Originally published in 2002 and nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel A blend of thriller, satire, and romance with a shocking twist Romance novelist Maggie Schneider flees snowy Canada for Costa Rica, seeking inspiration … and maybe even a romantic encounter. She finds far more than she expected when she’s kidnapped by a rag-tag gang led by a handsome, charismatic revolutionary called Halcon: the Falcon. Also held hostage for ransom is Halcon’s main target, the flirtatious wife of a right-wing U.S. senator who seeks to capture the Republican nomination as U.S. president. Enter burned-out ex–secret agent Slack Cardinal, the protagonist of Deverell’s third novel, Mecca. Now he has changed his name and is hiding out in the Costa Rican jungles, working as a tour guide. But he is found there by CIA operative Ham Bakerfield and reluctantly pressed into service to try to rescue the women.

The K’iche’ Maya creation story preserved in the sixteenth-century manuscript Popol Vuh describes the origin of the world and its people in a setting long assumed to be the Guatemalan central highlands. Now a scholar with a deep knowledge of Maya history shows that all of these mythological events occurred at specific locations and that this landscape was the template for the Maya worldview. Examining the primary Maya deities, Karen Bassie-Sweet links geographic features to gods and beliefs. She reconstructs key elements of the Popol Vuh to argue that the three volcanoes around Lake Atitlan were the three thunderbolt gods and that the lake was the center of the world. She also shows that the Maya view of the creation of humans is centered on corn and examines core beliefs about the corn cycle to propose that the creation myth was established much earlier in Maya history than previously supposed. Generously illustrated, Maya Sacred Geography and the Creator Deities is a detailed ethnohistorical analysis of Maya religion, cosmology, and ritual practice that convincingly links mythology to the land. A comprehensive treatment of Maya religion, it provides an essential resource for scholars and will fascinate any reader captivated by these ancient beliefs.

Until recently, surprisingly little has been known about the biology and behavior of tropical forest raptors, including such basic aspects as diets, breeding biology, habitat requirements, and population ecology, information critical to the development of conservation efforts. The Peregrine Fund conducted a significant eight-year-long research program on the raptor species, including owls, in Tikal National Park in Guatemala to learn more about Neotropical birds of prey. Impressive and unprecedented in scale, this pioneering research also involved the development of new methods for detecting, enumerating, and studying these magnificent but often elusive birds in their forest home. Beautifully illustrated with photographs of previously little-known species, the resulting book is the most important single source for information on the lowland tropical forest raptor species found in Central America.Neotropical Birds of Prey covers twenty specific species in depth, including the Ornate Hawk-Eagle, the Barred Forest-Falcon, the Bat Falcon, and the Mexican Wood Owl, offering thorough synopses of all current knowledge regarding breeding biology and behavior, diet, habitat use, and spatial needs. Contributors to this landmark work also show how the populations fit together as a community with overlapping habitat and prey needs that can put them in competition with reptiles and mammalian carnivores as well, yet differ from one another in their nesting or feeding behaviors and population dynamics. The work's substantive original data offer interesting comparisons between tropical and temperate zone species, and provide a basis for establishing conservation measures based on firsthand research. Making available for the first time new data on the biology, ecology, behavior, and conservation of the majestic owls and raptors of the New World tropics, this book will appeal to a wide ornithological readership, especially the many raptor enthusiasts around the world.

The Popol Vuh is the most important example of Maya literature to have survived the Spanish conquest. It is also one of the world’s great creation accounts, comparable to the beauty and power of Genesis. Most previous translations have relied on Spanish versions rather than the original K’iche’-Maya text. Based on ten years of research by a leading scholar of Maya literature, this translation with extensive notes is uniquely faithful to the original language. Retaining the poetic style of the original text, the translation is also remarkably accessible to English readers. Illustrated with more than eighty drawings, photographs, and maps, Allen J. Christenson’s authoritative version brings out the richness and elegance of this sublime work of literature, comparable to such epic masterpieces as the Ramayana and Mahabharata of India or the Iliad and Odyssey of Greece.

Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, Volume II provides an overview of developments in the study of ethnomusicology in the twenty-first century, offering an introduction to contemporary issues relevant to the field. Nineteen essays, written by an international array of scholars, highlight the relationship between current issues in the discipline and ethnomusicologists’ engagement with issues such as advocacy, poverty and social participation, maintaining intangible cultural heritages, and ecological concerns. It provides a forum for rethinking the discipline’s identity in terms of major themes and issues to which ethnomusicologists have turned their attention since Volume I published in 2005. The collection of essays is organized into six sections: Property and Rights Applied Practice Knowledge and Agency Community and Social Space Embodiment and Cognition Curating Sound Volume II serves as a basic introduction to the best writing in the field for students, professors, and music professionals, perfect for both introductory and upper level courses in world music. Together with the first volume, Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, Volume II provides a comprehensive survey of current research directions.

This field guide highlights 100 birds of prey found throughout the world. Readers will gain a greater understanding of these creatures and will be able to identify them in the wild. Features include a helpful introduction to the topic, a glossary, additional resources, and an index. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Abdo Reference is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

Birders who come to the American Southwest often keep an eye out for Mexican species that stray across the border. Many neotropical migrants of western North America winter in Sonora, and a host of hummingbirds make their home south of the border as well. This eagerly awaited volume by two respected authorities covers more than 500 species of birds and contains a vast amount of information not available elsewhere. The Birds of Sonora describes all the species known from that state and includes information on distribution, seasonal patterns of occurrence, abundance, and habitats. The first book of its kind in more than half a century to treat birds of this Mexican state immediately south of Arizona, it also contains details of nesting activity for breeding species, provides insight into factors influencing distribution, and notes historical changes in status. Each account is accompanied by a range map depicting the bird's range in Sonora—valuable information not available from any other source and useful to anyone interested in the distribution and ecology of North American birds. Drawings by internationally known wildlife artist Ray Harm enhance many of the entries. Because other books on Mexican birds don't treat Sonora in detail, The Birds of Sonora is an indispensable resource for birders, and its background descriptions of Sonoran geography, climate, and habitats also make it a key reference for conservation and land use planning. A useful companion to field guides, it is a narrative account that puts readers in touch with birds of this important biogeographic area.