Skyward Bound Cities presents a world where gravity's unpredictability has forced humanity skyward, creating floating metropolises that defy imagination. Zara, a young South Asian architect, navigates this aerial realm, designing structures that dance on the edge of science and magic. When an ominous force threatens to send these lofty abodes plummeting, Zara must unravel a mystery that intertwines ancient levitation wisdom with cutting-edge anti-gravity technology. As Zara races against time, readers are transported between her urgent present-day quest and illuminating historical vignettes, each revealing another piece of the gravitational puzzle. The narrative soars through themes of cultural preservation and technological ethics, painting a vivid picture of a society suspended between earth and sky. With lyrical prose and rich sensory details, this unique blend of urban fantasy, science fiction, and magical realism offers a fresh perspective on the ""floating world"" concept, inviting readers to explore the breathtaking possibilities—and perils—of a civilization unbound by earthly tethers.

F. Scott Fitzgerald left behind a substantial body of work on New York, yet his city remains in our time terra incognita, talked about but rarely well met. Lost City takes on this important and under-examined, indeed misunderstood and misrepresented, aspect of Fitzgerald's writing. The author shows that Fitzgerald's geography amounts to more than the Plaza Hotel and a wasteland. His writing depicts a variety of districts and neighborhoods. His is not the New York of the Roaring Twenties. Locating Fitzgerald's

Leo Makishima, the enigmatic Devicer Seven, only cares about one thing: power. And he’ll do whatever it takes to get it. His blind ambition, however, makes him the perfect target for the archmages’ machinations, and Quldald of the Whirlwind has the perfect use for the troubled boy. Likewise, the Japanese government is desperate to resurrect their greatest weapon—Devicer Three. Meanwhile, the crew arrives in Indonesia to investigate a dormant Asura and a mysterious power sleeping within Aliya. There, they meet Devicer Five, a prickly girl by the name of Zhou Xueli who’s looking to build an elite team to end the war once and for all. In particular, her eyes are set upon Devicer Three and the key she’s been looking for—a Replicant. Everyone wants something, and Yu Ichinose seems to have it. To what lengths they’re willing to go to take it, he doesn’t know, but he’ll have to be ready to do anything to defend those he cares about. Even if it means fighting a fellow Devicer.

The city's development from ancient times to the modern age. Winner of the National Book Award. "One of the major works of scholarship of the twentieth century" (Christian Science Monitor). Index; illustrations.

In Cities of Refuge, a single act of violence resonates through several lives, connecting closeby fears to distant political terrors. At the story’s center is the complex, intensely charged relationship between a twenty-eight-year-old woman and the father who abandoned her when she was young. One summer night on a side street in downtown Toronto, Kim Lystrander is attacked by a stranger. Thrown deep into turmoil, in the weeks and months that follow, she confronts her fear by returning to the night, in writing, searching for harbingers of the incident and clues to the identity of her assailant. The attack also torments Kim's father, Harold, a historian of Latin America. As he investigates the crime on his own, the darkest hours from his past revisit him, and he gradually begins to unravel. Entwined in their stories are Kim’s ailing mother, Marian; Father André Rowe, whose mission to guide others involves him in a decision with troubling consequences; Rodrigo Cantero, a young Colombian man living illegally in the city; and Rosemary Yates, a woman whose faith-based belief in the duty to give asylum to any who seek it, even those judged guilty, draws Harold to her, before a fateful choice changes the future for them all. Cities of Refuge is a novel of profound moral tension and luminous prose. It weaves a web of incrimination and inquiry, in which mysteries live within mysteries, and stories within stories, and the power to save or condemn rests in the forces of history and in the realm of our deepest longings.