The Absence of Sparrows
The Absence of Sparrows

Author: Kurt Kirchmeier

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Published: 2019-05-07

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 031645091X

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Stranger Things meets The Stand in this haunting coming-of-age novel about a plague that brings the world to a halt -- and the boy who believes that his town's missing sparrows can save his family. In the small town of Griever's Mill, eleven-year-old Ben Cameron is expecting to finish off his summer of relaxing and bird-watching without a hitch. But everything goes wrong when dark clouds roll in. Old Man Crandall is the first to change -- human one minute and a glass statue the next. Soon it's happening across the world. Dark clouds fill the sky and, at random, people are turned into frozen versions of themselves. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no one knows how to stop it. With his mom on the verge of a breakdown, and his brother intent on following the dubious plans put forth by a nameless voice on the radio, Ben must hold out hope that his town's missing sparrows will return with everyone's souls before the glass plague takes them away forever.

Flight of the Sparrow
Flight of the Sparrow

Author: Amy Belding Brown

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0451466691

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From the author of Emily's House comes a “compelling, emotionally gripping”* novel of historical fiction—perfect for readers of America’s First Daughter. Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1676. Even before Mary Rowlandson was captured by Indians on a winter day of violence and terror, she sometimes found herself in conflict with her rigid Puritan community. Now, her home destroyed, her children lost to her, she has been sold into the service of a powerful woman tribal leader, made a pawn in the ongoing bloody struggle between English settlers and native people. Battling cold, hunger, and exhaustion, Mary witnesses harrowing brutality but also unexpected kindness. To her confused surprise, she is drawn to her captors’ open and straightforward way of life, a feeling further complicated by her attraction to a generous, protective English-speaking native known as James Printer. All her life, Mary has been taught to fear God, submit to her husband, and abhor Indians. Now, having lived on the other side of the forest, she begins to question the edicts that have guided her, torn between the life she knew and the wisdom the natives have shown her. Based on the compelling true narrative of Mary Rowlandson, Flight of the Sparrow is an evocative tale that transports the reader to a little-known time in early America and explores the real meanings of freedom, faith, and acceptance. READERS GUIDE INCLUDED

When Sparrows Fall
When Sparrows Fall

Author: Meg Moseley

Publisher: Multnomah

Published: 2011-05-03

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 160142356X

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Freedom. Safety. Love. Miranda vows to reclaim them--for herself, and for her children. A widow and mother of six, Miranda Hanford leads a quiet, private life. When the pastor of her close-knit church announces his plans to move the entire congregation to another state, Miranda jumps at the opportunity to dissolve ties with Mason Chandler and his controlling method of ruling his flock. But then Mason threatens to unearth secrets from her past, and Miranda feels trapped, terrified she’ll be unable to protect her children. College professor Jack Hanford is more than surprised when he gets a call from his estranged sister-in-law’s oldest son, Timothy, informing him that Miranda has taken a serious fall and he has been named legal guardian of her children while she recovers. Quickly charmed by Miranda’s children, Jack brings some much-needed life into the sheltered household. But his constant challenging of the family’s conservative lifestyle makes the recovering mother uneasy and defensive—despite Jack’s unnerving appeal. As Jack tries to make sense of the mysterious Miranda and the secrets she holds so tightly, Mason’s pressure on her increases. With her emotions stirring and freedom calling, can Miranda find a way to unshackle her family without losing everything?

An Episode of Sparrows
An Episode of Sparrows

Author: Rumer Godden

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9781590171240

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In post-World War II London, two street-tough children attempt to build a hidden garden--an act that awakens hidden courage in the children and profoundly disrupts the neighborhood.

Red Flags
Red Flags

Author: Juris Jurjevics

Publisher: Soho Press

Published: 2021-02-16

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1641292334

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Viet Nam, 1966: A dead body in a combat zone barely merits a second glance. The perfect place to commit a murder. Army cop Erik Rider is content to fight his war in the sophisticated streets of Saigon, so he’s less than thrilled at being sent to a tiny American outpost in the remote wilderness of the Central Highlands. Sitting perilously close to a North Vietnamese infiltration route, Cheo Reo is rife with intrigue and betrayal: American supplies are being siphoned off by South Vietnamese corruption, the Montagnards are ready to start a bloody rebellion to regain their ancestral homeland, and Communists are harvesting opium to finance their war effort. Rider’s been sent to take down the opium operation, but soon finds himself entangled with a local CIA man and an alluring doctor serving the indigenous tribes. As he closes in on the opium fields, he learns that not all enemies are beyond the perimeter. Someone in Cheo Reo wants him dead.

Violet Mackerel's Natural Habitat
Violet Mackerel's Natural Habitat

Author: Anna Branford

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-05-21

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 1442435941

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As the youngest in her family, seven-year-old Violet identifies with small creatures in the natural world, but when she tries to help special ladybug, she learns an important lesson about animal habitats.

Hallucinations
Hallucinations

Author: Oliver Sacks

Publisher: Knopf Canada

Published: 2012-11-06

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 0307402193

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Hallucinations, for most people, imply madness. But there are many different types of non-psychotic hallucination caused by various illnesses or injuries, by intoxication--even, for many people, by falling sleep. From the elementary geometrical shapes that we see when we rub our eyes to the complex swirls and blind spots and zigzags of a visual migraine, hallucination takes many forms. At a higher level, hallucinations associated with the altered states of consciousness that may come with sensory deprivation or certain brain disorders can lead to religious epiphanies or conversions. Drawing on a wealth of clinical examples from his own patients as well as historical and literary descriptions, Oliver Sacks investigates the fundamental differences and similarities of these many sorts of hallucinations, what they say about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture's folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all.

The Clackity
The Clackity

Author: Lora Senf

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-06-28

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1665902698

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Reminiscent of Doll Bones and Small Spaces, this “delightfully eerie” (Erin A. Craig, New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrows) middle grade novel tells the story of a girl who must rescue her aunt by entering a world of ghosts, witches, and monsters to play a game with deadly consequences. Evie Von Rathe lives in Blight Harbor—the seventh-most haunted town in America—with her Aunt Desdemona, the local paranormal expert. Des doesn’t have many rules except one: Stay out of the abandoned slaughterhouse at the edge of town. But when her aunt disappears into the building, Evie goes searching for her. There she meets The Clackity, a creature who lives in the shadows and seams of the slaughterhouse. The Clackity makes a deal with Evie to help get Des back in exchange for the ghost of John Jeffrey Pope, a serial killer who stalked Blight Harbor a hundred years earlier. Evie reluctantly embarks on a journey into a strange otherworld filled with hungry witches, penny-eyed ghosts, and a memory-thief, all while being pursued by a dead man whose only goal is to add Evie to his collection of lost souls. Will she ever find Des, or is The Clackity planning something far more sinister?

The Sparrows
The Sparrows

Author: Denis Summers-Smith

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2010-11-30

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 1408138255

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While Denis Summers-Smith's monograph The Sparrows presented his knowledge of sparrow biology, this volume tells the other, human, side of the tale. Denis Summers-Smith first took up the study of the House Sparrow in 1947, thinking that the difficulties of travel in post-war Britain would best suit the study of a species always close at hand. The humble House Sparrow, common everywhere, was surprisingly poorly researched and his work soon provided interesting insights into this successful and adaptable little bird. As new opportunities to travel opened up, his interest blossomed to take in the genus Passer as a whole. His travels would ultimately lead to his study of all but one of the group, found only in deepest Turkestan, and to the publication of his authoritative monograph on sparrows in 1988. His wry descriptions of the tribulations and unexpected pleasures of a traveller on four continents, from the Himalayas and Thailand to Africa and the Americas (with a good few islands in between), are interspersed with observations and speculations on the biology of sparrows in a wide variety of habitats. Everywhere local officials and bird watchers warmed to the eccentric Scot in pursuit of the little birds that nobody notices but which so often make their homes beside us. The author's own photographs and delightful cartoons by Euan Dunn further paint the picture of this lifelong search.