* Inspirational, dramatic and extraordinary - the autobiography of a Somalian nomad circumcised at 5, sold in marriage at 13, who became an American model and is now at the young age of 30, the UN spokeswoman against circumcision

Fashion model, UN ambassador and courageous spirit, Waris Dirie is a remarkable woman, born into a traditional family of tribal desert nomads in Somalia. She told her story - enduring, at five years old, the ancient and savage custom of female circumcision; running away at twelve on foot through the desert in order to escape an arranged marriage; being discovered by Terence Donovan as she worked as a cleaner in London; and becoming a top fashion model - in her book, the worldwide bestseller, Desert Flower. Although Waris Dirie fled her homeland, she never forgot the country and culture that moulded her. The world of famine and violence, where women have no voice and no place - the very world that nearly destroyed her also gave her the tools to survive. She traces the roots of her courage, resilience and humour back to her motherland, and most particularly to her mother. Desert Dawn is the story of that return and a testimony to the stubborn fact that you can love something dearly and yet not love all that it represents. Desert Dawn is about coming home.

'A diary is an assassin's cloak which we wear when we stab a comrade in the back with a pen', wrote William Soutar in 1934. But a diary is also a place for recording everyday thoughts and special occasions, private fears and hopeful dreams. The Assassin's Cloak gathers together some of the most entertaining and inspiring entries for each day of the year, as writers ranging from Queen Victoria to Andy Warhol, Samuel Pepys to Adrian Mole, pen their musings on the historic and the mundane. Spanning centuries and international in scope, this peerless anthology pays tribute to a genre that is at once the most intimate and public of all literary forms. This new updated edition is published to mark the twentieth anniversary of the book's original publication.

Includes four comic strips featuring Moomin, a teenage troll who looks like a hippopotamus and passively deals with life's troubles; including "Moomin's Winter Follies," "Moomin Mamma's Maid," "Moomin Builds a House," and "Moomin Begins a New Life."

"The Brooke-Rose Omnibus brings together four unexpected novels: Out, a science-fiction vision of a world surviving catastrophe; Such, in which a three-minute heart massage is developed into a poetic and funny narrative; Between, a glittering experience of the multiplicity of language; and Thru, a novel in which text and typography assume a life of their own. Linking them all is wit, inventiveness and the sharply focused intellegence of Christine Brooke-Rose, a great European humanist writer."--BOOK JACKET.

National parks are different from other federal lands in the United States. Beginning in 1872 with the establishment of Yellowstone, they were largely set aside to preserve for future generations the most spectacular and inspirational features of the country, seeking the best representative examples of major ecosystems such as Yosemite, geologic forms such as the Grand Canyon, archaeological sites such as Mesa Verde, and scenes of human events such as Gettysburg. But one type of habitat--the desert--fell short of that goal in American eyes until travel writers and the Automobile Age began to change that perception. As the Park Service began to explore the better-known Mojave and Colorado deserts of southern California during the 1920s for a possible desert park, many agency leaders still carried the same negative image of arid lands shared by many Americans--that they are hostile and largely useless. But one wealthy woman--Minerva Hamilton Hoyt, from Pasadena--came forward, believing in the value of the desert, and convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish a national monument that would protect the unique and iconic Joshua trees and other desert flora and fauna. Thus was Joshua Tree National Monument officially established in 1936, with the area later expanded in 1994 when it became Joshua Tree National Park. Since 1936, the National Park Service and a growing cadre of environmentalists and recreationalists have fought to block ongoing proposals from miners, ranchers, private landowners, and real estate developers who historically have refused to accept the idea that any desert is suitable for anything other than their consumptive activities. To their dismay, Joshua Tree National Park, even with its often-conflicting land uses, is more popular today than ever, serving more than one million visitors per year who find the desert to be a place worthy of respect and preservation. Distributed for George Thompson Publishing

An extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, in the time of a dying sun, when our present culture is no longer even a memory. Severian, a torturer's apprentice, is exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his prisoners. Ordered to the distant city of Thrax, armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est, Severian must make his way across the perilous, ruined landscape of this far-future Urth. But is his finding of the mystical gem, the Claw of the Conciliator, merely an accident, or does Fate have a grander plans for Severian the torturer . . . ? This edition contains the first two volumes of this four volume novel, The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator.

The Complete Bel Dame Apocrypha Series by Kameron Hurley. Containing God's War (2011), Infidel (2011), and Rapture (2012).

An extra-value collection featuring two hundred witty, punny, Sunday crosswords from Tinseltown's Bursztyn & Tunick.