Sometimes Fitz would look at himself in the mirror, an expression of pathetic eagerness on his face. He was a dog in the pound, wanting to be adopted. He'd smile. What father wouldn't want this boy? Fifteen-year-old Fitzgerald—Fitz, to his friends—has just learned that his father, whom he's never met, who supports him but is not a part of his life, is living nearby. Fitz begins to follow him, watch him, study him, and on an otherwise ordinary May morning, he executes a plan to force his father, at gunpoint, to be with him. Over the course of one spring day, Fitz and his father become real to one another. Fitz learns about his father, why he's chosen to remain distant and what really happened between him and Fitz's mother. And his father learns what sort of boy his son has grown up to become.

A natural history and celebration of the famous bears and salmon of Brooks River. On the Alaska Peninsula, where exceptional landscapes are commonplace, a small river attracts attention far beyond its scale. Each year, from summer to early fall, brown bears and salmon gather at Brooks River to create one of North America’s greatest wildlife spectacles. As the salmon leap from the cascade, dozens of bears are there to catch them (with as many as forty-three bears sighted in a single day), and thousands of people come to watch in person or on the National Park Service’s popular Brooks Falls Bearcam. The Bears of Brooks Falls tells the story of this region and the bears that made it famous in three parts. The first forms an ecological history of the region, from its dormancy 30,000 years ago to the volcanic events that transformed it into the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. The central and longest section is a deep dive into the lives of the wildlife along the Brooks River, especially the bears and salmon. Readers will learn about the bears’ winter hibernation, mating season, hunting rituals, migration patterns, and their relationship with Alaska’s changing environment. Finally, the book explores the human impact, both positive and negative, on this special region and its wild population.

The disappearance of the Edmund Fitzgerald remains one of the great unsolved mysteries in maritime history. Michael Schumacher relays in vivid detail the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, its many productive years on the waters of the Great Lakes, its tragic demise, the search effort and investigation, as well as the speculation and the controversy that followed in the wake of the disaster. Michael Schumacher is the author of six books. He has written 25 documentaries on Great Lakes shipwrecks, including three about the Edmund Fitzgerald. "In his ballad, Mr. Lightfoot sang about the Fitz's final tense moments, when "the waves turn minutes to hours: Now the hours have lengthened into years and years into decades-but the allure of this doomed ship and its missing men remains as strong as ever."-Wall Street Journal

"Buffalo, New York - in the 1980s, this former boomtown had already left its illustrious past behind. The days of heavy production were over in America's rust belt, with no harbinger of what pursuits would fill this void. Amid this microcosm of national decline, a very special institution continued to flourish. The State University's famous English Department was past its own glory days of the '60s but remained a cauldron of intellectual life, incubating some of the freshest, strangest, most exciting ideas to emerge in that defining period of the U.S. academy. A suburban Michigan aesthete seeks the modernism that will distance him from his family's immersion in mass culture; a Pennsylvanian poet gains entry to the halls of academia through the art of theft; a cautious Canadian abandons monogamy for triangles of sexual and philosophical desire. In these three intricate, interrelated essays, Mary Cappello, James Morrison, and Jean Walton meditate on the limits of expression, on the gender of ambition, on secrecy, eroticism, academic time, and snow. They give us glimpses of their sometimes poignant, sometimes hilarious engagements with the likes of J.M. Coetzee, Raymond Federman, Leslie Fiedler, Martin Pops, and an adulterous Professor X. They recall their critical obsessions with James and Proust, Woolf and Nabokov, Bresson, Blanchot, and Freud. Combining the narrative-exegetical with the lyric-intellectual, they evoke the process of coming-into-queerness in a time and place not always conducive to it. Yet these are no ordinary stories of "coming out" or "coming of age"--

Three sexy dragonborn princes. An assassin with an erased past. And the impossible mission of assassinating the dragon emperor. I have spent my whole life training to be an assassin of Linmoor Valley, an underground gild of the world’s most lethal merceneries. My past is a blank, my master merciless. I kill on command, no questions asked. Life changes after the day I’m sent to the town’s brothel to make a kill. The people who ordered the killing now want me to execute the greatest assassination of our time. Their mission is simple: Kill the tyrant dragon emperor and bring peace to the four kingdoms. A wiser assassin would refuse the impossible. But I can’t. From the moment I see the three dragon born princes, I know I belong to them. And they, to me. Assassinating the emperor is no longer my only mission. I must protect the three princes, for they are the only hope of reviving the four kingdoms. My tasks seem impossible, but I am determined to carry them out if only for a chance to be with the men who make my frozen heart throb and bleed. Assassin’s Fate is the first book in an intrigue-filled whychoose fantasy romance that support’s our heroine’s right to choose more than one mate. Get ready for this captivating tale full of heart-pounding romance and edge-of-your-seat action. Note: The Assassin and Her Dragon Princes is a reverse harem series meant for mature readers who enjoy their fantasy fiction with no restraint to language, violence and a few heated scenes. The Assassin and Her Dragon Princess is now a completed series. Book 1: Assassin’s Fate Book 2: Assassin’s Past Book 3: Assassin’s Crown Book 4: Assassin’s Reign

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Nearly twenty years ago, Robin Hobb burst upon the fantasy scene with the first of her acclaimed Farseer novels, Assassin’s Apprentice, which introduced the characters of FitzChivalry Farseer and his uncanny friend the Fool. A watershed moment in modern fantasy, this novel—and those that followed—broke exciting new ground in a beloved genre. Together with George R. R. Martin, Robin Hobb helped pave the way for such talented new voices as Scott Lynch, Brandon Sanderson, and Naomi Novik. Over the years, Hobb’s imagination has soared throughout the mythic lands of the Six Duchies in such bestselling series as the Liveship Traders Trilogy and the Rain Wilds Chronicles. But no matter how far she roamed, her heart always remained with Fitz. And now, at last, she has come home, with an astonishing new novel that opens a dark and gripping chapter in the Farseer saga. FitzChivalry—royal bastard and former king’s assassin—has left his life of intrigue behind. As far as the rest of the world knows, FitzChivalry Farseer is dead and buried. Masquerading as Tom Badgerlock, Fitz is now married to his childhood sweetheart, Molly, and leading the quiet life of a country squire. Though Fitz is haunted by the disappearance of the Fool, who did so much to shape Fitz into the man he has become, such private hurts are put aside in the business of daily life, at least until the appearance of menacing, pale-skinned strangers casts a sinister shadow over Fitz’s past . . . and his future. Now, to protect his new life, the former assassin must once again take up his old one. . . . Praise for Fool’s Assassin “Hobb knows the complicated workings of the wayward human heart, and she takes time to depict them in her tale, to tell her story sweetly, insistently, compellingly. . . . A book meant to be inhabited rather than run through.”—The Seattle Times “[FitzChivalry Farseer is] one of the best characters in fantasy literature.”—Fantasy Book Review “[Hobb’s] prose sparkles, her characters leap off the page.”—Tordotcom “Modern fantasy at its irresistible best.”—The Guardian “Fantastic . . . emotionally rich storytelling.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Complex . . . an atmosphere-filled adventure . . . with a fair quota of surprises . . . a winning combination of strong characters and colorful societies.”—Kirkus Reviews In the final book in the Tawny Man Trilogy, Fitz and the Fool are tested more severely than ever in a book the Monroe News-Star calls “a breathtaking ride from beginning to end.” FitzChivalry Farseer has become firmly ensconced in the queen’s court. Along with his mentor, Chade, and the simpleminded yet strongly skilled Thick, Fitz strives to aid Prince Dutiful on a quest that could secure peace with the Out Islands—and win Dutiful the hand of the Narcheska Elliania. The Narcheska has set the prince an unfathomable task: to behead a dragon trapped in ice on the isle of Aslevjal. Yet not all the clans of the Out Islands support their effort. Are there darker forces at work behind Elliania’s demand? Knowing that the Fool has foretold he will die on the island of ice, Fitz plots to leave his dearest friend behind. But fate cannot so easily be defied.