In her debut memoir, Carole Firstman traces her strained relationship with her eccentric and distant father, a gifted biology professor whose research on scorpions may have contributed to the evolutionary theories of Stephen Jay Gould. Through unexpected forms-from footnotes and diagrams to startling love letters and Saturday morning cartoons-Firstman struggles to reconnect with her estranged father and redefine herself as both a grown woman and a daughter.Part travel narrative, pa...

Girl in the Woods is Aspen Matis's exhilarating true-life adventure of hiking from Mexico to Canada—a coming of age story, a survival story, and a triumphant story of overcoming emotional devastation. On her second night of college, Aspen was raped by a fellow student. Overprotected by her parents who discouraged her from telling of the attack, Aspen was confused and ashamed. Dealing with a problem that has sadly become all too common on college campuses around the country, she stumbled th...

“A stunningly inventive novel that . . . weaves together Mayan history, modern science, game theory and the coming Mayan apocalypse. BEWARE DECEMBER 21, 2012!”—Douglas Preston, author of The Monster of FlorenceIt was predicted. We were warned. December 21, 2012. The day time stops.The year is 2012. Jed DeLanda, a descendant of the Maya, is a math prodigy raking in profits from online trading. But Jed’s life is thrown into chaos when his former mentor, Taro, and a m...

The acclaimed author's memoir of life with an African grey parrot offers "a thoughtful and generous celebration of minds and bodies different from our own" ( Times Literary Supplement, UK).For thirty years, Brian Brett shared his office and his life with Tuco, a remarkable parrot given to asking questions such as "Whaddya know?" and announcing "Party time!" when guests showed up at Brett's farm. Although Brett bought Tuco on a whim, he gradually realized t...

TO THE WORLD OF ANCIENT MAYA, AND FAR BEYOND…In the Courts of the Sun introduced Maya descendent Jed De Landa, a math prodigy with rare knowledge of an ancient divination tool called the Sacrifice Game. But now there are two Jeds—one existing at the height of the ancient Maya civilization in AD 664, and another in the present who—for an unusual but compelling reason—is about to bring about the destruction of humanity. And only one self can win the game…With...

What is this World? What kind of place is it?“The round kind. The spinning kind. The moist kind. The inhabited kind. The kind with flamingos (real and artificial). The kind where water in the sky turns into beautifully symmetrical crystal flakes sculpted by artists unable to stop themselves (in both design and quantity). The kind of place with tiny, powerfully jawed mites assigned to the carpets to eat my dead skin as it flakes off . . . The kind w...

How many lenses does a dragonfly's eye have?Which is bigger, an eagle's eye or a human's?How many eyes does a scallop have?How do lizards keep their eyes wet?Animal eyes can be really strange and wonderful. How much do you know about the eyes of your animal friends? Find out more in this book.LearningIsland.com believes in the value of children practicing reading for 15 minutes every day. Our 15-Minute Books give children lots of fun, exciting choices t...

Long-shortlisted, 2017 ReLit AwardsDaniel Solomon is not having a good day. Somewhere between Bangkok and Tokyo, zipping through the stratosphere, the jetliner on which he's travelling cracks open like an egg, ejecting Daniel and his fellow passengers into the great blue sky.If only that were the worst of it.Thousands of feet above the merciless Earth, still strapped into his seat, his cherished comics fluttering away like freed parrots, Daniel find...

The New York Times–bestselling author of the Xanth novels wrote these weekly letters to a fan of is books in the hope of helping her out of a coma.In February 1989, science fiction writer Piers Anthony, author of the Xanth series, received a moving letter. It came from a woman whose daughter, Jenny, was in a coma as a result of severe injuries caused by a drunk driver. She asked Anthony to write to Jenny, an avid fan of his, in the hope that a letter from h...

NPR commentator Mary Sojourner, "a pithy yet sensuous, spiritual yet ferocious writer" (Booklist), delivers a powerful memoir about the joys of rejecting the pace, addictions, and false values of society...and learning to live without compromise.Twenty years ago, Mary Sojourner was a mental health consultant and counselor in Rochester, New York, a divorced mother of three, longing for her real work, her real home. She found it in Flagstaff, Arizona, in a remote two-room ca...

Bold new essays on how to craft a thrilling read--in any genre--from the bestselling author of The Dead LandsAnyone familiar with the meteoric rise of Benjamin Percy's career will surely have noticed a certain shift: After writing two short-story collections and a literary novel, he delivered the werewolf thriller Red Moon and the postapocalyptic epic The Dead Lands. Now, in his first book of nonfiction, Percy challenges the notion that l...

“Poetry,” writes best-selling author Ellen Bass, “is the way I pay attention, appreciate, give praise, struggle, grieve, rage, and pray. It’s the way I embody my love for the world.”The Human Line, Bass’ seventh book of poems, startles with its precise detail, intimate images, and wild metaphors. Bass brings attention to life’s endearing absurdities, and many of the poems flash with a keen sense of humor. She also faces many of the crucial moral dilemmas of our time—geneti...