Arizona's rugged Chiricahua Mountains have a special place in frontier history. They were the haven of many well-known personalities, from Cochise to Johnny Ringo, as well as the home of prospectors, cattlemen, and hardscrabble farmers eking out a tough living in an unforgiving landscape. In this delightful and well-researched book, Alden Hayes shares his love for the area, gained over fifty years. From his vantage point near the tiny twin communities of Portal and Paradise on the eastern slopes of the Chiricahuas, Hayes brings the famous and the not-so-famous together in a profile of this striking landscape, showing how place can be a powerful formative influence on people's lives. When Hayes first arrived in 1941 to manage his new father-in-law's apple orchard, he met folks who had been born in Arizona before it became a state. Even if most had never personally worried about Indian attacks, they had known people who had. Over the years, Hayes heard the handed-down stories about the area's early days of Anglo settlement. He also researched census records, newspaper archives, and the files of the Arizona Historical Society to uncover the area's natural history, prehistory, Spanish and Mexican regimes, and particularly its Anglo history from the mid nineteenth century to the beginning of World War II. His book is a rich account of the region and more, a celebration of rural life, brimming with tales of people whose stories were shaped by the landscape. Today the Chiricahuas are a magnet for outdoor enthusiasts and the site of the American Museum of Natural History's Southwestern Research StationÑand still a rugged area that remains off the beaten track. Hayes brings his straightforward and articulate style to this captivating account of earlier days in southeastern Arizona and opens up a portal to paradise for readers everywhere.

The first substantial collection of short fiction from "a writer with enough electricity to light up the country" (Ann Patchett) "I guess the things that scare you are the things that are almost normal," observes one narrator in this collection of effervescent and often uncanny stories. Drawing on fifteen years of work, See You in Paradise is the fullest expression yet of J. Robert Lennon's distinctive and brilliantly comic take on the pathos and surreality at the heart of American life. In Lennon's America, a portal to another universe can be discovered with surprising nonchalance in a suburban backyard, adoption almost reaches the level of blood sport, and old pals return from the dead to steal your girlfriend. Sexual dysfunction, suicide, tragic accidents, and career stagnation all create surprising opportunities for unexpected grace in this full-hearted and mischievous depiction of those days (weeks, months, years) we all have when things just don't go quite right.

The Maya are held up as the supreme apogee of indigenous Amerindian peoples in Central America - but is that true? Why are the imagery, deity, hero and god names so remarkably similar to that in Ancient India? The Pacific Ocean equatorial currents provide direct marine highways from Asia direct to central America and the Maya and vice versa. This book provides comparative aspects of archaeology, iconography, mythology and available history that focuses on Palenque where the architecture, sculpture, architectural construction and design are unusual even for the Maya to show that they relate directly, and certainly originates, from many examples in India. The supreme iconographical monument from the Maya civilisation is thought by many to be Pacal's Funerary Slab at Palenque and this is shown to reflect this same iconography originating in India but assimilated into the finest achievement of Mesoamerican civilisation.

Long time residents of Portal, Arizona, and well known desert ecologists, Alice and Robert Chew, share their poetic and photographic art.

Discover the art of personal transformation with Akal Pritam's beautiful and inspirational book. A call for the liberation and celebration of the human spirit! By the bestselling author and illustrator of Self Love, Akal Pritam's latest exquisite creation combines practical guidance with inspiring blueprints for creating our own paradise. With its glorious illustrations and insightful text, Creating Paradise is designed to encourage us to establish a creative inner culture. An energetically joyful, loving and harmonious inner state transforms the physical with grace, truth and beauty. And as we concentrate on what we truly desire while being relaxed and mindfully present, we can thrive.

Miles Lechler is nothing special. Like a million other highschoolers, he spends his days blissfully unaware of the comings and goings of life, absorbed in his own world of school, football and crushes. That is, until one rainy afternoon, when a fatal car accident changes what he thought he knew about death. Lance is a predator. A prodigy of the reapers, a sect of human souls overseen by the angels themselves, Lance mercilessly hunts the recently departed, dutifully carrying them onwards to paradise. That is, until one rainy night, when a rogue burst of spiritual power changes what he thought he knew about life after death. Now Lance, or as he was once called, Miles, must move quickly, fighting in both the physical and spiritual realms against nightmarish creatures born of sin, ancient demons hungering for pain, and perhaps most frighteningly, a growing hatred for humanity bred within the angels themselves. The fate of both worlds hangs in the balance.

In this personal autobiography de Vinck shares his belief that there is indeed a heaven and that readers can find evidence of it in the ordinary experiences of their lives.