A Dream of Old Leaves


Book Description

Bret Lott's powerful, insightful stories illuminate the everyday episodes that move us -- husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and neighhors -- along the intricate paths of intimacy. A little boy's first bad dream brings his father back to his own childhood nights when danger lurked beneath the bed; in the California desert at night two brothers in a pickup tune into radio stations from distant places, interrupted by sudden bursts of static; estranged suburban friends become good neighbors again in the course of thwarting two thieves. Lott's previous novels, The Man Who Owned Vermont and A Stranger's House, established him as "one of the strongest voices to come along in some time" (The San Francisco Chronicle). A Dream of Old Leaves stakes out his place in the landscape of new American fiction.




Complete Dream Book


Book Description

The Complete Dream Book is the only dream interpretation book based on concrete data about real people's dreams and how the real events in their lives relate to their nighttime visions.




The Humane Gardener


Book Description

In this eloquent plea for compassion and respect for all species, journalist and gardener Nancy Lawson describes why and how to welcome wildlife to our backyards. Through engaging anecdotes and inspired advice, profiles of home gardeners throughout the country, and interviews with scientists and horticulturalists, Lawson applies the broader lessons of ecology to our own outdoor spaces. Detailed chapters address planting for wildlife by choosing native species; providing habitats that shelter baby animals, as well as birds, bees, and butterflies; creating safe zones in the garden; cohabiting with creatures often regarded as pests; letting nature be your garden designer; and encouraging natural processes and evolution in the garden. The Humane Gardener fills a unique niche in describing simple principles for both attracting wildlife and peacefully resolving conflicts with all the creatures that share our world.




The Old Oak Tree's Last Dream


Book Description

On the top of a cliff overlooking the sea was an oak tree that was 365 years old. It was an unimaginable age for the mayflies, tiny creatures who lived only one day. The oak only slept during the winter. The rest of the year, he remained alert. That year, like every year, he began to lose his leaves in autumn. He knew that he was about to go to sleep for the last time! Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was a Danish author, poet and artist. Celebrated for children’s literature, his most cherished fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", "The Nightingale", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Little Match Girl". His books have been translated into every living language, and today there is no child or adult that has not met Andersen's whimsical characters. His fairy tales have been adapted to stage and screen countless times, most notably by Disney with the animated films "The Little Mermaid" in 1989 and "Frozen", which is loosely based on "The Snow Queen", in 2013. Thanks to Andersen's contribution to children's literature, his birth date, April 2, is celebrated as International Children's Book Day.







Dead Leaves


Book Description

Strange text messages portend a strange kind of apocalypse...Two brothers find themselves drawn to the only house in the neighborhood not decorated for Halloween…A man returns to his hometown to bury his overbearing mother, and finds more than memories awaiting him in the shadows of his childhood home…A young girl walks a lonely country road, recalling a rhyme that brings with it memories of death…A teenager hoping for romance gets more than he bargained for when the object of his desire introduces him to the object of hers…An aging millionaire awakes buried in a cheap coffin with only a lamp and a bell for company…The son of a woman accused of being a witch accepts the villagers' peace offering at her funeral, but all is not quite as it seems…A woman with a violent past realizes that this year's Halloween party may be coming for her…and a lonely trick-or-treater awakes in a house rumored to be a place of death. Featuring a new introduction, and rounded out by the author's recommended Halloween reading and watching lists, DEAD LEAVES makes for the perfect autumnal read.




House of Leaves


Book Description

“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices. The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.




Leaves of Grass


Book Description

Throughout his life, Walt Whitman continually revised and re-released Leaves of Grass. He added and deleted words, emended lines, divided poems, dropped and created titles, and shifted the order of poems. Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems includes all the variants that Whitman ever published, from the collection’s first appearance in 1855 through the posthumous “Old Age Echoes” annex printed in 1897. Each edition was unique, with its own character and emphasis, and the Textual Variorum enables scholars to follow the development of both the individual poems and the work as a whole. Volume I contains introductory material, including a chronology of the poems and a summary of all the editions and annexes, along with the poems from 1855 and 1856. Volume II includes the poems from 1860 through 1867, including the first appearance of “When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom’d” and “O Captain! my Captain!” Volume III features the poems 1870–1891, plus the “Old Ages Annex” and an index to the three-volume set.