Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is a creature of habit. She likes what she likes (museums, jumpsuits, her boyfriend, Will) and strongly dislikes what she doesn't (mess, change, her boss drinking out of her mug). Her life runs in a pleasing, predictable order...until now. She's just been dumped. She's just been fired. Her local cafe has run out of banana muffins. Then, something truly unexpected happens: Cassie discovers she can go back and change the...

"Late October. After midnight. You're waiting up for your seventeen-year-old son. He's past curfew. As you watch from the window, he emerges, and you realize he isn't alone: he's walking toward a man, and he's armed. You can't believe it when you see him do it: your funny, happy teenage son, he kills a stranger, right there on the street outside your house. You don't know who. You don't know why. You only know your son is now in custody, his future...

Simon Winchester offers an enthralling biography of the Pacific Ocean and its role in the modern world, exploring our relationship with this imposing force of nature. As the Mediterranean shaped the classical world, and the Atlantic connected Europe to the New World, the Pacific Ocean defines our tomorrow. With China on the rise, so, too, are the American cities of the West coast, including Seattle, San Francisco, and the long cluster of towns down...

In an outrageous tour Down Under, Bryson dodges jellyfish while learning to surf at Bondi Beach, discovers a fish that can climb trees, dehydrates in the deserts in 140 degree temperatures, and tells the true story of the rejected Danish architect who designed the Sydney Opera House.

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice's life isn't terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn't exactly the one she expected. She's happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But something is missing. Her father, the single parent who raised her, is ailing and out of reach. How did they get here so fast? Did she take too much for granted along the way? When Alice wakes up the next morning...

A man awakens in a clearing in what appears to be medieval England with no memory of who he is, where he came from, or why he is there. Chased by a group from his own time, his sole hope for survival lies in regaining his missing memories, making allies among the locals, and perhaps even trusting in their superstitious boasts. His only help from the “real world” should have been a guidebook entitled The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving...

A collection of writings that discuss the author's impressions of the land that lies between the high Sierras and the Mojave Desert in California.

“Happy again, back in the kingdom of light,” writes Paul Theroux as he sets out on a new journey through the continent he knows and loves best. Theroux first came to Africa as a twenty-two-year-old Peace Corps volunteer, and the pull of the vast land never left him. Now he returns, after fifty years on the road, to explore the little-traveled territory of western Africa and to take stock both of the place and of himself. His odyssey takes him...

"Explorers Kristen and Ville Jokinen met scuba diving in Vietnam and fell in love. She was a real estate agent from Oregon, and he a financial analyst for Toyota in his native Finland. After hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from the border of Mexico to Canada they decided their next adventure would be a two-year cycling trip covering 18,000 miles from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Ushuaia, Argentina, despite never having cycled other than around the block....

"Equality 7-2521 lives in the Dark Ages of the future, when all decisions are made by committee, all people live in collectives, all traces of individualism have been wiped out. But the spark of individual thought and freedom still burns in Equality 7-2521's breast, though he doesn't know what to call his passion to think and choose for himself, other than sinful. In a world where he is punished for being better than his brothers, he finds a tunnel...