There are 10 short stories in this collection. The old adage says: if you stand at New York’s Times Square long enough, the whole world will walk by. A short story deals with a tiny slice of life on a local scale but can, like a hologram, contain the big picture or illustrate universal themes. These ten stories have backgrounds that range from India to small-town America to Italy and even, in the case of Enigma, to outer space. In December 2012, a violent incident on the outskirts of Delhi traumatized a nation and triggered an outpouring of soul searching. A young woman and her male companion were attacked in a bus. The man was beaten with a metal bar and left incapacitated while the girl was brutally raped and then seriously injured in a frenzy of bloodlust as an aftermath of lust. The case attracted wide media attention and struck a chord in the hearts of millions of urban middle class who were shocked that such a thing could happen to one of their own kind. When the girl died of her injuries thirteen days later, there was an outpouring of grief and violence nation-wide. The mass protests and agitation in urban centers throughout the country were an expression of anger and disbelief that the nation that nurtured Gandhi and non-violence could harbor individuals like these. Far more egregious is the petty tyranny of low-level officials in rural areas and the title story in this collection is a reflection of that. The European Union is an unprecedented, brave and bold experiment by thirty-odd countries venturing into uncharted territory. Many economists have predicted that the experiment is doomed, and there is no shortage of possible reasons for failure. The Flood is a parable on the need for common myths to weld communities together. Cassie is a child's memory of adult marital stress in small-town America, while the two following stories Maestro Ladrini's Villa and Heavy Duty are simple love stories, set in Italy and India respectively. In addition to India having an Italian-born queen (Sonia Gandhi), both countries have this in common. They are populated by hot-blooded, voluble and demonstrative peoples. The Orbs of Celeris is the story of a dreamer, a Don Quixote who tilts, not at windmills, but at established mores. Ironically, the lance in this tale is a windmill. There is some magic in the story of the eccentric Mrs. Macawley. It’s an author’s privilege to dissemble the truth that is stranger than fiction, and it is for the reader to decide what is truth and what is fiction in the story. What if history repeats itself? Conception is a story of events leading to the second coming, or parousia, in the 21st century. The Voyager I space probe apparently left the solar system sometime in August 2012, the first man-made object to do so. Around 150,000 people worldwide have reportedly volunteered to take a one-way trip to Mars, the theme of Enigma. In A Night at the Taj Mahal a sixteen year old boy tries to find a shortcut to a University education and the secure employment that presumably comes with it.

Identify maple, ash, oak, and more with easy-to-learn visual techniques. In this friendly and approachable field guide, writer and avid hiker Mark Mikolas shares a unique approach for year-round tree identification. His method, which centers on the northeastern United States where 20 species make up the majority of trees, will prepare readers to recognize trees at a glance, even in winter when leaves and flowers are not present. Mikolas’s secret is to focus on the key characteristics of each tree—black cherry bark looks like burnt potato chips; beech and oak trees keep their leaves in winter; spruce needles are pointed while balsam fir needles are soft and rounded at the ends. Some trees can even be identified by scent. Location maps for each of the 40 species covered and more than 400 photographs illustrating key characteristics make the trees easy to identify. Mikolas also explains how to differentiate between similar and commonly confused trees, such as red maple and sugar maple. A Beginner’s Guide to Recognizing Trees of the Northeast is a book to keep close at hand wherever trees grow.

The perfect gift for fans of HBO's Game of Thrones—a boxed set featuring the first four novels! George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series has become, in many ways, the gold standard for modern epic fantasy. Martin—dubbed the "American Tolkien" by Time magazine—has created a world that is as rich and vital as any piece of historical fiction, set in an age of knights and chivalry and filled with a plethora of fascinating, multidimensional characters that you love, hate to love, or love to hate as they struggle for control of a divided kingdom. This bundle includes the following novels: A GAME OF THRONES A CLASH OF KINGS A STORM OF SWORDS A FEAST FOR CROWS

For fans of The Glass Castle and Educated, comes mystery author Toby Neal's personal story of surviving a wild childhood in paradise.Born in 1965 to hippie surfer parents who just want to ride waves, use substances, and hide from society, red-headed Toby grows up as one of only a few hundred Caucasian "haole" people on the rugged, beautiful North Shore of Kauai, Hawaii.Toby's idealistic parents, breaking away from high achieving families, struggle with mental health and addiction issues as they try to live according to their own rules. Despite the hardship and deprivations of life on Kauai, they return again and again to an island whose hold on them is more powerful than any drug.Told from the immersive, first-person view of a child experiencing turbulent times as they occur, Freckled will take you on a journey you won't soon forget as Toby catches an octopus with her bare hands to feed the family, careens on her first bike down a rugged dirt trail deep in the jungle, and makes money by selling magic mushrooms to a drug dealer. Living in tents and off the land without electricity or communication with the outside world, Toby escapes into reading and imagination to deal with racial harassment and indifferent parenting. Sensitive, imaginative, and resilient,like a surfer girl Anne of Green Gables. Toby clings to a dream of academic achievement and a "normal" life. "Neal's prose is often effortless and elegant." ~Kirkus Reviews

#1 New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan takes readers deep into the exotic Borneo rainforest as she introduces the Leopard people in this steamy paranormal romance novella. Under the blazing heat of the Borneo sun, a beautiful naturalist’s dream comes true—to live among the feral jungle creatures. But an untamed, irresistible beast of another sort forces Maggie to explore her own wild side...

NOW THE ACCLAIMED HBO SERIES GAME OF THRONES—THE MASTERPIECE THAT BECAME A CULTURAL PHENOMENON Winter is coming. Such is the stern motto of House Stark, the northernmost of the fiefdoms that owe allegiance to King Robert Baratheon in far-off King’s Landing. There Eddard Stark of Winterfell rules in Robert’s name. There his family dwells in peace and comfort: his proud wife, Catelyn; his sons Robb, Brandon, and Rickon; his daughters Sansa and Arya; and his bastard son, Jon Snow. Far to the north, behind the towering Wall, lie savage Wildings and worse—unnatural things relegated to myth during the centuries-long summer, but proving all too real and all too deadly in the turning of the season. Yet a more immediate threat lurks to the south, where Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King, has died under mysterious circumstances. Now Robert is riding north to Winterfell, bringing his queen, the lovely but cold Cersei, his son, the cruel, vainglorious Prince Joffrey, and the queen’s brothers Jaime and Tyrion of the powerful and wealthy House Lannister—the first a swordsman without equal, the second a dwarf whose stunted stature belies a brilliant mind. All are heading for Winterfell and a fateful encounter that will change the course of kingdoms. Meanwhile, across the Narrow Sea, Prince Viserys, heir of the fallen House Targaryen, which once ruled all of Westeros, schemes to reclaim the throne with an army of barbarian Dothraki—whose loyalty he will purchase in the only coin left to him: his beautiful yet innocent sister, Daenerys.

“An old-fashioned jungle adventure, one with rare immediacy and depth of feeling for the people and creatures [Rosolie] encounters.” —Wall Street Journal For fans of The Lost City of Z, Walking the Amazon, and Turn Right at Machu Picchu comes naturalist and explorer Paul Rosolie’s extraordinary adventure in the uncharted tributaries of the Western Amazon—a tale of discovery that vividly captures the awe, beauty, and isolation of this endangered land and presents an impassioned call to save it. In the Madre de Dios—Mother of God—region of Peru, where the Amazon River begins its massive flow, the Andean Mountain cloud forests fall into lowland Amazon Rainforest, creating the most biodiversity-rich place on the planet. In January 2006, when he was just a restless eighteen-year-old hungry for adventure, Paul Rosolie embarked on a journey to the west Amazon that would transform his life. Venturing alone into some of the most inaccessible reaches of the jungle, he encountered giant snakes, floating forests, isolated tribes untouched by outsiders, prowling jaguars, orphaned baby anteaters, poachers in the black market trade in endangered species, and much more. Yet today, the primordial forests of the Madre de Dios are in danger from developers, oil giants, and gold miners eager to exploit its natural resources. In Mother of God, this explorer and conservationist relives his amazing odyssey exploring the heart of this wildest place on earth. When he began delving deeper in his search for the secret Eden, spending extended periods in isolated solitude, he found things he never imagined could exist. “Alone and miniscule against a titanic landscape I have seen the depths of the Amazon, the guts of the jungle where no men go, Rosolie writes. “But as the legendary explorer Percy Fawcett warned, ‘the few remaining unknown places of the world exact a price for their secrets.’” Illustrated with 16 pages of color photos.

What the struggle over the Indonesian rainforests can teach us about the social frictions that shape the world around us Rubbing two sticks together produces heat and light while one stick alone is just a stick. It is the friction that produces movement, action, and effect. Anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing challenges the widespread view that globalization invariably signifies a clash of cultures, developing friction as a metaphor for the diverse and conflicting social interactions that make up our contemporary world. Tsing focuses on the rainforests of Indonesia, where in the 1980s and 1990s capitalist interests increasingly reshaped the landscape not so much through corporate design as through awkward chains of legal and illegal entrepreneurs that wrested the land from previous claimants, creating resources for distant markets. In response, environmental movements arose to defend the rainforests and the communities of people who live in them. Not confined to a village, province, or nation, the social drama of the Indonesian rainforests includes local and national environmentalists, international science, North American investors, advocates for Brazilian rubber tappers, United Nations funding agencies, mountaineers, village elders, and urban students—all drawn into unpredictable, messy misunderstandings, but misunderstandings that sometimes work out. Providing an invaluable portfolio of methods for the study of global interconnections, Friction shows how cultural differences are in the grip of worldly encounter and reveals how much is overlooked in contemporary theories of the global.

Perfect for fans of HBO's Game of Thrones--a boxed set featuring the first five novels! An immersive entertainment experience unlike any other, A Song of Ice and Fire has earned George R. R. Martin--dubbed "the American Tolkien" by Time magazine--international acclaim and millions of loyal readers. Now here is the entire monumental cycle: A GAME OF THRONES A CLASH OF KINGS A STORM OF SWORDS A FEAST FOR CROWS A DANCE WITH DRAGONS "One of the best series in the history of fantasy."--Los Angeles Times Winter is coming. Such is the stern motto of House Stark, the northernmost of the fiefdoms that owe allegiance to King Robert Baratheon in far-off King's Landing. There Eddard Stark of Winterfell rules in Robert's name. There his family dwells in peace and comfort: his proud wife, Catelyn; his sons Robb, Brandon, and Rickon; his daughters Sansa and Arya; and his bastard son, Jon Snow. Far to the north, behind the towering Wall, lie savage Wildings and worse--unnatural things relegated to myth during the centuries-long summer, but proving all too real and all too deadly in the turning of the season. Yet a more immediate threat lurks to the south, where Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King, has died under mysterious circumstances. Now Robert is riding north to Winterfell, bringing his queen, the lovely but cold Cersei, his son, the cruel, vainglorious Prince Joffrey, and the queen's brothers Jaime and Tyrion of the powerful and wealthy House Lannister--the first a swordsman without equal, the second a dwarf whose stunted stature belies a brilliant mind. All are heading for Winterfell and a fateful encounter that will change the course of kingdoms. Meanwhile, across the Narrow Sea, Prince Viserys, heir of the fallen House Targaryen, which once ruled all of Westeros, schemes to reclaim the throne with an army of barbarian Dothraki--whose loyalty he will purchase in the only coin left to him: his beautiful yet innocent sister, Daenerys. "Long live George Martin . . . a literary dervish, enthralled by complicated characters and vivid language, and bursting with the wild vision of the very best tale tellers."--The New York Times

Get your fix of not one, not two, but three of the Woods Cop Mystery series! This triple-thrill pack includes three of Joseph Heywood’s mystery novels: Ice Hunter, Blue Wolf in Green Fire, and Chasing a Blond Moon. Each novel takes the reader on a suspenseful journey through the wild against vicious poachers and hunters. This package is the perfect introduction to this thrilling mystery series featuring conservation officers in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.