An extreme landscape in both its beauty and challenges, Alaska is a place where know-how is currency and a novice's mistakes can be fatal. But it is a place for glorious reinvention—a refuge for those desperate to escape . . . and for those looking for something more. Miranda Weiss, a young woman who grew up landlocked in a well-kept East Coast suburb, moved to Homer, Alaska, with her boyfriend, determined to make a place for herself in this unfamiliar country where the years are marked by seasons of fish, and where locals carry around the knowledge of tides, boats, and weather as ballast. In Tide, Feather, Snow, Weiss introduces readers to the memorable people and peculiar beauty of Alaska's vast landscape, as she takes us along on her remarkable personal journey of adventure, physical challenge, and culture clash.
Three kingdoms. One man. A destiny written in blood. An epic fantasy series begins . . .Seemingly always the outsider, Gavril Andar - an impoverished young painter - yearns to join the privileged circles of Muscobar polite society. However, unknownto him, he does have royal blood in his veins: the dark and powerful blood of a father he never knew.
Waterford harbour has centuries of tradition based on its extensive fishery and maritime trade. Steeped in history, customs and an enviable spirit, it was there that Andrew Doherty was born and raised amongst a treasure chest of stories spun by the fishermen, sailors and their families. As an adult he began to research these accounts and, to his surprise, found many were based on fact. In this book, Doherty will take you on a fascinating journey along the harbour, introduce you to some of its most important sites and people, the area's history, and some of its most fantastic tales. Dreaded press gangs who raided whole communities for crew, the search for buried gold and a ship seized by pirates, the horror of a German bombing of the rural idyll during the Second World War – on every page of this incredible account you will learn something of the maritime community of Waterford Harbour.
A thought-provoking collection of personal essays about home What makes a home? What do equality, safety, and politics have to do with it? And why is it so important to us to feel like we belong? In this collection, 30 women writers explore the theme in personal essays about neighbors, marriage, kids, sentimental objects, homelessness, domestic violence, solitude, immigration, gentrification, geography, and more. Contributors -- including Amanda Petrusich, Naomi Jackson, Jane Wong, and Jennifer Finney Boylan -- lend a diverse range of voices to this subject that remains at the core of our national conversations. Engaging, insightful, and full of hope, This is the Place will make you laugh, cry, and think hard about home, wherever you may find it. "This collection, encompassing a spectrum of races, ethnicities, religions, sexualities, political beliefs and classes, could not be timelier . . . open this book, hear its chorus of voices and remember that we are a nation of individuals, bound to each other by our humanity." -- The New York Times Book Review " . . . an honest portrait of the U.S., pieced together like an imperfect American quilt. We need more books like this." -- BUST
Adam Nicolson explores the marine life inhabiting seashore rockpools with a scientist’s curiosity and a poet’s wonder in this beautifully illustrated book. The sea is not made of water. Creatures are its genes. Look down as you crouch over the shallows and you will find a periwinkle or a prawn, a claw-displaying crab or a cluster of anemones ready to meet you. No need for binoculars or special stalking skills: go to the rocks and the living will say hello. Inside each rock pool tucked into one of the infinite crevices of the tidal coastline lies a rippling, silent, unknowable universe. Below the stillness of the surface course different currents of endless motion—the ebb and flow of the tide, the steady forward propulsion of the passage of time, and the tiny lifetimes of the rock pool’s creatures, all of which coalesce into the grand narrative of evolution. In Life Between the Tides, Adam Nicolson investigates one of the most revelatory habitats on earth. Under his microscope, we see a prawn’s head become a medieval helmet and a group of “winkles” transform into a Dickensian social scene, with mollusks munching on Stilton and glancing at their pocket watches. Or, rather, is a winkle more like Achilles, an ancient hero, throwing himself toward death for the sake of glory? For Nicolson, who writes “with scientific rigor and a poet’s sense of wonder” (The American Scholar), the world of the rock pools is infinite and as intricate as our own. As Nicolson journeys between the tides, both in the pools he builds along the coast of Scotland and through the timeline of scientific discovery, he is accompanied by great thinkers—no one can escape the pull of the sea. We meet Virginia Woolf and her Waves; a young T. S. Eliot peering into his own rock pool in Massachusetts; even Nicolson’s father-in-law, a classical scholar who would hunt for amethysts along the shoreline, his mind on Heraclitus and the other philosophers of ancient Greece. And, of course, scientists populate the pages; not only their discoveries, but also their doubts and errors, their moments of quiet observation and their thrilling realizations. Everything is within the rock pools, where you can look beyond your own reflection and find the miraculous an inch beneath your nose. “The soul wants to be wet,” Heraclitus said in Ephesus twenty-five hundred years ago. This marvelous book demonstrates why it is so. Includes Color and Black-and-White Photographs
"Tide, Feather, Snow is about the resplendence and subtleties of coastal Alaska, and about one woman’s attempt to be fully present in them. Weiss serves as a skilled and poetic witness to a place undergoing incessant change." — Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collector A memoir of moving to Alaska—and staying—by a writer whose gift for writing about place and natural beauty is reminiscent of John McPhee and Jonathan Raban. An extreme landscape in both its beauty and challenges, Alaska is a place where know-how is currency and a novice's mistakes can be fatal. But it is a place for glorious reinvention—a refuge for those desperate to escape . . . and for those looking for something more. Miranda Weiss, a young woman who grew up landlocked in a well-kept East Coast suburb, moved to Homer, Alaska, with her boyfriend, determined to make a place for herself in this unfamiliar country where the years are marked by seasons of fish, and where locals carry around the knowledge of tides, boats, and weather as ballast. In Tide, Feather, Snow, Weiss introduces readers to the memorable people and peculiar beauty of Alaska's vast landscape, as she takes us along on her remarkable personal journey of adventure, physical challenge, and culture clash.
“In the wild, something inside me opens to innovation, inspiration, creativity, and imagination. It’s a good feeling, one that leaves me light and full of energy, free to imagine who I want to be in this life. . . . Yet it’s slippery and ephemeral, and I can never seem to pack it out with me.” —Adrienne Lindholm It Happened Like This is, on the surface, a memoir about what it means to live and love in one of the wildest places on the planet. But the love described is not a simple one; it’s a gritty, sometimes devastating, often blood-pumping kind of feeling played out in the rugged Alaska wilderness. In an authentic and honest voice, writer Adrienne Lindholm recounts her move to Alaska as a young woman eager to begin her career in environmental and wildlife studies. She finds herself initially out of her depth among her peers, many of whom are also “Outsiders,” new to the state, but who seem more experienced, more confident. Eventually she finds her way, immersing herself in the rigors of wilderness adventures and building a community of outdoorsy friends to sustain her. Soon she falls in love with JT and gradually, at times painfully, they build a life together and decide to start a family amidst the wild. Adrienne celebrates the many ways in which Alaska, and her outdoor adventures there, inspired self-discovery, as well as revealing her difficult and intimate journey into motherhood. Her love story encompasses the outline of massive mountains on the horizon, viewed for the first time; a caribou moving through an alder forest; the effort to climb a glaciated peak; and the peace that settles when contemplating a quiet Arctic lake. At times, her love—for JT, but also for nature and life—also feels savage, like when she charges onto a glacier alone, or when she shoots, kills, and skins her first animal. With It Happened Like This, readers take an intimate, gently humorous, and occasionally adrenalin-spiked journey into adulthood, and into the depth and comfort of wilderness.
Revisit old favorites and discover even more facts and stories. The perfect pocket book for any girl on a quest for knowledge. Includes New Chapters + the Best Wisdom & Wonder from The Daring Book for Girls
Incorporating seven years of photography and research, Krista Schlyer portrays life along the Anacostia River, a Washington, DC, waterway rich in history and biodiversity that has nonetheless lingered for years in obscurity and neglect in our nation’s capital. River of Redemption offers an experience of the river that reveals its eons of natural history, centuries of destruction, and decades of restoration efforts. The story of the Anacostia echoes the story of rivers across America. Inspired by Aldo Leopold’s classic book, A Sand County Almanac, Krista Schlyer evokes a consciousness of time and place, taking readers through the seasons in the watershed as well as through the river’s complex history and ecology. As with rivers nationwide, the ways we’ve changed the Anacostia affect the people and wildlife that inhabit its shores, from the headwaters in Maryland, past its confluence with the Potomac River, and ultimately to the Chesapeake Bay. Centuries of abuse at the hands of people who have altered the landscape and mistreated the waterway have transformed it into a polluted, toxic soup unfit for swimming or fishing. The forgotten river is both a reminder of the worst humanity can do to the natural landscape and a wellspring of memory that offers a roadmap back to health and well-being for watershed residents, human and non-human alike. Blending stunning photography with informative and poignant text, River of Redemption offers the opportunity to reinvent our role in urban ecology and to redeem our relationship with this national river and watersheds nationwide.
A writer of rare imagination, Sarah Ash lends her unique vision to epic fantasy. In this captivating continuation of her saga, the author of Lord of Snow and Shadows revisits a realm filled with spirits and singers, daemons and kings. . . . Gavril Nagarian has finally cast out the dragon-daemon from within himself. The Drakhaoul is gone—and with it all of Gavril’s fearsome powers. No longer possessed, he is instead being driven mad by the Drakhaoul’s absence. Worse, he has betrayed his blood, his people, and put the ice-bound princedom of Azhkendir at risk—and lost.At the mercy of the victorious Eugene of Tielen, Gavril is sentenced to life in an insane asylum. For the power-hungry Eugene longs to possess a Drakhaoul of his own, and his prisoner seems the best way to achieve that goal. Meanwhile, a shattered empire reunites. But peace is as fragile as a rebel’s whisper—and a captive’s wish to be free. . . . Praise for Prisoner of the Iron Tower “A new fantasy series [that] will leave readers drooling to get their hands on the sequel.”—Publishers Weekly “Solid, wonderful fantasy, sparkling and imaginative!”—Booklist “Ash takes her large and colorful cast of characters from horror to pathos, from triumph to betrayal, smoothly and convincingly. a roller-coaster ride of events and emotions in the best modern fantasy manner.”—Kirkus Reviews
