Higher Worlds

A woman steals a baby from a shelter in an attempt to recoup her own lost motherhood. A phone sex operator sees divine opportunity when a lavender-eyed cowboy walks into her life. A mother and a son selling dream catchers along a highway that leads to a toxic beach manifest two young documentary filmmakers into their realm. And two teenage girls play a dangerous online game with destiny. Told in bright, snapping prose that reveals a world of loss and love underneath, Chelsea Bieker illuminates a golden yet gothic world of longing and abandonment under an unrelenting California sun.

The end is here—and Alec West holds the fuse. After shattering the Ascension Gate and entering the Core World, Alec—now an Ascendant Warden—stands one irreversible choice away from saving Earth… or severing it forever. The Beacon’s heart is broken. The Void Dragon rules the skies. A one-minute countdown ticks across every reality shard. Worse, Harbinger champion Darius Kane wants the Beacon’s core—and the power to reshape existence—for himself. To stop the collapse, Alec must: Reunite his scattered party—Rina, Virgil, Cole, Mark, Eleanor, and Miranda—within a realm where...

«Millions of people share the same dream: a mile-high wave, erasing human civilization - the end of the world. This is not a dream. It’s a warning.» Across the globe, thousands of people have reported dreaming of a colossal wave—an overwhelming force that swallows buildings, roads, and entire cities: a vision of the world’s end as we know it. What was once dismissed as a mere collective dream has, under closer scrutiny, revealed itself as a deeply unsettling and increasingly tangible phenomenon. As climate change continues to reshape the planet, NASA confirms a rise in solar ...

Based on more than five years of clandestine reporting on the front lines, No Turning Back is an utterly engrossing human drama full of vivid, indelible characters that shows how hope can flourish even amid one of the 21st century's greatest humanitarian disasters.

History begets legends. Swords versus sorcery. Mortals cross paths with faeries. A high adventure of love, loss, treachery, and redemption. When John of Dumnonia visits his cousin, Rhys, he learns of the House of the Dragon. With renewed purpose, John sets out to seek the legendary Dragon’s Spire. John has his quest, but Owain has a mission, too. A chieftain with dangerous secrets, Owain leads his force of Silurian rebels against the Romans. However, when they’re betrayed, an ambush results. Owain retreats with the survivors, but now, there’s a price on his head. A Roman price. In ...

Set in Calcutta, London, the glacier-locked wilds of the Karakoram, and on Everest itself, The Last Englishmen is also the story of a generation. The cast of this exhilarating drama includes Indian and English writers and artists, explorers and Communist spies, Die Hards and Indian nationalists, political rogues and police informers. Key among them is a highborn Bengali poet named Sudhin Datta, a melancholy soul torn, like many of his generation, between hatred of the British Empire and a deep love of European literature, whose life would be upended by the arrival of war on his Calcutta doorstep.

With his mother in jail, Sequoyah, a 15-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care with the Troutt family. Literally and figuratively scarred by his unstable upbringing, Sequoyah has spent years mostly keeping to himself, living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface - that is, until he meets the 17-year-old Rosemary, another youth staying with the Troutts. Sequoyah and Rosemary bond over their shared Native American backgrounds and paths through the foster care system, but as Sequoyah's feelings toward Rosemary deepen, the precariousness of their lives and the scars of their pasts threaten to undo them both.

In this fully revised and updated third edition, Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham provide cogent answers to urgent questions regarding the world's newest superpower and offer a framework for understanding China's meteoric rise from developing country to superpower. Framing their answers through the historical legacies that largely define China's present-day trajectory, Wasserstrom and Cunningham introduce listeners to the Chinese Communist Party, the building boom in Shanghai, and the environmental fallout of rapid Chinese industrialization.

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, millions of young American men were eager to join up and defend their country. William Swanson was among them. The View from My Foxhole tells William Swanson's story of fighting in the jungles of Bougainville and Guam and the ash heap of Iwo Jima. Through it he maintains his sense of humor and thanks his lucky stars for every day he survives.

Yellowstone remains a national icon, one of the few entities capable of bridging ideological divides in the United States. Yet the park's history is also filled with episodes of conflict and exclusion, setting precedents for Native American land dispossession, land rights disputes, and prolonged tensions between commercialism and environmental conservation. Yellowstone's legacies are both celebratory and problematic. A Place Called Yellowstone tells the comprehensive story of Yellowstone National Park as the story of the nation itself.

Had Hitler succeeded in conquering Europe, he would have crowned himself Holy Roman Emperor. The Nazis had in their possession priceless artifacts that would give Hitler legitimacy in his subjects' eyes: the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire including the Spear of Destiny, alleged to have pierced Christ's side at the Crucifixion. Looted from the royal treasury in Vienna, Austria, the Crown Jewels were hidden in a secret bunker deep beneath Nrnberg castle, known to few.

The product of painstaking research and countless interviews, A High Price offers a nuanced, definitive historical account of Israel's bold but often failed efforts to fight terrorist groups. Israel's debacles in Lebanon against groups like the Lebanese Hizballah are examined in-depth, as is the country's problematic response to Jewish terrorist groups that have struck at Arabs and Israelis seeking peace.

Mari, the 9th Heiress of the Brall Empire, now controls half of the Empire. With the help of her summoned human hero Fred and the rest of her allies, she has successfully stopped the Brish invasion. General Maltarka, the self-proclaimed Queen of the Brish, is missing and presumed dead after suffering severe wounds and a devastating defeat near the port city of Cern. Coratabi, the Brall Empress, has returned to the imperial capital after a surprisingly unfriendly encounter with her daughter, Heiress Mari. As Fred struggles to avoid a Brall civil war, a powerful enemy secretly approaches. ...

Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in Switzerland, where the horrors of the Second World War seem only a distant echo. An only child, he lives alone with Emilie, the mother he adores but who treats him with bitter severity. He begins an intense friendship with a Jewish boy his age, talented and mercurial Anton Zweibel, a budding concert pianist.

Since the earliest known marker denoting the edge of one land and the beginning of the next—a stone column inscribed with Sumerian cuneiform—borders have been imagined, mapped, moved, and fought over. In The Edge of the Plain, James Crawford skillfully blends history, travel writing, and reportage to trace these borderlines throughout history and across the globe.

Would you dive into madness to save everything you love? A promise made on a whim by a mad god is Warren's only hope of saving the Ajoiner Realm.As Warren races through a treacherous world to earn the respect of the brutal tyuials, he realizes fulfilling his end of the deal with Atax-Zauul may prove more complicated than he’d expected. Horrific monsters and shifting landscapes threaten to devour him with every step he takes. Meanwhile, Warren's team struggles to rebuild the crumbling city of Fortitude while evil forces besiege them at every turn. With danger lurking in their own home, can...

As a young man growing up in Asheville, North Carolina, Robert Morgan was a fast-driving party boy - a hell-raiser. But when his mother committed suicide upon learning she had inoperable brain cancer, Morgan's life changed dramatically. He was no longer a carefree playboy; he was a man searching for meaning. He found that meaning at the controls of an airplane, and in the flak-and fighter-filled skies over Occupied France and Nazi Germany.

The death of Colonel Muammar Qadhafi freed Libya from 42 years of despotic rule, raising hopes for a new era. But in the aftermath, the country descended into bitter rivalries and civil war, paving the way for the Islamic State and a catastrophic migrant crisis. In a fast-paced narrative that blends frontline reporting, analysis, and history, Frederic Wehrey tells the story of what went wrong.

One day, a mysterious stranger arrives at a boardinghouse of the widow Gateau - a sad-faced stranger, who keeps to himself. When the widow’s daughter, Mirette, discovers him crossing the courtyard on air, she begs him to teach her how he does it. But Mirette doesn’t know that the stranger was once the Great Bellini - master wire-walker. Or that Bellini has been stopped by a terrible fear. And it is she who must teach him courage once again.

There exists a fine line between truth and legend, in the heart of Atlameria. Following an encounter in a deadly forest, two unlikely souls must join as one—or perish alone. Outcast shape-changer, called Ursakar by his people; Thorn struggles to understand the mysteries of his shadowed past while bearing the burden of an even more uncertain future. Meanwhile, the huntress tasked with the execution of his kind, Keira is forced to question the nature of her mission and whether those of her ruling order are as noble as they appear. Past and present soon collide with the discovery of a relic ...