It's 1939, and a teenage math genius is mysteriously summoned to the Smithsonian Institution, where a crash program to develop the atomic bomb is being conducted in the basement. The boy turns out to hold the key to both the secrets of nuclear fission and breakthroughs in the time continuum. As he brainstorms with Robert Oppenheimer, he catches a glimpse of the coming war and becomes determined to ward off the cataclysm. In a race against time-and surrounded by figures from American history past and present, including Albert Einstein, Grover Cleveland, and Abraham Lincoln-he battles to save...

A perfect balance of science, history, and sociology, Time's Pendulum traces the important developments in humankind's epic quest to measure the hours, days, and years with accuracy, and how our concept of time has changed with each new technological breakthrough. Written in an easy-to-follow chronological format and illustrated with entertaining anecdotes, author Jo Ellen Barnett's history of timekeeping covers everything from the earliest sundials and water clocks, to the pendulum and the more recent advances of battery-powered, quartz-regulated wrist watches and the powerful radioactive...

What does it take for a woman to be judged saintly? In this wily, wonderfully original novel, Michle Roberts tells the story of the fictional Saint Josephine: her life and death, her childhood and evolution from woman to nun to abbess, her unlikely canonization. The more we discover, the more incredible her sainthood seems. Who was Saint Josephine? Craven nun or fearless miracle worker? Pious role model or seductress? Illuminating Saint Josephine's story are the equally fantastical stories of eleven actual female saints: mad one-armed girls, beauties locked in towers, mothers who encourage...

My mother loved me to pieces, as she often said, writes Roy Blount Jr., "and I'm still trying to pick up the pieces." In the book his readers have been waiting for, our generation's master of full-hearted humor lays open the soul of his life story. Blount Georgia boy, New York wit, lover of baseball and interesting women, bumbling adventurer, salty-limerick virtuoso, and impassioned father journeys into his past, and his psyche (and also to China, Manhattan, and sixty feet underwater) in search of the answers to three riddles that have haunted his life: one, the riddle of "the family curse";...

From catfishing in Mississippi as a young girl to battling marlin in the Caribbean, Lorian Hemingway has always felt most comfortable with a fishing pole in hand. But for many years, it was alcohol that held prominence in her life, almost causing her to drown in the family legacy. Walk on Water is Lorian Hemingway's amazing story of how her one true passion-fishing-saved her life. With humor and startling honesty, Hemingway wryly acknowledges how fishing is more than a metaphor for her salvation-it allowed her to feel connected to something as a child, living with her alcoholic mother and...

"Actually, there were no men in Auletta except the married, the stupid, and the dead. In Auletta this worked out to be basically the same thing."
Welcome to Auletta, Louisiana, where the typical bumper sticker reads: "God, Guns and Guts Made This Country Great. Unfortunately for Jeanne Roth, a middle-aged woman with no taste for backwater towns, Auletta becomes her home when she makes good on a promise to her father to care for her mother. When Jeanne learns that her mother has Alzheimer's, she must confront a past bursting with memories of her mama, a once vibrant femme fatale. As she...

A new edition of the groundbreaking spiritual treasure, with a foreword by bestselling author Marianne Williamson .
Since its original publication in 1949, In Search of the Miraculous has been hailed as the most valuable and reliable documentation of G. I. Gurdjieff's thoughts and universal view. This historic and influential work is considered by many to be a primer of mystical thought as expressed through the Work, a combination of Eastern philosophies that had for centuries been passed on orally from teacher to student. Gurdjieff's goal, to introduce the Work to the West, attracted...

A single city woman meets Mr. Right-he has amber eyes and a wily heart. There's only one catch . . . he has four legs and a tail.
Relatively indifferent to the natural world, allergic to dogs, and happily independent, writer Louise Bernikow never had a pet and knew nothing about caring for one. But one day while running along Manhattan's Hudson River, she came across an abandoned boxer. He had a gimpy leg and a dim past, but Bernikow instantly, bewilderingly, did the one thing her mother always warned her not to do-she brought the strange male home.
Here is the comical and offbeat...

In the year 999, when Ben Attar, a Moroccan Jewish merchant, takes a second wife, he commits an act whose unforeseen consequences will forever alter his family, his relationships, his business-his life. In an attempt to forestall conflict and advance his business interests at the same time, Ben Attar undertakes his annual journey to Europe with both his first wife and his new wife. The trip is the beginning of a profound human drama whose moral conflicts of fidelity and desire resonate with those of our time. Yehoshua renders the medieval world of Jewish and Christian culture and trade with...

Snow Mountain Passage is a powerful retelling of our most dramatic pioneer story--the ordeal of the Donner Party. Through the eyes of James Frazier Reed, one of the group's leaders, and the imagined "Trail Notes" of his daughter Patty, we journey along with the ill-fated group determined, at all costs, to make it to the California territory.
James Reed is a proud, headstrong, yet devoted husband and father. As he and his family travel in the "Palace Car," a huge, specially built--and ultimately cumbersome--covered wagon, they thrill to new sights and cope with conflict and constant...