From the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist: A family saga of a wealthy man’s rise and his children’s fight for his fortune in 1920s New Orleans. Like many people in turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans, Thomas Henry Oliver came to the city to escape a dull life—in his case, a childhood in the backwoods of the Midwest. But few New Orleans immigrants find as much prosperity as Oliver does amongst the city’s lively streets, amassing an enormous fortune built from brothels and speakeasies. By the time he’s ninety-five, Oliver has created a dynasty in Storyville, the city’s notorious red-light district, but as his wealth grows, so does his family’s desire to control it. After a series of strokes, Oliver must choose an inheritor, even though his two entitled daughters and ambitious adopted son don’t always seem worthy of his legacy. His first daughter, an introverted perfectionist, marries a greedy, alcoholic, and adulterous Cajun, and his second daughter fosters a secret desire for her brother-in-law. On his deathbed, Thomas learns that the gold that built the Oliver name now corrupts his legacy and threatens to tear his family apart. In this simmering dynastic saga by the author of Keepers of the House, three generations collide in their battle to control an empire. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Shirley Ann Grau, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

“A heart-stopping saga of the rescue from the very brink of extinction of one of the grandest of all birds.”—Thomas Lovejoy, president of the Amazon Biodiversity Center. RETURN OF THE CONDOR is the riveting account of one of the most dramatic attempts to save a species from extinction in the history of modern conservation. Features a new Afterword by the author. With the condor’s population down to only twenty-two birds in the 1980s and their very survival in doubt, the condor recovery team flouted conventional wisdom and pursued a controversial strategy to pull the bird back from the brink of extinction. Thus began the ongoing, decades-long program to reestablish America’s largest bird in its ancient home in Western skies. Award-winning science writer John Moir takes readers into the backcountry to get to know the recovery program scientists as well as some of the individual condors. These are stories of peril, uncertainty, and controversy. Woven throughout these tales of heartbreak and triumph is the extraordinary dedication of the humans who have sometimes risked their lives for this charismatic, intelligent, and social bird. Despite the program’s remarkable successes, the condor’s narrative is still unfolding with a number of challenges remaining. This includes the dilemma of lead poisoning among free-flying condors that is a major obstacle to the bird’s recovery. The new Afterword presents a compelling examination of the progress and continuing adversity facing the condor recovery effort since the first edition of the book was published. Finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize from the Stanford University Libraries Honorable Mention from the National Association of Science Writers

Now on television: Condor, an AT&T Audience Network original series inspired by James Grady's first Condor novel. Look in the mirror: You're nobody anybody knows. You know pursuing the truth will get you killed. But you refuse to just fade away. So you're designated an enemy of the largest secret national security apparatus in America's history. Good guys or bad guys, it doesn't matter: All assassins' guns are aimed at you. And you run for your life branded with the code name you made iconic: Condor. Everyone you care about is pulled into the gunsights. The CIA star young enough to be your daughter-she might shoot you or save you. The savvy political aide who lets love trump the law. The lonely woman your romantic dreams make a fugitive. The Middle Eastern child warrior you mentored into a master spy. Last Days of the Condor is the bullet-paced, ticking clock saga of America on the edge of our most startling spy world revolution since 9/11. Set in the savage streets and Kafkaesque corridors of Washington, DC, shot through with sex and suspense, with secret agent tradecraft and full-speed action, with hunters and the hunted, Last Days of the Condor is a breakneck saga of America's secrets from muckraking investigative reporter and author James Grady. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.

Annie Bang I’m thrilled to be working in professional hockey, since my five brothers are all hockey players. My new role as skating coach to the New York Bears is the perfect fit and I can’t wait to whip all these guys into shape so we can win more games. Except one of the guys is Logan Coates—the guy who sent my brother to the hospital in a memorable game three seasons ago. I want nothing to do with him. Logan Coates I don’t need some tiny figure skater telling me what to do. I know how to skate. I wouldn’t be in the NHL if I didn’t. Although, I am a fourth liner. I do want more ice time. I want to make a difference on the team. But learning how to figure skate isn’t it. Especially from Annie Bang, who hates my guts. Speaking of guts…she has ’em. She’s a pint-sized badass. And that’s sexy as hell. When I’m around her, my skate blade’s not the only thing made of steel.

There is little apparent resemblance between the elegant feathered warbler which makes the woods re-echo to its cheerful song, and the crawling reptile which is apt to inspire feelings of disgust when the more potent sensation of terror is absent—between the familiar Swallow, which builds its house of clay under the eaves of your roof, or the warbler whose nest, with its young progeny, carefully watched by the father of the brood in the silent watches of the night, is now threatened by the Serpent which has glided so silently into the bush, its huge mouth already open to swallow the whole family, while the despairing and fascinated parents have nothing but their slender bills to oppose to their formidable foe. "Placed side by side," says Professor Huxley, "a Humming-bird and a Tortoise, or an Ostrich and a Crocodile, offer the strongest contrast; and a Stork seems to have little but its animality in common with the Snake which it swallows." Nevertheless, unlike as they are in outward appearance, there is sufficient resemblance in their internal economy to bring them together in most attempts at a classification of the Animal Kingdom. The air-bladder which exists between the digestive canal and kidneys in some fishes, becomes vascular with the form and cellular structure of lungs in reptiles; the heart has two auricles, the ventricle in most is imperfectly divided, and more or less of the venous blood is mixed with the arterial which circulates over the body; but retaining their gills and being therefore transitional in structure, they are also cold-blooded. Inbirds, the lungs are spongy, the cavity of the air-bags becoming obliterated by the multiplication of vascular cellules; the heart is four-chambered, transmitting venous blood to the lungs, and pure arterial blood to the body; the temperature is raised and maintained at 90° to 100° Fahr. Thus Reptiles, like Birds, breathe the common air by means of their lungs, but respiration is much less active. "Although," remarks Professor Owen, "the heart of Birds resembles in some particulars that of Reptiles, the four cavities are as distinct as in the Mammalia, but they are relatively stronger, their valvular mechanism is more perfect, and the contractions of this organ are more forcible and frequent in birds, in accordance with their more extended respiration and their more energetic muscular action." It is true, as Professor Huxley informs us, that the pinion of a bird, which corresponds with the human hand or the fore paw of a reptile, has three points representing three fingers: no reptile has so few.1 The breast-bone of a bird is converted into membrane-bone: no such conversion takes place in reptiles. The sacrum is formed by a number of caudal and dorsal vertebræ. In reptiles the organ is constituted by one or two sacral vertebræ.

Offering a comprehensive view of the South's literary landscape, past and present, this volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture celebrates the region's ever-flourishing literary culture and recognizes the ongoing evolution of the southern literary canon. As new writers draw upon and reshape previous traditions, southern literature has broadened and deepened its connections not just to the American literary mainstream but also to world literatures--a development thoughtfully explored in the essays here. Greatly expanding the content of the literature section in the original Encyclopedia, this volume includes 31 thematic essays addressing major genres of literature; theoretical categories, such as regionalism, the southern gothic, and agrarianism; and themes in southern writing, such as food, religion, and sexuality. Most striking is the fivefold increase in the number of biographical entries, which introduce southern novelists, playwrights, poets, and critics. Special attention is given to contemporary writers and other individuals who have not been widely covered in previous scholarship.

From the author of The Keepers of the House, a “beautiful” novel following a black mother and daughter through the Great Depression and Civil Rights era (The Boston Globe). Mary is an orphaned, homeless, African American child, abandoned by the rest of her family and left to care for her younger brother. She becomes a “roadwalker,” a nomad who wanders across the rural south and quickly learns to rely on herself to survive. When she grows up to become a successful artist and a designer, she has a daughter of her own, Nanda, and she’s determined to hold her child close. But when Nanda is accepted into an elite school on the East Coast, integrating the all-white Catholic girls’ academy, Mary finds she can’t keep some of the world’s cruel realities at bay forever. Told from the perspective of both mother and daughter, Roadwalkers is the story of a special bond forged by savage history, and a tale of extraordinary loyalty and sacrifice. From a National Book Award finalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, it is “a bold novel [that] seduces us with its vigorous prose, enthralls us with its narrative—and disquiets us with its defiance of our expectations” (The New York Times Book Review). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Shirley Ann Grau, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

A background synthesis freshly discussing the work of Chopin, McCullers, O'Connor, Mitchell, and Welty leads to extended treatment of the novels of Shirley Ann Grau, whose protagonists, "keepers of the house," remain their fathers' daughters; of Anne Tyler, whose characters are "fatherless" and "homeless at home"; and Gail Godwin, whose daughter-heroines learn the necessity of autonomy.

"For several decades now, the Andean conjunto has been the preeminent format for 'Andean folk music' groups in the major cities of the world. Easily identified through the musicians' colorful ponchos and indigenous-associated instruments such as the panpipe, these 4-6 member ensembles interpret the music of the Andes in a style that bears little resemblance to traditional indigenous music, notwithstanding the efforts of "world music" labels to market their recordings as if they accurately reproduce indigenous expressions. Developed mainly by criollo and mestizo musicians, the Andean conjunto tradition has taken root in many Latin American countries, from Argentina to Mexico, but it is only in Bolivia that mainstream society has long regarded ensembles in this mold as exemplars of national folkloric music. As this book reveals, Bolivia's adoption of the Andean conjunto as a national musical expression in the late 1960s represents the culmination of over four decades of local folkloric activities that at various points articulated with transnational artistic currents, especially those emanating from Argentina, Chile, France, Mexico, and Peru, as well as with Bolivian state initiatives and nation-building projects. By elucidating these connections through an examination of La Paz city's musical scene from the 1920s to 1960s, this book not only sheds light on the rise of a prominent manifestation of Bolivian national culture, but also also offers the first detailed historical study of the Bolivian folkloric music movement that documents how it developed in dialogue with Bolivian state projects and transnational artistic trends in this period"--