Although Hood is considered a "Southern" writer, her sensibilities are universal. In this impressive collection of short fiction, she uses simple phrases to capture a character perfectly; at the same time, she knows when to unleash her controlled prose, freeing it for poetic evocations of landscapes or moments. Above all, she tells good stories. "After Moore" traces the dissolution of a marriage as told to a marriage counselor by all the family members. Hood manages to be both funny and perceptive as she adopts the voice of each character in turn. The title piece is an ambitious novella in which Hood's experiments with time do not quite work, but she deftly renders a family's complex relationships and at the same time creates the ambience of a mill-town community. Hood, who won the 1984 Flannery O'Connor Award for her first book of stories, How Far She Went, is a talented writer with a distinctive, memorable voice.

For generations, mothers and daughters have struggled to say the right thing -- or have said nothing at all -- when the time has come to discuss sex. VENUS IN BLUE JEANS brings refreshing hope and guidance for every mother who has been undone by such questions as "Mom, what’s French kissing" or "What’s oral sex?" or who has agonized over her teenage daughter’s newfound interest in boys. In this wise and radiant book, Nathalie Bartle tackles some of the toughest topics of sexual education: What do girls know about sex? When is the right time to begin talking with them about sex? How can mothers get the conversation right? Today’s teenagers face enormous pressures to become sexually active; by age nineteen more than 50 percent of American girls have had intercourse. From billboards to cyberspace, society is awash in sexual images. Parents assume that teens possess abundant sexual knowledge, but information gleaned from the media or the teenage grapevine can be woefully inaccurate: many teens list AIDS as the only sexually transmitted disease; others assume they can’t get pregnant "the first time." We need a new dialogue for this generation of young women, Bartle argues. Combining her own stories of raising a daughter with the generously honest voices of mothers and daughters who have struggled firsthand with this topic, she illuminates the invaluable role that mothers can play in their daughters’ sexual education -- without encouraging them to be sexually active. Adolescent girls crave information, but they may be too afraid or embarrassed to ask for it, worried that their moms will think less of them or assume they are preparing for sex. The rich stories here help dispel common myths, encourage candid conversation, and reveal the importance of placing sexual information within the broader context of relationships and a moral framework. Filled with strategies, keen understanding, and a warm sense of humor, VENUS IN BLUE JEANS will inspire mothers and others to persevere with these vital conversations and will empower girls to think of their sexuality as a natural part of adolescence rather than something they need be defiant about or shamed by. This is an indispensable book for anyone concerned with guiding today’s young women safely through the upsets, infatuations, and intimacies of adolescence.

When did my life start resembling a Hallmark movie? I suppose it all started when my charming fiancé turned out to be anything but, and I decided I wanted to push the reset button on my life. So, I packed up my business and moved to a small town in the Texas Hill Country, complete with the cast of small-town characters you’d expect and the ridiculously sexy new veterinarian. Being the new kids in town, Cal and I kept finding ourselves thrown togetherand even though men were the absolute last thing on my mind... one thing led to another. Now someone’s threatening my business, but I’m not the same woman I was when I arrived. And I’m ready to fight for what’s mine. Each book in the Konigsburg series is STANDALONE: * Venus in Blue Jeans * Wedding Bell Blues * Be My Baby * Long Time Gone * Brand New Me * Don’t Forget Me * Fearless Love * Hungry Heart

A comprehensive and authoritative text on the formation and evolution of planetary atmospheres, for graduate-level students and researchers.

Detailed maps of the Moon and Mars, as well as Venus, are presented with an outline of the current information satellites have made available

Mary Hood's fictional world is a world where fear, anger, longing—sometimes worse—lie just below the surface of a pleasant summer afternoon or a Sunday church service. In "A Country Girl," for example, she creates an idyllic valley where a barefoot girl sings melodies "low and private as a lullaby" and where "you could pick up one of the little early apples from the ground and eat it right then without worrying about pesticide." But something changes this summer afternoon with the arrival at a family reunion of fair and fiery Johnny Calhoun: "everybody's kind and nobody's kin," forty in a year or so, "and wild in the way that made him worth the trouble he caused." The title story in the collection begins with a visit to clean the graves in a country cemetery and ends with the terrifying pursuit of a young girl and her grandmother by two bikers, one of whom "had the invading sort of eyes the woman had spent her lifetime bolting doors against." In the story "Inexorable Process" we see the relentless desperation of Angelina, "who hated many things, but Sundays most of all," and in "Solomon's Seal" the ancient anger of the mountain woman who has crowded her husband out of her life and her heart, until the plants she has tended in her rage fill the half-acre. "The madder she got, the greener everything grew."

“Fascinating . . . memorable . . . revealing . . . perhaps the best of Carl Sagan’s books.”—The Washington Post Book World (front page review) In Cosmos, the late astronomer Carl Sagan cast his gaze over the magnificent mystery of the Universe and made it accessible to millions of people around the world. Now in this stunning sequel, Carl Sagan completes his revolutionary journey through space and time. Future generations will look back on our epoch as the time when the human race finally broke into a radically new frontier—space. In Pale Blue Dot, Sagan traces the spellbinding history of our launch into the cosmos and assesses the future that looms before us as we move out into our own solar system and on to distant galaxies beyond. The exploration and eventual settlement of other worlds is neither a fantasy nor luxury, insists Sagan, but rather a necessary condition for the survival of the human race. “Takes readers far beyond Cosmos . . . Sagan sees humanity’s future in the stars.”—Chicago Tribune