You've admired agates for their color and beauty--now learn how to find your own. Unlike other books, Agate Hunting Made Easy provides step-by-step instructions to help you turn those once-frustrating agate hunts into successful ones. You'll have an experienced collector, Jim Magnuson, as your guide: He will show you photographs by Carol Wood of what rough agates really look like in the field. His tips will help you recognize agate imposters that often fool inexperienced collectors. He will teach you how to hunt in a variety of locations, from gravel pits to lakeshore....

Gemstones are naturally beautiful, but you can make them glisten and shine. This beginner's guide covers all the techniques you need to know: tumbling, cutting, face polishing and more. It pertains to a wide range of popular gemstones, from agates to turquoise, and it provides information about recommended equipment and supplies. Plus, it introduces jewelry making with seven projects. By following the authors' simple approach, you'll create finished stones worthy of displaying, selling or making into jewelry.

In this brilliant mix of literary satire and crime caper, Frankie Abandonato, a small-time con man on the run, finds refuge by posing as V. S. Mohle--a famously reclusive writer--and teaching in a prestigious writing program somewhere in Texas. Streetwise and semiliterate, Frankie finds that being treated as a genius agrees with him.

The program has been funded by Rex Schoeninger, the world's richest novelist, who is dying. Buzzards are circling, angling for the remains of Rex's fortune, and Frankie quickly realizes that he has been presented with the opportunity of a lifetime....