Sparrow is a young Indian boy who lives in a small village near a lake. One day he decided that he would like to visit his cousin, Running Bear, who lived in the city. After obtaining permission from his parents and the chief of the tribe, he boarded a bus for the city. When he arrived he was shocked to see how the people had such little regard for their environment, marking up buildings and throwing refuse on the ground with vehicles that burped soot into the air. He soon tired of the conditions there and returned home, happy to breathe clean air, free of smog and the noise of the city.

Stranger Things meets The Stand in this haunting coming-of-age novel about a plague that brings the world to a halt -- and the boy who believes that his town's missing sparrows can save his family. In the small town of Griever's Mill, eleven-year-old Ben Cameron is expecting to finish off his summer of relaxing and bird-watching without a hitch. But everything goes wrong when dark clouds roll in. Old Man Crandall is the first to change -- human one minute and a glass statue the next. Soon it's happening across the world. Dark clouds fill the sky and, at random, people are turned into frozen versions of themselves. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no one knows how to stop it. With his mom on the verge of a breakdown, and his brother intent on following the dubious plans put forth by a nameless voice on the radio, Ben must hold out hope that his town's missing sparrows will return with everyone's souls before the glass plague takes them away forever.

A visionary work that combines speculative fiction with deep philosophical inquiry, The Sparrow tells the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who leads a scientific mission entrusted with a profound task: to make first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. The mission begins in faith, hope, and beauty, but a series of small misunderstandings brings it to a catastrophic end. Praise for The Sparrow “A startling, engrossing, and moral work of fiction.”—The New York Times Book Review “Important novels leave deep cracks in our beliefs, our prejudices, and our blinders. The Sparrow is one of them.”—Entertainment Weekly “Powerful . . . The Sparrow tackles a difficult subject with grace and intelligence.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Provocative, challenging . . . recalls both Arthur C. Clarke and H. G. Wells, with a dash of Ray Bradbury for good measure.”—The Dallas Morning News “[Mary Doria] Russell shows herself to be a skillful storyteller who subtly and expertly builds suspense.”—USA Today

The story of a sensitive, gifted African American girl who tells us with mordant humor what it feels like to spend every day wishing so hard that you could fly away from it all Sparrow has always had a difficult time making friends. She would always rather stay home on the weekends with her mother, an affluent IT executive at a Manhattan bank, reading, or watching the birds, than play with other kids. And that's made school a lonely experience for her. It's made LIFE a lonely experience.But when the one teacher who really understood her -- Mrs. Wexler, the school librarian, a woman who let her eat her lunch in the library office rather than hide in a bathroom stall, a woman who shared her passion for novels and knew just the ones she'd love -- is killed in a freak car accident, Sparrow's world unravels and she's found on the roof of her school in an apparent suicide attempt.With the help of an insightful therapist, Sparrow finally reveals the truth of her inner life. And it's here that she discovers an outlet in rock & roll music...

An exhilarating novel of erotic and psychotic extremes from one of Canada’s best fiction writers. Everyone would agree that Darius Halloway was the most civilized of men, a professor of French literature, a connoisseur of ideas and women and wine, a perfect guest at life’s dinner party. Darius himself would have agreed, until Emma, waifish and insatiable,walks out the door, leaving her empty clothes hangers rattling in his closet. For a little while, it’s not so bad. He thinks she must come back, and other women find his melancholy quite compelling. But then the sparrows of insomnia start picking at the inside of his skull. Life’s little aggravating moments seem to require him to seek direct retaliation. Soon all his smoothness and cleverness is directed toward wreaking the most elaborate revenge… and getting away with it. Until the ultimate retaliation arises, and there he is, in the most damning of situations, with his nerves on fire and his heart in his throat…finally not thinking of Emma. From the Hardcover edition.

"Stern but compassionate, author Wendell Berry raises broader issues that environmentalists rarely focus on . . . In one sense Berry is the voice of a rural agrarian tradition that stretches from rural Kentucky back to the origins of human civilization. But his insights are universal because Our Only World is filled with beautiful, compassionate writing and careful, profound thinking." —Associated Press The planet's environmental problems respect no national boundaries. From soil erosion and population displacement to climate change and failed energy policies, American governing classes are paid by corporations to pretend that debate is the only democratic necessity and that solutions are capable of withstanding endless delay. Late Capitalism goes about its business of finishing off the planet. And we citizens are left with a shell of what was once proudly described as The American Dream. In this collection of eleven essays, Berry confronts head–on the necessity of clear thinking and direct action. Never one to ignore the present challenge, he understands that only clearly stated questions support the understanding their answers require. For more than fifty years we've had no better spokesman and no more eloquent advocate for the planet, for our families, and for the future of our children and ourselves.