An ambitious first novel set against the backdrop of the unravelling Portuguese and British empires

Widely considered a jewel of contemporary travel literature, Equator is Thurston Clarke’s magnificent, witty account of his solo journey along the earth’s torrid midsection—a grueling twenty-five-thousand-mile odyssey that spanned three years and as many continents. His was a perilous trek across an almost surreal landscape—where a first-class hotel appeared smack in the middle of a leper colony and a one-time Pacific island paradise stood as a hideous, bomb-blasted testament to nuclear folly. Along the way Clarke encountered the world’s heaviest rat, the earth’s highest volcano, and the king of a Micronesian island, wearing flip-flops and a novelty T-shirt. Throughout, Clarke’s unflagging sense of humor and wonder make Equator a classic of its kind.

In this brilliant mix of political journalism and travel writing, Helen Winternitz and fellow journalist Timothy Phelps witness what few Westerners have: life in the ecologically rich but financially impoverished American-backed dictatorship of Zaire, the former Belgian Congo.

An original, inventive--and visually stunning--exploration of place, identity, language, and experience from the acclaimed poet, novelist, and sound performer. GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE WINNER QWF A.M. KLEIN PRIZE FOR POETRY FINALIST The poems in Kaie Kellough's third collection drift between South and North America. They seek their ancestry in Georgetown, Guyana, in the Amazon Rainforest, and in the Atlantic Ocean. They haunt the Canadian Prairie. They recall the 1980s in the suburbs of Calgary, and they reflect on the snowed-in, bricked-in boroughs of post-referendum Montréal. They puzzle their language together from the natural world and from the works of Caribbean and Canadian writers. They reassemble passages about seed catalogues, about origins, about finding a way in the world, about black ships sailing across to land. They struggle to explain a state of being hemisphered, of being present here while carrying a heartbeat from elsewhere, and they map the distances travelled.

The Equator has no tangible existence beyond maps, but yet it lives, a hugely significant symbol in the minds and hearts of navigators, travellers, poets, madmen and dreamers of all eras. It is the world's girdle, its 24,000 miles or 38,640 kilometres passing through the Ecuadorian Andes and the mist-shrouded Ruwenzori Mountains, running along the courses of both the Amazon and the Congo rivers, and cutting through Africa's vast Lake Victoria, and the coral atolls and volcanic hulk of Krakatoa, in the Indian Ocean. The eminent Italian historian Gianni Guadalupi, and writer Antony Shugaar, have put together this inspirational collection of amazing equatorial adventures. Many have responded to the challenge of the Line, setting out to discover the mysterious source of the Nile, the perils of the Doldrums ('the living death in life' Coleridge called it') or the powerful force of El Niño, the quest for a lost Eden and for El Dorado. Others have sought a new life, like Elisa the 'nude Baroness' of the Galapagos, or Robert Louis Stevenson, for whom the fearsome King Tembinok built at Latitude Zero in the Gilbert Islands, an enclave named Equator City. So many grand expeditions and projects, so many great explorers and eccentrics, make this anthology a joyous voyage of discovery.

In the dying days of the Russian Empire, a Scottish sound recordist disappears into the Caucasus mountains; a former hero of the Algerian resistance experiments with traditional Chinese medicine; a French anatomical artist models disfigured soldiers returned from the Crimea. In 1960s Poland, a grandmother hatches a plan when a Hollywood star comes to town; while during the war in Vietnam, fate and superstition guide a Filipino cook toward a new vocation; and in Weimar Berlin, a young man's efforts to rehabilitate himself are derailed by a charismatic artist. Confronting, moving, and brilliantly original, Kyra Giorgi's fascinating stories loop through time and place to delve into the lives of those caught at the articulation points of history. Deftly balancing the personal and the political with the historical and the medical, they explore the impact of conflict, the ethics of treatment and care, and the lengths to which we will go to preserve who we are. [Subject: Fiction, Short Stories]

"""The Earth is wearing a belt"" is an age-old visual device teachers have used to explain the equator. In this volume, young readers will expand their comprehension of this important concept. With an understanding of the equator comes a grasping of the rotation of the Earth, climate, weather, and many other age-appropriate science concepts. Clean, accessible art on every spread, including diagrams, maps, and full-color photographs, help readers grasp these curriculum topics. That important main line of latitude we call the equator is made familiar through clean text and graphics in a way that every elementary reader is sure to understand."

In This 88-page edition: ANCIENT MYSTERIES SEEKING THE “LOST” EQUATOR Ice-Age-Era Artifact of a Destroyed Civilization? BY JONATHON A. PERRIN THE PARANORMAL TUNNELING THROUGH TIME Could Visitors from the Past & the Future Be Here After All? BY MARTIN RUGGLES THE UNEXPLAINED VANISHING ACTS Tracking the Strange Disappearances of People & Animals Worldwide BY WILLIAM B. STOECKER UFOs U.S. FORCES VS. UFOS BEFORE ROSWELL Could Forgotten Accounts, Force a Look at Evidence Once Considered Taboo? BY FRANK JOSEPH THE UNEXPLAINED GIANTS IN THE PAPERS Lost Details of the Senora Skeleton Finds BY JAMES VIERA & HUGH NEWMAN CONSCIOUSNESS CHURCH ENERGY What Mystic Science Were the Builders Practicing? BY CHARLES SHAHAR THE OTHER SIDE “THE WAY” OF ST. JAMES Was It Sacred, or a Cover for the Profane? BY STEVEN SORA ANCIENT WISDOM QUEST FOR A GOLDEN AGE Have We Been Here Before? BY GEOFFREY ASHE THE OTHER SIDE THE DIMENSIONS OF INSPIRATION The Strange Case of Victor Hugo Yet Unsolved BY JOHN CHAMBERS ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE REALITY Fundamentally Speaking–What Is It Anyway? BY ROBERT M. SCHOCH, Ph.D. THE FORBIDDEN ARCHAEOLOGIST FORBIDDEN ARCHAEOLOGY AND CONSCIOUSNESS BY MICHAEL A.CREMO ASTROLOGY SNOW WHITE, THE GOBLIN, FAROUT And Other Denizens of the Outer Solar System BY JULIE LOAR PUBLISHER’S LETTER THE SUN’ A CRYSTAL IN THE MAKING? BY J. DOUGLAS KENYON

Based on long-term field research carried out over more than 15 years, Beneath the Equator examines the changing shape of male homosexuality and the emergence of diverse and vibrant gay communities in urban Brazil. Drawing on detailed ethnographic description of multiple sexual worlds organized around street cruising and impersonal sex, male prostitution, transgender performances, gay commercial markets and establishments, gay rights activism and AIDS service provision, Richard Parker examines the changing sexual identities, cultures and communities that have taken shape in Brazil in recent years. Also includes 15 maps.