Heaven Lake is about many things: China, God, passion, friendship, travel, even the reckless smuggling of hashish. But above all, this extraordinary debut is about the mysteries of love. Vincent Saunders has graduated from college, left his small hometown in Illinois, and arrived in Taiwan as a Christian volunteer. After opening a ministry house, he meets a wealthy Taiwanese businessman, Mr. Gwa, who tells Vincent that on his far travels to western China he has discovered a beautiful young woman living near the famous landmark Heaven Lake. Elegant, regal, clever, she works as a lowly clerk in the local railway station. Gwa wishes to marry her, but is thwarted by the political conflict between China and Taiwan. In exchange for a sum of money, will Vincent travel to China on Gwa's behalf, take part in a counterfeit marriage, and bring her back to Taiwan for Gwa to marry legitimately? Vincent, largely innocent about the ways of the world and believing that marriage is a sacrament, says no. Gwa is furious. Soon, though, everything Vincent understands about himself and his vocation in Taiwan changes. Supplementing his income from his sparsely attended Bible-study classes, he teaches English to a group of enthusiastic schoolgirls -- and it is his tender, complicated friendship with a student that forces Vincent to abandon the ministry house and sends him on a path toward spiritual reckoning. It also causes him to reconsider Gwa's extraordinary proposition. What follows is not just an exhilarating -- sometimes harrowing -- journey to a remote city in China, but an exploration of love, passion, loneliness, and the nature of faith. John Dalton's exquisite narrative arcs across China as gracefully as it plumbs the human heart, announcing a major new talent. John Dalton was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of seven children. Upon graduation from college, he received a plane ticket to travel around the world, and so began an enduring interest in travel and foreign culture. During the late 1980s he lived in Taiwan for several years and traveled in Mainland China and other Asian countries. He attended the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop in the early 1990s and was awarded two fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown as well as a James Michener/Paul Engle Award for his novel-in-progress, Heaven Lake. He presently lives with his wife in North Carolina.

From the distinguished neurologist who is also one of the most remarkable storytellers of our time—a riveting memoir of his youth and his love affair with science, as unexpected and fascinating as his celebrated case histories. “A rare gem…. Fresh, joyous, wistful, generous, and tough-minded.” —The New York Times Book Review Long before Oliver Sacks became the bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings, he was a small English boy fascinated by metals—also by chemical reactions (the louder and smellier the better), photography, squids and cuttlefish, H.G. Wells, and the periodic table. In this endlessly charming and eloquent memoir, Sacks chronicles his love affair with science and the magnificently odd and sometimes harrowing childhood in which that love affair unfolded. In Uncle Tungsten we meet Sacks’ extraordinary family, from his surgeon mother (who introduces the fourteen-year-old Oliver to the art of human dissection) and his father, a family doctor who imbues in his son an early enthusiasm for housecalls, to his “Uncle Tungsten,” whose factory produces tungsten-filament lightbulbs. We follow the young Oliver as he is exiled at the age of six to a grim, sadistic boarding school to escape the London Blitz, and later watch as he sets about passionately reliving the exploits of his chemical heroes—in his own home laboratory. Uncle Tungsten is a crystalline view of a brilliant young mind springing to life, a story of growing up which is by turns elegiac, comic, and wistful, full of the electrifying joy of discovery.

This is the first-ever biography of Emmet Dalton, an American-born Dubliner, Home Ruler and later Republican, whose extraordinary military career as a British officer, IRA leader and General in the Free State army brought him from Flanders to Beal na Bláth. A decorated hero of the Battle of the Somme, he returned from the war with the rank of Captain and transferred his military expertise to the now rampant IRA, serving as Director of Training, and greatly impressing Michael Collins with his extraordinary daring and nerve. Soon befriending Collins and becoming his close confidante, he accompanied him to the Treaty talks in London in 1921, and in the Civil War that followed Dalton oversaw the bombardment of the Four Courts, personally manning an 18-pounder artillery gun. He then masterminded and led the audacious seaborne landings and successful recapture of Cork City and Munster Republic from Anti-Treaty forces, but was ultimately traumatised when Collins died in his arms at Beal na Bláith. In his expansive biography, Sean Boyne vividly portrays Dalton's experiences and the vital role he played in the politics and wars that created the independent Irish state. Dalton was the first Senate Clerk and he became a pioneer of the Irish film world, founding Ardmore film studios and establishing the Irish Film industry. An attractive and high-achieving figure in Irish life in war and peace, Dalton's heroism allowed him to live his many lives to the full, and this compelling biography does justice to a figure who will captivate all those interested in modern Irish history and the birth of the state.