Alma isn’t made of stone, even if she approaches her strange situation with a rational skepticism. Against her best judgement, she starts to like Tom, to warm to his attempts at seduction and ingratiation.

Millions of Americans fell in love with the prosperity gospel and its new kind of preacher. Charming though not effusive, polished but not slick, these favored few could as easily have appeared on Piers Morgan Tonight as behind their megachurch Sunday pulpits.

A special character of these mounds [the Kess-Kess carbonate mud mounds] is the numerous Neptunian dikes. These are fracture systems, which have been filled with other sediments and minerals. It is suspected that these dikes represent spring conduits (seeps) during the formation of the mounds, and that the seeping fluids were of a hydrothermal nature ….

Hip pain is a common complaint in children and may indicate a very mild irritation in the hip joint or may be the symptom of a very severe abnormality