Mirages have long astonished travelers of the sea and beguiled thirsty desert voyagers. Traditional Chinese and Japanese poetry and art depict the above-horizon, superior mirage, or fata morgana, as exhalations of clam-monsters. Indian sources relate mirages to the “thirst of gazelles,” a metaphor for the futility of desire. Starting in the late eighteenth century, mirages became a symbol in the West of Oriental despotism—a negative, but also enchanted, emblem. But the mirage motif is rarely simply condemnatory. More often, our obsession with mirages conveys a sense of escape, of fascination, of a desire to be deceived. The Waterless Sea is the first book devoted to the theories and history of mirages. Christopher Pinney navigates a sinuous pathway through a mysterious and evanescent terrain, showing how mirages have impacted politics, culture, science, and religion—and how we can continue to learn from their sublimity.

This second book in the captivating Chanters of Tremaris fantasy series follows Calwyn and her friends to the desolate desert lands of Merithos in search of a group of kidnapped children who have the gift of chantment.

Story, told in beautiful poetic prose, of the training of a present-day Navajo Indian boy who feels a vocation to become a medicine man.

Calwyn has never been beyond the high ice-wall that guards the sisters of Antaris from the world of Tremaris. She knows only the rounds of her life as a novice ice priestess, tending her bees, singing her ice chantments, and dreaming. But then Calwyn befriends Darrow, a mysterious Outlander who appears inside the Wall and warns of an approaching danger. To help Darrow, to see the world, and perhaps to save it, Calwyn will leave the safety of the Wall for a journey with a man she barely knows--and an adventure as beautiful and dangerous as the music of chantment itself.

YA. A dark secret is tearing Tremaris apart. From the frozen Bay of Sardi to the endless winter on Antaris, sickness is spreading and even the seasons are slipping into chaos. 11 yrs+

Eloise doesn't speak, but can she see into the past? This exciting and atmospheric mystery from the author of the Chanters of Tremaris series explores themes of family, friendship, and grief. Something flickered at the top of the stairs. Eloise heard a voice call,I'm coming!, and a girl in a pale dress and a big sunhat came running, her fingertips slipping down the curve of the slim iron railing. Eloise went cold all over. She couldn't move, or breathe; her mouth was dry. At the bottom of the steps, the girl in the pale dress faltered, then stopped. For a fraction of a second she stood motionless, as if she were listening. Then all at once she turned and stared straight at Eloise. And suddenly the foyer was empty. The ghostly girl was gone. When Eloise's get-rich-quick dad moves them back to his home town to turn the derelict family mansion into a convention center, Eloise feels an immediate bond with the old house. She begins spending all her time there, ignoring her strange grandmother and avoiding the friendly boy next door. Then Eloise meets a "ghost girl" who may or may not be from the house's past, and events take a strange—and ultimately dangerous—turn. Beautifully written, poignant, and gripping, this is a charming and atmospheric story of personal growth, overcoming grief, and the true nature of friendship and family.

"In Walking the Sea, Anton Ginzburg (* 1974 in St. Petersburg) charts a twenty-six-thousand-square-mile area between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan known as the Aral Sea, an environmental ruin of the Soviet era. Drawing on the tradition of American Land Art from the late sixties and early seventies, Ginzburg approaches the waterless sea as a ready-made earthwork in order to make visible a territory, history, and a potential imaginary space that remain largely inaccessible. The resulting film, photographs, and sculptures refer to regional histories and cultural myths, ranging from the figure of the plein-air painter as a traveling dervish to the idea of the landscape as shaped like an Aeolian harp, and the belief in a subterranean "inner sea" into which the Aral Sea has disappeared. The book pays homage to a rich history of artists who have approached the world from the perspective of a wanderer and who have mapped and reshaped both landscapes and urban environments through the act of walking." -- Provided by publisher

Through eyewitness accounts based on hundreds of interviews with crew members; personal diaries, notes, and letters; and each cutter's logbooks and patrol reports Walling plunges you into the thick of the battle, re-creating some of the most desperate encounters, heroic rescues, and harrowing missions of the Second World War. Told largely in the voices of the men who lived it, this unforgettable tale is peppered with humorous and ironic anecdotes about life aboard ship during wartime. You'll meet the liberty-craving crew members who painted their entire ship in less than an hour; the ship's mascot who became canine-non-grata in Greenland; and the crew whose vessel was mistaken for the German battleship Bismarck and attacked by the Royal Navy. Complete with dramatic photographs of the Coast Guard in action, Bloodstained Sea brings this epic drama to vibrant and pulsing life.

While snorkeling, eight-year-old Kolten discovers a underwater city of friendly, sea-dwelling robots.