On the shortest night of the year, blue eyes pierce the snowstorm. The elusive gryphons of the frozen taiga are beautiful, mysterious, and nearly extinct. As the days grow short and danger lurks around every corner, their eyes turn a bright blue. This short story collection set in the world of Eyrie follows several famous taiga gryphons during their most trying times. Blue Eyes and Other Tales is a short story collection set after the novel Starling and is perfect for fans of the Gryphon Insurrection series.

The never-before-told true story of Jane Elliott and the “Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes Experiment” she made world-famous, using eye color to simulate racism. The day after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in 1968, Jane Elliott, a schoolteacher in rural Iowa, introduced to her all-white third-grade class a shocking experiment to demonstrate the scorching impact of racism. Elliott separated students into two groups. She instructed the brown-eyed children to heckle and berate the blue-eyed students, even to start fights with them. Without telling the children the experiment’s purpose, Elliott demonstrated how easy it was to create abhorrent racist behavior based on students’ eye color, not skin color. As a result, Elliott would go on to appear on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, followed by a stormy White House conference, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and thousands of media events and diversity-training sessions worldwide, during which she employed the provocative experiment to induce racism. Was the experiment benign? Or was it a cruel, self-serving exercise in sadism? Did it work? Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes is a meticulously researched book that details for the first time Jane Elliott’s jagged rise to stardom. It is an unflinching assessment of the incendiary experiment forever associated with Elliott, even though she was not the first to try it out. Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes offers an intimate portrait of the insular community where Elliott grew up and conducted the experiment on the town’s children for more than a decade. The searing story is a cautionary tale that examines power and privilege in and out of the classroom. It also documents small-town White America’s reflex reaction to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the subsequent meteoric rise of diversity training that flourishes today. All the while, Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes reveals the struggles that tormented a determined and righteous woman, today referred to as the “Mother of Diversity Training,” who was driven against all odds to succeed.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace. In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. Here, Morrison’s writing is “so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry” (The New York Times).

Vols. for 1871-76, 1913-14 include an extra number, The Christmas bookseller, separately paged and not included in the consecutive numbering of the regular series.

"Morbid and illuminating" (Entertainment Weekly)—a young mortician goes behind the scenes of her curious profession. Armed with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre, Caitlin Doughty took a job at a crematory and turned morbid curiosity into her life’s work. She cared for bodies of every color, shape, and affliction, and became an intrepid explorer in the world of the dead. In this best-selling memoir, brimming with gallows humor and vivid characters, she marvels at the gruesome history of undertaking and relates her unique coming-of-age story with bold curiosity and mordant wit. By turns hilarious, dark, and uplifting, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes reveals how the fear of dying warps our society and "will make you reconsider how our culture treats the dead" (San Francisco Chronicle).

Embark on a captivating journey through the mysterious and the macabre with Julian Hawthorne's "David Poindexter's Disappearance, and Other Tales." This enthralling collection of stories offers readers a glimpse into the dark corners of the human psyche, where secrets lurk and mysteries abound. In this chilling anthology, Hawthorne weaves together a series of gripping tales that explore the complexities of the human experience and the darker aspects of human nature. From the eerie disappearance of David Poindexter to the haunting specters of the supernatural, each story is a masterclass in suspense and intrigue, guaranteed to keep readers on the edge of their seats until the very end. Themes of suspense, betrayal, and the supernatural pervade the pages of "David Poindexter's Disappearance, and Other Tales," as Hawthorne draws readers into a world where nothing is as it seems and danger lurks around every corner. Through his vivid prose and deft storytelling, he creates a sense of unease and foreboding that will linger long after the final page is turned. With its blend of mystery, horror, and psychological suspense, "David Poindexter's Disappearance, and Other Tales" is a must-read for fans of the genre. Hawthorne's ability to create atmosphere and tension is unparalleled, making this collection a spine-tingling delight for readers who crave a good scare. Widely praised for its originality and imagination, "David Poindexter's Disappearance, and Other Tales" has earned its place as a classic in the realm of horror fiction. Hawthorne's mastery of the genre shines through in every story, making this anthology a treasure trove of thrills and chills for readers of all ages. Don't miss your chance to immerse yourself in the chilling world of Julian Hawthorne's imagination. Let "David Poindexter's Disappearance, and Other Tales" send shivers down your spine and keep you guessing until the very end. Grab your copy now and prepare to be haunted by the dark and mysterious tales that await within.