Lu Beiping is one of 20 million young adults the Chinese government uproots and sends far from their homes for agricultural re-education. And Lu is bored and exhausted. While he pines for romance, instead he’s caught up in a forbidden religious tradition and married off to the foreman’s long-dead daughter so that her soul may rest. The foreman then sends him off to cattle duty up on Mudkettle Mountain, far away from everyone else. On the mountain, Lu meets an outcast polyamorous family led by a matriarch, Jade, and one of her lovers, Kingfisher. They are woodcutters and practice their own idiosyncratic faith by which they claim to placate the serpent-demon sleeping in the belly of the mountains. Just as the village authorities get wind of Lu’s dalliances with the woodcutters, a typhoon rips through the valley. And deep in the jungle, a giant serpent may be stirring. The Invisible Valley is a lyrical fable about the shapes into which human affection can be pressed in extreme circumstances; about what is natural and what is truly deviant; about the relationships between the human and the natural, the human and the divine, the self and the other.
In a hospital bed, small-time private detective Ray Lovell veers between paralysis and delirium. But before the accident that landed him there, he’d been hired to find Rose Janko, the estranged daughter of a traveling Gypsy family, who went missing seven years earlier. Half Romany himself, Ray is well aware that he’s been chosen more for his blood than for his investigative skills. Still, he’s surprised by the intense hostility he encounters from the Jankos, who haven’t had an easy past. Touched by tragedy, they’re either cursed or hiding a terrible secret—the discovery of which Ray can’t help suspecting is connected to Rose’s disappearance… Seamlessly toggling between Ray’s past and present, and the perspective of the missing woman’s young nephew JJ, Stef Penney builds a gripping page-turner that doesn’t let go until its shocking end.
An urgent examination of one of the biggest global crises facing us today—the drastic worsening of air pollution—and what we can do about it The air pollution that we breathe every day is largely invisible—but it is killing us. How did it get this bad, and how can we stop it? Far from a modern-day problem, scientists were aware of the impact of air pollution as far back as the seventeenth century. Now, as more of us live in cities, we are closer than ever to pollution sources, and the detrimental impact on the environment and our health has reached crisis point. The Invisible Killer will introduce you to the incredible individuals whose groundbreaking research paved the way to today's understanding of air pollution, often at their own detriment. Gary Fuller's global story examines devastating incidents from London's Great Smog to Norway's acid rain; Los Angeles' traffic problem to wood-burning damage in New Zealand. Fuller argues that the only way to alter the future course of our planet and improve collective global health is for city and national governments to stop ignoring evidence and take action, persuading the public and making polluters bear the full cost of the harm that they do. The decisions that we make today will impact on our health for decades to come. The Invisible Killer is an essential book for our times and a cautionary tale we need to take heed of.
NPR Best Book of 2017 Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Pick Refinery29 Best Book of the Year BOLO Books Top Read of 2017 “Destined to be a classic L.A. novel.”—Michael Connelly When a teen runs away from his father’s mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that will connect six characters desperate for hope and love, set across the sun-bleached canvas of Los Angeles. From the acclaimed author of Visitation Street, a visionary portrait of contemporary Los Angeles in all its facets, from the Mojave Desert to the Pacific, from the 110 to Skid Row. During a typically crowded morning commute, a naked runner is dodging between the stalled cars. The strange sight makes the local news and captures the imaginations of a stunning cast of misfits and lost souls. There's Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to LA in search of his mother. There's Owen and James, teenage twins who live in a desert commune, where their father, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful sway over his disciples. There's Britt, who shows up at the commune harboring a dark secret. There's Tony, a bored and unhappy lawyer who is inspired by the runner. And there's Blake, a drifter hiding in the desert, doing his best to fight off his most violent instincts. Their lives will all intertwine and come crashing together in a shocking way, one that could only happen in this enchanting, dangerous city. Wonder Valley is a swirling mix of angst, violence, heartache, and yearning—a masterpiece by a writer on the rise.
The internet is the most effective weapon the government has ever built. In this fascinating book, investigative reporter Yasha Levine uncovers the secret origins of the internet, tracing it back to a Pentagon counterinsurgency surveillance project. A visionary intelligence officer, William Godel, realized that the key to winning the war in Vietnam was not outgunning the enemy, but using new information technology to understand their motives and anticipate their movements. This idea -- using computers to spy on people and groups perceived as a threat, both at home and abroad -- drove ARPA to develop the internet in the 1960s, and continues to be at the heart of the modern internet we all know and use today. As Levine shows, surveillance wasn't something that suddenly appeared on the internet; it was woven into the fabric of the technology. But this isn't just a story about the NSA or other domestic programs run by the government. As the book spins forward in time, Levine examines the private surveillance business that powers tech-industry giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, revealing how these companies spy on their users for profit, all while doing double duty as military and intelligence contractors. Levine shows that the military and Silicon Valley are effectively inseparable: a military-digital complex that permeates everything connected to the internet, even coopting and weaponizing the antigovernment privacy movement that sprang up in the wake of Edward Snowden. With deep research, skilled storytelling, and provocative arguments, Surveillance Valley will change the way you think about the news -- and the device on which you read it.
A finalist for the Edgar and Mary Higgins Clark Awards, in her riveting debut Invisible City, journalist Julia Dahl introduces a compelling new character in search of the truth about a murder and an understanding of her own heritage. Just months after Rebekah Roberts was born, her mother, an Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn, abandoned her Christian boyfriend and newborn baby to return to her religion. Neither Rebekah nor her father have heard from her since. Now a recent college graduate, Rebekah has moved to New York City to follow her dream of becoming a big-city reporter. But she's also drawn to the idea of being closer to her mother, who might still be living in the Hasidic community in Brooklyn. Then Rebekah is called to cover the story of a murdered Hasidic woman. Rebekah's shocked to learn that, because of the NYPD's habit of kowtowing to the powerful ultra-Orthodox community, not only will the woman be buried without an autopsy, her killer may get away with murder. Rebekah can't let the story end there. But getting to the truth won't be easy—even as she immerses herself in the cloistered world where her mother grew up, it's clear that she's not welcome, and everyone she meets has a secret to keep from an outsider.
It is a high valley edged by serrated peaks, a remote expanse the size of Connecticut lying, as if forgotten, between two mountain ranges. Here, North AmericaÕs tallest sand dunes blow against glacier-gouged summits, the Rio Grande begins its long journey from snowflake to saltwater, and vast reaches of desert scrub hide verdant pocket wetlands. ColoradoÕs San Luis Valley is not a place for the timid. Sizzling hot in summer, frigid cold in winter, this huge landscape is humbling in its openness, a place defined by the rhythms of natureÑand by the thrust and parry of male courting female in the ritual dance of sandhill cranes. These majestic birds arrive by the thousands twice a year to feed, rest, and socialize in the valleyÕs wetlandsÑinvisible except from the airÑand their cries temper the constant wind. Susan Tweit lives in the high desert of southern Colorado not far from the valleyÕs dunes and wetlands. With the precision of a scientist and the passion of a poet, she guides readers through this land of sand dunes and sandhill cranes, describing its natural features and tracing its human history from buffalo hunters and conquistadors to Hispanic farming communities and UFO observatories. And in stunning images, photographer Glenn Oakley brings his intimate feel for light and landscape to portraying not only the subtle beauty of this high-desert sanctuary but also the grandeur of the cranes in flight. As an intimate look at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve and the San Luis Valley, this book reveals a desert place as seductive and sobering as existence itself.
Madeline Dare trades New York's gritty streets for the tree-lined avenues of Boulder, Colorado, when her husband Dean lands a promising job. As a freelance journalist in her new town, she closes in on a serial arsonist at large in the city.
Èe izraz »prazgodovina« uporabimo za èas in prostor, ki ga pisni viri ne »vidijo«, potem imamo ozemlja, ki so »prazgodovinska« tudi v èasu, ki sicer splošno velja za »zgodovino«. V tem pomenu še vedno obstajajo v Evropi v èasu zgodnjega srednjega veka obširna ozemlja, kjer stanje pisnih virov lahko opišemo kot prazgodovinsko. Še posebej velja to za ozemlja, ki so jih naseljevali Slovani. Mednje spada tudi današnja Slovenija, kjer leži Bled. Ta »stopi v zgodovino« šele leta 1004. Ali je ob tem notranji pogled v življenje za pisne vire nevidnih ljudi sploh mogoè? Res se ne moremo preprosto prestaviti v minuli èas, da bi si ogledali, kako je bilo. Lahko pa se postavimo v isti prostor (isti vsaj v koordinatnem smislu) in poišèemo vse preostanke nekdanjega življenja, ki so se zapisali v jezik, imena, ljudsko izroèilo, oblikovanje in urejanje prostora, razliène materialne ostanke, celo v mnogo mlajše pisne vire kot svojevrstni odmevi starejšega dogajanja. Najmanj, kar lahko z vsem tem dosežemo, je vloga pasivnega opazovalca. Zato skuša ta knjiga s souporabo razliènih vrst virov (pisnih, arheoloških, etnoloških, filoloških, historièno-geografskih) pokazati, da naloga, ujeti notranji pogled, morda ni povsem neuresnièljiva. Podoba zgodnjesrednjeveške blejske družbe, ki se na ta naèin oblikuje, je slika gospodarsko in upravno-politièno povezane celote. Ali so jo tedaj v resnici imenovali župa Bled, nam pisni viri sicer ne povedo, vsaj verjetno pa je. Srednjeveški pisci govorijo o Slovanih kot ljudeh pretežno enakega jezika, prava in obièajev. Kot osnovne politiène gradnike slovanskega sveta lahko predpostavljamo posamezne župe, ki so bile podobno strukturirane, s sorodnim jezikom, pravom, obièaji in rituali, kar je predpogoj za vtis celote, ki so ga imeli vsi, ki so Slovane opisovali. Morda je ustrezna matematièna prispodoba, ki enaèi župe z nekakimi fraktali, saj na ravni vsake župe najdemo tisto, kar lahko sicer opazujemo tudi na ravni grupacij posamiènih žup v veèje teritorialne skupine. V takem fraktalnem smislu je vsaka župa resnièni pars pro toto celote. Domišljati si, da s poznavanjem ene župe poznamo vse, je že samo zaradi razliènih geografskih okolij seveda hudo pretiravanje, gotovo pa ni preveè predrzna misel, da smo s tem vendarle pomembno napredovali tudi v razumevanju celote. _ _ _ _ _ Is the inside-view into the life of people invisible to the written records possible, then? One cannot simple transfer oneself into the past and observe. However, one can immerse in the same landscape and seek for the residuals of the past in language, place names, folklore, ordering of the landscape and various material remains, or even in younger written records in the form of the so called wirkungsgeschichte (record of younger consequence of an earlier phenomenon). The least one achieves is the role of the passive observer. It is the aim of this book to go even further and to demonstrate that the "inside" perspective is not unattainable; it can be achieved by using a combination of various sources: written sources, archaeology, ethnology, philology and historic geography. The image of early medieval society in the Bled micro-region thus forming reveals the community with tightly economic and political ties. Weather or not it was referred to as Župa Bled is not confirmed by the written sources but it is at least likely. Medieval authors refer to the Slavs as the people that are mostly speaking the same language and are following similar traditions and law. It would seem that the Slavs' society was based on a series of small territorial entities, known as župa. These had all a similar social structure, language, law, traditions and rituals – all of these were necessary in order for the Slavs to be perceived by the others – the medieval writers – as an entity. Using a mathematical metaphor the comparison with the fractals is perhaps in order. It explains the observed behaviour of the medieval Slavic society in which each individual župa behaves the same as larger territorial entity consisted of numerous župa's does. In this simile each župa is indeed a pars pro toto of the whole. To assume that by knowing Župa Bled we became familiar with the entire medieval Slavic society would be presumptuous solely on the grounds of environmental differences, not to dwell on numerous other variables. But it is not, we believe, stretching the truth to say that our knowledge of the whole has been significantly advanced.
