Time: Summer, 1990. Place: Yucca Valley, CA. Scott Faraday, sixteen, is fun loving, in a small town rock band, and out - but only to a select few. Isolated in his high desert town Scott doesn't know anyone else who's gay. When Ryan St. Charles, a troubled seventeen-year old, moves to town, everything changes. Ryan is brash and hot headed, the complete opposite of Scott's demeanor. In fact, Ryan has just severed a long-term relationship with a man, but still considers himself straight. As Scott and Ryan's unusual friendship develops, Scott begins to suspect Ryan might be covering up that he's gay. When Scott comes out to Ryan, their friendship is transmuted and it becomes Scott's first intimate relationship. Tightly focused on these two characters, Desert Sons follows the ups and downs of a young adult gay relationship. Filled with first-time wonder, teenage angst and the swirl of emotions that can only be expressed by youth, readers are pulled headlong into a highly charged drama.

In Desert Daughters, Desert Sons, professor Rachel Wheeler argues that a new reading of the texts of the Christian desert tradition is needed to present the (often) anonymous women who inhabit the texts. Though these women may have been included by storytellers to provide a foil to the exemplary men in the stories' foreground, Wheeler demonstrates how women's persistence in places they were not welcome witnesses to truths about where wisdom may be sought and found. In this book, Wheeler allows these women's stories to critique the desert impulse that can create a spiritual life devoid of social relationships and responsibility.

This delightful biography conveys the warmth and humour of the much-loved duo whose hilarious escapades convulsed a generation of movie-goers and who continue to acquire new worldwide audiences via the medium of television. Describing the book as 'positively miraculous', the Times Literary Supplement was moved to add 'it is difficult to see how this book could be improved upon'.

Recreation of Pitjantjatjara children, food hunting, water holes, language notes, story telling; family structure, evil spirit Mamu, Mingkulpa (tobacco plant), cave drawings Musgrave Ranges; educational activities Ernabella Mission, natural ability to draw, clothing, corroboree, walkabout; extensively illustrated; photographed by Noel Wallace.

Palestine, first century A.D.-the Jews have revolted against Roman occupation. The ten Greek cities of Palestine-the Decapolis-want only to continue their peaceful trading existence, but they find themselves caught in the middle of the uprisings. Apollodorus, a merchant of Philadelphia, takes a risk and rescues a man whom a Roman patrol has left to die in the desert. When Apollodorus is killed by robbers, his three sons are left almost penniless and must each find a way for themselves. Philo, the youngest, is befriended by Xenos, the man saved from the desert, who has lost his memory. From him the boy learns the art of the scribe, and together they try to find their identity-one from the past, the other for the future. A serious story of an important time in history. This is the sequel to The Ides of April.

Twilight in the Desert reveals a Saudi oil and production industry that could soon approach a serious, irreversible decline. In this exhaustively researched book, veteran oil industry analyst Matthew Simmons draws on his three-plus decades of insider experience and more than 200 independently produced reports about Saudi petroleum resources and production operations. He uncovers a story about Saudi Arabias troubled oil industry, not to mention its political and societal instability, which differs sharply from the globally accepted Saudi version. Its a story that is provocative and disturbing, based on undeniable facts, but until now never told in its entirety. Twilight in the Desert answers all readers questions about Saudi oil and production industries with keen examination instead of unsubstantiated posturing, and takes its place as one of the most important books of this still-young century.