He places us on the outcrops, rock hammer in hand, to examine the evidence for how these rough-hewn lands came to be. We see California and its gold assembled from pieces of old ocean floor and the relentless movements of the Earth’s tectonic plates. We witness the birth of the Rockies. And we investigate the violent earthquakes that continue to shape the region today. Into the West’s geologic story, Meldahl also weaves its human history. As we follow the adventures of John C. Frémont, Mark Twain, the Donner party, and other historic characters, we learn how geologic forces have shaped human experience in the past and how they direct the fate of the West today.

    This too was a fixture on bestseller lists and earned her a wider audience.With Point Dume she has produced her most remarkable novel to dateA fast moving page- turner, with insights that Arnoldi has gleaned from years of on-the-ground research, this is a timely novel that seems timeless.

     But Drake’s exploits in his earlier years, though less well known, are even more remarkable. Born into a poor, obscure family, he worked his way rapidly up in the maritime world to his first captaincy. Before long, he was the most successful of all English pirates, admired by his countrymen, hated and feared by the Spanish. Queen Elizabeth and her ministers saw the potential in this rough-mannered but enterprising young man, and gave him their blessing for the first British venture into the Pacific Ocean. This success of this voyage, which lasted for three years, exceeded their wildest hopes. Not only did Drake come home with a vast treasure of captured gold, silver and jewels; he became the first man ever to circumnavigate the globe in a single mission, and bring most of his crew home alive and well. Soon after his triumphant return, Elizabeth knighted this newly rich adventurer, and gave her blessing to his acts of pillage. It was a gesture that made war with Spain inevitable. And Drake’s part in the coming war changed the course of world history. SIR FRANCIS DRAKE: THE QUEEN’S PIRATE tells the extraordinary story of Drake’s early years and his journey around the world on his famous ship, the Golden Hind.

    When Krill Press bought the rights in 2008 they repackaged the story with a new cover and marketed it as "Absinthe of Malice".Old crimes come back to haunt a small California town in this intriguing urban cozy. ABSINTHE OF MALICE introduces Penny Mackenzie, Lifestyle reporter for The Pearl Outrider, and a cast of unforgettable characters who find their lives turned upside down when old secrets and new secrets all come to light after chance discovery of a skeleton in a cotton field leads to murder...and romance.

    Hundreds of thousands of people drive across it every day. The San Andreas Fault is everywhere, and primed for a colossal quake. For decades, scientists have warned that such a sudden shifting of the Earth’s crust is inevitable. In fact, it is a geologic necessity.The San Andreas fault runs almost the entire length of California, from the redwood forest to the east edge of the Salton Sea. Along the way, it passes through two of the largest urban areas of the country—San Francisco and Los Angeles. Dozens of major highways and interstates cross it. Scores of housing developments have been planted over it. The words “San Andreas” are so familiar today that they have become synonymous with earthquake.Yet, few people understand the San Andreas or the network of subsidiary faults it has spawned. Some run through Hollywood, others through Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. The Hayward fault slices the football stadium at the University of California in half. Even among scientists, few appreciate that the San Andreas fault is a transient, evolving system that, as seen today, is younger than the Grand Canyon and key to our understanding of earthquakes worldwide.

    But the aftermath of the quake—the fires that raged across the city for days and claimed the lives of thousands more—was an all too human disaster whose story has remained largely untold. Until now. Employing the same vivid prose and storytelling skill that made his Report from Ground Zero a national bestseller, Dennis Smith reconstructs those harrowing days from the perspective of the people who lived through them. Smith draws on hundreds of individual accounts and official documents to unearth the true story of the fires—from the corrupt officials who left the city woefully unprepared for disaster, to the militia officers who enforced martial law with deadly force, to the individual heroes who battled the blaze and saved untold lives. San Francisco Is Burning is a thrilling disaster tale that brings a lost chapter of history back to riveting life. BACKCOVER: “Riveting.” —The Washington Post “So riveting it is enraging…[Smith’s] message is the one that matters most.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A finely woven human story of tragedy, death, heroism and blunder…This book is an eye-opener in many ways, and a good read, to boot.” —The Associated Press

    Little by little, Jacinta’s mother lost her—first to college, then to a boy she said she loved, and then, finally, to the rage of a school shooter. Snap. In an instant it was all gone. All she has now is her daughter’s phone. Like an album, gripped in the palm of her hand—texts, photos, messages, and videos of her daughter’s first three years at college. With it, Jacinta’s mother is reconstructing her daughter’s last three weeks.In this uniquely moving exploration of mourning, fury, and reminiscence, Susan Straight evokes—through a grieving mother’s devastating internal monologue—both a modern-day nightmare and exquisite proof of love’s extraordinary power to overcome it.

    

    Francis Dam, a twenty-story-high concrete structure just fifty miles north of Los Angeles, suddenly collapsed, releasing a devastating flood that roared fifty-four miles to the Pacific Ocean, destroying everything in its path. It was a horrific catastrophe, yet one which today is virtually forgotten.With research gathered over more than two decades, award-winning writer and filmmaker Jon Wilkman revisits the deluge that claimed nearly five hundred lives. A key figure is William Mulholland, the self-taught engineer who created an unprecedented water system, allowing Los Angeles to become America's second-largest city, and who was also responsible for the design and construction of the St. Francis Dam.Driven by eyewitness accounts and combining urban history with a life-and-death drama and a technological detective story, Floodpath grippingly reanimates the reality behind L.A. noir fictions such as the classic film Chinatown. In an era of climate change, increasing demand on water resources, and a neglected American infrastructure, the tragedy of the St. Francis Dam has never been more relevant.

    McPhee embarks on a fascinating journey across the basement of the continent -- the land masses forming Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and thereabouts -- with a professor and geochronologist acting as a guide.

    Blending keen observations of flora, geography, and geology, the natural forces that shape the landscape, and the changing seasons, Muir paints a timeless portrait of the wilderness he called “the Range of Light, the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain chains I have ever seen.” Also included are visits to two famous Cascades peaks, Mount Shasta and Mount St. Helens

    The Klondike stampede was a wild interlude in the epic story of western development, and here are its dramatic tales of hardship, heroism, and villainy. We meet Soapy Smith, dictator of Skagway; Swiftwater Bill Gates, who bathed in champagne; Silent Sam Bonnifield, who lost and won back a hotel in a poker game; and Roddy Connors, who danced away a fortune at a dollar a dance. We meet dance-hall queens, paupers turned millionaires, missionaries and entrepreneurs, and legendary Mounties such as Sam Steele, the Lion of the Yukon.Pierre Berton's riveting account reveals to us the spectacle of the Chilkoot Pass, and the terrors of lesser-known trails through the swamps of British Columbia, across the glaciers of souther Alaska, and up the icy streams of the Mackenzie Mountains. It contrasts the lawless frontier life on the American side of the border to the relative safety of Dawson City. Winner of the Governor General's award for non-fiction, Klondike is authentic history and grand entertainment, and a must-read for anyone interested in the Canadian frontier.

    After World War II, it reshaped the global order-whoever could master uranium could master the world. Marie Curie gave us hope that uranium would be a miracle panacea, but the Manhattan Project gave us reason to believe that civilization would end with apocalypse. Slave labor camps in Africa and Eastern Europe were built around mine shafts and America would knowingly send more than six hundred uranium miners to their graves in the name of national security. Fortunes have been made from this yellow dirt; massive energy grids have been run from it. Fear of it panicked the American people into supporting a questionable war with Iraq and its specter threatens to create another conflict in Iran. Now, some are hoping it can help avoid a global warming catastrophe. In "Uranium," Tom Zoellner takes readers around the globe in this intriguing look at the mineral that can sustain life or destroy it.

    In The Dreamt Land, he travels the state to explore the one-of-a-kind distribution system, built in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, that is straining to keep up with California's relentless growth.This is a heartfelt, beautifully written book about the land and the people who have worked it--from gold miners to wheat ranchers to small fruit farmers and today's Big Ag. Since the beginning, Californians have redirected rivers, drilled ever-deeper wells and built higher dams, pushing the water supply past its limit.The Dreamt Land weaves reportage, history, and memoir to confront the "Golden State" myth in riveting fashion. No other chronicler of the West has so deeply delved into the empires of agriculture that drink so much of the water. The nation's biggest farmers--the nut king, grape king and citrus queen--tell their story here for the first time.It is a tale of politics and hubris in the arid West, of imported workers left behind in the sun and the fatigued earth that is made to give more even while it keeps sinking. But when drought turns to flood once again, all is forgotten as the farmers plant more nuts and the developers build more houses.Arax, the native son, is persistent and tough as he treks from desert to delta, mountain to valley. What he finds is hard earned, awe-inspiring, tragic and revelatory. In the end, his compassion for the land becomes an elegy to the dream that created California and now threatens to undo it.

    But the L.A. TV station where she works as a consumer reporter won't let her do the globally important stories she wants to do, and now the guys upstairs are suggesting she mix a little of the nasty into her helping-people segments to raise the--already high--ratings. Afraid the TV biz is going to suck out her soul, Abbie agrees to take all the time-off she's saved and housesit for her sister in the suburbs of Houston where conservatism and good barbequing skills are highly rated. But, it will give her time alone to re-evaluate her life, or, at least, give the guys upstairs time to see how ratings plummet without her.Once in Houston, Abbie causes a raucous with a column she guest-writes for her sister's neighborhood newsletter and butts heads with the president of the homeowner's association from across the street. Rick's a real hunk (yum!) of a lawyer (yuck!) who drives a fancy pickup (wasting natural resources), is an ex-rodeo cowboy (too macho, but kinda hot) and has been known to vote conservatively on occasion (dead faint). Unfortunately, he's also irresistible and available since his wife took off, leaving him with their six-year-old daughter. After some malicious neighborhood mischief followed by a hot encounter in his kitchen, Abbie decides she'd better stay away or this guy could change her life in a way she never thought she wanted. But when her volunteer job, teaching English as a Second Language, gets her arrested on suspicion of smuggling illegal aliens, who is the only emergency contact her sister left? Mr. Hunky-Annoying-Across-the-Street-Lawyer, of course. And as Abbie feels herself getting sucked in by Rick, she realizes life's decisions aren't always as black and white as she'd like them to be.