The story of Greenstone is loosely based on the authors' own birth family, taking the romantic and legendary - and therefore more palatable - parts and making them into a novel. To the large family, the crippled father with a long heritage, and the mother at war with her employers, Ashton-Warner adds a Māori princess and all the myth and legend she brings with her.

A desperate mother spirits away her infant son, seemingly drawn (chased, perhaps?) to the small English village of Thornyhill. She ends up on the doorstep of old Bartlemy, a curious man who has lived on the forested land for as long as anyone can remember–and who comes to believe that the child is destined for great things. . . . While growing up under Bartlemy’s protective eye, Nathan Ward senses something else watching him, a shift of shadows in the surrounding Darkwood. Then pieces of his dreams begin to come to life. A man he saved from the ocean washes ashore on the television news. A greenish stone cup set with jewels that has haunted his visions sounds eerily like one lost by the Thorn family centuries ago–a cup that has recently made its way back into the hands of the village’s last living ancestor. Yet when Nathan learns the chalice may have come from another world, a land with bloodstained moons and a toxic sun, he knows he is destined to play a part in something beyond his most vivid imagination. But why is the cup here, and what could it possibly want with a teenage boy and a sleepy town of villagers full of tall tales? With the help of his best friend, Hazel, Nathan must figure out why he’s been chosen–and for what purpose. Even if it means traveling deeper each night into dreams, into lands, into legends that both terrify and mesmerize him. The Greenthorn Grail is the first novel of a thrilling new trilogy, tracing a boy’s journey–a quest rife with magic, wonder, and forces as dark as midnight.

In this story Alice Walker teaches that our love for family and friiends brings us the most powerful peace and happiness of all.

In 1979, a team of investigators working for a magazine based in the Midlands of England followed a trail of cryptic clues to discover a hidden green gemstone once possessed by Mary Queen of Scots and a secret society called The Order of Meonia. Lost for over three-and-a-half centuries, the stone was said to hold ancient supernatural power. When the relic was taken to the offices of the magazine, an old Victorian house in the English town of Wolverhampton, inexplicable events, witnessed by dozens of observers, began to occur. -An unexplained dense, incense-smelling smoke filled the entire building each night as darkness fell. -The mysterious sound of footsteps, eerie noises and unearthly voices drove terrified visitors away. -Objects began to move and be thrown around, seemingly of their own volition, and an odious blue, gelatinous substance oozed from the walls. -An ominous, dark, faceless figure appeared and disappeared before the very eyes of those involved. -The sleeping bag of a member of the team spontaneously combusted as he slept in the building overnight. -Ultimately, nine people stood witness to hellish, unearthly cries, and bright balls of fiery light exploding over a nearby wood, when the awesome power of the stone was finally unleashed. The Green Stone is not only a spellbinding real-life historical detective story, but one of the most extraordinary true tales of the paranormal ever told. Augmented with four dozen additional, previously unpublished illustrations and photographs, this special 40th anniversary edition has been revised and updated and includes a new introduction by Graham Phillips. "One of the most remarkable true stories I have ever read." Weekend "If you only read one book in your life, read this one." Psychic News "A thrilling paranormal adventure." Today

A study on the Bellingwe Greenstone Belt, presenting the stratigraphy of the belt, its structure and tectonic setting, the sedimentology of what may be a rift basin, the geochemistry of the freshest Archaean komatiites yet found, and models of the evolution of the region.

Archean Greenstone Belts