Guidance from the God of Seahorses is a collection of prose poems about Earth's ongoing sixth mass extinction. The poems are written as advice columns from a series of Gods, each of whom speaks as the creator of a particular species. Through profiling fifty animals--many threatened or endangered, others thriving weed-like in urban centers--the Gods grapple with pressing environmental issues such as climate change, habitat fragmentation, and the spread of invasive species. Collectively, Guidance offers a "God's-eye-view" of the Anthropocene that is simultaneously playful and sorrowful, inspiring a renewed sense of gravity about our planet's vanishing species.
Seahorses are extraordinary creatures. They swim upright and spend days in dancing courtship. They are small, shy and have heads shaped like miniature ponies. And the male carries the female’s eggs in his pouch and ‘births’ the young. Found worldwide, they are sensitive to environmental disruption and are an obvious flagship group for conservation. Seahorses unveils every species, including the seadragons and pipefish that share the Syngnathidae family. Each of the 47 entries incorporates a photograph and description, so you can admire their beauty as you learn about their ecological importance.
Nem is a student of English literature at Delhi University. He drifts between classes, weed-hazy parties, and the amorous complexities of campus life, until a chance encounter with an art historian steers him into a world of pleasure and artistic discovery. Nem’s life is irrevocably transformed. One day, without warning, his mentor disappears. In the years that follow, Nem cocoons himself in South Delhi, writing for a chic cultural journal. When he is awarded a fellowship to London, a cryptic note plunges him into a search for the art historian—a search which turns into a reckoning with his past. Retelling the myth of Poseidon and his youthful male devotee Pelops, Seahorse transforms a simple coming-of-age story into an epic drama of loss, love, and healing.
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A bestselling dystopian novel that tackles surveillance, privacy and the frightening intrusions of technology in our lives—a “compulsively readable parable for the 21st century” (Vanity Fair). When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.
A celebration and practical guide to the renowned and beloved goddess and orisha. Yemaya, queen of the sea, first emerged in Yorubaland (now in modern Nigeria). A primordial deity, considered the mother of all, some perceive her to be at the root of numerous ancient goddesses, including Isis. During the Middle Passage, Yemaya accompanied her enslaved devotees to the Western Hemisphere, where her veneration took root and flourished. She is among the most beloved and prominent spirits of Candomblé, Santeria, and other African diaspora traditions. Through her associations with the Virgin Mary, devotion to Yemaya spread throughout Latin America. Cuban immigrants brought Yemaya with them to the US, where her veneration expanded exponentially. No longer a local water spirit, she became an internationally beloved goddess whose devotees derive from numerous traditions and who worship her in her many fluid forms. Yemaya currently ranks among the most beloved goddesses worldwide. Raven Morgaine, a priest of Yemaya for over three decades, shares his expertise and knowledge in Yemaya: Orisha, Goddess, and Queen of the Sea, the first full-length English language book accessible to general readers. Morgaine explores Yemaya’s history and her many forms, including her roles as mother, lover, witch, warrior, and mermaid. He describes her many paths, aspects, and incarnations. Simultaneously a celebration of Yemaya and a practical, hands-on guide to working with her, Yemaya explores her mythology in depth, as well as her special role in the LGBQT community. The book features: Spells and rituals associated with Yemaya appropriate for the uninitiated Instructions for building altars and shrines for Yemaya, as well as other methods for working with her, including correct, respectful ways to make appropriate offerings Recipes that will please Yemaya A detailed list of flowers, herbs, and other botanicals that radiate the power of Yemaya
Hyper-spiritual approaches to finding God's will don't work. It's time to try something new: Give up. Pastor and author Kevin DeYoung counsels Christians to settle down, make choices, and do the hard work of seeing those choices through. Too often, he writes, God's people tinker around with churches, jobs, and relationships, worrying that they haven't found God's perfect will for their lives. Or-even worse-they do absolutely nothing, stuck in a frustrated state of paralyzed indecision, waiting...waiting...waiting for clear, direct, unmistakable direction. But God doesn't need to tell us what to do at each fork in the road. He's already revealed his plan for our lives: to love him with our whole hearts, to obey His Word, and after that, to do what we like. No need for hocus-pocus. No reason to be directionally challenged. Just do something.
How do you rebuild your life after it falls apart? Dawn Sanders has traveled that path and lived to tell the tale–twice. With her unique perspective, authenticity and courage, Dawn digs deep into the creation story and unearths a seven-step process by which God brings us out of the void and guides us into renewed hope.
In The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter, Gillian Cummings gives voice to her version of Ophelia, a young woman shattered by unbearable losses, and questions what makes a mind unwind till the outcome is deemed a suicide. Ophelia’s story, spoken quietly, lyrically, in prose poems whose tone is unapologetically feminine, is bracketed by short, whittled-down once-sonnets featuring other Ophelias, nameless “she” and “you” characters who address the question of madness and its aftermath. These women and girls want to know, what is God when the soul is at its nadir of suffering, and how can one have faith when living with a mind that wants to destroy itself? If it is true, as Joseph Campbell said, that “the psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight,” then Cummings strains the boundaries of this notion: “Is it the same? The desire to end a life / and the need to know how: a flower’s simple bliss?” Her women and girls, part “little heavenling” and part “small hellborn,” understand the emptiness of utmost despair and long for that other emptiness, which can be thought of as union with God, the death of the troublesome ego. Cummings’s poetic ancestors may be Dickinson and Plath and her source here Shakespeare, but more contemporary voices also echo in her poems, those of Lucie Brock-Broido, Larissa Szporluk, and Cynthia Cruz. Here, in The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter, is what might happen if, after sealing off the doors and turning on the gas, indeed, after dying, a poet had come to embrace the holiness in how “all dissolves: one color, / one moon, all earth, red as love, red as living.”
"Cephalopods are often misunderstood creatures. Three biologists set the record straight."—Science News Largely shell-less relatives of clams and snails, the marine mollusks in the class Cephalopoda—Greek for “head-foot”—are colorful creatures of many-armed dexterity, often inky self-defense, and highly evolved cognition. They are capable of learning, of retaining information—and of rapid decision-making to avoid predators and find prey. They have eyes and senses rivaling those of vertebrates like birds and fishes, they morph texture and body shape, and they change color faster than a chameleon. In short, they captivate us. From the long-armed mimic octopus—able to imitate the appearance of swimming flounders and soles—to the aptly named flamboyant cuttlefish, whose undulating waves of color rival the graphic displays of any LCD screen, there are more than seven hundred species of cephalopod. Featuring a selection of species profiles, Octopus, Squid, and Cuttlefish reveals the evolution, anatomy, life history, behaviors, and relationships of these spellbinding animals. Their existence proves that intelligence can develop in very different ways: not only are cephalopods unusually large-brained invertebrates, they also carry two-thirds of their neurons in their arms. A treasure trove of scientific fact and visual explanation, this worldwide illustrated guide to cephalopods offers a comprehensive review of these fascinating and mysterious underwater invertebrates—from the lone hunting of the octopus, to the social squid, and the prismatic skin signaling of the cuttlefish.
Christianity has revealed the secret that psychologists have long sought--the "inward soul," the re-created spirit, the focus of God's great redemptive work on earth. The four Gospels give us a wonderful picture of the lonely man of Galilee, the humble Messiah who ends His earthly walk on Calvary. But Paul's Epistles give us the risen triumphant One, the conqueror of death, sin, and Satan. He provides the revelation of what happened on the cross and in the tomb, and how that affects who and what we are in Christ today. Legendary Bible teacher E. W. Kenyon delves deeply into Paul's teaching to give us a living picture of the entire substitutionary work of Christ, which made possible the new creation, a new race of men and women who can stand in God's presence without a sense of guilt, condemnation, or inferiority.
