Set in a future where cosmetic surgery is a requirement at age 16 and attractiveness is mandated, Scott Westerfeld’s popular Uglies series has received critical acclaim from the press and public alike. Chock-full of action, adventure and teenage rebellion, there’s no question why Uglies has attracted thousands of fans. In Mind-Rain, popular authors examine the series and delve into the underlying themes. What sort of critiques are Uglies, Pretties, Specials and Extras making about the real world? Is there more behind Tally, David and Shay? Mind-Rain is a collection of smart, analytical and completely unauthorized eessays on Scott Westerfeld’s wildly popular Uglies series. Westerfeld’s written introduction gives readers insight from the person who knows the series best!

Rain had only been in love once in her life and it was the kind of love that held onto you so tight that nothing could erase it from your life, not even time or distance. Back in Atlanta after six years Rain was focused on one thing and that was finding the one person who ever truly owned her heart, Theory. Never mind the fact that she moved there with her current situation Jamel, because honestly that was all he would ever be. Theory knew from the from the first time he laid eyes on Rain that she owned his heart. She was the only thing he loved more than the streets that controlled him, so when Rain disappeared from his life he did the only thing he could and just survived. The streets became his priority and women became his past time. Now she's back, and things are as they should be, but will the choices that Theory made affect their chance to finally get it right?

Experience the riveting, dystopian Uglies series seen as never before—through the eyes of Shay, Tally Youngblood’s closest and bravest friend, who refuses to take anything about society at face value. “From the moment we are born, we are considered threats in need of ‘special’ management. We are watched and shaped and exploited by a force most of us never see. . . . All to keep us safe. . . . Do you feel safe?! Or do you feel like you’re in a cage?”—Shay In Pretties, Tally Youngblood and her daring best friend, Shay, both underwent the operation that turned them from ordinary Uglies into stunning beauties. Now this thrilling new graphic novel reveals Shay’s perspective on living in New Pretty Town . . . and the way she sees it, there’s more to this so-called paradise than meets the eye. With the endless parties and custom-made clothes, life as a Pretty should be perfect. Yet Shay doesn’t feel quite right. She has little to no memory of her past; it’s as if something in her brain has inexplicably changed. When she reunites with Tally and the Crims—her rebellious group of friends from Uglyville—she begins to recall their last departure to the wild, and the headstrong leader she used to be. And as she remembers the truth about what doomed their escape, Shay decides to fight back—against the status quo, against the mysterious Special Circumstances, even against her own best friend.

"Walking is medicine for the mind. It helps us slow down and think things through. It also helps us perk up and generate new ideas. There are few activities as readily available and revitalising as a brisk walk, or as soothing and stimulating as a long walk. Discover the wonderful things that can happen when you set out on two feet. Studies show a strong link between the mental state while walking and innovative ideas or strokes of insight. From Aristotle's strolls with his students to Steve Jobs's famous walking meetings, walking not only inspires creativity but also attention, presence and perspective. Taking your mind for a walk nourishes connection with yourself, it allows exploration of the self and the world around us and invigorates all of our senses."--Publisher.

A baton twirler fights the rain to save her neighborhood parade

Rain is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive. It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world's water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain. Cynthia Barnett's Rain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science—the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains—with the human story of our ambition to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River. It offers a glimpse of our "founding forecaster," Thomas Jefferson, who measured every drizzle long before modern meteorology. Two centuries later, rainy skies would help inspire Morrissey’s mopes and Kurt Cobain’s grunge. Rain is also a travelogue, taking readers to Scotland to tell the surprising story of the mackintosh raincoat, and to India, where villagers extract the scent of rain from the monsoon-drenched earth and turn it into perfume. Now, after thousands of years spent praying for rain or worshiping it; burning witches at the stake to stop rain or sacrificing small children to bring it; mocking rain with irrigated agriculture and cities built in floodplains; even trying to blast rain out of the sky with mortars meant for war, humanity has finally managed to change the rain. Only not in ways we intended. As climate change upends rainfall patterns and unleashes increasingly severe storms and drought, Barnett shows rain to be a unifying force in a fractured world. Too much and not nearly enough, rain is a conversation we share, and this is a book for everyone who has ever experienced it.

The action of the play takes place in the hotel store of trader Joe Horn, on the island of Tutuila, Port of Pago Pago, the south seas, where a missionary's determination to reform a prostitute leads to tragedy.