"There's humor and action aplenty, but Four Corners is also a warmhearted look at how we love and forgive. Five hundred and forty-four pages never seemed so short"—People, 4 stars, People Pick The Four Corners of the Sky is master storyteller Michael Malone's new novel of love, secrets, and the mysterious bonds of families. Malone brings characters to life as only he can, exploring the questions that defy easy answers: Is love a choice or a calling? Why do the ties of family bind so tightly? And is forgiveness a gift to others...or a gift we give ourselves? In small towns between the North Carolina Piedmont and the coast the best scenery is often in the sky. On flat sweeps of red clay and scrub pine the days move monotonously, safely, but above, in the blink of an eye, dangerous clouds can boil out of all four corners of the sky...The flat slow land starts to shiver and anything can happen. In such a storm, on Annie Peregrine's seventh birthday, her father gave her the airplane and minutes later drove out of her life. Thus begins an enchanting novel that bursts with energy from the first pages, and sweeps you off on a journey of unforgettable characters, hilarious encounters, and haunting secrets. Praise for The Four Corners of the Sky: "Devoted Michael Malone fans have been waiting more than twenty years for another Handling Sin, perhaps the greatest road novel since Tom Jones. The wait is over..."— Bill Ott, editor-in-chief, Booklist "Secrets and intrigues among the honeysuckle: a sun-washed yarn of the New South, affectionately told." —Kirkus starred review "The Four Corners of the Sky is the best thing I have read in years and you can imagine how much I read. Truly, I couldn't put it down. I loved it."—Kathy Ashton, The King's English Bookshop BONUS READING GROUP GUIDE INCLUDED

A collection of folk stories from around the world, each accompanied by background information, that explain the various perspectives of different peoples on how the universe and their world came to be.

Abby Lovitt is put in charge of training the expensive and haughty horse Pie in the Sky after his owner refuses. While trying to get a hold on him, she must deal with the new challenges, both good and bad, that come with being a freshman in high school in 1970's Northern California.

Following the route taken by British explorer Ivan Champion in 1927, and amid breathtaking landscapes and wildlife, Salak traveled across this remote Pacific island - often called the last frontier of adventure travel - by dugout canoe and on foot. Along the way, she stayed in a village where cannibals m was still practiced behind the backs of the missionaries, met the leader of the OPM - the separatist guerrilla movement opposing the Indonesian occupation of Western New Guinea - and undertook an epic trek through the jungle. The New York Times said ''Kira Salak is tough, a real - life Lara Croft.'' And Edward Marriott, proclaimed Four Corners to be ''A travel book that transcends the genre?It is, like all the best travel narratives, a resonant interior journey, and offers wisdom for our times.''

No water ever tasted better than when it came up clear and cool from deep in the ground, its flow pulsing to the steady rhythm of the wind-driven pump. . . . Windmill men such as Tex Burdick and others described in Baker?s narrative deserve much credit for making life possible in semi-desert rural areas of Texas, New Mexico, and other parts of the West. ?Elmer Kelton, from the forewordDuring the Great Depression the windmillers of the Burdick & Burdick Company of El Paso, one of the largest windmill distributorships in the United States, crisscrossed the desert Southwest to bring wind power and water to a parched land. Battling blazing sun, dust storms, dizzying heights, and the hazards of cacti and rattlesnakes, they worked seven days a week from sunup to sundown and counted themselves lucky to earn two dollars a day. From 1923 to 1942, company owner B. H. ?Tex? Burdick, Sr., photographed his men at work, producing a chronicle of the windmillers? lives. Fifty of his remarkable images, paired here with text by historian T. Lindsay Baker, preserve the fascinating story of the industry that made western settlement possible.

It's a great honor when Grandfather Gao, a family friend and elder in New York's Chinatown community, asks Lydia Chin and her partner Bill Smith to go to Hong Kong to deliver the ashes of an old friend for burial, a letter from that friend to his brother, and a vauable jade figurine for the friend's seven-year-old grandson.

On the Ides of March, our hero, Raleigh Whittier Hayes (forgetful husband, baffled father, prosperous insurance agent, and leading citizen of Thermopylae, North Carolina), learns that his father has discharged himself from the hospital, taken all his money out of the bank and, with a young black female mental patient, vanished in a yellow Cadillac convertible. Left behind is a mysterious list of seven outrageous tasks that Raleigh must perform in order to rescue his father and his inheritance. And so Raleigh and fat Mingo Sheffield (his irrepressibly loyal friend) set off on an uproarious contemporary treasure hunt through a landscape of unforgettable characters, falling into adventures worthy of Tom Jones and Huck Finn. A moving parable of human love and redemption, Handling Sin is Michael Malone's comic masterpiece.