Angry her father, who has ordered her to bond with a man with tainted lines.Lasara plans to escape. Her ability to read the lines of fire makes her a talented duelist. Friends aid her escape. They tell her to seek the Desert Riders and a man called Jens. The meeting is different than she plans. They duel for hours and end in both collapsing. While she recovers she hears about the kidnapping of girls with strong lines of fire, she decides to act to free them. Then she learns about a strange man who has joined her enemy. The Defenders need to know. Ever since his duel with a Defender Jens wonders if this man could really be his brother. Traveling to the Defender’s Hall doesn’t suit him. He like his life as a Desert Rider. His band of Riders travels to a village on the edge of the desert. A challenge to see who has the trading advantage is called for. The duel ends in a tie. He is on his way back to the desert when a man from a different troop speaks of young girls being kidnapped. Learning and freeing them becomes his goal. Lasara joins him during the quest. Somehow, they must face the renegades and rescue the young women.

Over 1 million sold in series! Kidnapped by Celtic Druids in 433, Patrick and Beth are headed to certain death when followers of a former Irish Slave (Saint Patrick, called Patritius in this book) save them. The cousins find themselves in the midst of a power struggle between Ireland’s King Logaire, Patritius, and the leader of the Druids, Lochru. A spiritual showdown begins on the Hill of Slane when Patritius builds a fire, challenging the King’s authority. Will Patritius prove to the king that the God of the Bible is the true God? Or will the king take sides with the Druids? The Emerald Isle holds many tales and legends, but this story of truth and standing strong for God is not one to be missed.

"This book follows as LAW"--

Let this graphic novel be your time machine! In History Comics, the new nonfiction graphic novel series from First Second, the past comes alive! A deadly blaze engulfs Chicago for two terrifying days! A brother, a sister, and a helpless puppy must race through the city to stay one step ahead of the devilish inferno. But can they reunite with their lost family before it’s too late? In History Comics: The Great Chicago Fire, learn how a city rose up from the one of the worst catastrophes in American history, and how this disaster forever changed how homes, buildings, and communities are constructed.

A dramatic, revelatory account of the female inmate firefighters who battle California wildfires. Shawna was overcome by the claustrophobia, the heat, the smoke, the fire, all just down the canyon and up the ravine. She was feeling the adrenaline, but also the terror of doing something for the first time. She knew how to run with a backpack; they had trained her physically. But that’s not training for flames. That’s not live fire. California’s fire season gets hotter, longer, and more extreme every year — fire season is now year-round. Of the thousands of firefighters who battle California’s blazes every year, roughly 30 percent of the on-the-ground wildland crews are inmates earning a dollar an hour. Approximately 200 of those firefighters are women serving on all-female crews. In Breathing Fire, Jaime Lowe expands on her revelatory work for The New York Times Magazine. She has spent years getting to know dozens of women who have participated in the fire camp program and spoken to captains, family and friends, correctional officers, and camp commanders. The result is a rare, illuminating look at how the fire camps actually operate — a story that encompasses California’s underlying catastrophes of climate change, economic disparity, and historical injustice, but also draws on deeply personal histories, relationships, desires, frustrations, and the emotional and physical intensity of firefighting. Lowe’s reporting is a groundbreaking investigation of the prison system, and an intimate portrayal of the women of California’s Correctional Camps who put their lives on the line, while imprisoned, to save a state in peril.

It's time for America to move beyond zoning, argues city planner M. Nolan Gray in Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. With lively explanations, Gray shows why zoning abolition is a necessary--if not sufficient--condition for building more affordable, vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities. Gray lays the groundwork for this ambitious cause by clearing up common misconceptions about how American cities regulate growth and examining four contemporary critiques of zoning (its role in increasing housing costs, restricting growth in our most productive cities, institutionalizing racial and economic segregation, and mandating sprawl). He sets out some of the efforts currently underway to reform zoning and charts how land-use regulation might work in the post-zoning American city. Arbitrary Lines is an invitation to rethink the rules that will continue to shape American life--where we may live or work, who we may encounter, how we may travel. If the task seems daunting, the good news is that we have nowhere to go but up