Barry Moser's extraordinarily detailed and evocative relief engravings decorate this translation of Pliny the Younger's two famous letters to Tacitus about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 and the death of his uncle, Pliny the Elder. Printed in black and white, the engravings are works of art that illustrate various descriptions in the letters. The text includes a brief description of the eruption of the volcano, concise biographies of Tacitus and of both Plinys, and a summary of how the texts of the two letters have survived until today.

I see your future, and I see my own. My future is terrifying. Ten years ago, on my twenty-first birthday, I discovered the bloodied body of my uncle who'd raised me. Rumor said a secret society known as The Whispers had tortured and killed him when he wouldn't turn over a magical pendant. Rumor said his niece-me-who'd disappeared right after, had the stone and chain. A series of small towns sheltered me before I landed in the beach city I've called home for seven years, eking out an anonymous living as a Tarot card reader. The cards help focus my far-sight. If you sit at my table, I will see your true future. I see my own, too. But my far-sight didn't warn me my apartment would be set on a fire or that a tiny blue dragon would save me from the flames. I certainly wasn't expecting Aiden Maddox-a too-good-looking trainer and bodyguard whom the dragon insists on hiring-or what his touch does to me. Now The Whispers are closing in. Again. An Ashen Sky features magic, romance, and a grumpy dragon with a deep and abiding love of bacon.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation—the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. From the bestselling authors of Tightrope, two of our most fiercely moral voices With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope. They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. A Zimbabwean mother of five, counseled to return to school, earned her doctorate and became an expert on AIDS. Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty. Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen.

The “Ashen Light” of Venus—a ghostly emission of light from the night side of our nearest planetary neighbor—is among the last unsolved mysteries of astronomical history. In the four centuries since the phenomenon was first reported, highly reputable visual observers of Venus have recorded seeing the Ashen Light, while others have spent a lifetime searching for it without once being convinced that they ever saw it. Is the Ashen Light a trick of the eye? The result of a defective lens? A real scientific event? Occasional references to the Ashen Light are scattered across the literature, yet no work to date has synthesized these records. This book therefore digs deep into the history of the mystery and our latest attempts to understand it, sifting through the clues that might explain whether it is caused by physics, is conjured up by the eye or brain, or a combination of both. This baffling story will appeal to amateur astronomers, hobbyists, and lay readers interested in joining the debate about one of the most elusive observable phenomena ever recorded in the night sky.

As a world crumbles, three royal sisters must reclaim a lost magic to rescue their shattered home from a plague of ancient malevolence. The story that began with Black Trillium—the brainchild of Julian May, Andre Norton, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, three of fantasy fiction’s greats—takes glorious flight in Sky Trillium as author May carries the magnificent saga of magic, sisterhood, and destiny to breathtaking new heights. The Petals of the Living Trillium—Anigel the Queen, Kadiya the Warrior, and Haramis the Archimage—have defeated great evil to keep their realm safe, thanks in part to three magical talismans dating back to the War of Enchantment that nearly destroyed the world in the time of the Vanished Ones. Now, with one relic missing and another rendered powerless, the World of the Three Moons is vulnerable—and a devastating outbreak of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other natural disasters suggests that a dark and terrible magic is descending once again. The last hope for the planet’s salvation lies in the fabled Sky Trillium, but its creation depends on the three sisters being able to recover what was stolen from them and escape the poisonous intrigues of the royal court, banding together one more time to forge a Scepter of Power. But the old wounds of an ancient war continue to fester—and the Star Men are waiting to see the Petals wither and fall.