Sunshine and nature: California as a beacon of better health Since the mid-19th century, the idea of California has lured many waves of migrants. Here, writer and editor Lyra Kilston explores a less examined attraction: the region's promise of better health. From ailing families seeking a miracle climate cure to iconoclasts and dropouts pursuing a remedy to societal corruption, the abundance of sunshine and untamed nature around the small but growing Los Angeles area offered them refuge and inspiration. In the wild west of medical practice, eclectic nature-cure treatments gained popularity. The source for this trend can be traced to the mountains and cold-water springs of Europe, where early sanatoriums were built to offer the natural cures of sun, air, water and diet; this sanatorium architecture was exported to the West Coast from Central Europe, and began to impact other types of building. Sun Seekers: The Cure of Californiaconstitutes the second volume of The Illustrated America(following 2016's Old Glory), Atelier Éditions' ongoing series excavating America's cultural past. Lyra Kilstonis a writer and editor focused on architecture, history, design and urbanism. Her work has appeared in Artforum, Los Angeles Review of Books, Time, Wiredand Hyperallergic, among other publications. She was on the curatorial team of Overdrive: LA Constructs the Future, 1940-1990, exhibited at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the National Building Museum.

** From Emmy Award-winning writer Rachel McRady comes a vital, illuminating debut novel about memory, storytelling and a broken family uniting in the face of a terrifying crisis. ** Six-year-old Gracie Lynn is perpetually curious and bighearted. Convinced she knows how to save her beloved grandfather John from the 'worm' that is eating his brain - a metaphor her mother once used to explain John's dementia and sundown syndrome - Gracie helps him break out of his nursing home, and the two disappear together on a quest to chase the sun. But what's an adventure for Gracie is a nightmare scenario for her estranged parents, LeeAnn and Dan. There's no way to predict where John might have taken their young daughter, or if he's capable of keeping her safe. An emotionally resonant novel, Sun Seekers artfully explores the truths of parenthood, the ways in which we sometimes hurt those we love most and the universal experience of deep loss - even when the person is still here. Perfect for fans of Fredrik Backman, Clare Pooley, Mark Haddon and Nicholas Sparks, as well as the hit TV series Parenthood and This Is Us PRAISE FOR SUN SEEKERS 'A heartwrenching tribute to familial trauma, guilt and loss, Sun Seekers makes for a captivating, beautiful holiday read' - Daily Mail 'In her impactful debut, Rachel McRady explores the intricate dynamics of a fractured family. Through multiple perspectives, she paints a poignant portrait of the complexities of relationships that resonate with us all' - Jo Piazza, author of We Are Not Like Them 'A vivid and often wise exploration of grief, told through the lens of alternating narrators... Sun Seekers explores how we grieve and who we love, despite our struggles to maintain a brave front in the aftermath of great loss' - Jaimee Wriston, author of How Not to Drown 'Sun Seekers is my favorite type of novel: beautifully written prose delivering deep truths about family and the nature of grief. I absolutely loved it. An incredible debut by a writer to watch' - Brenda Janowitz, author of The Grace Kelly Dress 'Rachel McRady's debut novel depicts the fabric of family dynamics in the voices of well-developed engaging characters. The emotional connections across multi-generations are genuine and kept me turning pages until the finale' - Suzanne Leopold, Suzy Approved Book Reviews 'Magnificent... A beautiful tribute to the suffering and hard-earned growth of these characters' - Booklist

Whit is different. Not only is she an outcast at school, but she has an alter ego, Dusty, who embodies the transgender side of who Whit really is inside. She finds an unlikely companion in Danny, also an outcast, who comes out to Whit as gay. However, there seems to be something more than friendship brewing between the two. Their art teacher Mr. Jay tries to help them come to terms with who they both are, but will their relationship be able to overcome the hurdles created by being themselves while at school? Everyone is looking for a place under the sun, but can Whit and Danny find their own sunshine amidst the coming storms?

At the end of a long and useful life, Penelope Keeling's prized possession is The Shell Seekers, painted by her father, and symbolizing her unconventional life, from bohemian childhood to wartime romance. When her grown children learn their grandfather's work is now worth a fortune, each has an idea as to what Penelope should do. But as she recalls the passions, tragedies, and secrets of her life, she knows there is only one answer...and it lies in her heart, in this beloved Cornwall novel from Rosamunde Pilcher.

A groundbreaking argument about the link between autism and ingenuity. Why can humans alone invent? In The Pattern Seekers, Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen makes a case that autism is as crucial to our creative and cultural history as the mastery of fire. Indeed, Baron-Cohen argues that autistic people have played a key role in human progress for seventy thousand years, from the first tools to the digital revolution. How? Because the same genes that cause autism enable the pattern seeking that is essential to our species's inventiveness. However, these abilities exact a great cost on autistic people, including social and often medical challenges, so Baron-Cohen calls on us to support and celebrate autistic people in both their disabilities and their triumphs. Ultimately, The Pattern Seekers isn't just a new theory of human civilization, but a call to consider anew how society treats those who think differently.

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.

Katie Cotugno meets The Bridges of Madison County in a magnetic tale about summer love that stays with you long after the seasons change. Rose Darrow never wanted to spend her life working on her family’s farm. But when her family is rocked by an unexpected tragedy she has no choice but to put her plans for the future—and dreams of escaping her small town—on hold. Bodhi Lowell left home as a kid and hasn’t looked back. Years of working farm jobs has given him the one thing he wants most: freedom to travel without answering to anyone. He’s already looking past his job at Darrow Farm and plans on leaving in September—until he meets Rose. Neither Rose nor Bodhi can deny the sparks flying between them, but with the end of summer looming, they must decide if it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. . . .

Gene Wolfe's Return to the Whorl is the third volume, after On Blue's Waters and In Green's Jungles, of his ambitious SF trilogy The Book of the Short Sun . . . It is again narrated by Horn, who has embarked on a quest in search of the heroic leader Patera Silk. Horn has traveled from his home on the planet Blue, reached the mysterious planet Green, and visited the great starship, the Whorl and even, somehow, the distant planet Urth. But Horn's identity has become ambiguous, a complex question embedded in the story, whose telling is itself complex, shifting from place to place, present to past. Perhaps Horn and Silk are now one being. Return to the Whorl brings Wolfe's major new fiction, The Book of the Short Sun, to a strange and seductive climax. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, American cities began to go dark. Hulking new buildings overspread blocks, pollution obscured the skies, and glass and smog screened out the health-giving rays of the sun. Doctors fed anxities about these new conditions with claims about a rising tide of the "diseases of darkness," especially rickets and tuberculosis. In American Sunshine, Daniel Freund tracks the obsession with sunlight from those bleak days into the twentieth century. Before long, social reformers, medical professionals, scientists, and a growing nudist movement proffered remedies for America’s new dark age. Architects, city planners, and politicians made access to sunlight central to public housing and public health. and entrepreneurs, dairymen, and tourism boosters transformed the pursuit of sunlight and its effects into a commodity. Within this historical context, Freund sheds light on important questions about the commodification of health and nature and makes an original contribution to the histories of cities, consumerism, the environment, and medicine.