Rooted in the past but still active in the world today, the Gods and Goddesses of Ireland have always been powerful forces that can bless or challenge, but often the most difficult thing is to simply find information about them. This short introductory text looks at a variety of different Irish deities, common and more obscure, from their ancient roots to the modern practices associated with honoring them in, an encyclopedia-style book with entries in easy-to-use sections.

    And that is to be fiercely, inarguably and masterfully talented.No one knows who fathered eleven-year-old Satomi, and the women of her 1950s Japanese mountain town find her mother's restless sensuality a threat. Satomi's success in piano competitions has always won respect, saving her and her mother from complete ostracism. But when her mother's growing ambition tests this delicate social balance, Satomi's gift is not enough to protect them. Eventually, Satomi is pushed to make a drastic decision in order to begin her life anew. Years later, Satomi's choices echo in the life of her American daughter, Rumi, a gifted authenticator of Asian antiques. Rumi has always believed her mother to be dead, but when Rumi begins to see a ghost, she wonders: Is this the spirit of her mother? If so, what happened to Satomi?Picking Bones from Ash explores the struggles women face in accepting their talents, and asks what happens when mothers and daughters dare to question the debt owed each other. Fusing imagination and suspense, Marie Mutsuki Mockett builds a lavish world in which characters journey from Buddhist temples to the black market of international antiques in California, as they struggle to understand each other across cultures and generations."Marie Mockett brings postwar Japan into the 21st Century with sensitivity and grace, drawing the lives of three women to illuminate the tension between two cultures. Picking Bones from Ash is a lovely book."—KIT REED"In Marie Mockett's first novel—which ranges in confident and lovely prose from a mountain town in mid-century Japan to an antiques business in contemporary San Francisco—temples, ghosts, and oni demons aren't inert markers of exoticism: they're embedded in a lived web of human relationships and everyday tasks. Beginning in a world as solid as Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres, Picking Bones from Ash takes the reader down a rabbit-hole as matter-of-factly supernatural as that of Haruki Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. This wiry and delicate novel, as grounded as it is surreal, goes down like a tall glass of water. Except it's spiked: like Rumi, the younger of Mockett's two heroines, you will be haunted until you finish this book." —ELLIS AVERY"Remarkable and arresting, this debut has the pleasures of a fairy tale and a novel at the same time. Mockett probes the family mythology of a very peculiar line of talented Japanese women who may or may not be descended from the Princess of the Moon, and spins the tale of how they survived post-war Japan, modernity and life in America. A spellbinding new talent." —ALEXANDER CHEE "Mockett has made an impressive debut with Picking Bones from Ash. Here, she creates a fully-absorbing world with vivid characters who search for what was painfully lost to them. Mockett is a beautiful writer." —MIN JIN LEE, author of Free Food for Millionaires

    By deliberately avoiding the hindsight knowledge that he will lose the Battle of Bosworth Field, this book presents a new Richard—no passive victim, awaiting defeat and death, but a king actively pursuing his own policies and agenda. It also reexamines the aftermath of Bosworth—the treatment of Richard’s body, his burial, and the construction of his tomb. Based on newly discovered evidence and wider insights it explores the motives underlying these events. And there is the fascinating story of why and how Richard III’s DNA was rediscovered, alive and well, and living in Canada. This is a stimulating and thought-provoking account of the end of Richard’s life—even readers very familiar with his short life will discover a new and fascinating picture of him.

    Readers will find excerpts from bestsellers such as Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, Francis Crick's Life Itself, Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey, Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us. There are classic essays ranging from J.B.S. Haldane's "On Being the Right Size" and Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" to Alan Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" and Albert Einstein's famed New York Times article on "Relativity." And readers will also discover lesser-known but engaging pieces such as Lewis Thomas's "Seven Wonders of Science," J. Robert Oppenheimer on "War and Physicists," and Freeman Dyson's memoir of studying under Hans Bethe.A must-read volume for all science buffs, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a rich and vibrant anthology that captures the poetry and excitement of scientific thought and discovery.One of New Scientist's Editor's Picks for 2008.

    In Christmas Pudding, an array of colorful characters converge on the hunt-obsessed Lady Bobbin’s country house, including her rebellious daughter Philadelphia, the girl’s pompous suitor, a couple of children obsessed with newspaper death notices, and an aspiring writer whose serious first novel has been acclaimed -to his utter dismay- as the funniest book of the year. In Pigeon Pie, set at the outbreak of World War II, Lady Sophia Garfield dreams of becoming a beautiful spy yet manages not to notice a nest of German agents right under her nose. That is, until the murder of her maid and kidnapping of her beloved bulldog force them on her attention, and her actions prove heroic.With a lighter tone than Mitford’s later work, these novels offer a subtle/cynical criticism of the shallow and conventional way of life of British upper class in the 20s.

    And if you’re going to do it in front of 500 coworkers at one of the top ad agencies in the country, you better have a pretty big set! At a time when the term “transgender” didn’t really exist, and with support from family, friends, and a great therapist, Chris Edwards endured 28 surgeries to become the man he always knew he was meant to be. He used what he learned working in advertising along with his ever-present sense of humor to rebrand himself and orchestrate what was quite possibly the most widely accepted and embraced gender transition of its kind. He’s a pioneer who changed the perception of an entire community, and his memoir, BALLS, will touch readers’ hearts and open their minds. ​Edwards is funny, brazen, and endearing, and BALLS is the hilarious and moving story about family, friends, and the courage to be your true self. It boldly and fearlessly goes where other trans memoirs haven’t. If you’ve ever felt uncomfortable in your own skin, for whatever reason, you will be inspired and empowered by this book.

    You'll discover how the sun shines, why light is both a wave and a particle, the certainty of the Uncertainty Principle, Schrodinger's Cat, Einstein's spooky action, how to build a quantum computer, and why quantum mechanics drives even its experts completely crazy. 'Jim Al-Khalili has done an admirable job of condensing the ideas of quantum physics from Max Planck to the possibilities of quantum computers into brisk, straightforward English' The Times

    A nearly forgotten schoolgirl’s game, it is the long-standing signal for alarm agreed upon long before Willa went to Stockholm to live. Grace takes the coded message seriously and wires her cousin that she is on her way, and much, much more.What follows is a perilous search through the fascinating night world of Stockholm. Romance, terror, and a succession of shocking surprises await Grace-and the reader-as the pieces of the puzzle gradually fit together. WAITING FOR WILLA bristles with the kind of foreboding suspense Dorothy Eden's many readers have come to expect from her.

    Provides a review of introductory noncalculus-based physics for those who do not have a strong background in mathematics.

    The theme of Heisenberg's exposition is that words and concepts familiar in daily life can lose their meaning in the world of relativity and quantum physics. This in turn has profound philosophical implications for the nature of reality and for our total world view.

    Bell, a leading figure in mathematics in America for half a century. Men of Mathematics accessibly explains the major mathematics, from the geometry of the Greeks through Newton's calculus and on to the laws of probability, symbolic logic, and the fourth dimension. In addition, the book goes beyond pure mathematics to present a series of engrossing biographies of the great mathematicians -- an extraordinary number of whom lived bizarre or unusual lives. Finally, Men of Mathematics is also a history of ideas, tracing the majestic development of mathematical thought from ancient times to the twentieth century. This enduring work's clear, often humorous way of dealing with complex ideas makes it an ideal book for the non-mathematician.

    This is a new view of mathematics, not the one we learned at school but a comprehensive guide to the patterns that recur through the universe and underlie human affairs. A Beginner's Guide to Constructing, the Universe shows you: Why cans, pizza, and manhole covers are round.Why one and two weren't considered numbers by the ancient Greeks.Why squares show up so often in goddess art and board games.What property makes the spiral the most widespread shape in nature, from embryos and hair curls to hurricanes and galaxies. How the human body shares the design of a bean plant and the solar system. How a snowflake is like Stonehenge, and a beehive like a calendar. How our ten fingers hold the secrets of both a lobster a cathedral, and much more.

    Whether taking us to Orléans to evoke the miraculous visions of Joan of Arc, to Versailles to experience the flamboyant achievements of Louis XIV, or to the Place de la Concorde to witness the beheading of Marie Antoinette, Caro animates history with her lush descriptions of architectural splendors and tales of court intrigue. Organizing her destinations chronologically from twelfth-century Saint-Denis to the nineteenth-century Restoration at Chantilly, Caro appeals not only to the casual tourist aboard the Metro or the TGV but also to the armchair reader of Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence. Caro's passion for and knowledge of France—its soaring cathedrals, enthralling history, and sumptuous cuisine—are so impressive that Paris to the Past promises to become one of the classic guidebooks of our time.

    For years, Blanche de Castille, the White Queen of France, has lived by this maxim—passed on by her grandmother, Eléonore d'Aquitaine, as she took the girl to marry King Louis VIII. When her husband dies unexpectedly, however, Blanche finds that beauty is not enough to hold, and command, a kingdom against usurpers eager to wrest the Crown from her woman's grasp. Faced with an English invasion, barons' uprisings, and slanderous rumors, Blanche must look within herself for the strength she needs to guard the throne for her young son. Her bold response shocks the kingdom and shapes her into the formidable, seemingly heartless mother-in-law to Marguerite of Provence, wife of King Louis IX (Saint Louis) and the eldest of the "Four Sisters, All Queens" in Sherry Jones's forthcoming novel.Includes an excerpt to the upcoming Four Sisters, All Queens, to be published by Gallery Books, May 8, 2012.

    An angry young woman makes a fatal mistake, taking them on a collision course which will smash their lives to pieces.​Since childhood, Dawn has "lost time." She awakens in strange places, far away from her last memory. Now she's just trying to be a good mom to her son while the fear of another blackout episode looms over her.Kylie is over her dead-end cashier job. Her boss is on her back, an ex-boyfriend won’t stop harassing her and she hates the world. As she drives from the supermarket lot, she picks up her cell to send a text. In the next terrifying moment, she’ll realize the gravity of her mistake when Dawn’s and her destiny collide.All is not lost though, for Dawn’s “lost time” now turns out to be an incredible gift. She discovers herself back again, reliving the most dreadful day of her life. Changing fate is now within her power, except fate doesn’t want a new course.To save her son and free herself from repeating a nightmare forever, she will need to discover an elusive, simple truth before time runs out.From international best-selling author Susan May comes a unique time travel story of hope, forgiveness and a mother’s tenacious love. It will touch your heart and might just change your life too.