An assortment of sages sharpen Daniel's wide-eyed outlook until he has the concentration of a card shark Zeta master, via apprenticeships in meditation, safecracking, poker, and the art of walking through walls. Wizards are made, not born, and this unconventional education sets Daniel on the trail of mysteries ancient and modern.A strange, six-pound diamond sphere held by the U.S. government in a New Mexico vault, rumored to be the Philosopher's Stone or the Holy Grail, becomes the AMO's obsession. In time, Daniel perfects his powers and heads off to steal the magic stone, and what happens changes his life forever.Stone Junction is a bravura act of storytelling, both a free-spirited adventure and a parable about the powers within all of us.

    The Bible had Ruth meeting Boaz on the threshing field. If that worked for Ruth, couldn't it work for Hannah? It did. It all went perfectly, except the wrong man got snared.Henry Lee Watson likes his life—without a wife. He makes the finest corn liquor in the territory. A good business on Saturday night, does not always make a good marriage to a Sunday morning kind of woman. But it's a shotgun wedding and he's thinking that the starchy preacher's daughter is maybe she's not so starchy after all. Pamela Morsi writes with great tenderness and insight. — Luanne Rice, NYTimes Bestselling Author Read all the Small Town Swains! Book 1: Heaven Sent Book 2: Something Shady Book 3: No Ordinary Princess Book 4: Sealed With a Kiss Book 5: Garters Book 6: The Love Charm

    Tobias Wolff is the author of In Pharoah's Army and This Boy's Life.

    Jackson J. Benson's definitive biography explores every aspect of the author's life-his campaigns for the rights of the little people; his stand on the Vietnam War; his Hollywood film scripts; and his ongoing difficulties with fame, the press, and lack of privacy-to reveal the private man behind the public persona.* Winner of the PEN-USA West award for non-fictionAuthor Bio: Jackson J. Benson has published nine books on modern American literature, including Wallace Stegner: His Life and Work, which won the David Woolley and Beatrice Cannon Evans Biography award presented by Utah State University.

    The newcomers are a proud and bloody-minded people whose kings once changed themselves into wolves. The Norse have advanced as implacably as a glacier from Iceland to the wastes of Greenland and from there to the place they call Vinland the Good. The natives are a bronze-skinned race who have not yet discovered iron and still see themselves as part of nature. As William T. Vollmann tells the converging stories of these two peoples and of the Norsewomen Freydis and Gudrid, whose venomous rivalry brings frost into paradise he creates a tour-de-force of speculative history, a vivid amalgam of Icelandic saga, Inuit creation myth, and contemporary travel writing that yields a new an utterly original vision of our continent and its past.--back cover

    But when he fails to make the grade as a college footballer, and takes a job with the local farmers' co-operative, it seems he has finally settled into the rhythm and routine of everyday life. Outward appearances can be deceptive, however, as Jack proves: returning from a weekend conference with a new wife in tow, then leaving her behind and skipping town with a bundle of other folk's money.Nearly a decade later, no one has forgiven or forgotten, and when Jack reappears, resentment runs high. Once again though, it is Jack whose presence - even more than his eight-year absence - proves the most devastating.

    A love letter and a tribute, Route 66: The Mother Road takes us on an unforgettable journey through the secret corners and hidden towns of America's most famous and beloved highway.

    Based on Foxfire students' interviews with neighbors and family members, the memories shared here are from a simpler time, when gifts were fewer but perhaps more precious, and holiday tables were laden with traditional favorites. More than just reminiscences, however, A Foxfire Christmas includes instructions for recreating many of the ornaments, toys, and recipes that make up so many family traditions, from Chicken and Dumplings to Black Walnut Cake, and from candy pulls to corn husk dolls and hand-whittled toy cars. The students who created this book attended Rabun County High School, where the innovative Foxfire program originated, in the mountains of northeast Georgia. They conducted the interviews, shot and developed most of the photographs and edited the final manuscript.

    Dick's VALIS trilogy. VALIS What is VALIS? This question is at the heart of Philip K. Dick’s groundbreaking novel, the first book in his defining trilogy. When a beam of pink light begins giving a schizophrenic man named Horselover Fat (who just might also be known as Philip K. Dick) visions of an alternate Earth where the Roman Empire still reigns, he must decide whether he is crazy, or whether a godlike entity is showing him the true nature of the world. The Divine Invasion God is not dead, he has merely been exiled to an extraterrestrial planet. And it is on this planet that God meets Herb Asher and convinces him to help retake Earth from the demonic Belial. As the middlie novel of Dick's VALIS trilogy, The Divine Invasion plays a pivotal role in answering the questions raised by the first novel, expanding that world while exploring just how much anyone can really know -- even God himself. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer The final book in the VALIS trilogy, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer brings the author’s search for the identity and nature of God to a close. The novel follows Bishop Timothy Archer as he travels to Israel, ostensibly to examine ancient scrolls bearing the words of Christ. But, more importantly, this leads him to examine the decisions he made during his life and how they may have contributed to the suicide of his mistress and son.

    From a southern boy bitten by wanderlust and wonder, to a curious rover writing for newspapers, radio, and TV, to a CBS News correspondent adventuring around the world--from Cuba and Vietnam to the Congo and the North Pole, to his twenty-plus years roaming the back roads of America. In this engaging memoir, Kuralt relives a lifetime of discovering places and people whose unique stories enriched him, shaped him, and fueled his all-consuming passion: to find out what wonderful thing waits just around the next bend.From the Paperback edition.

    Alphabetically arranged, this humorous compilation of bad taste and mediocrity covers topics as diverse as fashion, music, people, places, food, furniture, automobiles, and more.

    For Jim Nashe, it all started when he came into a small inheritance and left Boston in pusuit of "a life of freedom." Careening back and forth across the United States, waiting for the money to run out, Nashe met Jack Pozzi, a young man with a temper and a plan. With Nashe's last funds, they entered a poker game against two rich eccentrics, "risking everything on the single turn of a card." In Paul Auster's world of fiendish bargains and punitive whims, where chance is a shifting and powerful force, there is redemption, nonetheless, in Nashe's resolute quest for justice and his capacity for love.

    They then smuggled the device into the casinos of Las Vegas, hidden in the soles of their shoes. This book is an introduction to computing as well as a thriller.

    Herskovits, the father of New World African studies. Since its original publication, the field has changed considerably. Africanism has been explored in its broader dimensions, particularly in the area of white Africanisms. Thus, the new edition has been revised and expanded. Joseph E. Holloway has written three essays for the new volume. The first uses a transnational framework to examine how African cultural survivals have changed over time and readapted to diasporic conditions while experiencing slavery, forced labor, and racial discrimination. The second essay is "Africanisms in African American Names in the United States." The third reconstructs Gullah history, citing numerous Africanisms not previously identified by others. In addition, "The African Heritage of White America" by John Phillips has been revised to take note of many more instances of African cultural survivals in white America and to present a new synthesis of approaches.

    Helens on May 18, 1980, was the most catastrophic and deadly volcanic event ever experienced in the United States. That event had the force of thousands of atom bombs and destroyed 234 square miles of forestland. This highly visual book tells the scientific and human story of that cataclysm and the remarkable recovery that has occurred. Some surprising facts are that the late winter of 1980 contributed to the survival of some hibernating animals; the larger mammals, including elk, brown bears, and cougars have all returned; and unaffected forests quickly spread to cover areas that were wiped out by the blast.

    The book raises general questions about the abuse of patients by governmental-sponsored experimental psychiatric programmes.

    It produced remarkable social and industrial upheavals which were repugnant to an astonishingly large numbers of Americans. Despite national prosperity, industrial workers suffered severe losses of economic status and independence; in protests grounded in religion and politics, they sought to hold on to what they had, and later to win material gains. Mr. Ware's illuminating book analyzes the conditions which brought on the Industrial Revolution, and traces and interprets the labor struggles that developed in response to the factory system.

    From the basics of what airline to choose to a detailed analysis of the Tour Operator network, the author describes the rules and tells the reader how to play the Galapagos adventure travel game. History, wildlife, and details on what to pack are also includEd

    He had taken all she held dear and she had sworn to use any ploy to steal it back. Yet never did she dream that the lure of her beautiful innocence would unleash reckless desires between sworn enemies. She had come to destroy him. Instead, she was helpless in his powerful embrace. He dared not trust her, yet her spirited beauty touched his very soul with yearning. And as passions mounted, the tears and fury of war would be forgotten, lost in the ecstasy of surrender.

    An armchair visit to the year 1846 in Concord, Massachusetts, the "Athens of America" and home to Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and other seminal thinkers.