A “rich, unblinking” (USA TODAY) memoir that moves from grief to reckoning to reflection to solace as a marine biologist shares the solo worldwide journey she took after her fiancé suffered a fatal box jellyfish attack in Thailand. In the summer of 2002, Shannon Leone Fowler was a blissful twenty-eight-year-old marine biologist, spending the summer backpacking through Asia with the love of her life—her fiancé, Sean. He was holding her in the ocean’s shallow waters off the coast of Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand, when a box jellyfish—the most venomous animal in the world—wrapped around his legs, stinging and killing him in a matter of minutes, irreparably changing Shannon’s life forever. Untethered and unsure how to face returning to her life’s work—the ocean—Shannon sought out solace in a passion she shared with Sean: travel. Traveling with Ghosts takes Shannon on journeys both physical and emotional, weaving through her shared travels with Sean and those she took in the wake of his sudden passing. She ventured to mostly landlocked countries, and places with tumultuous pasts and extreme sociopolitical environments, to help make sense of her tragedy. From Oswiecim, Poland (the site of Auschwitz) to war-torn Israel, to shelled-out Bosnia, to poverty-stricken Romania, and ultimately, to Barcelona where she and Sean met years ago, Shannon began to find a path toward healing. Hailed as a “brave and necessary record of love” (Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Bel Canto and Commonwealth) and “as intricate and deep as memory itself (Jane Hamilton, author of A Map of the World), Shannon Leone Fowler has woven a beautifully rendered, profoundly moving memorial to those we have lost on our journeys and the unexpected ways their presence echoes in all places—and voyages—big and small.

'Extraordinary. I've never met anyone who has read it and doesn't rank it as one of their favourite books.' DOLLY ALDERTON 'So fierce and brave and visceral and raw - will stay with me forever. I loved it.' ELIZABETH GILBERT 'Full of heart, bravery and adventure.' AMY LIPTROT SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE Clover Stroud grew up in rural Wiltshire surrounded by animals and family. When she was just sixteen her adored mother had a horrific riding accident which left her permanently brain-damaged, and suddenly Clover was left to fend for herself. She embarked on an extraordinary journey to heal her broken heart, courting men and danger through two marriages and five children. The Wild Other is a grippingly honest account of love, sex and travelling to the darkest edges of human experience and back again. Powerful and deeply emotional, this is the story of an extraordinary life lived at its fullest. 'There is so much richly evoked life here... beautifully written.' Cathy Rentzenbrink, The Times 'This redemptive memoir will steal your heart; it will return it bruised but emboldened.' Mail on Sunday

An eloquent odyssey through Spain's dark history journeys into the heart of the Spanish Civil War to examine the causes and consequences of a painful recent past, as well as its repercussions in terms of the discovery of mass graves containing victims of Franco's death squads and the lives of modern-day Spaniards. Reprint.

In her latest collection of English-language poems, trilingual Romanian-American poet Stella Vinitchi Radulescu continues to explore the capabilities and limits of language itself as the nexus where thought and physicality meet. Gathering fragments of idea and image from a vast constellation of influences, Radulescu's nimble, ever-surprising poems weave a tapestry that embodies what it feels like to be both intensely alive and knowingly transient. Publishers Weeklycalls these meditative, metaphysical poems that are rewardingly dense with surprising turns and images.

This collection seems to have been written with vapor-the unseen made visible through James Siegel's intuitive eye. The poems also form an elegy of place, Ohio. Personal phantoms populate this physical and metaphysical locus. Haunted by history and its ruins, the poet deciphers " t]hat fur-covered / folklore crawling out from under the skin." Recasting stanzas into incantations, Siegel conjures memories that "brush the sides of your face, / rest in the tangles of your hair." Finally, ghosts become the Holy Ghost, with "a congregation of wings," with "the rattle of the rosary." Angelic presences reify the ineffable. And from that perspective, the poet shows the reader how "the vault of the stars unlocks." Dean Kostos, author of "This Is Not a Skyscraper" and "Rivering" "How Ghosts Travel" is James Siegel's beautifully-atmospheric explication of his past, which here is ever-present. His voice, though casual and colloquial at times, is always tuned to the lyrical as he resurrects his childhood and young adulthood in industrial and small-town Ohio in poems scarred with heartbreak and loss. But what is perhaps most impressive about this debut collection is the sheer number of poems that remain vibrantly in mind long after they're read, among them "Fishing Photo, Circa 1984," "Boy Scout Blue," "Massillon," "Flatlands," "The Road," and "Serpent Mound," one of the most skillful love poems I've encountered. This is a book well worth the price of admission. Myrna Stone, author of "In The Present Tense: Portraits of My Father"and "The Casanova Chronicles" In"How Ghosts Travel," James J. Siegel tells us "you may leave behind your landscapes" but not without warning "we cannot expect the past to just stop talking." This collection channels that past, using crumbling maps, a oujia board, even the "bones of an ancient civilization unearthed where a parking lot was supposed to be" torevisit the "charged particles" of a childhood in suburban Ohio. Atribute to the Midwest of his parents and grandparents, Siegel observes "Factories close, families move, gears sigh one last time." But luckily there arethe drive-in theaters, Lake Erie fishing trips, County Fairs, and Boy Scout badges to remember.One would think this "world has slipped away" with "the drugstore windows filled with dust," but Siegel reminds us "Nature knows what to do" when "itfills the emptyspaces of the Ferris wheelwith thick birch branches." This book is a ride on that wheel, granting a view of the whole town, its industrial graveyards and abandoned homes made fertile again by their former lives and the poet who resurrects them. Michael Montlack, author of "Cool Limbo" (NYQ Books)"

Guides the backroads traveler to about eighty historic sawmill towns in various stages of decline. Organized into six different auto tours through once bustling coastal villages, with detailed directions, maps, old town plans, and historic photos.

Frank and often outrageous, this is an account of a 40-something Englishwoman's epic 4,000 mile cycle ride from Seattle to Mexico, via the snow-covered Rockies, mostly alone and camping in the wild. She runs appalling risks and copes in a gutsy, hilarious way with exhaustion, climatic extremes, dangerous animals, eccentrics, lechers, and a permanently saddle-sore backside. We share her deep involvement with the West's pioneering past, and with the tragic traces that history has left lingering on the land. When she rides the faded trails of the vanished American Indian nations she displays a strong sensitivity to the atmosphere of the spectacular landscape, as if the moments of its vibrant past are hanging in the air, only waiting for her to conjure them up vividly—sometimes with humor, and frequently with passion. As she travels, the ghosts of Lewis and Clark, Chief Joseph and Geronimo, Custer and Crazy Horse—all the legendary figures of the Old West—ride with her.

In Washington, D.C., on a field trip, "Egg" Garrison and his friends solve a haunting mystery.

'It's enthralling stuff, mixing the scholarly with the accessible and placing storytelling right at the heart of the human experience.' - History Revealed 'A fascinating journey' - Yorkshire Post 'Marvellous...Finkel is an expert in Mesopotamian cultures at the British Museum, and is one of the most clever, and nicest, of people it has ever been my pleasure to encounter...A fascinating journey' - The Scotsman There are few things more in common across cultures than the belief in ghosts. Ghosts inhabit something of the very essence of what it is to be human. Whether we personally 'believe' or not, we are all aware of ghosts and the rich mythologies and rituals surrounding them. They have inspired, fascinated and frightened us for centuries - yet most of us are only familiar with the vengeful apparitions of Shakespeare, or the ghastly spectres haunting the pages of 19th century gothic literature. But their origins are much, much older... The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies takes us back to the very beginning. A world-renowned authority on cuneiform, the form of writing on clay tablets which dates back to 3400BC, Irving Finkel has embarked upon an ancient ghost hunt, scouring these tablets to unlock the secrets of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians to breathe new life into the first ghost stories ever written. In The First Ghosts, he uncovers an extraordinarily rich seam of ancient spirit wisdom which has remained hidden for nearly 4000 years, covering practical details of how to live with ghosts, how to get rid of them and bring them back, and how to avoid becoming one, as well as exploring more philosophical questions: what are ghosts, why does the idea of them remain so powerful despite the lack of concrete evidence, and what do they tell us about being human?

This book is an interactive novel which takes you on a ghostly, time travelling adventure with multiple paths and puzzles that you must solve to reach one of multiple, thrilling climaxes.You are Dave Ingram. When you and your fiancée are given a chance to move into Craven Manor, you think that you have just been given the deal of a lifetime. That is until you discover the house is haunted. When your fiancée is possessed by one of the spirits inhabiting the house, you learn that the only way to free her is with the aid of a time travelling amulet. In an attempt to remove the ghosts from the house, you must travel through time and learn the truth about what happened there, so that you can either fight the threat in the present, or possibly attempt to prevent it in the past. The choice is yours.