Big city girl in a small town—Liddy Peel has culture shock. Marian Pardoo, Reference Librarian for the Iowa City Public Library, would be happy if the woman she's loved for years wasn't already married. Annoyed by the thoughtless out-of-town Liddy, she isn't prepared for the seething passion that erupts when Liddy careens into her meticulously controlled life. Liddy has run two thousand miles from a devastating love affair. Now the idea of spending the sweltering summer watching the corn grow is driving her mad. Finding herself lusting after Marian the Librarian seems like yet another cosmic jest at her hopeless love life. The only thing that keeps her sane is the coffee. In a town where everybody knows your name, the names of your exes, pets, and your third grade teacher, Marian is thankful that she and Liddy at least don't have an ex-girlfriend in common. One degree of separation is too close for comfort.

In this soaring and deeply provacative tragicomedy of race, class, and manners, John Guare has created the msot important American play in years. Six Degrees of Separation is one of those rare works that capture both the supercharged pulse of our present era and the deepest and most mysterious movements of the human heart. Six Degrees of Separation won the 1990 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, as well as the Hull Warriner Award and the Obie.

The pioneering young scientist whose work on the structure of small worlds has triggered an avalanche of interest in networks. In this remarkable book, Duncan Watts, one of the principal architects of network theory, sets out to explain the innovative research that he and other scientists are spearheading to create a blueprint of our connected planet. Whether they bind computers, economies, or terrorist organizations, networks are everywhere in the real world, yet only recently have scientists attempted to explain their mysterious workings. From epidemics of disease to outbreaks of market madness, from people searching for information to firms surviving crisis and change, from the structure of personal relationships to the technological and social choices of entire societies, Watts weaves together a network of discoveries across an array of disciplines to tell the story of an explosive new field of knowledge, the people who are building it, and his own peculiar path in forging this new science.

After several years spent recovering from a devastating knee injury, champion musher Jessie Arnold is working to get back into shape for the Iditarod, but when she stumbles upon a corpse during a practice run down a local trail, she is sidetracked by the hunt for a killer. Reprint.

During the first hundred years of Chinese immigration--from 1848 to 1943--San Francisco was home to a shockingly extensive underground slave trade in Asian women, who were exploited as prostitutes and indentured servants. In this gripping, necessary book, bestselling author Julia Flynn Siler shines a light on this little-known chapter in our history--and gives us a vivid portrait of the safe house to which enslaved women escaped. The Occidental Mission Home, situated on the edge of Chinatown, served as a gateway to freedom for thousands. Run by a courageous group of female Christian abolitionists, it survived earthquakes, fire, bubonic plague, and violent attacks. We meet Dolly Cameron, who ran the home from 1899 to 1934, and Tien Fuh Wu, who arrived at the house as a young child after her abuse as a household slave drew the attention of authorities. Wu would grow up to become Cameron's translator, deputy director, and steadfast friend. Siler shows how Dolly and her colleagues defied convention and even law--physically rescuing young girls from brothels, snatching them from their smugglers--and how they helped bring the exploiters to justice. Riveting and revelatory, The White Devil's Daughters is a timely, extraordinary account of oppression, resistance, and hope.

Looks at how and where wine is made and how this affects its quality and pricing, including information on how the professionals taste and rate wine and a country-by-country tour of the latest vintages.

Kareena Thakkar’s world is turned upside down when she learns she’s landed an invitation to the US Open, which could lead to a spot on the first-ever Muay Thai Olympics team. To make it to the US Open, she has to come clean about being a Muay Thai fighter—a sport that her traditional Indian community deems too violent for girls—and own her destiny.