"Melody Shee is alone and in trouble. At 33 years old, she finds herself pregnant with the child of a 17-year-old Traveller boy, Martin Toppy, and not by her husband Pat. Melody was teaching Martin to read, but now he's gone, and Pat leaves too, full of rage. She's trying to stay in the moment, but the future is looming, while the past won't let her go. It's a good thing that she meets Mary Crothery when she does. Mary is a bold young Traveller woman,...

"We shall all, in the end, be led to where we belong. We shall all, in the end, find our way home. In a time of war, a mysterious child appears at the monastery of the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing. Gentle Brother Edik finds the girl, Beatryce, curled in a stall, wracked with fever, coated in dirt and blood, and holding fast to the ear of Answelica the goat. As the monk nurses Beatryce to health, he uncovers her dangerous secret, one that imperils...

"According to commentator and lawyer Elie Mystal, Republicans are wrong when they tell you the First Amendment allows religious fundamentalists to discriminate against gay people who like cake. They're wrong when they tell you the Second Amendment protects the right to own a private arsenal. They're wrong when they say the death penalty isn't cruel or unusual punishment, and they're wrong when they tell you we have no legal remedies for the scourge...

With a unique voice in American potery, Emily Dickinson is known for her short poems, which are full of acute observations.

"The author's lifelong interest in hymns led him to discover the richness of the stories behind many of the best-loved hymns. Many of the stories also reflect the impact hymns have had on ordinary people as they read, heard, and sang the great hymns of faith."--Cover. Does your soul lift in song when you hear the first few bars of a favorite hymn? Robert Morgan's lifelong interest in hymns led him to discover the richness of the stories behind many...

"One hundred years ago, Sir Ernest Shackleton embarked on the legendary Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917), accomplishing one of history's most remarkable feats of endurance, even though his crew failed in their mission to cross Antarctica...Less well known, however, is the incredible but often forgotten tale of the Mount Hope party (also known as the Ross Sea party)--six men who worked in the shadow of Shackleton's great cause." "The...

In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land. At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime...

Lucky Suit: I'm breaking up with set-ups. No more "can I introduce you to my son, nephew, grandson, the butcher, the guy down the street who mows my lawn." Machines know what's best, and I'll rely on the great dating algorithms of the web to find the ideal man, thank you very much. Soon enough, it looks like I've found him -- his nickname is Lucky Suit, and he's hilarious, quick-witted and full of heart. But when I finally get together with him in...

"A personal, lyrical, and idiosyncratic ode to our national parks"-- "For years, America's national parks have provided public breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing, which is why close to 300 million people visit the parks each year. Now, to honor the centennial of the National Park Service, Terry Tempest Williams, the author of the beloved memoir When Women Were Birds, returns with The Hour of Land, a literary...

"A sweeping, groundbreaking, and comprehensive treasury of the most essential presidential writings, featuring a richly varied mix of the beloved and the little-known, from stirring speeches and shrewd remarks to behind-the-scenes drafts and unpublished autobiographies. From the early years of our nation's history, when George Washington wrote his humble yet powerful Farewell Address, to our current age, when Barack Obama delivered his moving speech...