Before fate intervened, Joseph Needham was a distinguished biochemist at Cambridge University, married to a fellow scientist. In 1937 he was asked to supervise a young Chinese student named Lu Gwei-Djen, and in that moment began the two greatest love affairs of his life - Miss Lu, and China. Miss Lu inspired Needham to travel to China where he initially spent three dangerous years as a wartime diplomat. He established himself as the pre-eminent China scholar of all time, firm in his belief that China would one day achieve world prominence. By the end of his life, Needham had become a truly global figure, travelling endlessly and honoured by all - though banned from America because of his politics. And in 1989, after a fifty-two year affair, he finally married the woman who had first inspired his passion. The Magnificent Barbarian is Simon Winchester at his best - at once a magnificent portrait of one man's remarkable life and a riveting exploration of the country that so engaged him.

In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous"—New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"—Time) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically advanced country. No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair. He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire. He searched everywhere for evidence to bolster his conviction that the Chinese were responsible for hundreds of mankind's most familiar innovations—including printing, the compass, explosives, suspension bridges, even toilet paper—often centuries before the rest of the world. His thrilling and dangerous journeys, vividly recreated by Winchester, took him across war-torn China to far-flung outposts, consolidating his deep admiration for the Chinese people. After the war, Needham was determined to tell the world what he had discovered, and began writing his majestic Science and Civilisation in China, describing the country's long and astonishing history of invention and technology. By the time he died, he had produced, essentially single-handedly, seventeen immense volumes, marking him as the greatest one-man encyclopedist ever. Both epic and intimate, The Man Who Loved China tells the sweeping story of China through Needham's remarkable life. Here is an unforgettable tale of what makes men, nations, and, indeed, mankind itself great—related by one of the world's inimitable storytellers.

Winner of the 2015 Prix Goncourt, an astounding novel that bridges Europe and the Islamic world Winner of the Prix Goncourt (France), the Leipzig Prize (Germany), Premio Von Rezzori (Italy), shortlisted for the 2017 International Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award As night falls over Vienna, Franz Ritter, an insomniac musicologist, takes to his sickbed with an unspecified illness and spends a restless night drifting between dreams and memories, revisiting the important chapters of his life: his ongoing fascination with the Middle East and his numerous travels to Istanbul, Aleppo, Damascus, and Tehran, as well as the various writers, artists, musicians, academics, orientalists, and explorers who populate this vast dreamscape. At the center of these memories is his elusive, unrequited love, Sarah, a fiercely intelligent French scholar caught in the intricate tension between Europe and the Middle East. With exhilarating prose and sweeping erudition, Mathias Énard pulls astonishing elements from disparate sources—nineteenth-century composers and esoteric orientalists, Balzac and Agatha Christie—and binds them together in a most magical way.

Earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis. Headline-making natural disasters with devastating consequences for millions of people. But what do we actually know about these literally earth-shaking events? New York Times bestselling author, explorer, journalist, and geologist Simon Winchester—who’s been shaken by earthquakes in New Zealand, skied through Greenland to help prove the theory of plate tectonics, and even charred the soles of his boots climbing a volcano—looks at the science, technology, and societal impact of these inter-connected natural phenomena. A master nonfiction storyteller, Winchester digs deep into the powerful natural forces that shape the earth, exploring the how and why of world-changing events from the 19th-century’s infamous volcanic eruption at Krakatoa and the earthquake that flattened San Francisco, to the 21st-century tsunamis that devastated Indonesia and Japan. It’s a gripping story about what happens when our seemingly unmovable planet shakes, explodes, and floods—all richly illustrated with fascinating historical and stunning contemporary photographs.

Seven students trapped in their school after a bomb goes off must fight to survive while also discovering who among them is the bomber in this provocative new thriller from the author of the New York Times bestselling Testing Trilogy. Perfect for fans of This Is Where It Ends. A congressman's daughter who has to be perfect. A star quarterback with a secret. A guy who's tired of being ignored. A clarinet player who's done trying to fit in. An orphaned rebel who wants to teach someone a lesson. A guy who wants people to see him, not his religion. They couldn't be more different, but before the morning's over, they'll all be trapped in a school that's been rocked by a bombing. When they hear that someone inside is the bomber, they'll also be looking to one another for answers. Told from multiple perspectives, Time Bomb will keep readers guessing about who the bomber could be--and what motivated such drastic action.

Jordan Velsor didn’t want to need anyone. After dumping her cheating fiancé, caring for her sick dad, and nearly being crushed along with her car during a violent storm, she’s pretty much at her breaking point. If anyone needs some luck, it's Jordan, but the last thing she wants is gorgeous Nick Rinaldi, her landlord’s grandson, hovering over her while she nurses a bad cold. The wounded Navy doctor seems too good to be true... which means he probably is. Nick Rinaldi left the Navy broken and adrift, wondering if he would ever practice medicine again. When his grandparents' tenant is almost killed by a falling tree during a storm, he discovers Jordan is not only in shock, but suffering from pneumonia. Not one to miss an opportunity to play white knight, Nick arrives at her cottage to take care of her during the storm... But the lovely teacher has a a fierce independent streak, and as he learns more about her, he wants to do more than merely help. Can Jordan and Nick let go of their separate pasts and seize their future together?

Between the ongoing recession, the collapse of the housing market, and the crumbling of the middle class, many Americans are left wondering what happened to the American Dream. They’re also wondering what happened to their money. For millions of people, just making ends meet is challenging enough. So when it comes to saving and investing, it seems like the deck is stacked against you. The bad news is that you’re right. If the economy were a card game, the dealer would hold all the aces. But the good news is that you don’t have to play by the house rules. Renowned for his unvarnished insight on finance and investing, money manager Mark Grimaldi has a reputation for telling it like it is. He doesn’t sugarcoat the negative and he doesn’t have time for the financial industry hype that leads to bad investing decisions. Here’s the truth: the economy is in bad shape, but that doesn’t mean you can’t save responsibly, invest profitably, and retire comfortably. In The Money Compass, Grimaldi teams up with accounting professor G. Stevenson Smith to offer a wealth of smart investing advice for today’s investor. This plain-English guide to good investing presents practical strategies and actionable advice for safely navigating today’s financial markets. It shows you how to manage credit and debt responsibly, how to use the tax code to your advantage, which kinds of trendy investing advice you should ignore, and where to put your money for solid returns. In addition, the authors explore the hard macroeconomic realities that explain how we got here and where we’re going next. They look at the primary causes and consequences of the recession, the housing crash, the slow collapse of government programs, long-term unemployment, and how it all impacts you and your money. Plus, Grimaldi and Stevenson forecast the next big economic shock and show you how to profit from it. The economic game is rigged to keep you poor and keep Wall Street rich. So it’s time to write your own rules. Whether you’re white collar, blue collar, or somewhere in between, The Money Compass gives you the commonsense guidance you need to chart a course to a comfortable financial future—even in the roughest economic waters.

An inventive, mordantly funny novel about love, marriage, stalkers, and the indignities of parenthood In quaint Haddonfield, New Jersey, Tess is about to marry Gabe in her childhood home. Her mother, Helen, is in a panic about the guests, who include warring exes, crying babies, jealous girlfriends, and too many psychiatrists. But the most difficult guest was never on the list at all: a woman in a wedding dress and a gas mask, armed with a rifle, a bomb trigger strapped to her arm. Lisa Zeidner's audacious novel Love Bomb begins as a hostage drama and blossoms into a far-reaching tale about the infinite varieties of passion and heartbreak. Who has offended this nutcase, and how? Does she seek revenge against the twice-divorced philanderer? Or is her agenda political—against the army general? Or the polygamous Muslim from Mali? While the warm, wise Helen attempts to bond with the masked woman and control the hysteria, the hostages begin to untangle what connects them to one another, and to their captor. But not until the SWAT team arrives does "the terrorist of love" unveil her real motives . . . Critics have praised Lisa Zeidner's prose for its "unforced edginess and power"; her fiction "shines with humor, wisdom, and poignancy." In her most masterful novel yet, Zeidner gives us a tough yet tender social comedy, a romance with guts, a serious frolic written out of deep affection for all that it skewers.

He jumped out of a Boeing 727 into the November chill of the Pacific Northwest in 1971. He was carrying $200,000 and a briefcase he said contained a bomb. No trace of the man known as D.B. Cooper has ever been found. Who was he? Where is he? Will the D. B.Cooper mystery ever be solved?