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Desert Snow is the story of one girl, one bike and 1,000 beers in Africa. By daring to follow a dream and not letting fear prevail, Helen cycled across the Sahara, Sahel and tropics of West Africa, paddled down the Niger River in a pirogue, hitch-hiked to Timbuktu and spent three months traversing the Congo, which she thought she may never leave... A lot can change in 2 years, cycling 25,000km from England to Cape Town. So can nothing. Helen takes you with her on the journey through every high and low of her memories and misadventures. She describes a continent brimming with diversity that is both a world away from what she knows and yet not so different at all.
In the parched, arid wastes of this far-flung Polity world, Snow is being hunted. With a prize on his head and his life in danger, trust is a luxury he can't afford. Hirald, pale and deadly in the blistering heat, is an ambiguous presence. But who is she? What does she want from him? Mankind has sought Snow's secret for thousands of years, and blood will flow in the desert before it's revealed. This short tale is compelling, brutal and lingers long after the final word: the perfect introduction to Neal Asher's Polity universe fiction.
A novel about a macho father, his drifter son and the memory of a dead mother. The setting is a gas station in the Arizona desert in the 50s. A study of a father and son relationship when there is no mother.
Experience the infinite varieties of snow in the Alps through the lens of famed Austrian landscape photographer Peter Mathis. Renowned for his gorgeous mountain scenes and spectacular photos of winter athletes, Peter Mathis has chosen black-andwhite film to capture the essence of snow in this book. These stunning duotone images render a traditional Alpen landscape into painterly canvases that are in turns otherworldly, sensuous, haunting, and heavenly. Skiers' tracks zig and zag through the powder and windswept waves of snow undulate like desert sand. Impeccably reproduced in large, full-bleed format, these images showcase an enormous palette, from the deepest black to the most immaculate white, and every imaginable tone in between. Mathis's texts recall the instances of each shot, many of which require days of trekking through mountains with nearly fifty pounds of equipment strapped to his back. Reminiscent of the works of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, Mathis's photographs perfectly evoke the biting cold, blazing sun, deep shadows, and blinding lights that make the Alps a uniquely beautiful landscape and snow a powerful force of nature.
A Desert Habitat describes one of the world's most fascinating desert habitats: the Sonoran Desert. Discover how animals find food, keep cool, and stay alive.
The Turner family, headed by Jessup Paul Turner, is a power force in the country. The family is obsessed with the preservation of its heritage and dynasty, but is cursed with marriages that produce a single male heir each generation. Jessup Paul Turner's wife produces an heir. Unfortunately, the heir is a girl. The girl, Debra, while in college, falls in love with a Black student. They marry against family wishes and she becomes pregnant, unacceptable for the Turner dynasty preservation. Turner determines that the child must be killed to preserve the Turner lineage. Turner sends men, led by his personal bodyguard, to kill the baby. The bodyguard, in love with Debra, kills the hit men instead. The young child is precocious and as he matures, believes himself to be the son of God. He attracts a large following, called the Jessupites. Turner, now with a male heir, as a result of a relationship with a prostitute, is determined, now more than ever, to have the Black boy killed. He puts into motion a plan to kill the Black Prophet.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Cadillac Desert in the past few weeks, as the rain fell and fell and kept falling over California, much of which, despite the pouring heavens, seems likely to remain in the grip of a severe drought. Reisner anticipated this moment. He worried that the West’s success with irrigation could be a mirage — that it took water for granted and didn’t appreciate the precariousness of our capacity to control it.” – Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times, January 20,2023 "The definitive work on the West's water crisis." --Newsweek The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster. In his landmark book, Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West. Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden--an Eden that may only be a mirage. This edition includes a new postscript by Lawrie Mott, a former staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, that updates Western water issues over the last two decades, including the long-term impact of climate change and how the region can prepare for the future.
There was no snow on Christmas Eve. Instead, a desert zephyr blew And palm fronds sang a rustling tune To welcome the awaited birth. There was no snow, no fireplace, no need for woolen caps and gloves on that very first Christmas. Instead there was a humble stable, and weary travelers with light robes and sandals on a desert night. This luminous picture book manages to take the familiar story of the Nativity and make it fresh and immediate, reminding young children of the miracle of Christmas and the true nature of the spirit of the season, no matter what the weather.
