Benjamin Franklin conceived of it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle endorsed it. Winston Churchill campaigned for it. Kaiser Wilhelm first employed it. Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt went to war with it, and more recently the United States fought an energy crisis with it. For several months every year, for better or worse, daylight savings time affects vast numbers of people throughout the world. And from Ben Franklin's era to today, its story has been an intriguing and sometimes-bizarre amalgam of colorful personalities and serious technical issues, purported costs and perceived benefits, conflicts between interest groups and government policymakers. It impacts diverse and unexpected areas, including agricultural practices, street crime, the reporting of sports scores, traffic accidents, the inheritance rights of twins, and voter turnout. Illustrated with a popular look at science and history, Seize the Daylight presents an intriguing and surprisingly entertaining story of our attempt to regulate the sunlight hours.

Announcing the 2008 recipient of the Yale Younger Poets prize Arda Collins is the 2008 winner of the annual Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. Mesmerizing and electric, her poems seem to be articulated in the privacy of an enclosed space. The poems are concrete and yet metaphysically challenging, both witty and despairing. Collins' emotional complexity and uncommon range make this debut both thrillingly imaginative and ethical in its uncompromising attention to detail. In her Foreword, contest judge Louise Gl ck observes, "I know no poet whose sense of fraud, the inflated emptiness that substitutes for feeling, is more acute." Gl ck calls Collins' volume "savage, desolate, brutally ironic . . . a book of astonishing originality and intensity, unprecedented, unrepeatable."

Michael Downing is obsessed with Daylight Saving, the loopy idea that became the most persistent political controversy in American history. Almost one hundred years after Congressmen and lawmakers in every state first debated, ridiculed, and then passionately embraced the possibility of saving an hour of daylight, no one can say for sure why we are required by law to change our clocks twice a year. Who first proposed the scheme? The most authoritative sources agree it was a Pittsburgh industrialist, Woodrow Wilson, a man on a horse in London, a Manhattan socialite, Benjamin Franklin, one of the Caesars, or the anonymous makers of ancient Chinese and Japanese water clocks. Spring Forward is a portrait of public policy in the 20th century, a perennially boiling cauldron of unsubstantiated science, profiteering masked as piety, and mysteriously shifting time–zone boundaries. It is a true–to–life social comedy with Congress in the leading role, surrounded by a supporting cast of opportunistic ministers, movie moguls, stockbrokers, labor leaders, sports fanatics, and railroad execs.

Daylight is the gripping follow up to Long Road to Mercy and A Minute to Midnight featuring Special Agent Atlee Pine, from one of the world’s most favourite thriller writers, David Baldacci. The hunt Ever since Mercy was abducted aged six, Atlee has been relentless in her search for her. Finally, she gets her most promising breakthrough yet – the identity of her sister’s kidnapper. The capture As Atlee and her assistant, Carol Blum, race to track down the suspect, they run into Pine’s old friend and fellow agent, John Puller, who is investigating the suspect’s family for another crime. The kill Working together, Pine and Puller must pull back the layers of deceit, lies and cover-ups that strike at the very heart of global democracy. And the truth about what happened to Mercy will finally be revealed. That truth will shock Atlee Pine to her very core. Continue the gripping series with Mercy.

Truth Wyman has watched Nicodemus, Kansas, grow into a busy little prairie town. And she has grown up, too. Her family was among the first settlers to homestead this area, and there is nowhere she'd rather live. She's always thought her husband felt the same way. . . . Then Moses comes home with news that he has been nominated for state office. If he wins, they'll need to move to the state capital. Pregnant with her first child, Truth does not plan to move to Topeka. How can she raise her baby in an unfamiliar city? How can she leave her family and her home? Yet what will happen if she refuses? Nicodemus's sister community, Hill City, is thriving, too. Macia Boyle returns to her family after a European holiday. The storekeeper's nephew, Garrett Johnson, captures her attention, but she can't seem to forget Jeb Malone, the young blacksmith who showed interest in her before her trip. Soon, Macia must make a choice: Should she return to Jeb's arms or seek a new life with Garrett?

One morning, Takahashi, a writer who has just stayed up all night working, is interrupted by a phone call from his old friend Sonomura: barely able to contain his excitement, Sonomura claims that he has cracked a secret cryptographic code based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Gold-Bug and now knows exactly when and where a murder will take place—and they must hurry if they want to witness the murder, because it’s later that very night! Sonomura has a history of lunacy and playing the amateur detective, so Takahashi is of course reluctant to believe him. Nevertheless, they stake out the secret location, and through tiny peepholes in the knotted wood, become voyeurs at the scene of a shocking crime… Atmospheric, erotic, and tense, Devils in Daylight is an early work by the master storyteller who “created a lifelong series of ingenious variations on a dominant theme: the power of love to energize and destroy” (Chicago Tribune).

Can you save someone from something that’s already happened? Daniel’s expectations for his forced vacation with his father at the Leisure World Holiday Complex are low. He hates sports, and his father is mostly lost in drink and depression. But then he sees a strange girl swimming in the fake lake, and everything changes. Lexi has a smart mouth and a killer swim stroke, but dark secrets swirl around her. She’s got bruises and cuts that seem to be getting worse instead of better. She’s always alone. And her watch is ticking backwards. When a dark figure begins to stalk Lexi and Daniel, the truth must come out. This gripping ghost story will raise goose bumps and questions: does a traumatic past mean the future is a foregone conclusion?