When Zeina was born, the civil war in Lebanon had been going on for six years, so it's just a normal part of life for her and her parents and her little brother. The city of Beirut is cut in two, separated by bricks and sandbags and threatened by snipers and shelling. East Beirut is for Christians, and West Beirut is for Muslims. When Zeina's parents don't return one afternoon from a visit to the other half of the city, and the bombing grows ever closer, the neighbors in her apartment house create a world indoors for Zeina and her brother where it's comfy and safe, where they can share cooking lessons and games and gossip. Together they try to make it through a dramatic day in the one place they hoped they would always be safehome. Zeina Abirached, born into a Lebanese Christian family in 1981, has collected her childhood recollections of Beirut in a warm story about the strength of family and community.

An account of a remarkable life - of love, courage and survival in the dark days of World War II. Dorothy Eva Ferreira grew up on a remote farm in South Africa, but in 1930, she met and married Engelbert, Count Praschma, Baron von Bilkau, an adventuring German aristocrat. Upon the death of his father in 1933, Engelbert took his wife and children to Germany to claim his rightful inheritance - only to be rebuffed by his status-conscious siblings. The family castle and estates were held in a fideicommiss which stated that the oldest son would be the sole heir. But the family maneuvered to have Engelbert disinherited as he was deemed a black sheep, an irresponsible profligate who married an African peasant while his younger brother had married a princess. The war raging about them, Dorothy and her children found refuge with an aunt and uncle, Count and Countess Stolberg, in Czechoslovakia. The aristocrats soon found it useful to have someone around who knew how to gather berries... how to slaughter a chicken... how to stand up to wave after wave of overbearing Russian soldiers and above all was not German. Her only proof: a small tattered South African flag and stamps of King George on her marriage certificate. In the horrific aftermath of the war, she retrieved her small children from distant boarding schools... and missing relatives from Soviet labor camps. In a world gone mad, she lived by the words, "My heart must never be too small for a woman." *** 31 January, 1941 I know that Engelbert got into financial trouble. He is accused of arms dealing and the family said he was a difficult case but why did they let him be taken to Leubus, this so-called sanatorium where people who are not useful to "the magnificent Third Reich" are sent. Is it possible that the family actually handed him over to the Nazis because he was such a thorn in their sides? Why did his sister Elisabeth who works for the military tell me, ten days ago, heartlessly, that as Engelbert is going to die soon the only thing for me is to go back to Africa and leave the children here to be adopted by suitable families? Leave my children? Never.

Eleanor "Groovy" Robinson loves cooking and plans to go to culinary school just as soon as she's old enough. But even Groovy's thoughtfully—planned menus won't fix the things that start to go wrong the year she turns eleven—suddenly, her father is in jail, her best friend's long-absent mother reappears, and the swallows that make their annual migration to her hometown arrive surprisingly early. As Groovy begins to expect the unexpected, she learns about the importance of forgiveness, understands the complex stories of the people around her, and realizes that even an earthquake can't get in the way of a family that needs to come together. Kathryn Fitzmaurice's lovely debut novel is distinctively Californian in its flavor. Her rich characters and strong sense of place feel both familiar and fresh at first meeting—and worth revisiting, again and again.

From the bestselling author of The Robin, The Wren and The Twelve Birds of Christmas. With around 700,000 breeding pairs, the swallow is one of the most familiar birds in Britain. Though we consider the swallow to be 'our' bird, we also share this beloved creature with millions of others across the globe. Whilst we see it on a daily basis for half the year, the swallow then flies south to Africa, living on only in our memory in the long, dark winter. In The Swallow Stephen Moss documents a year of observing the swallow close to home and in the field to shed light on the secret life of this extraordinary bird. We trace the swallow's life cycle and journey, including the epic 12,000-mile round trip it takes every year, to enable it to enjoy a life of almost eternal sunshine, and the key part the swallow plays in our traditional and popular culture. With beautiful illustrations throughout, this captivating year-in-the-life biography reveals the hidden secrets of this charismatic and beautiful bird. PRAISE FOR STEPHEN MOSS: 'A superb naturalist and writer' Chris Packham 'Inspired, friendly and blessed with apparently limitless knowledge' Peter Marren 'Moss has carved out an enviable niche as a chronicler of the natural world' Daily Mail

The New York Times–bestselling author of H is for Hawk explores the human relationship to the natural world in this “dazzling” essay collection (Wall Street Journal). In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.

These stories are a wonderful way for children to explore one of nature's most fascinating mysteries--the instinctive compulsion for animals to migrate over large distances. With poetic text and stunning illustrations, these tales evoke the majestic environments that each animal inhabits. Two tiny swallows, Skimmer and Sweet Claw, have flown over a long distance to raise their young brood in the exact same nest they built last year. Now it is time for them to leave the cold, autumnal winds of northern Europe and return to the warmth and plenty of South Africa.

Set in Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul, this extraordinary novel "puts a human face on the suffering inflicted by the Taliban" (San Francisco Chronicle), taking readers into the seemingly divergent lives of two couples—and depicting with compassion and exquisite details the mentality of Islamic fundamentalists and the complexities of the Muslim world. Mohsen comes from a family of wealthy shopkeepers whom the Taliban has destroyed; Zunaira, his wife, exceedingly beautiful, was once a brilliant teacher and is now no longer allowed to leave her home without an escort or covering her face. Intersecting their world is Atiq, a prison keeper, a man who has sincerely adopted the Taliban ideology and struggles to keep his faith, and his wife, Musarrat, who once rescued Atiq and is now dying of sickness and despair. Desperate, exhausted Mohsen wanders through Kabul when he is surrounded by a crowd about to stone an adulterous woman. Numbed by the hysterical atmosphere and drawn into their rage, he too throws stones at the face of the condemned woman buried up to her waist. With this gesture the lives of all four protagonists move toward their destinies. Yasmina Khadra brings readers into the hot, dusty streets of Kabul and offers them an unflinching but compassionate insight into a society that violence and hypocrisy have brought to the edge of despair.

Known as heralds of spring and beautiful, elegant flyers, swallows are among the most beloved of familiar birds. Because they return with the spring, swallows, as Angela Turner explains, have long been associated with the renewal of life, love, fidelity, and fertility, while their ability to travel incredible distances has given them associations with freedom and speed. That freedom, however, hasn’t kept them from becoming familiar figures in towns and cities. They often seem to even seek out human company—for example, barn swallows are known for nesting in our buildings and purple martins in our back yards. Destruction of their natural habitat, however, has proved dangerous to some species of swallow, and recent years have seen some populations dwindling to the point of near-extinction. Turner outlines the reasons for these declines as part of her engaging account of the natural and cultural history of this beloved bird.

The Barn Swallow is a familiar and popular bird throughout the world. It is one of the most widely distributed bird species, breeding in North America, Europe, Asia and North Africa and wintering in South America, southern Africa, southern Asia and even northern Australia. Its habit of nesting close to human habitation has made this elegant bird a part of farmyard and village life and a welcome herald of spring. This book examines all aspects of the life of this endearing bird, with chapters on its flying skills and feeding habits, mate choice, breeding strategies, nest sites, eggs and incubation, nestling rearing, productivity and survival, migratory behaviour and population dynamics. It also considers changes in populations and behaviour in relation to intensive agriculture and climate change. The Barn Swallow is both engaging and authoritative; birdwatchers will enjoy amazing insights into the life of the species, such as the importance of tail feathers when finding a mate, or the sinister way that some birds kill of the chicks of rivals. Academic scholars will appreciate the book's broad overview of current research on this species.

Between the 1890s and the Second World War, twenty-five million people traveled from the densely populated North China provinces of Shandong and Hebei to seek employment in the growing economy of China's three northeastern provinces, the area known as Manchuria. This was the greatest population movement in modern Chinese history and ranks among the largest migrations in the world. Swallows and Settlers is the first comprehensive study of that migration. Drawing methods from their respective fields of economics and history, the coauthors focus on both the broad quantitative outlines of the movement and on the decisions and experiences of individual migrants and their families. In readable narrative prose, the book lays out the historical relationship between North China and the Northeast (Manchuria) and concludes with an examination of ongoing population movement between these regions since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.