Unemployed English professor Emily Murray has been given a chance of a lifetime: to work and study inside Gnarled Hollow, the former estate of one of her favorite authors. She doesn’t believe in the supernatural, but by the end of her first day, she knows something is wrong. The house has a disturbing habit of changing dimensions--and nor just physical ones. Rooms go missing, doors close on their own, and time has a strange tendency to disappear. Emily is joined by other scholars, among them the beautiful art historian, Juniper Friend. Together they begin to research the history of the house, refusing to abandon their work despite the appearance of a mysterious, frightening presence. Spurred on by their desire to uncover the mysteries of Gnarled Hollow and its ghostly inhabitant, they’re determined to uncover the truth, even if it means risking their own lives.

This book claims that any one who cares more and better, exists more and better. Much has been written about how character affects action, but this book describes how actions and passions affect character ontologically. There is an independent, not culturally relative source for the ethics of care in an ontology of the self. Ethical and aesthetic flourishing is at once ontological flourishing of the largest, truest self. The book includes many illustrations of how behavior and attitudes have consequences not only for who, but for how much we are. It refines the concept of flourishing originating with Aristotle, showing how values that encourage flourishing of the world as it relates to any person, reflexively enhance the flourishing of that person, hence offering a bridge across the fact/value chasm and a cure for ethical relativism. Classical and modern philosophers writing about the nature of a self are engaged to provide a platform from which further advances can be made on several problems in general philosophy that relate to the ontology of a self. These include the use of the term “existence,” a bundle theory showing a way substance can be made up of attributes, an exploration of unity in a self, an evaluation of necessary constituents of selfhood, a theory of how persons are constituted in space and time, a portrayal of how existential intensity relates to the exercise of power, and a proposal about how free acts and stances can be connected to character. Applications of an ontology of care to problems of partiality, specialization, limitation, age and death are outlined in the final chapters. All these issues are engaged to explicate the connection between ontological and ethical flourishing of the self/world combination.

Reprint of the original.

This book is an invaluable compilation of ecological information on 244 species of trees, shrubs, and woody vines found in the northern half of the Florida peninsula and in the Florida Panhandle. It covers the full range of native species in the region as well as common exotic plants, drawing on original experience and field research by ecologist Robert Simons. For each species, Simons describes the plant’s leaves, flowers, and fruit, geographical distribution, size, and lifespan. He also discusses its typical habitats, soil and light requirements, water needs and flooding tolerance, adaptation to fire, economic importance, and the plants, insects, and diseases most often associated with it. Notably, the book focuses on each plant’s relationship with wildlife, including which species eat the fruit or foliage or pollinate the flowers. It also features an introduction to the biological communities of northern Florida and a helpful glossary of botanical terms. The Ecology of the Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of Northern Florida provides gardeners, landscapers, scientists, and students a foundational understanding of how these plants fit into the communities of organisms in which they live and how they have adapted to their place in their physical environment.