A sweeping saga of an impassioned romance set amidst the upheaval of a nation under siege and a way of life threatened with destruction. The American Civil War creates enemies of lifelong friends and allies of strangers, but no relationship is more unlikely than that of a passionate Northern Unionist and a loyal Virginia sympathizer. Actress and Northerner Jordan Colfax is hired by Allan Pinkerton to spy on behalf of the Union. When she meets Confederate sympathizer, Laura St. Clair, whose father is military aide to Jefferson Davis, the perfect opportunity presents itself. But when the truth about Jordan's real intentions are discovered, their growing love is put to the ultimate test - the result of which could mean the difference between life and death. Can a Southern belle and a Yankee spy overcome their differences or will divided loyalties keep them apart? From Tidewater Virginia to Washington, D.C., passion and betrayal converge in Civil War Richmond.

While many baby boomers are downsizing to a simpler retirement lifestyle, photographer and writer Judy Blankenship and her husband Michael Jenkins took a more challenging leap in deciding to build a house on the side of a mountain in southern Ecuador. They now live half the year in Cañar, an indigenous community they came to know in the early nineties when Blankenship taught photography there. They are the only extranjeros (outsiders) in this homely, chilly town at 10,100 feet, where every afternoon a spectacular mass of clouds rolls up from the river valley below and envelopes the town. In this absorbing memoir, Blankenship tells the interwoven stories of building their house in the clouds and strengthening their ties to the community. Although she and Michael had spent considerable time in Cañar before deciding to move there, they still had much to learn about local customs as they navigated the process of building a house with traditional materials using a local architect and craftspeople. Likewise, fulfilling their obligations as neighbors in a community based on reciprocity presented its own challenges and rewards. Blankenship writes vividly of the rituals of births, baptisms, marriages, festival days, and deaths that counterpoint her and Michael’s solitary pursuits of reading, writing, listening to opera, playing chess, and cooking. Their story will appeal to anyone contemplating a second life, as well as those seeking a deeper understanding of daily life in the developing world.

Discover the beginnings of the Quantum Evolution with The House of Styx, the start of a groundbreaking new series set 250 years before The Quantum Magician. Life can exist anywhere. And anywhere there is life, there is home. In the swirling clouds of Venus, the families of la colonie live on floating plant-like trawlers, salvaging what they can in the fierce acid rain and crackling storms. Outside is dangerous, but humankind’s hold on the planet is fragile and they spend most of their days simply surviving. But Venus carries its own secrets, too. In the depths, there is a wind that shouldn’t exist. And the House of Styx wants to harness it. “Künsken’s vivid worldbuilding is a knockout…This is a must-read” – Publishers Weekly, starred review “An audacious con job, scintillating future technology, and meditations on the nature of fractured humanity” - Yoon Ha Lee on The Quantum Magician “Technology changes us—even our bodies—in fundamental ways, and Künsken handles this wonderfully” - Cixin Liu on The Quantum Magician “Künsken has a wonderfully ingenious imagination.” – Adam Roberts, Locus

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A day after closing down the Whispering Pines country club house for winter break, the narrator is surprised to see what looks like smoke emanating from the building's chimney. Upon investigating, he witnesses his sister's fiancé flee the building crying and, upstairs, finds her dead body. The third book in Green's detective series featuring Caleb Sweetwater, “The House of the Whispering Pines” is a riveting page-turner brimming with intrigue not to be missed by fans of classic detective fiction. Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935) was an American novelist and poet. Among the first writers of detective fiction in America, she is considered to be the “mother” of the genre for her legally-accurate and well-thought-out plots. Other notable works by this author include: “The Leavenworth Case” (1878), “One of my Sons” (1901), and “The Circular Study” (1900). Read & Co. Classics is proudly republishing this vintage detective novel now in a brand new edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

A "beautifully written travelogue" that draws on the latest scholarly research as well as a lifetime of exploration to light on the extraordinary Anasazi culture of the American Southwest (Entertainment Weekly). The greatest "unsolved mystery" of the American Southwest is the fate of the Anasazi, the native peoples who in the eleventh century converged on Chaco Canyon (in today's southwestern New Mexico) and built what has been called the Las Vegas of its day, a flourishing cultural center that attracted pilgrims from far and wide, a vital crossroads of the prehistoric world. The Anasazis' accomplishments -- in agriculture, in art, in commerce, in architecture, and in engineering -- were astounding, rivaling those of the Mayans in distant Central America. By the thirteenth century, however, the Anasazi were gone from Chaco. Vanished. What was it that brought about the rapid collapse of their civilization? Was it drought? pestilence? war? forced migration? mass murder or suicide? For many years conflicting theories have abounded. Craig Childs draws on the latest scholarly research, as well as on a lifetime of adventure and exploration in the most forbidding landscapes of the American Southwest, to shed new light on this compelling mystery.

The award-winning author’s “hard-edged, fast-moving thriller” about love, crime, family, and loyalty set around the borderlands of Texas and Mexico (Booklist, starred review). On a rainy winter night in Mexico City, a ten-member wedding party is kidnapped in front of the groom’s family mansion. The perpetrator is a small-time gangster named El Galán, who wants nothing more than to make his crew part of a major cartel. He hopes that this crime will be his big break. Setting the wedding party’s ransom at five million US dollars, he demands to be paid in cash within twenty-four hours. The only captive not related to either the bride or the groom is the young Jessica Juliet Wolfe, a close friend of the bride. Jessie also hails from a family of notorious outlaws that has branches on both sides of the border, and when the Wolfes learn of Jessie’s abduction, El Galán suddenly finds himself in over his head. “This fast-paced, well-plotted thriller” from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winning author of In the Rogue Blood “reads like a mix of Cormac McCarthy and Elmore Leonard” (Library Journal). “[The House of Wolfe] keeps the reader engaged as the action rushes toward a surprising and fully satisfying conclusion” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “A pungent and exhilarating read. ” —Financial Times