approach to Judaism," said Ellen, 70. "I knew he was struggling. So sometimes, I would just go to services alone."

Then last year, the Barnetts saw a small notice in a local Jewish newspaper about a recently formed group in South Jersey. "We went to a meeting that was focused on Jewish history," Arnold, 71, recalls, "and that was something I could relate to. It was much more appealing."

And so the Barnetts will celebrate Rosh Hashanah, which begins Wednesday at sundown, by meeting Sunday with like-minded members of South Jersey Secular Jews - a group of people who may or may not believe in God, but do believe in caring about the world and one another, respecting and understanding Jewish history, and celebrating a culture that has meaning and emotional pull.

"The most important aspect of secularism is the survival and continuity of the Jewish people," said Paul Shane, a native New Yorker now living in Philadelphia and married to the daughter of Holocaust survivors.

Shane, 75, a member of the more established Philadelphia Secular Jewish Organization, believes humans are responsible for what happens on Earth. The here and now is central, and actions speak louder than words.

That philosophy resembles traditional Judaism. But secular Jews and traditional Jews part company when it comes to accepting religious dogma.

If you're secular, God is optional. (Traditional Judaism has "God at its heart. That's not an option," said Rabbi Ethan Franzel of Main Line Reform Temple Beth Elohim in Wynnewood.) Also, life-cycle events are handled individually - for instance, there are no set burial or wedding traditions in secular Judaism.

Of course secularism, in which one adheres to cultural norms rather than religious ones, is hardly new. During the Renaissance, from 1450 to 1600, and the Enlightenment in the 18th century, many Jews shed the God-oriented elements of their Jewishness, according to Shane, a professor of social policy at Rutgers University in Newark. That shedding also continued in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

What's different today is that a growing number of secular Jews are finding one another, forming groups, and practicing the social responsibility Judaism requires - minus the synagogue.

Rifke Feinstein, executive director of the national Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations, says there are approximately 2,000 affiliated secular Jews in the United States. But because seculars typically are unaffiliated, and therefore uncounted, estimates for the entire American secular population range from 8,000 to 40,000.

In the Philadelphia area, there are six such organizations for secular Jews - including the five-year-old South Jersey Secular Jews - all under the local umbrella cooperative venture called Kehilla for Secular Jews.

For many people, discovering that such an organization exists has been a relief.

" 'I thought I was the only one!' is what people often express when they discover that they are not alone in their secular relationship to their Jewishness," said Larry Angert, 59, a member of 11-year-old Shir Shalom: A Havurah for Secular Jews. "The Jewish tent is big, and there's room for all of us in it."

Some local secular groups, like Philadelphia's Sholom Aleichem Club, which started in 1954, and Philadelphia Workmen's Circle, founded nationally in 1900 to aid Jewish immigrant workers and to promote Yiddish, have graying memberships. Bob Kleiner, 85, of Elkins Park, a retired sociology professor at Temple University, and his wife, Frances, a teacher of Yiddish, both long active in the secular movement, lament that younger people are not actively involved in these historic groups.

But the formation of new groups, such as South Jersey Secular Jews, is evidence the movement still has traction.

Credit Naomi Scher, 64, of Cherry Hill, whose children attended the Jewish Children's Folkshul, another Kehilla group, which is a parent-run cooperative held at Springside School in Philadelphia. About 100 children receive their Jewish education, not in a traditional Hebrew school but in classes that nourish social justice and individual responsibility. Bar and bat mitzvah aspirants undertake personally meaningful projects that they ultimately share with the entire Folkshul community.

Although Scher formed relationships with parents of her children's classmates, commuting to Philadelphia became burdensome once her children graduated, and in 2005, the retired social worker decided to start a secular group closer to home.

What began as a gathering of eight to 10 people now regularly attracts 30, meeting monthly with speakers who address social and political concerns, Scher said.

Deborah Chaiken, 74, of Palmyra is delighted to have a group close to home. "In the formal Jewish community, I felt that I didn't really have a voice. Here, I know that I do."

Dues are $25 a year, and participants are asked to bring food for potluck dinners. Meetings are held on the second Sunday of the month at Unitarian Universalist Church in Cherry Hill..

South Jersey Secular Jews members Cary and Bilha Hillebrand of Cherry Hill call the group a welcome addition to the local landscape. For Bilha, 54, the philosophy of the group is more in keeping with that of her native Israel, where the majority of the population leads a more secular lifestyle.

"We are not in any way antireligious," says Cary, 60. "We hold the belief that we are responsible for what happens to ourselves and to the world. And to us, that's the essence of what religion is, and should be."