This vibrant and entrancing book invites readers on a journey around the world. Artist and globetrotter Shirin Sahba celebrates the diversity of people, places, and traditions, and revels in the joy of the journey itself. In exquisitely detailed paintings, she captures fleeting moments and small treasures—a brightly colored sari fluttering in the breeze, a mother and child enjoying gelatos on a hot Italian day, the mesmerizing pattern of an antique Chinese carpet. Along the way, the artist shares reflections, inspirations, and stories, immersing readers in each new landscape. This ebook is perfect for nomads, graduates, retirees, or anyone setting off in search of their own new horizons.

Equipped with an experimental faster-than-light drive, a United Systems cruiser is converted and recommissioned as the exploratory vessel New Horizon. During its first jump, something goes terribly wrong, damaging the ship and hurtling it thousands of light-years from its destination. With the FTL drive destroyed, the handpicked crew's only option is to settle in a nearby star system. Fortunately, a habitable planet exists in the system, populated by creatures that are strikingly similar to those of Earth's past. Internal politics, along with a series of accidents, plagues the fledgling colony while they struggle to gain a foothold and discover the secrets of the planet. The prospects become grim when the dominant rulers of the world arrive to dispute the New Horizon crew's precarious claim.

Much of what you’ve heard about plastic pollution may be wrong. Instead of a great island of trash, the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of manmade debris spread over hundreds of miles of sea—more like a soup than a floating garbage dump. Recycling is more complicated than we were taught: less than nine percent of the plastic we create is reused, and the majority ends up in the ocean. And plastic pollution isn’t confined to the open ocean: it’s in much of the air we breathe and the food we eat. In Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis, journalist Erica Cirino brings readers on a globe-hopping journey to meet the scientists and activists telling the real story of the plastic crisis. From the deck of a plastic-hunting sailboat with a disabled engine, to the labs doing cutting-edge research on microplastics and the chemicals we ingest, Cirino paints a full picture of how plastic pollution is threatening wildlife and human health. Thicker Than Water reveals that the plastic crisis is also a tale of environmental injustice, as poorer nations take in a larger share of the world’s trash, and manufacturing chemicals threaten predominantly Black and low-income communities. There is some hope on the horizon, with new laws banning single-use items and technological innovations to replace plastic in our lives. But Cirino shows that we can only fix the problem if we face its full scope and begin to repair our throwaway culture. Thicker Than Water is an eloquent call to reexamine the systems churning out waves of plastic waste.