The Armchair Book of Gardens is a collection of indiviual essays focused on understanding gardens in a different light/perspective. The book concentrates on the emotional, social, spiritual, and politicial aspects of the garden.

In the tradition of A Civil Action—this true story of a North Carolina outdoorsman who teams up with his Appalachian neighbors to save treasured land from being destroyed will “make you want to head for the mountains” (Raleigh News & Observer). LIVING ALONE IN HIS WOODED MOUNTAIN RETREAT, Jay Leutze gets a call from a whip-smart fourteen-year-old, Ashley Cook, and her aunt, Ollie Cox, who say a local mining company is intent on tearing down Belview Mountain, the towering peak above their house. Ashley and her family, who live in a little spot known locally as Dog Town, are “mountain people,” with a way of life and speech unique to their home high in the Appalachians. They suspect the mining company is violating North Carolina’s mining law, and they want Jay, a nonpracticing attorney, to stop the destruction of the mountain. Jay, a devoted naturalist and fisherman, quickly decides to join their cause. So begins the epic quest of “the Dog Town Bunch,” a battle that involves fiery public hearings, clandestine surveillance of the mine operator’s highly questionable activities, ferocious pressure on public officials, and high-stakes legal brinksmanship in the North Carolina court system. Jay helps assemble a talented group of environmental lawyers to contend with the well-funded attorneys protecting the mining company’s plan to dynamite Belview Mountain, which happens to sit next to the famous Appalachian Trail, the 2,184- mile national park that stretches from Maine to Georgia. As the mining company continues to level the forest and erect the gigantic crushing plant on the site, Jay’s group searches frantically for a way to stop an act of environmental desecration that will destroy a fragile wild place and mar the Appalachian Trail forever.

A ground-breaking approach to history where YOU choose the fate of WWII - perfect for readers of Bletchley Park Brainteasers and The GCHQ Puzzle Book. ''An original and exciting approach . . . Buckley is one of our very finest historians.' JAMES HOLLAND ________________________ TAKE THE HOTSEAT Assume the role of real Generals, Leaders, Soldiers and Intelligence Officers in the Allied Forces during WWII, including Winston Churchill and President Eisenhower. EXAMINE THE INTELLIGENCE Explore eight key moments of the war with real contemporaneous intelligence: Britain's Darkest Hour, 1940; The War in North Africa; Stalin's War on the Eastern Front; The Pacific Battle of Midway; The Dresden Bomber Offensive; Casablanca; Arnhem and Operation Market Garden; The Bomb and Hiroshima. CONSIDER THE SCENARIO & MAKE YOUR DECISION From battlefields to war cabinets, each tactical and strategic decision you make leads to a different outcome. Will you follow the path of the past - or shape a new history? ________________________ 'Wonderfully original . . . putting readers at the heart of the decision-making process and allowing them, literally, to change the course of history. This is counterfactual history at its best.' SAUL DAVID 'A reminder that history is a never ending now, a relentless and endless present that comes without the luxury of hindsight.' AL MURRAY 'An original and exciting approach . . . Buckley is one of our very finest historians. The Armchair General adds enormously to our understanding of the conflicts.' JAMES HOLLAND 'A unique, enjoyable approach to evaluating military decision-making.' HISTORY OF WAR

In 1925 Harold Ross hired Katharine Sergeant Angell as a manuscript reader for The New Yorker. Within months she became the magazine’s first fiction editor, discovering and championing the work of Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, James Thurber, Marianne Moore, and her husband-to-be, E. B. White, among others. After years of cultivating fiction, White set her sights on a new genre: garden writing. On March 1, 1958, The New Yorker ran a column entitled “Onward and Upward in the Garden,” a critical review of garden catalogs, in which White extolled the writings of “seedmen and nurserymen,” those unsung authors who produced her “favorite reading matter.” Thirteen more columns followed, exploring the history and literature of gardens, flower arranging, herbalists, and developments in gardening. Two years after her death in 1977, E. B. White collected and published the series, with a fond introduction. The result is this sharp-eyed appreciation of the green world of growing things, of the aesthetic pleasures of gardens and garden writing, and of the dreams that gardens inspire.

“Riveting! Camilla, high-five! Amazing work!”—Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, #1 New York Times bestselling authors of Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered An audacious novel of feminine rage about one of the most prolific female serial killers in American history--and the men who drove her to it. They whisper about her in Chicago. Men come to her with their hopes, their dreams--their fortunes. But no one sees them leave. No one sees them at all after they come to call on the Widow of La Porte. The good people of Indiana may have their suspicions, but if those fools knew what she'd given up, what was taken from her, how she'd suffered, surely they'd understand. Belle Gunness learned a long time ago that a woman has to make her own way in this world. That's all it is. A bloody means to an end. A glorious enterprise meant to raise her from the bleak, colorless drudgery of her childhood to the life she deserves. After all, vermin always survive.

Jane Austen loved a garden. She took a keen interest in flower gardening and kitchen gardening alike. This book strolls through the sorts of gardens that Jane Austen would have known and visited: the gardens of the great estates, cottage gardens, gardens in town, and public gardens and parks. Some of the gardens she owned or knew exist still in some form today; among the gardens highlighted is the restored garden at Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, England, complete with a sample planting plan of the flowers grown there now. The book also includes touring information for gardens featured in film adaptations of the novels. With lush photos, social history, excerpts from the novels, information on her life, and period drawings, this book brings Georgian and Regency gardens and Jane Austen’s world to life. In the Garden with Jane Austen captures the essence and beauty of the traditional English garden. As the heroine of Mansfield Park Fanny Price observes, “To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment.”

A sumptuous exploration of 21 of the world's most celebrated royal gardens, from the formal splendour of Versailles to the organic, sustainable Highgrove. In mainland Europe you can journey from the formal splendour of Het Loo in the Netherlands and Fontainebleau in France to the Baroque World Heritage Site of the Royal Palace of Caserta in Southern Italy. Further afield still lies the Taj Mahal in India and the Peterhof Palace in Russia. Each featured garden will include the history, plantings and evolution of the garden as well as plant portraits of key plants and information about the design and layout of each. Countries included are: England, Scotland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, India, Bali and Japan. This inspiring global selection of royal gardens is a perfect gift for any gardening enthusiast or armchair traveller and takes the reader on a journey of architecturally significant houses and their classic gardens as well as providing planting ideas that range from modest to grand, simple to ornate.

Think you know how the game of baseball began? Think again. Forget Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown. Did baseball even have a father--or did it just evolve from other bat-and-ball games? John Thorn, baseball's preeminent historian, examines the creation story of the game and finds it all to be a gigantic lie. From its earliest days baseball was a vehicle for gambling, a proxy form of class warfare. Thorn traces the rise of the New York version of the game over other variations popular in Massachusetts and Philadelphia. He shows how the sport's increasing popularity in the early decades of the nineteenth century mirrored the migration of young men from farms and small towns to cities, especially New York. Full of heroes, scoundrels, and dupes, this book tells the story of nineteenth-century America, a land of opportunity and limitation, of glory and greed--all present in the wondrous alloy that is our nation and its pastime.--From publisher description.

A third-grader finds room to grow in a gentle, feel-good story about the transforming power of friendship and gardening” (Kirkus Reviews). When Anna Wang is gifted a copy of The Secret Garden, it inspires her to follow her dreams—maybe she can plant ivy and purple crocuses and the birds will come. It’s the perfect time for growth and change, especially since Anna’s family has moved out of their apartment into a house in Cincinnati, and Anna is starting at a new school. But something else that grows from her dream of a garden is even better: friendship. And friendship, like a garden, often has a mind of its own . . . In this prequel to The Year of the Book, join Anna in a year of discovery, new beginnings, friendships, and growth. “From a class lesson on recycling to the rescue of an orphaned rabbit, themes of renewal and ‘the circle of life’ are woven throughout.” —School Library Journal