The #1 "New York Times"-bestselling author of "Crank" returns with a gripping, masterful novel, told in verse, that weaves a riveting story about a teenage girl who is raised in a fundamentally religious yet abusive family.

The director of the famed Bodleian Libraries at Oxford narrates the global history of the willful destruction—and surprising survival—of recorded knowledge over the past three millennia. Libraries and archives have been attacked since ancient times but have been especially threatened in the modern era. Today the knowledge they safeguard faces purposeful destruction and willful neglect; deprived of funding, libraries are fighting for their very existence. Burning the Books recounts the history that brought us to this point. Richard Ovenden describes the deliberate destruction of knowledge held in libraries and archives from ancient Alexandria to contemporary Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets in Iraq to the destroyed immigration documents of the UK Windrush generation. He examines both the motivations for these acts—political, religious, and cultural—and the broader themes that shape this history. He also looks at attempts to prevent and mitigate attacks on knowledge, exploring the efforts of librarians and archivists to preserve information, often risking their own lives in the process. More than simply repositories for knowledge, libraries and archives inspire and inform citizens. In preserving notions of statehood recorded in such historical documents as the Declaration of Independence, libraries support the state itself. By preserving records of citizenship and records of the rights of citizens as enshrined in legal documents such as the Magna Carta and the decisions of the US Supreme Court, they support the rule of law. In Burning the Books, Ovenden takes a polemical stance on the social and political importance of the conservation and protection of knowledge, challenging governments in particular, but also society as a whole, to improve public policy and funding for these essential institutions.

This provocative new work examines the years between the Nazi book fires and the publication of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953), a period when book burning captured the popular imagination. It explores how embedded the myths of book burning have become in our cultural history, and illustrates the enduring appeal of a great cleansing bonfire.

Jessica Bruderis a reporter for theOregonian.Her writing has also appeared in theNew York Times,theWashington Post,and theNew York Observer.She lives in Portland, Oregon.

'Personal inclination made me a historian. Personal encounter with public policy made me an activist.'

Uncovering class divisions, racial conflicts, and tangled emotions, this gritty, shocking novel of suspense heralds the arrival of a major new talent. Henning Juul is a veteran investigative crime reporter in Oslo, Norway. A horrific fire killed his six-year-old son, cut scars across his face, and ended his marriage, and on his first day back at the job after the terrible tragedy a body is discovered in one of the city’s public parks. A beautiful female college student has been stoned to death and buried up to her neck, her body left bloody and exposed. The brutality of the crime shakes the whole country, but despite his own recent trauma – and the fact that his ex-wife’s new boyfriend is also on the case - Henning is given the assignment. When the victim’s boyfriend, a Pakistani native, is arrested, Henning feels certain the man is innocent. This was not simply a Middle Eastern-style honor killing in the face of adultery – it was a far more complicated gesture, and one that will drag Henning into a darkness he’s never dreamed of.

One of the most shocking scandals in Northern Irish political history: originally a green-energy initiative, the Renewal Heat Incentive (RHI) or ‘cash-for-ash’ scheme saw Northern Ireland’s government pay £1.60 for every £1 of fuel the public burned in their wood-pellet boilers, leading to widespread abuse and ultimately the collapse of the power-sharing administration at Stormont. Revealing the wild incompetence of the Northern Ireland civil service and the ineptitude and serious abuses of power by some of those at the head of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), now propping up Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government and a major factor in the Brexit negotiations, this scandal exposed not only some of Northern Ireland’s most powerful figures but revealed problems that go to the very heart of how NI is governed. A riveting political thriller from the journalist who covered the controversy for over two years, Burned is the inside story of the shocking scandal that brought down a government.

In The Wood Burn Book, Instagram star Rachel Strauss (@woodburncorner) teaches you everything you’ll need to know to master your favorite new hobby: pyrography, or writing with fire. This essential guide opens with a brief background to the art of wood burning, a list of tools and how to use them, basic techniques that can be used over and over again, and even what to burn and how to be safe doing it. You will also find a detailed explanation of the process from start to finish, with patterns and frames, techniques for lettering and adding color, as well as dozens of projects ready for gifting, including picture frames, cutting boards, coasters, cards, wooden spoons, and jewelry. Above all, Strauss has created the book she wished she had when she first discovered pyrography: a simple guide that quickly gets the reader successfully burning. With the right tools and a little time, you'll be able to create meaningful handmade gifts without breaking the bank. Whether it’s to create a family name sign as a housewarming gift for newlyweds, or customize baby blocks for a new little one, wood burning is the versatile hobby that can be used time and time again to create memorable gifts for all of life’s occasions. In addition, wood burning is a practice in mindfulness, requiring patience and focus to awaken the senses and calm the mind. Mastering the art of writing with fire begins with the ability to follow a line. If you can trace, you can burn.

Was a monstrous killer brought to justice or an innocent mother condemned? On an April night in 1989, Jo Ann Parks survived a house fire that claimed the lives of her three small children. Though the fire at first seemed a tragic accident, investigators soon reported finding evidence proving that Parks had sabotaged wiring, set several fires herself, and even barricade her four-year-old son inside a closet to prevent his escape. Though she insisted she did nothing wrong, Jo Ann Parks received a life sentence without parole based on the power of forensic fire science that convincingly proved her guilt. But more than a quarter century later, a revolution in the science of fire has exposed many of the incontrovertible truths of 1989 as guesswork in disguise. The California Innocence Project is challenging Parks's conviction and the so-called science behind it, claiming that false assumptions and outright bias convicted an innocent mother of a crime that never actually happened. If Parks is exonerated, she could well be the "Patient Zero" in an epidemic of overturned guilty verdicts—but only if she wins. Can prosecutors dredge up enough evidence and roadblocks to make sure Jo Ann Parks dies in prison? No matter how her last-ditch effort for freedom turns out, the scenes of betrayal, ruin, and hope will leave readers longing for justice we can trust.

This unique reference provides a primary source for osteologists and the medical/legal community for the understanding of burned bone remains in forensic or archaeological contexts. It describes in detail the changes in human bone and soft tissues as a body burns at both the chemical and gross levels and provides an overview of the current procedures in burned bone study. Case studies in forensic and archaeological settings aid those interested in the analysis of burned human bodies, from death scene investigators, to biological anthropologists looking at the recent or ancient dead. - Includes the diagnostic patterning of color changes that give insight to the severity of burning, the positioning of the body, and presence (or absence) of soft tissues during the burning event - Chapters on bones and teeth give step-by-step recommendations for how to study and recognize burned hard tissues