Despite the enormous literature on the crusades, the Frankish states in the Aegean (set up in the wake of the Fourth Crusade in 1204) have been seriously neglected by modern historians. Yet their history is both compelling in itself - these were the last crusader states to be set up in the eastern Mediterranean and among the last to fall to the Turks - and also valuable for the case study they offer in medieval colonialism. Peter Lock surveys the social, economic, religious and cultural as...

Billy and Jilly Watson ask Mikkee the Martian to explain the Bermuda Triangle.Mikkee replies that it started when an alien spaceship crashed on Earth millions of years ago.Signals between the Aliens and their home planet cause interruptions in the sea and air in the surrounding area, and ships and planes caught in the disturbance, are trapped in a time bubble,Mikkee takes the twins to visit one such bubble, where their ship is raided by pirates and they are taken ca...

"The Greatest Love of All" is a powerful, deeply contemplative book about a journey with God. A compilation of intense Christian poetry and Catholic apologetics. Moving, inspiring love sonnets to God, Christmas poems that will put you in the manger with the Holy Family and Passion poems that will make you feel like you were standing at the foot of the Cross on the first Good Friday. There are also great, unanswerable questions for God. Atheists don't believe in God's existence at all; but ...

**“Electric.” —Vanity Fair“The characters that inhabit The Bewildered are cut from a rare cloth of eccentricity. Or make that electricity . . . Compelling.” —San Francisco Chronicle“Rock has an eye for detail, with lucid, confident metaphors reminiscent of Annie Proulx.” —The Wall Street Journal**In Portland, Orgeon, three high school friends—Leon, Chris and Kayla—spend their time skateboarding, studying foreign languages and clas...

This Is the Place is the sinister tale of an aged and lonely blackjack dealer living in Wendover, Nevada, and his love that leads him to do a terrible thing, and the story he tells to justify it to himselfSixty-four-feet tall and made of metal, the neon giant Wendover Will stands in front of the Stateline casino in Wendover, Nevada and faces east. The sign under him reads "This Is The Place." Over a hundred miles away in Utah, across the salt flats, stands...

Vivian feels left behind when her older sister, Audra, runs away from home. She believes that Audra will return and pays careful attention to the clues around her. Then, inexplicably, writing begins to appear in a blank notebook.When Audra does come back for Vivian, she's in the company of a strange man. The three of them run away together and practice wilderness survival. While Audra plans for the future, Vivian continues to gather evidence: Who is this mysterious man, and does he ...

A father and his estranged daughter reconnect to try to understand a decades-old trauma in this haunting novel, part ghost story, part lyrical exploration of family, aging, and how we remember the past.At age 11, Helen disappeared in the wilderness of Mount Rainier National Park while camping with her father, Benjamin. She was gone for almost a week before being discovered and returned to her family. It is now 25 years later, and after more than two decades of estr...

A father and his estranged daughter reconnect to try to understand a decades-old trauma in this haunting novel, part ghost story, part lyrical exploration of family, aging, and how we remember the past.At age eleven, Helen disappeared in the wilderness of Mount Rainier National Park while camping with her father, Benjamin. She was gone for almost a week before being discovered and returned to her family. It is now twenty-five years later, and after more than two de...

Populated by strangers, ghosts, and other shadowy figures, the thirteen stories in The Unsettling attend to those startling moments when what we have understood as familiar is suddenly revealed as mysterious and foreign.A lonely man saving library books from an outbreak of mold listens to a coworker's tale about a blind woman and imbues it with his own sense of romance; a woman drives a Gold Firebird through the desert with a television playing "Rockford Files" reruns on the passen...

"A beautifully crafted, beautifully felt novel . . . Rock's rendering of place is, as usual, flawless. He knows terrain so well, both geographical and human, where we hide and where we can be found. The writing is fierce, smart, and moving. This is the real deal." —Percival Everett, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winner JamesThe Shelter Cycle tells the story of two children, Francine and Colville, who grew up in the Church Universal and Triumphant, ...

“Lyrical and poignant, Makeshift proves a powerful antidote to the modern world. This must-read novel lures the reader in, not unlike the coastal wrecks that line the island.” —Adam Johnson, author of The WayfinderAbandoned on a remote island known as Makeshift, three sisters—Ari, Heiko, and CeCe—believe they’re the last humans on Earth.These three, left alone after a band of foreigners slaughtered their entire community, must learn to fen...

This provocative novel follows Scott, a lonely drifter who earns money as a medical test subject and finds shelter in abandoned buildings on the riverfront. He first befriends Ray, a mysterious homeless man whose tenderness can't hide his unsavory tastes; next, he sets four adolescent boys on a series of increasingly dangerous dares. As these relationships develop and tangle, Scott gains insight into various lives and proves he can outlast any bad first impression.