A BRANCH FROM THE LIGHTNING TREE is centered around several key elements: 1. It features four texts and commentaries ? Welsh, Russian, Siberian and Norwegian myths that explore the process of leaving what is considered safe and predictable and journeying out into wild, uncertain areas of nature and the psyche in search of new insights. The four stories have at their center a man, woman, and adolescent. 2. A narrative of why the author gave up a large musical publishing deal with Warner Brothers to spend four years living in a tent in the wilds and over a decade facilitating wilderness rites-of-passage for others. 3. Shaw's eloquent insistence that without a renewed attention to myth and the initiation process we are only partially equipped to reestablish a complementary relationship with the living world. 4. The core of these stories are paradoxical in nature, far from the clumsily perceived ?hero' myths, and point towards Trickster, or Coyote, as a way of existing in a world ambivalent to the insights of what you could call traditional knowledge. A BRANCH FROM THE LIGHTNING TREE is unique in the field of myth and ritual in several ways: 1. It carries an ?in-the-field' narrative of several hundred men and women who have gone out into wild places to fast for four days and nights. Not in the Amazon, or in Mongolia, but in a place that is indigenous to them, that grounds the experience in the wider context of their lives, rather than a one-off event that can be hard to reconnect with. This is part of a growing mood to get to the bones of initiatory experience, rather than the cultural affectations. The stories illustrate both the grandeur and struggle of this often subtle process. 2. Unlike many of the big mythological sellers (i.e Bly's IRON JOHN or Pinkola Estes WOMEN WHO RUN WITH WOLVES), A BRANCH FROM THE LIGHTNING TREE is not a gender piece, but focuses on both men and women's movement into wildness as part of the bigger awareness of climate change and ecology. It presents the old stories as keys into any debate on these issues, that the ability to think metaphorically/mythologically loosens the grip of literalness, and can ?re-enchant' our perspectives. 3. As a wilderness teacher Shaw has noticed that the real point of crisis that is emerging is the return to community, rather than the time out in the wild. This is turning of rites-of-passage on its head: Shaw reasons that the rites-of-passage process requires three stages following an initial Call to the Soul: (i) Going out of the Village, and the severance from ordinary life and the stepping into the image-laden language of myth, story, ritual; (ii) Into the Forest, baring the soul to extraordinary forces, receiving the sacred wound, bonding with the living world; (iii) And Back Again, return to community, the performance of identity, and the confirmation in and of the Soul. A BRANCH FROM THE LIGHTNING TREE invokes Robert Graves work on the White Goddess, and the Crow poems of Ted Hughes-it is a combination of practical knowledge, imaginative insight and passionate storytelling that gives Shaw's book its persuasiveness and power. At times incantatory, at times novelistic and poetic, he writes as someone who has been to these places, undergone these trials and tested himself at the extremes of lived experience.

After surviving the tragic deaths of her parents, her baby sister, and a harrowing trek across the plains to Utah, it's no surprise that Maggie's nights are plagued by nightmares. But after years of harsh treatment by her foster family and memories that seem to hint at an unthinkable crime, Maggie is forced to strike out on her own to separate the facts from the lies.

The Lightning Tree, the third and final installment of the Bye For Now Trilogy, follows Callie moving through her arduous life. She finds balancing work, family, and friendship difficult, but nothing as difficult as the monumental challenge that lies ahead. One mishap at work and in a blink of an eye, everything changes. It doesn't seem fair, now that she's found a way to put all the pieces of her life together. Meanwhile, Maddie has struggled in her own life. She's survived addiction, and an abusive relationship, but can she survive watching her best friend go through this insurmountable struggle? Family and friends alike try to find hope in the darkness. Callie finds peace by entering a magical maze. A place to quiet her mind and be present. A place to wash away the worry, but will it be enough? Will Callie find the healing she needs at the lightning tree?

When U.S. Marshal Sam Begay first discovered the wolf hair clues, he never expected they would lead him to a string of murders. The Reservation deaths appeared accidental, random, and unrelated until he found a connection in an old High School yearbook. An ancient, Spanish gold coin he carried was part of the mystery, and it put his own life in danger as it drew him closer to an evil, malignant being called a skinwalker.

The Lightning Tree is a deeply moving and inspirational story of the Nolan Moss clan, a close-knit black family of fifteen souls bound together by love, living on the edge of existence, struggling to eke out a living, plowing the hard red clay on a small plot of ground in the isolated backwaters of Tallassee, Alabama. The head of the family is Charlie Nolan Moss, the patriarch, a devout man of strong character, proud, fiercely independent, and deeply spiritual. He is bound and determined by the grace of God to provide for and protect his family despite the ever present threats and challenges that are a part of everyday life in the racist and repressive atmosphere of the Jim Crow South. Yet in spite of all his efforts, vigilance, and prayers, bad things still happen.

This is a story of two young people who fall in love - and then life gets in the way. Ursula is part dreamer, part radical in the making. Raised in a matriarchal household by a CND-loving activist, she is impatient to begin a life of adventure. But this is Newcastle in the mid-80s where girls are getting permed and their dreams go no further than copping off down the Bigg Market. Then Ursula meets Jerry, a class warrior from the wrong side of town, intellectually hungry, erudite and ambitious. It is a meeting of bodies, souls, minds and ideals. Keen to pursue the road less travelled, Ursula heads to India while Jerry goes to Oxford and the promise of politics and power. But Ursula's family is clouded with secrets, and the past threatens to repeat itself. As Ursula searches for answers, she is soon drifting - and Jerry loses touch. What happens to young love when it is tested by real life? In this second novel from the acclaimed author of The Whole Wide Beauty, Emily Woof interweaves across generations asking us to question the nature of love in all its forms.

This "utterly spectacular" book weighs the impact modern medical technology has had on the author's life against the social and environmental costs inevitably incurred by the mining that makes such innovation possible (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises). What if a lifesaving medical device causes loss of life along its supply chain? That's the question Katherine E. Standefer finds herself asking one night after being suddenly shocked by her implanted cardiac defibrillator. In this gripping, intimate memoir about health, illness, and the invisible reverberating effects of our medical system, Standefer recounts the astonishing true story of the rare diagnosis that upended her rugged life in the mountains of Wyoming and sent her tumbling into a fraught maze of cardiology units, dramatic surgeries, and slow, painful recoveries. As her life increasingly comes to revolve around the internal defibrillator freshly wired into her heart, she becomes consumed with questions about the supply chain that allows such an ostensibly miraculous device to exist. So she sets out to trace its materials back to their roots. From the sterile labs of a medical device manufacturer in southern California to the tantalum and tin mines seized by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to a nickel and cobalt mine carved out of endemic Madagascar jungle, Lightning Flowers takes us on a global reckoning with the social and environmental costs of a technology that promises to be lifesaving but is, in fact, much more complicated. Deeply personal and sharply reported, Lightning Flowers takes a hard look at technological mythos, healthcare, and our cultural relationship to medical technology, raising important questions about our obligations to one another, and the cost of saving one life.

Winner of the 2023 MOONBEAM Gold Medal in the Young Adult - Mystery/Horror category. Perfect for fans of Stranger Things and A History of Wild Places, this is a "fast-paced, intriguing story that will likely appeal to young and older adults alike and keep them turning pages." -Kirkus Reviews Nature finally rises against humanity. Flora Reed discovers a lifeless body in her front yard the morning after the last day of her junior year of high school. Matters get worse when more people from her small town are found dead under mysterious circumstances and police take an interest in the boy next door, Carl. Flora is convinced that Carl is innocent. Instead, she suspects that the deaths are somehow connected to her younger sister Fauna's tragic accident a year earlier. What she learns changes everything, and she has to race against time to prevent the killings from spreading. Flora and a small group of friends soon find themselves at the onset of an apocalyptic battle between man and nature, with no one believing their story. The Lightning Tree is the first installment of The Natural Intelligence Revolution Trilogy. "Captivating! With lyrical prose and an engrossing combination of supernatural mystery and slow-burn romance, The Lightning Tree takes readers on an emotional journey as Flora Reed's dedication to her sister leads to a most unlikely discovery about her family's traumatic past and the future of the planet." -Amalie Jahn, author of Phoebe Unfired and The Next to Last Mistake

Unfettered is an anthology of original fantasy fiction by some of the very biggest names in fantasy fiction, and it also features deleted scenes from A MEMORY OF LIGHT, the final book in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. This collection is not only a fantastic anthology in its own right, but it's a testament to the generosity found in the science fiction and fantasy community. When author Shawn Speakman fell seriously ill and was unable to pay his medical bills, that's when New York Times bestselling author Terry Brooks offered to donate a short story that Shawn could sell to help alleviate those bills. He also suggested he ask the same of his other writer friends, and Unfettered is the incredible result. Twenty-four tales comprise this superb collection, and as the title suggests, the writers were free to contribute whatever they wished. Table of contents: - Foreword by Patrick Rothfuss - Introduction: On Becoming Unfettered - Imaginary Friends by Terry Brooks - How Old Holly Came To Be by Patrick Rothfuss - The Old Scale Game by Tad Williams - Game of Chance by Carrie Vaughn - The Martyr of the Roses by Jacqueline Carey - Mudboy by Peter V. Brett - The Sound of Broken Absolutes by Peter Orullian - The Coach with Big Teeth by R.A. Salvatore - Keeper of Memory by Todd Lockwood - Heaven in a Wild Flower by Blake Charlton - Dogs by Daniel Abraham - The Chapel Perilous by Kevin Hearne - Select Mode by Mark Lawrence - All the Girls Love Michael Stein by David Anthony Durham - Strange Rain by Jennifer Bosworth - Nocturne by Robert V.S. Redick - Unbowed by Eldon Thompson - In Favour with Their Stars by Naomi Novik - River of Souls by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson - The Jester by Michael J. Sullivan - The Duel by Lev Grossman - Walker and the Shade of Allanon by Terry Brooks - The Unfettered Knight by Shawn Speakman - The Twilight Dragon by Shawn Speakman (bonus story for UK edition)

An iconic novel from a rebellious and politically active author, this story follows Jack, a sculptor and blacksmith, who idolizes the Biblical Samson as a figure of man’s independence. Deciding to carve a mahogany tribute to Samson, however, becomes a more complicated affair when Jack’s wife leaves him for another man. The end result is a sculpture of a blinded Samson leaning on a young boy for support. As life imitates art, Jack is struck by lightning and left blind, forcing him to rely on his friends to survive. After leading him on a journey to discover just how reliant on humanity he really is, Jack’s blindness ultimately drives him to his final act of independence: his own suicide.