Book #2 in a trilogy from fantasy author Wayne Thomas Batson explores the concept of dreams and their effects on us. Fourteen-year-old Archer Keaton discovers he has the ability to enter and explore his dreams. He is a dreamtreader, one of three selected from each generation. Their mission: to protect the waking world from the evil lurking in the Dream. The Nightmare Lord has been thrown down, but his throne is no longer empty. Rigby Thames has taken up the evil mantle with Kara Windchil as his queen. Now the only living dreamtreader, Archer Keaton finds himself on the outside of two worlds looking in. Dream Walking Inc. is taking the world by storm, allowing Rigby to build an unstoppable empire. Worse still, Rigby has unleashed the Tendrils, shadow people who can cross over into the waking world. As Archer’s family and friends begin to disappear, unexpected help comes in the form of the Wind Maiden, a mysterious angelic being who seems to know how Archer can rescue his loved ones and defeat the new Nightmare King. But the cost may prove too dear for Archer to pay. Steeped in epic fantasy and intrigue, this second book in the Dreamtreaders series teaches kids important Christian values such as being a light in the darkness, resisting temptation, and keeping your faith, even when you feel like you’re standing alone. Trim Size: 5.5 x 8.375
An expert explains how the conventional wisdom about decision making can get us into trouble—and why experience can’t be replaced by rules, procedures, or analytical methods In making decisions, when should we go with our gut and when should we try to analyze every option? When should we use our intuition and when should we rely on logic and statistics? Most of us would probably agree that for important decisions, we should follow certain guidelines—gather as much information as possible, compare the options, pin down the goals before getting started. But in practice we make some of our best decisions by adapting to circumstances rather than blindly following procedures. In Streetlights and Shadows, Gary Klein debunks the conventional wisdom about how to make decisions. He takes ten commonly accepted claims about decision making and shows that they are better suited for the laboratory than for life. The standard advice works well when everything is clear, but the tough decisions involve shadowy conditions of complexity and ambiguity. Gathering masses of information, for example, works if the information is accurate and complete—but that doesn't often happen in the real world. (Think about the careful risk calculations that led to the downfall of the Wall Street investment houses.) Klein offers more realistic ideas about how to make decisions in real-life settings. He provides many examples—ranging from airline pilots and weather forecasters to sports announcers and Captain Jack Aubrey in Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander novels—to make his point. All these decision makers saw things that others didn’t. They used their expertise to pick up cues and to discern patterns and trends. We can make better decisions, Klein tells us, if we are prepared for complexity and ambiguity and if we will stop expecting the data to tell us everything. “I know of no one who combines theory and observation—intellectual rigor and painstaking observation of the real world—so brilliantly and gracefully as Gary Klein.” —Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and Blink
The High Kingdom has known twenty years of peace. The true reason unknown to everyone save Sultan Vilos the First. At the height of The Crown War, Vilos made a deal with a powerful sorcerer. Vilos’s reign would be secured in exchange for his first born daughter. The sorcerer promised to come for the princess on her eighteenth birthday. That day is today. The sorcerer is coming to claim his due and if he doesn’t get it, all Hell is going to break loose.
According to the theory of relativity, we are constantly bathed in gravitational radiation. When stars explode or collide, a portion of their mass becomes energy that disturbs the very fabric of the space-time continuum like ripples in a pond. But proving the existence of these waves has been difficult; the cosmic shudders are so weak that only the most sensitive instruments can be expected to observe them directly. Fifteen times during the last thirty years scientists have claimed to have detected gravitational waves, but so far none of those claims have survived the scrutiny of the scientific community. Gravity's Shadow chronicles the forty-year effort to detect gravitational waves, while exploring the meaning of scientific knowledge and the nature of expertise. Gravitational wave detection involves recording the collisions, explosions, and trembling of stars and black holes by evaluating the smallest changes ever measured. Because gravitational waves are so faint, their detection will come not in an exuberant moment of discovery but through a chain of inference; for forty years, scientists have debated whether there is anything to detect and whether it has yet been detected. Sociologist Harry Collins has been tracking the progress of this research since 1972, interviewing key scientists and delineating the social process of the science of gravitational waves. Engagingly written and authoritatively comprehensive, Gravity's Shadow explores the people, institutions, and government organizations involved in the detection of gravitational waves. This sociological history will prove essential not only to sociologists and historians of science but to scientists themselves.
Attorney Skyler Grace has lived a life full of tragedy that cumulates in her law firm defending a serial rapist with Tourette's Syndrome named Gabriel Usher; a man she knows is guilty. Gabriel Usher is unrepentant and Skyler Grace brutalizes the rape victim Rachel Barcum at the trial to earn her guilty client an acquittal. Gabriel Usher is disgusted by Skyler Grace's supposed ethical dilemma and he vows to teach her a lesson: he rapes the very lawyer that had just freed him from a long prison term. Skyler Grace uses her rape to totally surrender her tragic life to Gabriel Usher and incredibly agrees to marry him. They begin to live together in a life of total denial and dysfunction. Skyler Grace slices her wrist in her bathtub in a suicide attempt after she finds her fiancee and former client is now an Internet predator who seduces young boys and girls for perverted photos and videos. As Skyler Grace slowly bleeds to death, she finds herself at a long, dark tunnel and feels a familiar Presence with her. This mysterious but familiar Presence takes her back to the most significant events that have shaped her life. This familiar entity tells her that she must look at all of her choices from her tragic life to fully understand and complete her suicide. At the final moment, Skyler Grace still has one more choice to make: she must choose either Life or Death.
Chances are, whether you're a seasoned author or an aspiring scribe, you've grappled with your share of rejection, setbacks, and heartbreak. However, literary agents say the number one key to writing success is perseverance in the face of disappointment. Daily Writing Resilience provides advice, inspiration, and techniques to help you turn roadblocks into steppingstones. You'll find tips and support through exercises such as meditation, breath work, yoga, stress management, gratitude, de-cluttering, sleep, exercise, mindful eating, and more. These 365 meditations will help you navigate the ups-and-downs of your writing practice, creating positive habits that will guide you toward the success and fulfillment that you've been seeking. Praise: "This must-have collection of inspirational nuggets will nudge you free of writer's block. Even if you're not blocked, a morning commune with some of writing's great minds will put you in the right creative space."—Sara Gruen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants "Every person with that little voice in their head—the one that tells them to write everyday—must own this book. Every page is full of hope and reality, just what we all need to keep us going."—Steve Berry, New York Times and # 1 Internationally bestselling author of The Patriot Threat "For every type of writer—new, old, fresh, tired, impassioned, cynical, hopeful . . . this gem is flat out inspiring."—M.J. Rose, New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Language of Stones "Bryan Robinson's Daily Writing Resilience is not only wise but also marvelously practical. The daily mantras he offers, taken from the experiences of those who've kept to the path, will provide much needed encouragement along the way. Take this book to heart, and then take it with you wherever you go."—William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author of the multi-award winning Ordinary Grace and the Cork O'Connor series "You don't have to be a writer to treasure Daily Writing Resilience, a unique and uplifting meditation book. It's chock-full of insights so profound you'll be tempted to gobble it up in one bite!"—Cassandra King, author of The Sunday Wife and Moonrise "I urge both fledgling and experienced writers to get their hands on Daily Writing Resilience and keep it nearby for handy reference. Bryan Robinson knows his way around the head and heart of the working writer, and this book is a wonderful companion and a balm to the writer's soul."—John Lescroart, New York Times bestselling author "At last! A real tool for real writers, a reference book that should be on every writer's desk next to their Thesaurus and Strunk & White Elements of Style. A practical guide that can be used as a daily devotional or motivational tool to hold your hand, to guide you, to encourage you, and to pull you back from the ledge."—Karen White, New York Times bestselling author of Flight Patterns A 2018 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award Finalist A 2018 Top Shelf Magazine Indie Book Award Finalist
After two acclaimed story collections, Laura van den Berg brings us Find Me, her highly anticipated debut novel—a gripping, imaginative, darkly funny tale of a young woman struggling to find her place in the world. Joy has no one. She spends her days working the graveyard shift at a grocery store outside Boston and nursing an addiction to cough syrup, an attempt to suppress her troubled past. But when a sickness that begins with memory loss and ends with death sweeps the country, Joy, for the first time in her life, seems to have an advantage: she is immune. When Joy's immunity gains her admittance to a hospital in rural Kansas, she sees a chance to escape her bleak existence. There she submits to peculiar treatments and follows seemingly arbitrary rules, forming cautious bonds with other patients—including her roommate, whom she turns to in the night for comfort, and twin boys who are digging a secret tunnel. As winter descends, the hospital's fragile order breaks down and Joy breaks free, embarking on a journey from Kansas to Florida, where she believes she can find her birth mother, the woman who abandoned her as a child. On the road in a devastated America, she encounters mysterious companions, cities turned strange, and one very eerie house. As Joy closes in on Florida, she must confront her own damaged memory and the secrets she has been keeping from herself.
'Roger waited but nothing further came. Dayne's expression, however, told its story. A story of fear and cunning ...' Tony Dayne's predicament presents a problem. The English police had promised him escape and immunity for feeding them all he knew about his partners in an international counterfeiting ring. But an accident and an over-zealous policeman gets Tony pulled during the raid. The best the police can do for him is appoint a young lawyer, Roger Elwin, who does some detecting that takes him as far afield as Vienna and the violent end of yet another conspirator.
The New York Times bestseller “The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero.” —Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice) “One gorgeous read.” —Stephen King Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.
The tale begins over three-hundred years ago, when the Fair People—the goblins, fairies, dragons, and other fabled and fantastic creatures of a dozen lands—fled the Old World for the New, seeking haven from the ways of Man. With them came their precious jewels: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls... But then the Fair People vanished, taking with them their twelve fabulous treasures. And they remained hidden until now... Across North America, these twelve treasures, over ten-thousand dollars in precious jewels, are buried. The key to finding each can be found within the twelve full color paintings and verses of The Secret. Yet The Secret is much more than that. At long last, you can learn not only the whereabouts of the Fair People's treasure, but also the modern forms and hiding places of their descendants: the Toll Trolls, Maitre D'eamons, Elf Alphas, Tupperwerewolves, Freudian Sylphs, Culture Vultures, West Ghosts and other delightful creatures in the world around us. The Secret is a field guide to them all. Many "armchair treasure hunt" books have been published over the years, most notably Masquerade (1979) by British artist Kit Williams. Masquerade promised a jewel-encrusted golden hare to the first person to unravel the riddle that Williams cleverly hid in his art. In 1982, while everyone in Britain was still madly digging up hedgerows and pastures in search of the golden hare, The Secret: A Treasure Hunt was published in America. The previous year, author and publisher Byron Preiss had traveled to 12 locations in the continental U.S. (and possibly Canada) to secretly bury a dozen ceramic casques. Each casque contained a small key that could be redeemed for one of 12 jewels Preiss kept in a safe deposit box in New York. The key to finding the casques was to match one of 12 paintings to one of 12 poetic verses, solve the resulting riddle, and start digging. Since 1982, only two of the 12 casques have been recovered. The first was located in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1984 by a group of students. The second was unearthed in 2004 in Cleveland by two members of the Quest4Treasure forum. Preiss was killed in an auto accident in the summer of 2005, but the hunt for his casques continues.
