The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and of the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world. “I couldn’t believe Texas was real,” the painter Georgia O’Keeffe remembered of her first encounter with the Lone Star State. It was, for her, “the same big wonderful thing that oceans and the highest mountains are.” Big Wonderful Thing invites us to walk in the footsteps of ancient as well as modern people along the path of Texas’s evolution. Blending action and atmosphere with impeccable research, New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harrigan brings to life with novelistic immediacy the generations of driven men and women who shaped Texas, including Spanish explorers, American filibusters, Comanche warriors, wildcatters, Tejano activists, and spellbinding artists—all of them taking their part in the creation of a place that became not just a nation, not just a state, but an indelible idea. Written in fast-paced prose, rich with personal observation and a passionate sense of place, Big Wonderful Thing calls to mind the literary spirit of Robert Hughes writing about Australia or Shelby Foote about the Civil War. Like those volumes it is a big book about a big subject, a book that dares to tell the whole glorious, gruesome, epically sprawling story of Texas.

The time is 1887. From any window in Georgia O’Keeffe’s Sun Prairie, Wisconsin birthplace home she only saw the Wisconsin prairie with its traces of roads veering around the flat marshlands and a vast sky that lifted her soul. At twelve years of age Georgia had a defining moment when she declared, “I want to be an artist.” Years later from her east-facing window in Canyon, Texas she observed the Texas Panhandle sky with its focus points on the plains and a great canyon of earth history colors streaking across the flat land. Georgia’s love of the vast, colorful prairie, plains and sky again gave definition to her life when she discovered Ghost Ranch north of Abiquiu, New Mexico. She fell prey to its charms which were not long removed from the echoes of the “Wild West.” These views of prairie, plains and sky became Georgia’s muses as she embarked on her step-by-step path with her role models—Alon Bement, Arthur Jerome Dow and Wassily Kandinsky. In this two-part biography of which this is Part I covering the period 1887–1945, Nancy Hopkins Reily “walks the Sun Prairie Land,” as if in Georgia’s day as a prologue to her family’s friendship with Georgia in the 1940s and 1950s. Reily chronicles Georgia’s defining days within the arenas of landscape, culture, people and the history surrounding each, a discourse level that Georgia would easily recognize.

The time is 1887. From any window in Georgia O’Keeffe’s Sun Prairie, Wisconsin birthplace home she only saw the Wisconsin prairie with its traces of roads veering around the flat marshlands and a vast sky that lifted her soul. At twelve years of age Georgia had a defining moment when she declared, “I want to be an artist.” Years later from her east-facing window in Canyon, Texas she observed the Texas Panhandle sky with its focus points on the plains and a great canyon of earth history colors streaking across the flat land. Georgia’s love of the vast, colorful prairie, plains and sky again gave definition to her life when she discovered Ghost Ranch north of Abiquiu, New Mexico. She fell prey to its charms which were not long removed from the echoes of the “Wild West.” These views of prairie, plains and sky became Georgia’s muses as she embarked on her step-by-step path with her role models—Alon Bement, Arthur Jerome Dow and Wassily Kandinsky. In this two-part biography of which this is Part I covering the period 1887–1945, Nancy Hopkins Reily “walks the Sun Prairie Land,” as if in Georgia’s day as a prologue to her family’s friendship with Georgia in the 1940s and 1950s. Reily chronicles Georgia’s defining days within the arenas of landscape, culture, people and the history surrounding each, a discourse level that Georgia would easily recognize.

Virginia of Elk Creek Valley is a story by Mary Ellen Chase. A group of friends find themselves on escapades riding horses, fishing, hiking, getting lost and even running from bears in this adventure story.

Reflections, meditations, prayers, activities and liturgies for Lent. Includes a liturgy for Mother's Day, worship for Ash Wednesday, an all-age service for Shrove Tuesday for making and sharing pancakes, and other all-age resources. Sally Foster-Fulton i

A troubled English boy sets out to uncover the truth about his father’s death, from the Edgar Award–winning author of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael. Following the death of his father at an archaeological dig in Greece, young Crispin Almond returned to England and the mother he barely knew. Now a difficult, morose, and unreachable teenager, he has been expelled from every school he’s attended. At her wits’ end, his mother decides Crispin needs a positive male role model and turns to a former friend, who disappeared from her life sixteen years earlier when she rejected his proposal of marriage. Hired by the woman he always loved to be her son’s tutor, Evelyn Manville is determined to break through Crispin’s protective shell. But the closer he gets to the troubled teen, the more unsettling their relationship becomes. Because, despite having no evidence, Crispin believes his father’s death in Greece was no accident, and he’s been secretly manipulating events to prove it. And now his plan could be drawing a murderer into all of their lives. With Death Mask, the Edgar, Agatha, and Gold Dagger Award–winning author of the Brother Cadfael Mysteries delivers a stand-alone novel that is “a literate and original piece of work” (Kirkus Reviews).

State Oddities takes a different kind of look at the American nation, spotlighting the fun foibles, peculiarities, and twists in each of the 50 states that are (mostly) united under the Stars and Stripes. State Oddities is a fascinating trip through the 50 states for students studying America, teachers planning classroom activities, and general readers who will enjoy an eye-opening journey through the nation's fun side. It offers a compelling look at the character of America through the individuality of 50 very distinct states that together form the USA. This book paints a picture of the broad sweep of the American story, offering a gateway to the country as it developed into one nation filled with individual states that can be remarkably different from each other, yet unified under such national symbols as the American flag and "The Star-Spangled Banner." The author of State Oddities has become known as a master of "painless history," telling America's story in a sparkling style along with the historian's eye for fascinating detail. On the book's cross-country journey, the reader will find that it differs from other works by taking a fresh look at stories we think we know.

"Myths, according to Freud's view, are of the psychological order of dream. Myths, so to say, are public dreams; dreams are private myths. " "There is no one quite like Joseph Campbell. He knows the vast sweep of man's panoramic past as few men have evern known it." -The Village Voice What is a properly functioning mythology and what are its functions? Can we use myths to help relieve our modern anxiety, or do they help foster it? In Myths to Live by, Joseph Campbell explores the enduring power of the universal myths that influence our lives daily and examines the myth-making process from the primitive past to the immediate present, retuning always to the source from which all mythology springs: the creative imagination. Campbell stresses that the borders dividing the Earth have been shattered; that myths and religions have always followed the certain basic archetypes and are no longer exclusive to a single people, region, or religion. He shows how we must recognize their common denominators and allow this knowledge to be of use in fulfilling human potential everywhere.