Despite the seemingly unbridgeable social divides of Calcutta, a city where pleasure and indolence co-exist with extreme poverty, the lives of three young people are inextrcably connected—by family, by proximity, by accident. Political power play and corruption, petty local gangsterism, and the smell and color of Indian city life all combine with a delicate vein of humor in Amal Chatterjee's fluent first novel.
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Named a most-anticipated summer book by USA Today, People, E! News, Cosmopolitan, PureWow, CNN.com, New York Post, CrimeReads, POPSUGAR, and more The bestselling author of Final Girls and Survive the Night is back with his “best plot twist yet.” (People, "Best Summer Books") Be careful what you watch for . . . Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of bourbon, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple living in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing—a tech innovator, Tom is powerful; and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous. One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other—and the longer Casey watches—it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom’s marriage isn’t as perfect as it appears. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey immediately suspects Tom of foul play. What she doesn’t realize is that there’s more to the story than meets the eye—and that shocking secrets can lurk beneath the most placid of surfaces. Packed with sharp characters, psychological suspense, and gasp-worthy plot twists, Riley Sager’s The House Across the Lake is the ultimate escapist read . . . no lake house required.
New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award "Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.… Egan’s book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.
The author provides an account of his experiences as a crew member on a tall-masted schooner during a six-week voyage through the Great Lakes, and discusses his other explorations of the lakes, looking at their history, geology, and environmental disaster and rescue.
This book is an account of ships that have borne the name "Queen of the Lakes," an honorary title indicating that, at the time of its launching, a ship is the longest on the Great Lakes. In one of the most comprehensive books ever written on the maritime history of the lakes, Mark Thompson presents a vignette of each of the dozens of ships that has held the title, chronicling the dates the ship sailed, its dimensions, the derivation of its name, its role in the economic development of the region, and its sailing history. Through the stories of the individual ships, Thompson also describes the growth of ship design on the Great Lakes and the changing nature of the shipping industry on the lakes. The launching of the fist ship on Lake Ontario in 1678 -- the diminutive Frontenac, a small, two-masted vessel of only about ten tons and no more than forty or forty-five feet long -- set in motion an evolutionary process that has continued for more than three hundred years. That ship is the direct ancestor of all the ships that ever have operated on the Great Lakes, from the Str. Onoko, launched in February 1882 and the first ship to bear the name Queen of the Lakes; to the Str. W. D. Rees, which held its title only for a few weeks, to today's Queen, the Tregurtha, the longest ship on the lakes since its launching in 1981. Although the ships on the Great Lakes may be surpassed in size and efficiency by many of the modern ocean freighters, Thompson notes that the ships now sailing on the great freshwater seas of North America have achieved a level of operating mastery that is unrivaled anywhere in the world, considering the inherent limitations of the Great Lakes system. The Tregurtha reigns as a model of unsurpassed maritime craftsmanship and as heir to a long and glorious tradition of excellence. Every magnificent ship that has borne the title in the past has contributed in some part to the greatness embodied in the Tregurtha. In time, her title as Queen of the Lakes will pass to another monumental freighter that will carry the art and science of shipbuilding and operation to even greater heights. [Back Cover] The name "Queen" is bestowed upon ships that become, at the time of their launching, the longest ship sailing on the Great Lakes. Queen of the Lakes, perfect for coffee tables, lakefront cabins, and boat lovers' bookshelves, tells the story of each of the ships that has been honored with the title. From the earliest ships launched in the late 1600s; to the "palace steamers" outfitted with stained glass, rare woods, fine carpets, and silk curtains; to today's mammoth ore carriers, Thompson describes each great ship, recalling its dimensions, name derivation, accidents, and sailing history. Ship by ship, era by era, he constructs a chronicle of ship design and the changing role and nature of the shipping industry on the Great Lakes. Queen of the Lakes is a Great Lake Books publication.
The Great Lakes are the largest collection of fresh surface water on earth, and more than 40 million Americans and Canadians live in their basin. Will we divert water from the Great Lakes, causing them to end up like Central Asia's Aral Sea, which has lost 90 percent of its surface area and 75 percent of its volume since 1960? Or will we come to see that unregulated water withdrawals are ultimately catastrophic? Peter Annin writes a fast-paced account of the people and stories behind these upcoming battles. Destined to be the definitive story for the general public as well as policymakers, The Great Lakes Water Wars is a balanced, comprehensive look behind the scenes at the conflicts and compromises that are the past-and future-of this unique resource.
In this highly accessible history of ships and shipping on the Great Lakes, upper elementary readers are taken on a rip-roaring journey through the waterways of the upper Midwest. Great Ships on the Great Lakes explores the history of the region’s rivers, lakes, and inland seas—and the people and ships who navigated them. Read along as the first peoples paddle tributaries in birch bark canoes. Follow as European voyageurs pilot rivers and lakes to get beaver pelts back to the eastern market. Watch as settlers build towns and eventually cities on the shores of the Great Lakes. Listen to the stories of sailors, lighthouse keepers, and shipping agents whose livelihoods depended on the dangerous waters of Lake Michigan, Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Give an ear to their stories of unexpected tragedy and miraculous rescue, and heed their tales of risk and reward on the low seas. Great Ships also tells the story of sea battles and gunships, of the first vessels to travel beyond the Niagara, and of the treacherous storms and cold weather that caused thousands of ships to sink in the Great Lakes. Watch as underwater archaeologists solve the mysteries of Great Lakes shipwrecks today. And learn how the shift from sail to steam forever changed the history of shipping, as schooners made way for steamships and bulk freighters, and sailing became a recreation, not a hazardous way of life. Designed for the upper elementary classroom with emphasis on Michigan and Wisconsin, Great Ships on the Great Lakes includes a timeline of events, on-page vocabulary, and a list of resources and places to visit. Over 20 maps highlight the region’s maritime history. The accompanying Teacher’s Guide includes 18 classroom activities, arranged by chapter, including lessons on exploring shipwrecks and learning how glaciers moved across the landscape.
Steamboats and Sailors of the Great Lakestraces the evolution of the Great Lakes shipping industry over the last three centuries. The Great Lakes shipping industry can trace its lineage to 1679 with the launching on Lake Erie of the Griffon, a sixty-foot galley weighing nearly fifty tons. Built by LaSalle, a French explorer who had been commissioned to search for a passage through North America to China, it was the first sailing ship to operate on the upper lakes, signaling the dawn of the Great Lakes shipping industry as we know it today. Steamboats and Sailors of the Great Lakes is the most thorough and factual study of the Great Lakes shipping industry written this century. Author Mark L. Thompson tells the fascinating story of the world's most efficient bulk transportation system, describing the Great Lakes freighters, the cargoes of the great ships ,and the men and women who have served as crew. He documents the dramatic changes that have taken places in the industry and looks at the critical role that Great Lakes shipping plays in the economic well-being of the U.S. and Canada, despite the fact tat the size of the fleet and the amount of cargo carried have declined dramatically in recent years. Spanning more than three centuries, from LaSalle's voyage in 1679, through 1975 with the mysterious sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, to life aboard today's thousand-foot behemoths, this important volume documents the evolution of the industry through its "Golden Age" at the end of the nineteenth century to the present, with a downsized U.S. fleet that numbers fewer than seventy vessels.
