When P.I. Lena Jones discovers the body of a woman connected to an infamous Arizona polygamy cult, she goes on a hunt to find the dead woman's missing son, one of the many teenaged boys the cult rejects from its ranks to prevent competition for wives.

From endless sand dunes and prickly cacti to shimmering mirages and green oases, deserts evoke contradictory images in us. They are lands of desolation, but also of romance, of blistering Mojave heat and biting Gobi cold. Covering a quarter of the earth’s land mass and providing a home to half a billion people, they are both a physical reality and landscapes of the mind. The idea of the desert has long captured Western imagination, put on display in films and literature, but these portrayals often fail to capture the true scope and diversity of the people living there. Bridging the scientific and cultural gaps between perception and reality, The Desert celebrates our fascination with these arid lands and their inhabitants, as well as their importance both throughout history and in the world today. Covering an immense geographical range, Michael Welland wanders from the Sahara to the Atacama, depicting the often bizarre adaptations of plants and animals to these hostile environments. He also looks at these seemingly infertile landscapes in the context of their place in history—as the birthplaces not only of critical evolutionary adaptations, civilizations, and social progress, but also of ideologies. Telling the stories of the diverse peoples who call the desert home, he describes how people have survived there, their contributions to agricultural development, and their emphasis on water and its scarcity. He also delves into the allure of deserts and how they have been used in literature and film and their influence on fashion, art, and architecture. As Welland reveals, deserts may be difficult to define, but they play an active role in the evolution of our global climate and society at large, and their future is of the utmost importance. Entertaining, informative, and surprising, The Desert is an intriguing new look at these seemingly harsh and inhospitable landscapes.

"Walking into the lion's den unprotected, Princess?" For Layla, princess of Tazkhan, her arranged marriage means one thing—a lifetime of cruelty and captivity. Such an unendurable prospect drives her to throw herself at the mercy of Sheikh Raz Al Zahki—her family's greatest enemy! Raz demands one thing in return for the safe haven Layla is seeking—this brooding desert king wants to make her his queen! Her freedom might be secured, but now her heart is at risk, for soon she's lost to the scorching heat of their marriage bed. However, it will take more than fire to thaw her guarded husband….

Roland Johnson's autobiography is the triumphant story of a man who rose above an intellectual disability and devastating abuse to become a prominent leader in the self-advocacy movement. As a child, Roland was sent away to live at the infamous Pennhurst State School in Pennsylvania, where he was sexually assaulted and forced to do unpaid manual labor. When he finally got out, he discovered the "real world" had no place for people like him - people who weren't considered normal or valuable by societal standards. Through a hospital counseling program, Roland ultimately began to find his voice. He discovered an ability to speak his truth and to fight for other people with disabilities. He would become president of Speaking for Ourselves and bring wide-scale awareness to the struggles faced by people with disabilities, as well as the unique gifts those same people have to offer. Lost in a Desert World brings you into Roland's life through his own voice and both encourages and challenges you to connect to your own humanity as a means of connecting with the humanity present in all people. Roland Johnson was a man of great courage, vision, and determination. He had an alternate kind of intelligence - one not based on what we call intellect. In Roland Johnson's world, understanding - one person for another - is the way of the future, the only route to true freedom. CRITICAL PRAISE "Roland Johnson has an important story to tell. In writing this truth-telling autobiography, he becomes a powerful witness to the cost of segregation and the hope of community." - Joseph P. Shapiro, author of No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement "Roland Johnson was a friend and a hero of mine. He was a great pioneer of the frontier of human being. Read his book." - Justin Dart, father of the ADA, Americans With Disabilities Act, and Chairperson of the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities under President Bush "Roland Johnson was a good and true man whose friendship I cherished. He was a teacher to many of us, and now this book will carry his voice across the country." - Gunnar Dybwad, internationally respected advocate and past president of the International League of Societies for Persons with Mental Handicaps "Roland is a man who accepted you for who you were. He was a friend to everyone and wanted to help people live their dreams and have control over their lives. It was an honor to have him as my friend." - Tia Nelis, Chair of the Board of Self-Advocates Becoming Empowered (SABE) "It is rare, even in fiction let alone autobiography, when an author's words leap off the page through the ear to awaken the reader's heart. I never knew Roland Johnson. But thanks to Karl Williams, I am able to know Roland's playful spirit, his soul full of knowing, the truth of his experience. Bravo to both." - Lucy Gwin, Mouth Magazine "... Intimate and vivid portrayal ... Roland Johnson's autobiography ... breaks new ground regarding the authenticity with which it projects his voice ... Karl Williams' preservation of Roland's words, and Roland's voice, his unique manner of speaking intact, shines new light on the meaning of 'speaking for ourselves.' ... (A) work of pioneering authenticity ..." - Melissa Probst, AAMR Journal "Lost In a Desert World is so good and Roland's talking is so much like him, it felt like I was in the same room with him again ... Loved every minute of it ... It made me want to reach out and hug him ..." - Robert Perske, Author

Winner of the Best Mysteries of 2009 of Library Journal. While running surveillance in an industrial section of Scottsdale, P.I. Lena Jones discovers the body of a woman connected to Second Zion, an infamous polygamy cult based in northern Arizona. With the help of a former "sister wife," Lena discovers a shocking secret: in a society where one man can have ten wives, nine men will have none. Second Zion makes certain these possible rivals don't stick around by turning these teens into Arizona's "lost boys." While searching for the dead woman's lost son, Lena is surprised by a visit from Madeline, the beloved foster mother from whom she'd been forcibly parted at the age of nine. Madeline's presence renews Lena's memories of her own damaged childhood and brings new clues to the identity of her biological parents, who seemingly abandoned her when she was four years old. But their joyful reunion is interrupted when Lena learns that her close friend, television star Angel Grey, is being stalked by an increasingly violent mental patient. When Lena flies to Angel's aid, she finds that danger has followed her to Hollywood. Arizona polygamy and its discarded sons, the deceptively insulated world of Beverly Hills, and Lena's lost past converge in a case fraught with danger.

Eleven-year-old Kevin finds himself alone and lost in the Utah desert, with only his wits to help him survive.

The cult-y pocket-size field guide to the strange and intriguing secrets of the Mojave—its myths and legends, outcasts and oddballs, flora, fauna, and UFOs—becomes the definitive, oracular book of the desert For the past five years, Desert Oracle has existed as a quasi-mythical, quarterly periodical available to the very determined only by subscription or at the odd desert-town gas station or the occasional hipster boutique, its canary-yellow-covered, forty-four-page issues handed from one curious desert zealot to the next, word spreading faster than the printers could keep up with. It became a radio show, a podcast, a live performance. Now, for the first time—and including both classic and new, never-before-seen revelations—Desert Oracle has been bound between two hard covers and is available to you. Straight out of Joshua Tree, California, Desert Oracle is “The Voice of the Desert”: a field guide to the strange tales, singing sand dunes, sagebrush trails, artists and aliens, authors and oddballs, ghost towns and modern legends, musicians and mystics, scorpions and saguaros, out there in the sand. Desert Oracle is your companion at a roadside diner, around a campfire, in your tent or cabin (or high-rise apartment or suburban living room) as the wind and the coyotes howl outside at night. From journal entries of long-deceased adventurers to stray railroad ad copy, and musings on everything from desert flora, rumored cryptid sightings, and other paranormal phenomena, Ken Layne's Desert Oracle collects the weird and the wonderful of the American Southwest into a single, essential volume.