Prayers for Rain


Book Description

When a former client jumps naked from a Boston landmark, Private Investigator Patrick Kenzie wants to know why. Once a perky young woman in love with life, her suicide is the final fall in a spiral of self-destruction. What Kenzie discovers is a sadistic stalker who targeted the woman and methodically drove her to her death – a monster that the law can’t touch. But Kenzie can. He and his former partner, Angela Gennaro, will fight a mind-twisting battle against the psychopath, even as he turns tricks on them… Prayers for Rain is another superior thriller from Dennis Lehane, the bestselling and acclaimed author of Mystic River, Shutter Island, and Gone, Baby, Gone.




The Story of the Lost Child


Book Description

The “stunning conclusion” to the bestselling saga of the fierce lifelong bond between two women, from a gritty Naples childhood through old age (Publishers Weekly, starred review). One of the New York Times​’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century The Story of the Lost Child concludes the dazzling saga of two women, the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila, who first met amid the shambles of postwar Italy. In this book, life’s great discoveries have been made; its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women’s friendship remains the gravitational center of their lives. Both women once fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. But now, she has returned to Naples to be with the man she has always loved. Lila, on the other hand, never succeeded in freeing herself from Naples. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect her neighborhood. Yet, somehow, this proximity to a world she has always rejected only brings her role as unacknowledged leader of that world into relief. “Lila is a magnificent character.” —The Atlantic “Everyone should read anything with Ferrante’s name on it.” —The Boston Globe







In Defense of Plants


Book Description

The Study of Plants in a Whole New Light “Matt Candeias succeeds in evoking the wonder of plants with wit and wisdom.” ―James T. Costa, PhD, executive director, Highlands Biological Station and author of Darwin's Backyard #1 New Release in Nature & Ecology, Plants, Botany, Horticulture, Trees, Biological Sciences, and Nature Writing & Essays In his debut book, internationally-recognized blogger and podcaster Matt Candeias celebrates the nature of plants and the extraordinary world of plant organisms. A botanist’s defense. Since his early days of plant restoration, this amateur plant scientist has been enchanted with flora and the greater environmental ecology of the planet. Now, he looks at the study of plants through the lens of his ever-growing houseplant collection. Using gardening, houseplants, and examples of plants around you, In Defense of Plants changes your relationship with the world from the comfort of your windowsill. The ruthless, horny, and wonderful nature of plants. Understand how plants evolve and live on Earth with a never-before-seen look into their daily drama. Inside, Candeias explores the incredible ways plants live, fight, have sex, and conquer new territory. Whether a blossoming botanist or a professional plant scientist, In Defense of Plants is for anyone who sees plants as more than just static backdrops to more charismatic life forms. In this easily accessible introduction to the incredible world of plants, you’ll find: • Fantastic botanical histories and plant symbolism • Passionate stories of flora diversity and scientific names of plant organisms • Personal tales of plantsman discovery through the study of plants If you enjoyed books like The Botany of Desire, What a Plant Knows, or The Soul of an Octopus, then you’ll love In Defense of Plants.




The True History of the Conquest of New Spain. By Bernal Diaz del Castillo, One of its Conquerors


Book Description

Continued from Second Series 23, 24, 25, 30. Books XIV-XVII, translated into English and edited, with introduction and notes, by Alfred Percival Maudslay, M.A., Hon. Professor of Archaeology, National Museum, Mexico, relating the expedition to Honduras, the return to Mexico, the rule of the Audiencia there, and the record of the conquistadores, with an appendix including the fifth letter of Cortés to the Emperor Charles V, 1526. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1916. Owing to technical constraints the Map of Tabasco, by Melchor Alfaro de Santa Cruz, 1579 is not included.




The True History of the Conquest of New Spain


Book Description

An eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico (1519-1522); this final volume describes the beginning of Spanish rule.




Only Sons


Book Description

Only Sons is a collection dealing with familial relationships in the Mexican-American community. More specifically, the stories deal with families victimized by divorce, death and machismo.







The Lost World


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Timeline, Sphere, and Congo comes the sequel to the smash-hit Jurassic Park, a thriller that’s been millions of years in the making. “Fast and gripping.”—The Washington Post Book World It is now six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic Park, six years since the extraordinary dream of science and imagination came to a crashing end—the dinosaurs destroyed, the park dismantled, and the island indefinitely closed to the public. There are rumors that something has survived. . . . “Harrowing thrills . . . fast-paced and engaging.”—People “A very scary read.”—Entertainment Weekly “Action-packed.”—New York Daily News “An edge-of-the-seat tale.”—St. Petersburg Times




Wandering through Guilt


Book Description

The first comprehensive study on the pattern of guilt and wandering in literature, this book examines the relationship between the two complex concepts as they appear in twentieth-century novels, positing its methodological premises on archetypal criticism and both close and distant reading, but also drawing on psychology, anthropology, mythology, and religion. This research deciphers a common paradigm and literary representation whose archetype within Western literature is found in the biblical figure of Cain, while presenting a critical framework valid for boundary-crossing comparative approaches. From Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, to Wolfgang Koeppen’s Death in Rome and Ōoka Shōhei’s Fires on the Plain, this book is not merely a thematic study, but an analysis of the literary phenomena that appear in those novels where the sense of guilt is controversially subjective, or so collective as to be perceived as universal, as is often the case with war and postwar literature. Di Gennaro goes beyond the analysis of explicit rewritings of the story of Cain, in order to uncover the monomyth through its rhetorical structures and mythical methods. The wasteland with no religion; the lost, abandoned garden; the classical and religiously-corrupted city; and the tropical, cannibalistic island at war are the respective settings of these narratives, where the issue is neither homelessness nor journeying, but, rather, the desperate and futile movement toward self-consciousness, or self-destruction. After the Second World War, much was silenced rather than left unsaid. This study retraces those silent cries over history through the powerful literary marks of myths.