People became colonists on newly opened frontier worlds for a wide variety of reasons. Most wanted a new beginning. Some wanted the adventure frontier worlds promised. A few wanted to escape their ugly problems on their home worlds. Potential colonists underwent a thorough background check, including a criminal investigation. They were also forced to pay hundreds of credits as an immigration fee. The Samuel Wiggins Immigration Adventure was different. The colonists were desperate to get away from their current situations. The vast majority of them had fought long, vicious wars before being evacuated from their home worlds. They were sequester in a prison camp on a gray world where its gray, silicon based indigenous life forms had a taste for carbon based life forms. Samuel Wiggins made them an offer that seemed like an answer to prayer. He would transport them to their new world, and provide all of the equipment and supplies they would need. He would also give each one 200 credits they could spend on anything they wanted. Excitement turned to depression early on in their flight to their new world. That was after they learned Samuel Wiggins was a drug lord, and his Immigration Adventure was nothing more that setting up a huge drug manufacturing operation. Worse, their new home world was classified code Blue, unsuitable for human colonization. Things turned downright scary after they arrived at the planet and an overwhelming number of starships attacked the starship transporting their spaceships. The starship jumped back into Hyper flight, flew across the galaxy and down a spiral arm. When the starship reappeared in normal space, it was out in the middle of a dark nowhere without any chance of flying back to civilization. Would the severely damaged starship be able to fly to a star system? Would they find a planet that they could colonize?

The secrets of serenity and wisdom in a changing world can be found in these Taoist teachings, written during the late 16th century in the Ming dynasty. The author's reflections are an outgrowth of his upbringing in the science of neo-Confucianism, a lifelong career in public service, and his retirement at age 62 into Taoist apprenticeship.

Early in this volume, David Ehrenfeld describes what prophecy really is. Referring to the biblical prophets, he says they were not the "holy fortunetellers that the word prophet has come to signify....The business of prophecy is not simply foretelling the future; rather it is describing the present with exceptional truthfulness and accuracy." Once this is done, then it can be seen that broad aspects of the future have suddenly become apparent. The twentieth century is drawing to a chaotic close amidst portents of unprecedented change and upheaval. The unravelling of societies and civilizations and the destruction of nature march together--linked--a fact whose enormous significance is often lost. In Beginning Again, David Ehrenfeld has undertaken the difficult task of describing the present clearly enough to reveal the future. Out of his broad vision emerges a glimpse of a new millennium: a vision at once frightening and comforting, a scene of great devastation and great rebuilding. Ehrenfeld ranges far and wide to present a coherent vision of our relationship with Nature--its many aspects and implications--as our century opens into the next millennium. Whether he is writing about the problem of loyalty to organizations, rights versus obligations, our over-managed society, the vanishing of established knowledge, the failure of experts, the triumph of dandelions, Dr. Seuss, Edward Teller, or the future of farming, he is always concerned with the intricate interaction between technology and nature. As in his classic book, The Arrogance of Humanism, Ehrenfeld never loses sight of our fatal love affair with the fantasy of control. We now have no choice, he argues, but to transform the dream of control, of progress, from one of overweening hubris, love of consumption, and the idiot's goal of perpetual growth, to one based on "the inventive imitation of nature," with its honesty, beauty, resilience, and durability. Few American writers and even fewer scientists can describe these timeless, transcendent qualities of nature so well. In "Places," the opening chapter, David Ehrenfeld tells about nightly vigils he spent alone on the moonlit beach of Tortuguero, watching giant sea turtles emerging from the sea to lay their eggs in the black sand where they were born. "I could watch the perfect white spheres falling," he writes. "Falling as they have fallen for a hundred million years, with the same slow cadence, always shielded from the rain or stars by the same massive bulk with the beaked head and the same large, myopic eyes rimmed with crusts of sand washed out by tears. Minutes and hours, days and months dissolve into eons. I am on an Oligocene beach, an Eocene beach, a Cretaceous beach--the scene is the same. It is night, the turtles are coming back, always back; I hear a deep hiss of breath and catch a glint of wet shell as the continents slide and crash, the oceans form and grow."

The novel follows a young man from rural northern Finland during the depression as he faces obstacles to emigrate to Canada and pursue his aspirations. Looming on the horizon is the threat of war between the land he left behind and its big neighbor to the east.

In a desperate bid to escape the fate that her pack has planned for her, Lori makes a run for freedom the night of her 18th birthday. But she has no idea just how high the cost of her freedom will be...Lori finds herself lost and alone until she comes upon a town that is seemingly perfect on the outside, but the pleasant exterior hides darkness within.Grayson, Corey, Wyatt, and Kannon are banished from their home after a violent takeover from a rival pack. They find sanctuary in a small town far from any other wolves. They aren't expecting a lone female to wander into their territory. *This is the first book in a slow burn reverse harem series.

Annotation Eight essays address the relation of any specific beginningof a text, a book, an argument, a narrativeto the originary moment of Jewish textual tradition. The two fundamental approaches are attending to the quotidian and obvious notion that any textual work claims a beginning, and the connection between rhetorical and cultural moves. No credentials are noted for the contributors. There is no index. Distributed in the US by Stylus. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).