Lu Beiping is one of 20 million young adults the Chinese government uproots and sends far from their homes for agricultural re-education. And Lu is bored and exhausted. While he pines for romance, instead he’s caught up in a forbidden religious tradition and married off to the foreman’s long-dead daughter so that her soul may rest. The foreman then sends him off to cattle duty up on Mudkettle Mountain, far away from everyone else. On the mountain, Lu meets an outcast polyamorous family led by a matriarch, Jade, and one of her lovers, Kingfisher. They are woodcutters and practice their own idiosyncratic faith by which they claim to placate the serpent-demon sleeping in the belly of the mountains. Just as the village authorities get wind of Lu’s dalliances with the woodcutters, a typhoon rips through the valley. And deep in the jungle, a giant serpent may be stirring. The Invisible Valley is a lyrical fable about the shapes into which human affection can be pressed in extreme circumstances; about what is natural and what is truly deviant; about the relationships between the human and the natural, the human and the divine, the self and the other.

Every invisible girl deserves to be seen. I'm the Invisible Girl. No one at school knows I exist, least of all star quarterback Brayden Barrington. What sucks is that I have a major crush on him. What sucks even more? He only has eyes for my dad, a college sports recruiter. When Brayden concocts a plan for us to fake date so he could get close to my dad, of course I say yes. Massive crush, remember? With the help of the new friends I make at my school's book club, I can navigate this confusing path of pretend. Sort of. Not really. I'm not the one pretending, but I'll end up with the broken heart. Because Brayden and I live in two different worlds and he'd never in a million years choose a girl like me. Or would he? Quarterbacks Don't Fall For Invisible Girls is the first book in the Invisible Girls Club, a sweet YA contemporary romance series. If you like invisible girls who snag the boys of their dreams, this book is for you!

It is a high valley edged by serrated peaks, a remote expanse the size of Connecticut lying, as if forgotten, between two mountain ranges. Here, North AmericaÕs tallest sand dunes blow against glacier-gouged summits, the Rio Grande begins its long journey from snowflake to saltwater, and vast reaches of desert scrub hide verdant pocket wetlands. ColoradoÕs San Luis Valley is not a place for the timid. Sizzling hot in summer, frigid cold in winter, this huge landscape is humbling in its openness, a place defined by the rhythms of natureÑand by the thrust and parry of male courting female in the ritual dance of sandhill cranes. These majestic birds arrive by the thousands twice a year to feed, rest, and socialize in the valleyÕs wetlandsÑinvisible except from the airÑand their cries temper the constant wind. Susan Tweit lives in the high desert of southern Colorado not far from the valleyÕs dunes and wetlands. With the precision of a scientist and the passion of a poet, she guides readers through this land of sand dunes and sandhill cranes, describing its natural features and tracing its human history from buffalo hunters and conquistadors to Hispanic farming communities and UFO observatories. And in stunning images, photographer Glenn Oakley brings his intimate feel for light and landscape to portraying not only the subtle beauty of this high-desert sanctuary but also the grandeur of the cranes in flight. As an intimate look at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve and the San Luis Valley, this book reveals a desert place as seductive and sobering as existence itself.

NPR Best Book of 2017 Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Pick Refinery29 Best Book of the Year BOLO Books Top Read of 2017 “Destined to be a classic L.A. novel.”—Michael Connelly When a teen runs away from his father’s mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that will connect six characters desperate for hope and love, set across the sun-bleached canvas of Los Angeles. From the acclaimed author of Visitation Street, a visionary portrait of contemporary Los Angeles in all its facets, from the Mojave Desert to the Pacific, from the 110 to Skid Row. During a typically crowded morning commute, a naked runner is dodging between the stalled cars. The strange sight makes the local news and captures the imaginations of a stunning cast of misfits and lost souls. There's Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to LA in search of his mother. There's Owen and James, teenage twins who live in a desert commune, where their father, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful sway over his disciples. There's Britt, who shows up at the commune harboring a dark secret. There's Tony, a bored and unhappy lawyer who is inspired by the runner. And there's Blake, a drifter hiding in the desert, doing his best to fight off his most violent instincts. Their lives will all intertwine and come crashing together in a shocking way, one that could only happen in this enchanting, dangerous city. Wonder Valley is a swirling mix of angst, violence, heartache, and yearning—a masterpiece by a writer on the rise.

After the conquest of Mexico, colonial authorities attempted to enforce Christian beliefs among indigenous peoples—a project they envisioned as spiritual warfare. The Invisible War assesses this immense but dislocated project by examining all known efforts in Central Mexico to obliterate native devotions of Mesoamerican origin between the 1530s and the late eighteenth century. The author's innovative interpretation of these efforts is punctuated by three events: the creation of an Inquisition tribunal in Mexico in 1571; the native rebellion of Tehuantepec in 1660; and the emergence of eerily modern strategies for isolating idolaters, teaching Spanish to natives, and obtaining medical proof of sorcery from the 1720s onwards. Rather than depicting native devotions solely from the viewpoint of their colonial codifiers, this book rescues indigenous perspectives on their own beliefs. This is achieved by an analysis of previously unknown or rare ritual texts that circulated in secrecy in Nahua and Zapotec communities through an astute appropriation of European literacy. Tavárez contends that native responses gave rise to a colonial archipelago of faith in which local cosmologies merged insights from Mesoamerican and European beliefs. In the end, idolatry eradication inspired distinct reactions: while Nahua responses focused on epistemological dissent against Christianity, Zapotec strategies privileged confrontations in defense of native cosmologies.

Madeline Dare trades New York's gritty streets for the tree-lined avenues of Boulder, Colorado, when her husband Dean lands a promising job. As a freelance journalist in her new town, she closes in on a serial arsonist at large in the city.