Though initially employed as a maid, Mary soon becomes the daughter the couple were never able to have. With Britain at war, unable to remain idle, Mary finds employment in the local steel works but when her fiancé Tom Downing is killed in action Mary is convinced it is retribution for their night of sin during Tom's Christmas leave. However, Mary grows to love Jack Holmes, a local miner. They marry and move into a humble terrace house with little but their love to keep them going. As the years pass Mary is determined to achieve success for herself and her family. She sets up her own dressmaking business and it seems as if she has finally found peace of mind. But the business starts to dominate her life until tragedy once more threatens to destroy all she most cherishes...

    They unearthed a treasure trove of Cretaceous dinosaurs and mammals, including several new species, that has already helped to reshape our understanding of the dinosaur age. In Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs, team leader Michael Novacek, Provost of Science of the American Museum of Natural History and Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, re-creates the day-to-day drama of field exploration over the past six years in the Gobi and recounts his and his colleagues' historic discoveries, reported in front-page headlines across the world. In a remarkable narrative that interweaves expedition chapters with in-depth scientific discussions on the nature and importance of the fossil record, Novacek takes us on a journey that explores the very nature of scientific inquiry and dinosaur research.

    As well as being the most ubiquitous of wild animals, it is also the least understood.In Foxes Unearthed Lucy Jones investigates the truth about foxes in a media landscape that often carries complex agendas. Delving into fact, fiction, folklore and her own family history, Lucy travels the length of Britain to find out first-hand why these animals incite such passionate emotions, revealing our rich and complex relationship with one of our most loved – and most vilified – wild animals. This compelling narrative adds much-needed depth to the debate on foxes, asking what our attitudes towards the red fox say about us – and, ultimately, about our relationship with the natural world.

    Research has shown that integrating little daily practices into your life can actually change the way your brain works.This guide offers simple things you can do routinely, mainly inside your mind, that will support and increase your sense of security and worth, resilience, effectiveness, well-being, insight, and inner peace. For example, they include: taking in the good, protecting your brain, feeling safer, relaxing anxiety about imperfection, not knowing, enjoying your hands, taking refuge, and filling the hole in your heart.  At first glance, you may be tempted to underestimate the power of these seemingly simple practices. But they will gradually change your brain through what’s called experience-dependent neuroplasticity.Moment to moment, whatever you're aware of—sounds, sensations, thoughts, or your most heartfelt longings—is based on underlying neural activities. This book offers simple brain training practices you can do every day to protect against stress, lift your mood, and find greater emotional resilience.Just one practice each day can help you to:Be good to yourself Enjoy life as it is Build on your strengths Be more effective at home and work Make peace with your emotions With over fifty daily practices you can use anytime, anywhere, Just One Thing is a groundbreaking combination of mindfulness meditation and neuroscience that can help you deepen your sense of well-being and unconditional happiness.

     For his groundbreaking sexual research, Alfred Kinsey and his team interviewed 18,000 people, relying on them to honestly report their most intimate experiences. Using the Internet, the neuroscientists Ogas and Gaddam quietly observed the raw sexual behaviors of half a billion people. By combining their observations with neuroscience and animal research, these two young neuroscientists finally answer the long-disputed question: what do people really like? Ogas and Gaddam's findings are transforming the way scientists and therapists think about sexual desire. In their startling book, Ogas and Gaddam analyze a "billion wicked thoughts" on the Internet: a billion Web searches, a million individual search histories, a million erotic stories, a half-million erotic videos, a million Web sites, millions of online personal ads, and many other enormous sources of sexual data in order to understand the true differences between male and female desires, including: ?Men and women have hardwired sexual cues analogous to our hardwired tastes-there are sexual versions of sweet, sour, salty, savory, and bitter. But men and women are wired with different sets of cues. ?The male sexual brain resembles a reckless hunter, while the female sexual brain resembles a cautious detective agency. ?Men form their sexual interests during adolescence and rarely change. Women's sexual interests are plastic and change frequently. ?The male sexual brain is an "or gate": A single stimulus can arouse it. The female sexual brain is an "and gate": It requires many simultaneous stimuli to arouse it. ?When it comes to sexual arousal, men prefer overweight women to underweight women, and a significant number of men seek out erotic images of women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. ?Women enjoy writing and sharing erotic stories with other women. The fastest growing genre of erotic stories for women are stories about two heterosexual men having sex. ?Though the male sexual brain is much more different from the female sexual brain than is commonly believed, the sexual brain of gay men is virtually identical to that of straight men. Featuring cutting-edge, jaw-dropping science, this wildly entertaining and controversial book helps readers understand their partner's sexual desires with a depth of knowledge unavailable from any other source. Its fascinating and occasionally disturbing findings will rock our modern understanding of sexuality, just as Kinsey's reports did sixty years ago.

    You're not stuck with the brain you're born with. Here are just a few of neuropsychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen's surprising--and effective--"brain prescriptions" that can help heal your brain and change your life:To Quell Anxiety and Panic: ¸  Use simple breathing techniques to immediately calm inner turmoilTo Fight Depression: ¸  Learn how to kill ANTs (automatic negative thoughts)To Curb Anger: ¸  Follow the Amen anti-anger diet and learn the nutrients that calm rageTo Conquer Impulsiveness and Learn to Focus: ¸  Develop total focus with the "One-Page Miracle"To Stop Obsessive Worrying: ¸  Follow the "get unstuck" writing exercise and learn other problem-solving exercises

    Stringer's new theory, based on archeological and genetic evidence, holds that distinct humans coexisted and competed across the African continent—exchanging genes, tools, and behavioral strategies.Stringer draws on analyses of old and new fossils from around the world, DNA studies of Neanderthals (using the full genome map) and other species, and recent archeological digs to unveil his new theory. He shows how the most sensational recent fossil findings fit with his model, and he questions previous concepts (including his own) of modernity and how it evolved.Lone Survivors will be the definitive account of who and what we were, and will change perceptions about our origins and about what it means to be human.

    And in this cutthroat $200 million business, no one made more money than—or posed as great an ecological danger as—Yoshi Kojima, the kingpin of butterfly smugglers. Determined to capture Kojima, rookie U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agent Ed Newcomer became close to the smuggler, posing as a young apprentice eager to learn the smuggling trade. But twice the agent's inexperience allowed this criminal, with a nearly supernatural sense of survival and an overwhelming sense of paranoia, to get away. Just when it seemed Kojima was out of reach, Newcomer was given one last chance to reel him in. Somewhere in the hunt, Kojima had become obsessed with the agent. This obsession, along with his continued mania for butterflies, could finally spell the downfall of the untouchable smuggler. But the story doesn't end there. Working under-cover to research this book, Jessica Speart befriended Kojima as well. Like Newcomer, she was going to betray Kojima. What she didn't know was that this cagey smuggler was planning to turn the tables and use her as a patsy for continuing his illegal butterfly trade.

    Who would have guessed that all of our sexual and social behavior, and even our physical appearance, could be attributed to what our tiny unseen reproductive cells are doing? But that's Quirk's thesis in this highly entertaining book from an Average Guy that's a fun read full of a-ha! moments for scientists and civilians alike. Learn facts about cheating you'll never see on "Jerry Springer," like how unfaithful females actually change the biology of their mates. Discover why most sperm couldn't care less if they never saw an egg, what makes men yell "woo!" in a feminine falsetto--very similar to the mating cry of the Siamang gibbon--and, most important, the surprising answer on what to wear to attract that alpha mate.

    "The lessons of life choices are hidden within the covers of VETTING. Dr. Pete Freyburger tells us how he tried, failed, succeeded, and triumphed while serving his community, his family, his friends and animals. The humor and passion that Pete shows as he learns about life and how his choices will frame his future can help all of us live the life we want." Barbara Carr - Executive Director - SPCA Serving Erie County ------------------------------------------- "VETTING is more than a story; it's an allegory of life, using Dr. Freyburger's relationships with animals to transport us to the hidden crannies and fissures of our souls. A worthy read." Donald F. Smith, DVM - Dean Emeritus - Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine ------------------------------------------ "At sometime in his or her life, almost every young pet owner imagines a career as a veterinarian. Very, very few ever get to achieve that dream. Through Dr. Freyburger's experiences, we have a chance to know the joys and the sorrows of small animal medicine." Alan Bergman - Instructor at Hosei University - Tokyo, Japan ------------------------------------------- * Experience the unique journey to become a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. * See the inside of the exam room, treatment area, and surgery suite through the eyes of a raw new graduate. * Feel the incredible stress and self-doubt that young professionals must overcome. * Share the veterinarian's perspective as you meet and observe many memorable pets and their equally memorable owners. * Enjoy amazing, stranger-than-fiction stories. ---------------------------------------- Proceeds from the sale of VETTING are shared with four animal related charities. Details at www.pjfpub.com

    From biblical plagues, to the AIDS crisis, to supergerms of the future, this updated and revised edition of the original covers the whole gamut of diseases that have threatened humanity since its origins.It also includes a new chapter on the history of bioterrorism and the deplorable role it has played and is likely to play in the phenomenal diversity of diseases.

    Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday—in evolutionary time—when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years—a past that has mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today.This is Jared Diamond’s most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesn’t romanticize traditional societies—after all, we are shocked by some of their practices—but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us. Provocative, enlightening, and entertaining, The World Until Yesterday is an essential and fascinating read.

    It provides information on how drugs enter the body, how they manipulate the brain, their short- & long-term effects, the high they produce & the circumstances in which they can be deadly. psychological & pharmacological research on drugs. Whether the reader is a student confronted by drugs for the first time, an accountant reaching for another cup of coffee, or a health educator, this book aims to provide a clear understanding of how drugs work & the consequences of their use.

    David Owen traces all that water from the Colorado's headwaters to its parched terminus, once a verdant wetland but now a million-acre desert. He takes readers on an adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, reservoirs, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and RV parks, to the spot near the U.S.–Mexico border where the river runs dry. Water problems in the western United States can seem tantalizingly easy to solve: just turn off the fountains at the Bellagio, stop selling hay to China, ban golf, cut down the almond trees, and kill all the lawyers. But a closer look reveals a vast man-made ecosystem that is far more complex and more interesting than the headlines let on.The story Owen tells in Where the Water Goes is crucial to our future: how a patchwork of engineering marvels, byzantine legal agreements, aging infrastructure, and neighborly cooperation enables life to flourish in the desert, and the disastrous consequences we face when any part of this tenuous system fails.

    But when one evening at twilight a lone black wolf ambled into view not far from his doorstep, Nick would finally come to know this mystical species—up close as never before.A Wolf Called Romeo is the remarkable story of a wolf who returned again and again to interact with the people and dogs of Juneau, living on the edges of their community, engaging in an improbable, awe-inspiring interspecies dance and bringing the wild into sharp focus. At first the people of Juneau were guarded, torn between shoot first, ask questions later instincts and curiosity. But as Romeo began to tag along with cross-country skiers on their daily jaunts, play fetch with local dogs, or simply lie near Nick and nap under the sun, they came to accept Romeo, and he them. For Nick it was about trying to understand Romeo, then it was about winning his trust, and ultimately it was about watching over him, for as long as he or anyone could.Written with a deft hand and a searching heart, A Wolf Called Romeo is an unforgettable tale of a creature who defied nature and thus gave humans a chance to understand it a little more.