Amos Posner has a lovely house in the upscale Hamptons beach community of eastern Long Island. But recent events in Amos's life are preventing him form enjoying it. His employer, an international trading firm, fired him after making him the scapegoat for some shady business deals. His wife, a highly successful Manhattan lawyer, has not taken kindly to his job situation, and their marriage is under considerable stress. Amos is spending most of his time at the beach house, alone, and not at all happy. So he is highly vulnerable when a beautiful woman approaches him on a bus - the Hampton Jitney - from Manhattan to the Hamptons and persuades him to show her around the area on her day off from her job as a psychiatric resident at a Manhattan hospital. When Amos reluctantly agrees, he gets far more than an ego boost. He gets a nightmare beyond imagination. And the cascading events could cost him more than the loss of his job and his wife. They could cost him his life.

Ever since Jessica Mastriani was struck by lightning, she's had the ability to find missing people. But her amazing new power came at a cost: national fame and a crushing responsibility that Jess never asked for. The only way she knows how to get back her old life is to lie and say she’s lost her gift. But when Jess’s classmates start to disappear, she's accused of being involved. Jess’s only chance to clear her name is to use her powers. But this will only bring back all the old nightmares: the press, the FBI, everyone who seems to want a piece of her . . . including the guy she once gave her heart to. Time is running out, and it seems as if Jess is the only one who can save her friends. But even if she succeeds, will there be anyone to save her?

When the Nursery Rhyme Killer returns after a long hiatus, FBI profiler Evelyn Baine finally gets her chance to investigate her best friend's unsolved abduction; but when she returns to Rose Bay, she finds a dark side to the seemingly idyllic town that could bring about her own disappearance.

San Francisco is well-known for its beautiful vistas and fascinating destinations. However, many places that were once part of the San Francisco experience have vanished from the land--lost to earthquakes, fire, development, and other forces that led to their disappearance--but not from memory. Sand dunes have been replaced by buildings and streets, homes now cover previously desolate areas where cemeteries once stood, and beloved buildings are gone due to various reasons. San Francisco's lost treasures also include the popular Hamm's sign, the former two-toned foghorn, and the first insect to go extinct in the United States due to human behavior. Like most cities, San Francisco is constantly changing. Places appear and disappear, and the city grows and changes, always ready to rebuild and remake history.

The conference "Combating Desertification with Plants" was held in Beer Sheva, Israel, from November 2-5, 1999, and was attended by 70 participants from 30 countries and/or international organisations. Desertification - the degradation of soils in drylands - is a phenomenon occurring in scores of countries around the globe. The number of people (in semiarid regions) affected by the steady decline in the productivity of their lands is in the hundred millions. The measures required to halt and reverse the process of desertification fall into many categories - policy, institutional, sociological-anthropological, and technical. Although technical "solutions" are not currently in vogue, the conference organizers felt that perhaps the pendulum had swung too far in the direction of "participatory approaches." Hence IPALAC - The International Program for Arid Land Crops - whose function is to serve as a catalyst for optimizing the contribution of plant germplasm to sustainable development in desertification-prone regions - felt the time was opportune for providing a platform for projects where the "plant-driven" approach to development finds expression. Some 45 papers were delivered at the conference, falling into the categories of this volume: Overview, Potential Germplasm for Arid Lands, Introduction, Domestication and Dissemination of Arid Land Plants, Land Rehabilitation, and Mechanisms of Plant Transfer. The conference was funded by UNESCO (Division of Ecological Sciences), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, and MASHAV, Israel's Center for International Development Cooperation.

Our beaches are eroding, sinking, washing out right under our houses, hotels, bridges; vacation dreamlands become nightmare scenes of futile revetments, fills, groins, what have you—all thrown up in a frantic defense against the natural system. The romantic desire to live on the seashore is in doomed conflict with an age-old pattern of beach migration. Yet it need not be so. Conservationist Wallace Kaufman teams up with marine geologist Orrin H. Pilkey Jr., in an evaluation of America's beaches from coast to coast, giving sound advice on how to judge a safe beach development from a dangerous one and how to live at the shore sensibly and safely.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Raucous cops, outlaw bikers, and suntanned celebrities collide in a steamy landscape swirling with natural beauty and unnatural death. Seventeen months ago the California desert revealed the remains of Jack Watson. The rich man’s son was found incinerated in a Rolls-Royce, a bullet in his head. Now, a year and a half later, Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective Sidney Blackpool is called into the desert to take on the case. But what begins for Blackpool as an investigation sandwiched between golf games in nearby Palm Springs quickly becomes an obsession. For the savage beauty of the wastelands holds many secrets. Secrets that stir up Blackpool’s long-suppressed nightmares of his own son’s death. Secrets that threaten to destroy an entire police department. Secrets that, by rights, should remain forever buried by the wind in the ageless desert sands. In this riveting novel, bestselling author Joseph Wambaugh jolts our emotions while entertaining us with his special brand of bawdy, beautiful, dark humor.

Collection of previously published essays.