Together, operating under pseudonyms and anonymous to potential kidnappers, they are given a new machine, the RS-80, and tasked with building a highway that connects the country's far-flung villages with the capital. Four, nicknamed "The Clock," is one of the highway's most experienced operators, never falling short of his assigned schedule. He drives the RS-80, stopping only to sleep and eat the food provided by the company. But Nine is an agent of chaos: speeding ahead on his vehicle, chatting and joking with locals, eating at nearby bars and roadside food stands, he threatens the schedule, breaks protocol, and endangers the work that they must complete in time for a planned government parade. His every action draws Four's ire, but when illness, corruption, and theft compromise their high-stakes mission, Four and Nine discover danger far greater than anything they could pose to one another.

    Teaches the structure and function of plants and surveys the entire plant kingdom.

    A more plausible explanation would have been that she died from a drug overdose. A review of the medical examiner's report revealed that the Fisher family refused to give permission for an autopsy and toxicology tests to be done. Constrained by these limitations, the coroner labeled the manner of death "undetermined".FORENSICS: The Science behind the Deaths of Famous People is an analysis and description of how coroners determine the cause and manner of death. An investigation of twenty-three deaths of famous people was conducted based on a review of publicly available autopsy and toxicology reports, as well as published scientific and lay articles. Drug use was implicated in 70 percent of the deaths. Four celebrity deaths were the result of suicide or homicide. Four others were from natural causes.

    Written in Noble’s absorbing voice, Show Don’t Tell illustrates how to develop a dramatic framework using similes and metaphors, a focused point of view, steady pacing, increasing tension, and an appeal to the senses to create solid dramatic impact. In other words, how to show, not tell!Perfect for novelists, short story writers, and those interested in writing creative nonfiction.

    I was also a fraud, a liar and a cheat. Those lists of birds seen, ticked off like Don Juan’s conquests? A tissue of lies. One hundred and thirty species? More like 60. Dotterel, firecrest, smew? Give me a break.So when I revived my dormant mania early this year, I decided to right my childhood wrongs, even though they were born of good intentions. I would go birdwatching again. I would keep track of the birds I saw. I would not lie. To spice things up, and to guard against enthusiasm fatigue, I set myself a target. Six hundred and one bird species have been recorded in Britain. I would aim to see 200 of them in a year. A doddle, surely?Not so fast, man-cub.Half of the 601 are described as ‘rare’. One, the great auk, is extinct. That leaves 300. My friend Andrew is a proper and active birder. In his best year he clocked up 206. I’m neither proper nor active. What chance do I have? Slim to none. But I like a challenge.Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? is the story of that challenge. But it’s not just about birds. It’s about family, music, nostalgia; hearing the stories of strangers; the nature of obsession and obsession with nature. It’s about finding adventure in life when you twig it’s shorter than you thought; losing and regaining contact with the sights, sounds and smells of the natural world; the humiliation of being a professional musician who doesn’t recognise the song of a blue tit. It’s about the first time my parents heard me say ‘fuck’.It’s a book for anyone who has ever seen a small brown bird and wondered what it was, or tried to make sense of a world in which we can ask ‘What's that bird?’ and ‘What's for lunch?’ and get the same answer. It’s also a long overdue thank you letter to my parents.

    The best bones weren’t on trails—deer and moose don’t die conveniently—and soon I was wandering so far into the woods that I needed a map and compass to find my way home. When winter came and snow blew into the mountains, burying the bones, I continued to spend my days and often my nights in the woods. I vaguely understood that I was doing this because I could no longer think; I found relief in walking up hills. When the night temperatures dropped below zero, I felt visited by necessity, a baseline purpose, and I walked for miles, my only objective to remain upright, keep moving, preserve warmth. When I was lost, I told myself stories . . .”So Charles D’Ambrosio recounted his life in Philipsburg, Montana, the genesis of the brilliant stories collected here, six of which originally appeared in The New Yorker. Each of these eight burnished, terrifying, masterfully crafted stories is set against a landscape that is both deeply American and unmistakably universal. A son confronts his father’s madness and his own hunger for connection on a misguided hike in the Pacific Northwest. A screenwriter fights for his sanity in the bleak corridors of a Manhattan psych ward while lusting after a ballerina who sets herself ablaze. A Thanksgiving hunting trip in Northern Michigan becomes the scene of a haunting reckoning with marital infidelity and desperation. And in the magnificent title story, carpenters building sets for a porn movie drift dreamily beneath a surface of sexual tension toward a racial violence they will never fully comprehend. Taking place in remote cabins, asylums, Indian reservations, the backloads of Iowa and the streets of Seattle, this collection of stories, as muscular and challenging as the best novels, is about people who have been orphaned, who have lost connection, and who have exhausted the ability to generate meaning in their lives. Yet in the midst of lacerating difficulty, the sensibility at work in these fictions boldly insists on the enduring power of love. D’Ambrosio conjures a world that is fearfully inhospitable, darkly humorous, and touched by glory; here are characters, tested by every kind of failure, who struggle to remain human, whose lives have been sharpened rather than numbed by adversity, whose apprehension of truth and beauty has been deepened rather than defeated by their troubles. Many writers speak of the abyss. Charles D’Ambrosio writes as if he is inside of it, gazing upward, and the gaze itself is redemptive, a great yearning ache, poignant and wondrous, equal parts grit and grace.The high divide --Drummond & son --Screenwriter --Up north --The scheme of things --The dead fish museum --Blessing --The bone game

    He also describes his enduring friendship with the ‘kid from across Dublin’s Tolka Park’, Eamon Dunphy, and his career on RTÉ2’s football panel, where Giles’ intelligent and insightful analysis have made him an even more well-loved and respected national figure.

    Series has nearly 2000 pages of combined lightning-paced action. Readers are describing this series as: A fierce, sparkling and enchanted SciFi tale! Realms of Time (Book 4) Welcome to the fourth installment of the Scrapyard Ship series, Realms of Time. Captain Jason Reynolds and his team are up against a new, and unexpected foe—an adversarial force that has every intention of aligning with the powerful and dreaded Craing Empire.  The enemy strikes from Earth’s high orbit, deploying five time-shifting spheres. The spheres are strategically positioned to link-up and set Earth’s clock back 100 years into the past. But when that course of action is interrupted by The Lilly’s crew, the results become far worse. Fluctuating time realms rapidly spread across the globe and threaten to rip the planet apart. Join Jason, Billy, Traveler, Ricket and Dira on their mission as they literally travel to the ends of time to bring Earth back to the twenty-first century. Craing Dominion (Book 5) The Wild Wild Wild ride continues ... Welcome to Craing Dominion, Book 5 of the best-selling Scrapyard Ship series.  Truly dark times have come to the Allied forces, the crew of The Lilly, and Earth — we knew they were coming but nothing will have prepared you for this …  With the introduction of Craing commander Ot-Mul, there’s a new standard for evil that will not only shape the rest of this series, but Science Fiction literature as a whole.  Join Captain Jason Reynolds as he ventures into the proverbial lion’s den in a last ditch effort to even the playing field with the Craing — an empire that has embarked on a pursuit that will guarantee their de facto dominance for millennia to come.  The Great Space (Book 6) They knew the day would come—the day when Earth itself would come under direct attack by the Craing. After destroying much of Jhardon and the Mau planet of Carz-Mau, an elite Vanguard fleet of seven Craing dreadnaughts, planet killers, enters Earth’s orbit. Captain Jason Reynolds and the crew aboard his Caldurian ship, The Lilly, are once again pulled into action to fend off what just might be their most ruthless and powerful adversary yet. In an unanticipated turn of events, thousands of molt weevils are unleashed on Earth, swarming insectoid aliens with one intent … kill every man, woman, and child on the surface of the planet. Nan and Mollie must utilize their own cunning and resourcefulness to stay alive long enough to be rescued.  Call To Battle (Book 7) Welcome to the final, heart-pounding, episode of the Scrapyard Ship series books. It’s all about to end in one climatic crescendo.  The story continues, with Captain Jason Reynolds, and his team: Billy, Rizzo, and the rhino-warrior, Traveler. They must attempt to rescue Ricket and Gaddy, still held captive aboard the impregnable Dreathlor prison barge. Only then, can Jason return to The Lilly, his highly advanced Caldurian vessel … where it all began.  The elusive Admiral Ot-Mul, leader of the Craing Drac-Vin forces, has not only survived, but thrived, in the far, outer-reaches of space. With hundreds of thousands of warships under his command, Ot-Mul’s combined fleets are on the move. But, in truth, he cares about little else than making one man suffer … Captain Jason Reynolds.  With the approach of an enormous fighting force on the horizon, it’s the last call to battle.

    Discovering the rare BRCA1 gene meant Emma had a 50 percent chance of developing ovarian cancer and an 85 percent chance of developing breast cancer. This book tells her story.

    It requires an annual dressing of compost to help accelerate the improvement in soil structure and leads to higher fertility and less weeds. No dig experts Charles Dowding and Stephanie Hafferty, explain how to set up a no dig garden, including how to:- Make compost and enrich soil- Learn skills you need to sow and grow annual and perennial veg- Harvest and prepare food year round- Make natural cosmetics, cleaning products, and garden preparationsThe no dig approach works as well in small spaces as in large gardens. The authors' combined experience covers methods of growing, preparing and storing the plants you grow for many uses, and includes recipes and ideas for increasing self-reliance, saving money, living sustainably, and enjoying the pleasure of growing your own food, year round. An acknowledged expert in no dig and author of a half-dozen books on the subject, Charles' advice is distilled from 35 years of growing vegetables intensively and efficiently. Stephanie, a kitchen gardener, grows in her small, productive home garden and allotment, and creates no dig gardens for restaurants and private estates. She creates delicious seasonal recipes made from the vegetables anyone can grow. She also explains how to use common plants you can grow and forage for to make handmade preparations for the home and garden.

    Ranging over three generations—and clustered mainly in two clans, the Grouses and the Gaffneys—these remarkably various lives share only the common human dilemmas and the awesome physical and emotional presence of Mohawk itself.For this is a town like Winesburg, Ohio or Our Town, in our time, that encompasses a plethora of characters, events and mysteries. At once honestly tragic and sharply, genuinely funny, Mohawk captures life, then affirms it.

    They show that gardening is a passion and obsession that cannot be conquered or abandoned, only indulged. Each gardener tells a compelling story. Whether their muse is the quest to achieve a personal vision of ultimate beauty, a mission to heal the earth, or the attempt to grow a perfect heirloom tomato, the writing is direct, engaging, and from the heart.For Doug Tallamy, a love of plants is rooted first in a love of animals: "animals with two legs (birds), four legs (box turtles, salamanders, and foxes), six legs (butterflies and beetles), eight legs (spiders), dozens of legs (centipedes), hundreds of legs (millipedes), and even animals with no legs (snakes and pollywogs)." For Rosalind Creasy, it's "not the plant itself; it's how you use it in the garden." And for Sydney Eddison, the reason has changed throughout the years. Now, she "gardens for the moment."As you read, you may find yourself nodding your head in agreement, or gasping in disbelief. What you're sure to encounter is some of the best writing about the gardener's soul ever to appear. For anyone who cherishes the miracle of bringing forth life from the soil, "The Roots of My Obsession" is essential inspiration.

    But ambition quickly took wing. The house swelled to 225 rooms and became - until 2012 when it was topped by the home of a billionaire in Mumbai, India – the world’s largest residence ever built for a private citizen. Here’s the story of the house that Vanderbilt built - from the gardens by Frederick Law Olmsted to the John Singer Sargent portraits that adorn its walls.

    

    Over the next three years they haunted every used and rare bookshop between New York and Boston that they could find, from dingy, dust-filled barns to elegant Park Avenue galleries. Starting small on cheap, out-of-print used books, their addiction soon graduated to first editions and, finally, to three-quarter morocco, custom-bound antiquarian classics that they could not afford. Along the way, they gained an education in books—and in people—that we can all savor. This warm and witty story is filled with eccentric characters, from a punk book dealer peddling fifty-thousand-dollar modern firsts to a golf-obsessed Shakespearean scholar with books on demonic possession in his basement. Part travel story, part love story, and part memoir, Used and Rare is an absorbing and delightful journey and a love letter to book lovers everywhere.