For more than four decades, Twyla Tharp has been a phenomenon in American dance, a choreographer who not only broke the rules but refused to repeat her own successes. At the conclusion of Howling Near Heaven, Marcia Siegel writes about the thrill of watching Tharp choreograph in 1991: "Tharp's movement can be planned or spontaneous, personal, funny, hard as hell, precise enough to look thrown away. She doesn't so much invent or create it, she prepares for it. Crusty, driven, demanding, and admiring, she hurls challenges at the dancers. Brave, virtuosic, and cheerful, they volley back what she gives them and more. She watches them. They watch her. It's the most subtle form of competition and cooperation, a process so intuitive, so intimate, that no one can say whose dance it is in the end, and none of the parties to that dance can be removed without endangering its identity. The same is true for all theatrical dance making, all over the world, only most of it isn't so inspired or obsessed." Starting in the rebellious 1960s, Tharp tried her creative wings on minimalism, pedestrianism, and Dada, then abandoned both the avant-garde and the established modern dance. She thrilled a new audience with her witty version of jazz in Eight Jelly Rolls, then merged her dancers with the Joffrey Ballet for the sensational Deuce Coupe, to the music of the Beach Boys. She explored the classical world in Push Comes to Shove, for the American Ballet Theater and the celebrated Russian virtuoso Mikhail Baryshnikov. For her touring company in the 1970s and 1980s, an unprecedented fusion of modern dancers and ballet dancers, she created a superb repertory that included the theatrical full-length work The Catherine Wheel, the ballroom duets Nine Sinatra Songs, and the company showcase Baker's Dozen. Tharp has made movies, television specials, and nearly one hundred riveting dance works. Movin' Out, the dance show that reflected on the Vietnam era using the music of Billy Joel, ran on Broadway for three years and won Tharp a Tony award for Best Choreography. Howling Near Heaven is the first in-depth study of Twyla Tharp's unique, restless creativity, the story of a choreographer who refused to be pigeonholed and the dancers who accompanied her as she sped across the frontiers of dance.

These volumes provide an authoritative reference resource on leadership issues specific to women and gender, with a focus on positive aspects and opportunities for leadership in various domains.

Sara Mason joins in searching for Huxley's MIA brother's remains in the Vietnam jungle. She is joined by her friend Esmerelda. Later in Hawaii, Sara learns that a six-year-old neighborhood girl had gone missing ten years earlier. Something odd is going on at the nearby forest cliffs; someone wants this cold case to stay cold. But even after attempts are made on Sara's life, she pushes on with the investigation and pursues the leads that take her on a path of danger. Can she solve the mystery of the Howling Cliffs?

Fans of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" and John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" will embrace Poe Ballantine's "Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere." Poe Ballantine's "Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel" included in Best American Essays 2013, and for well over twenty years, Poe Ballantine traveled America, taking odd jobs, living in small rooms, trying to make a living as a writer. At age 46, he finally settled with his Mexican immigrant wife in Chadron, Nebraska, where they had a son who was red-flagged as autistic. Poe published four books about his experiences as a wanderer and his observations of America. But one day in 2006, his neighbor, Steven Haataja, a math professor from the local state college disappeared. Ninety five days later, the professor was found bound to a tree, burned to death in the hills behind the campus where he had taught. No one, law enforcement included, understood the circumstances. Poe had never contemplated writing mystery or true crime, but since he knew all the players, the suspects, the sheriff, the police involved, he and his kindergarten son set out to find out what might have happened.

DYLAN'S SCOUT TROOP goes camping in Halape, a remote spot below the volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. The only thing wrong with the weekend on a beautiful, peaceful beach is Louie, a tough older boy. Louie and Dylan just can't get along.That night an earthquake rocks the camp, and then a wave rushes in, sweeping everyone and everything before it. Dylan and Louie must team up on a dangerous rescue mission. The next hours are an amazing story of survival and the true meaning of leadership.