The Mountain and the Fathers explores the life of boys and men in the unforgiving, harsh world north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana in a drought afflicted area called the Big Dry, a land that chews up old and young alike. Joe Wilkins was born into this world, raised by a young mother and elderly grandfather following the untimely death of his father. That early loss stretches out across the Big Dry, and Wilkins uses his own story and those of the young boys and men growing up around him to examine the violence, confusion, and rural poverty found in this distinctly American landscape. Ultimately, these lives put forth a new examination of myth and manhood in the American West and cast a journalistic eye on how young men seek to transcend their surroundings in the search for a better life. Rather than dwell on grief or ruin, Wilkins' memoir posits that it is our stories that sustain us, and The Mountain and the Fathers, much like the work of Norman Maclean or Jim Harrison, heralds the arrival of an instant literary classic.

• A fresh perspective on a famous father and a legacy forged on the icy slopes of Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak In 1963, the world followed the first American Mount Everest Expedition, and watched as “Big Jim” Whittaker became the first American to stand on top of the world. He returned home a hero. My Old Man and the Mountain is Leif Whittaker’s engaging and humorous story of what it was like to “grow up Whittaker”—the youngest son of Jim Whittaker and Dianne Roberts, in an extended family of accomplished climbers. He shares glimpses of his upbringing and how the pressure to climb started early on. Readers learn of his first adventures with family in the Olympic Mountains and on Mount Rainier; his close yet at times competitive relationship with his brother Joss; his battle with a serious back injury; and his efforts to stand apart from his father’s legacy. With wry honesty he depicts being a recent college grad, still living in his parents’ home and trying to find a purpose in life—digging ditches, building houses, selling t-shirts to tourists—until a chance encounter leads to the opportunity to climb Everest, just like his father did. Leif heads to Nepal with all the excitement, irony, boredom, and trepidation that are part of high-altitude climbing. Well-known guides Dave Hahn and Melissa Arnot figure prominently in his story, as does “Big Jim.” But Leif’s story is not his father’s story. It’s a unique coming of age tale on the steep slopes of Everest and a climbing adventure that lights the imagination and fills an emotional human endeavor with universal meaning.

Cat Taylor is furious when her cousin steals her father’s ashes to scatter on the mountain—but when they get caught in a blizzard, can the two work together to survive? Cat Taylor’s father and uncle, a famous search-and-rescue team, died on Storm Mountain two years ago, and Cat and her mother still can’t seem to move on. When her mom goes away on business for the weekend, Cat thinks she has the house to herself—until her cousin Ty suddenly shows up at her door, claiming his dad visited him in a dream and told him to scatter the two brothers’ ashes at the mountain’s summit. Cat refuses; how can Ty ask her to let go of her dad? But when she wakes up the next morning, Cat discovers that Ty has gone to Storm Mountain—and he took her father’s ashes with him. Determined to stop Ty before he does something crazy, Cat races up the mountain after him. But when a huge snowstorm rolls in and traps them, Cat and Ty realize they could be in more danger than they ever imagined.

For every man who pulled a trigger in Vietnam, there were nine men who supported him. This is the story of one of those men: SP4 Luis Rosas-Luca and those who served with him in the U.S. Army's 1st Air Cavalry Air Mobile Division / 15th Transportation Corps Battalion Delta Company at Camp Radcliff, An Khe in the Central Highlands of the Republic of Vietnam 1965-1966. Overlooking their base stood the Hon Cong Mountain whose shadow lives on as a metaphor for the war's long reach after their tour ended and how it affected these Vietnam Veterans and their families. This book contains over 400 never before seen photographs taken by Luis Rosas during his tour in Vietnam.

In When We Were Birds, Joe Wilkins wrestles his attention away from the griefs, deprivations, and high prairies of his Montana childhood and turns toward "the bean-rusted fields and gutted factories of the Midwest," toward ordinary injustice and everyday sadness, toward the imminent birth of his son and his own confusions in taking up the mantle of fatherhood, toward faith and grace, legacy and luck. A panoply of voices are at play--the escaped convict, the late-night convenience store clerk, and the drowned child all have their say--and as this motley chorus rises and crests, we begin to understand something of what binds us and makes us human: while the world invariably breaks all our hearts, Wilkins insists that is the very "place / hope lives, in the breaking." Within a notable range of form, concern, and voice, the poems here never fail to sing. Whether praiseful or interrogating, When We Were Birds is a book of flight, light, and song. "When we were birds," Wilkins begins, "we veered & wheeled, we flapped & looped-- / it's true, we flew."

Addresses the dramatic effects of World War II on the relationship between the men who fought war and their sons and grandsons, drawing on his own and other father-son tales of veterans to reveal how their experiences on the battlefield shaped their lives as fathers.

"Should appeal to all rugged individualists who dream of escape to the forest."—The New York Times Book Review Sam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in New York City with his family, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountains to live in the woods—all by himself. With only a penknife, a ball of cord, forty dollars, and some flint and steel, he intends to survive on his own. Sam learns about courage, danger, and independence during his year in the wilderness, a year that changes his life forever. “An extraordinary book . . . It will be read year after year.” —The Horn Book

Daniella Logan, daughter of a film impresario, is stunned to see a group of robed men performing a ritual above the newly-turned earth of her father's grave. Daniella's father and his friends--politicians, newspaper magnates, highly-paid actors, top-flight surgeons, high-ranking police officials, and many more--are bound by an unholy blood pact that calls for the sacrifice of their first born children. Now, the more she learns, the more Daniella makes herself a target. But she must not be silenced, for she is not the only firstborn in danger, only the oldest. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In one of the greatest American classics, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin tells the story of the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Originally published in 1953, Baldwin said of his first novel, "Mountain is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else." “With vivid imagery, with lavish attention to details ... [a] feverish story.” —The New York Times

In a story of Everest unlike any told before, Jamling Tenzing Norgay gives us an insider's view of the Sherpa world. As Climbing Leader of the famed 1996 Everest IMAX expedition led by David Breashears, Jamling Norgay was able to follow in the footsteps of his legendary mountaineer father, Tenzing Norgay, who with Sir Edmund Hillary was the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest, in 1953. Jamling Norgay interweaves the story of his own ascent during the infamous May 1996 Mount Everest disaster with little-known stories from his father's historic climb and the spiritual life of the Sherpas, revealing a fascinating and profound world that few -- even many who have made it to the top -- have ever seen.