New Releases by Kate Wharton

Have you ever watched a Hallmark Christmas movie and thought, “I bet I could write one of those?” With this book, you can! We’ll show you how to write and market your own made-for-TV Cozy Christmas Romance, even if you’ve never written a script before! We’ve broken the process down into ten easy-to-follow steps.

COVID-19 has transformed our everyday lives. It’s as if another world has arrived in the blink of an eye. Yet life is not on pause. We still need to live. The pandemic, like any other time, is a moment both of opportunity as well as challenge. Healthy Faith in the Coronavirus Crisis is a briefing on how to thrive in a world of restrictions. Twenty leading Christian thinkers have come together to help you begin to navigate this strange reality. Each contributor writes on their area of expertise, and topics covered include prayer, loneliness, work, singleness, marriage, parenting, grief, death, imagination, conversations, humour, and much more. They offer practical advice as well as helpful perspective from Scripture. This is an essential resource for anyone looking to cultivate a healthy faith which infuses all areas of life during this disorienting time.

The ''couples culture'' is everywhere: church family events, valentine’s day, cinema, popular music and even supermarket offers. Being single can often mean you are singled-out. But Kate wants to encourage Christians, holding singleness up as a unique opportunity for holiness, personal development and Christian living. In her book, Kate tackles the common challenges many face when reconciling their relational choices: - Issues of Identity: church roles, social invitations and being whole without an ''other half'' - Finance: learning to live alone when it''s cheaper to live with others - Sexual Pressure: staying pure, in thinking as well as action - Friendship: how to be ''just friends'' with the opposite sex - Calling: when the cost of obedience is to stay single - Divorce or Bereavement: learning to be single again "When we are sold out for God," she says, "then life will be the very best that it can be - whether married or single, with children or without - because we will be on our way to becoming who we were created to be."

ELLs are a growing community in the United States and their learning needs are significantly different from younger learners, collegiate ELLs or Adult Basic Education students. Additionally, adult female ELLs have their own needs and motives for investing in the English language. This study explores the self-recounted experiences of three adult female English language learners'' (ELLs) motivation for investing in English language learning, their identities and the benefits gained in a nonacademic learning setting in Texas. Data for this study was gathered using a background questionnaire, individual interview, group interview and in-class observation using an instrument that looks for visible markers of investment. First, each participant''s investment and identity are analyzed with regard to how the two intersect and influence each other throughout the language learning experience. Second, investment and benefits are examined and presented to demonstrate before and after pictures of the participants'' experiences learning English, asking, "Have the learners gained what they sought to gain?" and "Is it worth it?" Findings substantiate prior research on the influence that investment and identity have on each other in language learning, while also clearly demonstrating the explicit relationship between investment and benefits. The study concludes with an understanding that adult educators must recognize the individuality of each adult learner and her circumstances. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/151273

Forty years of low-intensity internal armed conflict has made Colombia home to the world''s second largest population of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). The effect of being directly impacted by conflict on a child''s educational accumulation and enrollment is of particular concern because of the critical role that education plays in increasing human capital and productivity. This paper explores the educational accumulation and enrollment gap created by being directly affected by conflict. First, we show that children living in municipality with high conflict have a gap in education enrollment and accumulation. However, this gap is much smaller than the attainment and enrollment gap for those directly affected by the conflict (IDPs). We estimate the education accumulation and enrollment gaps for IDPs in comparison to non-migrants and other migrants respectively. Our results suggest significant education accumulation and enrollment gaps for children of IDPs that widens to over half a year in secondary school. The disparity in effects when we focus on direct exposure to conflict versus living in a municipality with conflict suggests a need to be careful when using the latter to estimate the impact of conflict. -- educational attainment ; school enrollment ; Colombia ; internal displacement ; conflict

Considers the many things Mrs. Claus might do while Santa delivers toys on Christmas.