Full of unforgettable figures and an unrelenting spirit of adventure, Strange Stones is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Peter Hessler’s best reportage—a dazzling display of the powerful storytelling, shrewd cultural insight, and warm sense of humor that are the trademarks of his work. Over the last decade, as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of three books, Peter Hessler has lived in Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in these two very different regions. This unusual perspective distinguishes Strange Stones, which showcases Hessler’s unmatched range as a storyteller. “Wild Flavor” invites readers along on a taste test between two rat restaurants in South China. One story profiles Yao Ming, basketball star and China’s most beloved export, another David Spindler, an obsessive and passionate historian of the Great Wall. In “Dr. Don,” Hessler writes movingly about a small-town pharmacist and his relationship with the people he serves. While Hessler’s subjects and locations vary, subtle but deeply important thematic links bind these pieces—the strength of local traditions, the surprising overlap between apparently opposing cultures, and the powerful lessons drawn from individuals who straddle different worlds.

"The best book to have been written about the Vietnam War" (The New York Times Book Review); an instant classic straight from the front lines. From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time. Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.

Articles, interviews and photographs published in Rolling Stone. Authors, artists, and subjects included are Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, Ralph Steadman, The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend, Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Woodstock, Kent State, Vietnam, Patty Hearst, Charles Manson, Karen Silkwood, and John Lennon.

I want to be direct, my name is Greg. I go by “Onision” online. This book is made up of events that occurred in my own life mixed with fiction from the made up life of James. James is essentially a better version of myself. His home, his school & his life all resemble my own at his age. The people James analyzes and is surrounded by are not so unlike those I’ve known as well. I have experienced much of the loss James has however his happier moments are more often than not also mine. I want to share my story without it being purely non-fiction. I simply felt this approach would make for a far better book. Stones to Abbigale is not just my book, it is a piece of who I am.

Who built the megaliths, those massive stone structures ranging from tombs to standing stones that date back to over 4000 BC? Why were they built? How were the enormous stones transported and erected? Were these strange, sacred stones used as temples or tombs, sculptures or houses? Covering the best-known sites - Avebury and Stonehenge in England, Carnac in France and Knowth in Ireland - and also less famous examples in Scandinavia, Malta, Egypt and Spain, this book considers the special significance - architectural, scientific, religious and cultural - of these enigmatic Neolithic stone structures.

A strange glowing stone picked up on a sea voyage captivates a ship's crew and has a terrible transforming effect on them.

The first complete English translation of the nineteenth-century Austrian innovator's evocative, elemental cycle of novellas. For Kafka he was “my fat brother”; Thomas Mann called him “one of the most peculiar, enigmatic, secretly audacious and strangely gripping storytellers in world literature.” Often misunderstood as an idyllic poet of “beetles and buttercups,” the nineteenth-century Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter can now be seen as a radical experimenter with narrative and a forerunner of nature writing’s darker currents. One of his best-known works, the novella cycle Motley Stones now appears in its first complete English translation, a rendition that respects the bracing strangeness of the original. In six thematically linked novellas, including the beloved classic “Rock Crystal,” human dramas play out amid the natural cycles of the Alps or the urban rhythms of Vienna—environments so keenly observed that they emerge as the tales’ most indomitable protagonists. Stifter’s human characters are equally haunting—children braving perils, eccentrics and loners harboring enigmatic torments. “We seek to glimpse the gentle law that guides the human race,” Stifter famously wrote. What he glimpsed, more often than not, was the abyss that lies behind the idyll. The tension between his humane sensitivity and his dark visions is what lends his writing its heartbreaking power.

The Upside-Down Magic kids are back in another topsy-turvy adventure in the next installment of this New York Times bestselling series, now a Disney Channel Original Movie! Strange things are happening at Dunwiddle Magic School -- and the Upside-Down Magic class is getting blamed! Yes, Marigold did shrink Lacey Clench to the size of a gerbil. But that was an accident. And, yes, most people weren't prepared for Nory to transform into a squippy (that's half squid, half puppy) -- but it's not like Nory meant to mix up paws and tentacles. And while Bax does have the unfortunate magical condition of turning into a stone, he swears he has nothing to do with the rocky magic that's been happening in Dunwiddle's halls. When things get messy, it's easy to point your finger at the kids with the messiest magic. But the Upside-Down Magic students aren't going to let themselves get in trouble. Instead, they're going to find out what's really going on -- and get their school back on track before something really wacky happens.

The Speaking Stone: Stories Cemeteries Tell is a literary love letter to the joys of wandering graveyards and the discoveries such wanderings can yield. Here, Michael Griffith roams Spring Grove (founded 1844), the nation's third-largest cemetery, following curiosity and accident wherever they lead. The result is this fascinating collection, which narrates the lives of those he encountered on the way. Griffith lingers amidst the traces left behind--these are stories of race, feminism, art, and death, uncovered through obituaries, archival documents, and family legacies. Some essays focus on well-known figures like the feminist icon and freethinker Fanny Wright, but most chronicle the lives of lesser-known figures (a spiritual medium, a temperance advocate, the designers of caskets and hearses, the inventor of the glass-door oven) or of nearly unknown ones (a young heiress who died under mysterious circumstances, the daring sign-painters known as walldogs). The Speaking Stone examines what endures and what doesn't, reflecting on the vanity and poignancy of our attempts to leave monuments that last. Archival photos grace the pages of these thirteen essays that explore a larger, deeply tangled complex of ideas about place, history, self, and art.

A wry, funny and fascinating memoir from a leading figure in the modern financial world, this is the unique account of one of the greatest bands in musical history