In an obsessive attempt to protect her son from the innumerable dangers of the world, Martha kidnaps him and hides in an isolated cave before reluctantly befriending a detective who has been hired to bring them back home.

When all of Venice is unmasked, one man's identity remains a mystery . . . 1807 When a baby is discovered floating in a basket along the quiet canals of Venice, a guild of artisans takes him in and raises him as a son, skilled in each of their trades. Although the boy, Sebastien Trovato, has wrestled with questions of his origins, it isn't until a woman washes ashore on his lagoon island that answers begin to emerge. In hunting down his story, Sebastien must make a choice that could alter not just his own future, but also that of the beloved floating city. 1904 Daniel Goodman is given a fresh start in life as the century turns. Hoping to redeem a past laden with regrets, he is sent on an assignment from California to Venice to procure and translate a rare book. There, he discovers a city of colliding hope and decay, much like his own life, and a mystery wrapped in the pages of that filigree-covered volume. With the help of Vittoria, a bookshop keeper, Daniel finds himself in a web of shadows, secrets, and discoveries carefully kept within the stones and canals of the ancient city . . . and in the mystery of the man whose story the book does not finish: Sebastien Trovato. "Introspective, surprising, and achingly beautiful."--Booklist starred review "Dykes's pen is fused with magic and poetry. Every word's a gentle wave building into the splendor that is All the Lost Places, where struggles for identity and a place to belong find hope between the pages of a timeless story."--J'NELL CIESIELSKI, bestselling author of The Socialite "Luscious writing, authentic characters, and an ending that satisfies to the core of the spirit, this novel is another winner from Amanda Dykes."--HEIDI CHIAVAROLI, Carol Award-winning author of Freedom's Ring and Hope Beyond the Waves

Alastair Bonnett explores extraordinary, off-grid, offbeat places including micro-nations, moving villages, secret cities, and no man's lands. Consider Sealand, an abandoned gun platform off the English coast that a British citizen claimed as his own sovereign nation, issuing passports and making his wife a princess. Or Baarle, a patchwork city of Dutch and Flemish enclaves where crossing the street can involve traversing national borders. Or Sandy Island, which appeared on maps well into 2012 despite the fact it never existed.

We live in a world of accelerating change, marked by the decline of traditional forms of family, community, and professional life. Both within families and in work-places individuals feel increasingly lost, unsure of the roles required of them. In this book a psychoanalyst and an Anglican priest, using a combination of psychoanalysis and social systems theory, offer tools that allow people to create meaningful connections with one another and with the institutions within which they work and live. The authors begin by discussing how life in a family prefigures and prepares the individual to participate in groups, offering detailed case studies of families in therapy as illustrations. They then turn to organizations, describing how their consultations with an academic conference, a mental hospital, a law firm, and a church parish helped members of these institutions to relate to one another by becoming aware of wider contexts for their experiences. All the people within a group have their own subjectively felt perceptions of the environment. According to Shapiro and Carr, when individuals can negotiate a shared interpretation of the experience and of the purposes for which the group exists, they can further their own development and that of their organizations. The authors suggest how this can be accomplished. They conclude with some broad speculations about the continuing importance of institutions for connecting the individual and society.

A new collection from the author of Nebula Award winning A Song for a New Day and Philip K Dick Award winning Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea. A half-remembered children's TV show. A hotel that shouldn't exist. A mysterious ballad. A living flag. Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Pinsker's second collection brings together a seemingly eclectic group of stories that unite behind certain themes: her touchstones of music and memory are joined by stories about secret subversions and hidden messages in art. Her stories span and transcend genre labels, looking for the truth in strange situations from possible futures to impossible pasts.

This book examines what it means to lose a place forever and why we return, and keep on returning, to these places so large in our memories. It considers many lost towns, suburbs and homes: Darwin after Cyclone Tracy, the flooding of the town of Adaminaby in NSW, the inundation of Lake Pedder in Tasmania, bushfire at Macedon in Victoria, migration from other countries, the clearing of neighborhoods for freeways and the everyday circumstances that force people from their land. It establishes how important the places we live in are, and how much we grieve when we lose them.

Some cities that once thrived have now disappeared, the sites sometimes turning into empty, ominous ruins. What dark secrets are hidden in these vanished cities? In this book, readers will explore the mysteries of the world’s most famous lost cities and learn how these intriguing places were rediscovered. Among the 11 spooky places highlighted are the abandoned remains of a futuristic vacation town that was said to be cursed, and the crumbling ruins of an industrial town on an eerily deserted island. Fascinating histories and haunting photographs will keep kids turning the pages for more.