Tony the trilobite and his friends, Becky the brachiopod and Bryan the bryozoan, live in an ancient ocean that covers what will one day be the Chickasaw Nation. When a hungry cephalopod named Seth shows up, Tony and his friends find themselves in trilobite trouble! This fun and educational introduction to the Paleozoic era and fossils includes a glossary of scientific terms, Chickasaw language vocabulary words, and a downloadable version of the "Trilobite Song," written and performed by the author.
Breece D'J Pancake cut short a promising career when he took his own life at the age twenty-six. Published posthumously, this is a collection of stories that depict the world of Pancake's native rural West Virginia.
Long ago the Chickasaw Native Americans used the crushed, fossilized shells of these ancient mollusks to create the clay for their pottery. Therefore the many English words used in this book have Chickasaw language words for them as well. A glossary, a vocabulary, and a pronunciation key are provided in the back of the book.
By one of Britain's most gifted scientists: a magnificently daring and compulsively readable account of life on Earth (from the "big bang" to the advent of man), based entirely on the most original of all sources--the evidence of fossils. With excitement and driving intelligence, Richard Fortey guides us from the barren globe spinning in space, through the very earliest signs of life in the sulphurous hot springs and volcanic vents of the young planet, the appearance of cells, the slow creation of an atmosphere and the evolution of myriad forms of plants and animals that could then be sustained, including the magnificent era of the dinosaurs, and on to the last moment before the debut of Homo sapiens. Ranging across multiple scientific disciplines, explicating in wonderfully clear and refreshing prose their findings and arguments--about the origins of life, the causes of species extinctions and the first appearance of man--Fortey weaves this history out of the most delicate traceries left in rock, stone and earth. He also explains how, on each aspect of nature and life, scientists have reached the understanding we have today, who made the key discoveries, who their opponents were and why certain ideas won. Brimful of wit, fascinating personal experience and high scholarship, this book may well be our best introduction yet to the complex history of life on Earth. A Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection With 32 pages of photographs
From beloved author Cynthia DeFelice, The Ghost of Fossil Glen marks the first installment in this gripping middle grade series featuring sixth-grader and ghost magnet Allie Nichols, who solves mysteries with the help of her friend Dub. Allie Nichols knows she's being pursued by a ghost. But her friend Karen calls her a liar and doesn't want to hear "stuff like that." It is Allie's old pal Dub who listens eagerly as Allie tells him about a voice that guides her safely down a steep cliff side, the face in her mind's eye of a girl who begs "Help me," and a terrible nightmare in which that girl falls to her death. Who is the girl? Is she the ghost? And what does the ghost want from Allie? As Allie discovers that her role is to avenge a murder, she also learns something about friendship, false and true, in this chilling tale from bestselling author Cynthia DeFelice.
FINALIST FOR 2018 KIRKUS PRIZE NAMED ONE OF THE "BEST LITERARY FICTION OF 2018' BY KIRKUS REVIEWS "Sci-fi in its most perfect expression…Reading it is like having a lucid dream of six years from next week, filled with people you don't know, but will." —NPR "[Williams’s] wit is sharp, but her touch is light, and her novel is a winner." – San Francisco Chronicle "Between seasons of Black Mirror, look to Katie Williams' debut novel." —Refinery29 Smart and inventive, a page-turner that considers the elusive definition of happiness. Pearl's job is to make people happy. As a technician for the Apricity Corporation, with its patented happiness machine, she provides customers with personalized recommendations for greater contentment. She's good at her job, her office manager tells her, successful. But how does one measure an emotion? Meanwhile, there's Pearl's teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive kid who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own kind of "pursuit of happiness." As his mother, Pearl wants nothing more than to help Rhett--but is it for his sake or for hers? Certainly it would make Pearl happier. Regardless, her son is one person whose emotional life does not fall under the parameters of her job--not as happiness technician, and not as mother, either. Told from an alternating cast of endearing characters from within Pearl and Rhett's world, Tell the Machine Goodnight delivers a smartly moving and entertaining story about the advance of technology and the ways that it can most surprise and define us. Along the way, Katie Williams playfully illuminates our national obsession with positive psychology, our reliance on quick fixes. What happens when these obsessions begin to overlap? With warmth, humor, and a clever touch, Williams taps into our collective unease about the modern world and allows us see it a little more clearly.
Strange, poignant tales of life in outer space and on tomorrow’s Earth from the multiple Hugo Award–winning Grand Master of Science Fiction. Virtually every major author from science fiction’s fabled golden age—including Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein—agreed that Clifford D. Simak was one of the greatest among them. Named Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, the award-winning author created enduring visions of future worlds, perilous space explorations, and weird alien encounters as rich in emotion and humanity as they are in ingenious invention. This is an essential collection of short fiction from the remarkable mind and heart of a true giant of twentieth-century speculative fiction, featuring powerful examples of literary science fiction at its very best. Beginning with the unforgettable title story—a wry and chilling horror tale about cloning and alien invasion that inspired the classic teleplay “The Duplicate Man” from the television series The Outer Limits—Simak propels the reader on a breathtaking journey across the galaxies and into the future. He then enthralls us with the strange chronicle of twin siblings, one tied to the Earth, the other drawn to the stars; imaginings of a volatile reunion of two former enemies who must join forces on Jupiter’s moon or face extinction; and the story of a house in the middle of nowhere that serves as a gateway back to prehistoric times. With his wondrous tales of a journalist’s miraculous discovery of fairies and sprites in the world, a census three centuries in the making that uncovers an unknown leap forward in human evolution, and the nightmare realities of future elder care, Simak demonstrates once again that he is not only one of the greatest science fiction writers of the twentieth century, but also one of the greatest of all time.
