With another aching deep dive into human spirituality, Emily France mines her home state of Colorado in a novel of a teen girl's harrowing search for her missing younger sister—and her own search for self. Born and raised in Boulder, Colorado, Essence McKree feels older than any seventeen-year-old she knows. Ever since weed was legalized, her mother has been working in a pot shop, high more often than not. Lately it’s been up to Essa to care for her nine-year-old sister, Puck. When Essa meets Oliver—a brainy indoor type who’s in town for the summer—she is cautious at first, distrustful of the tourist crowd and suspicious of Oliver’s mysterious past in Chicago. But Puck is charmed and pushes Essa toward him. Soon Essa finds herself showing Oliver the Boulder she has forgotten: the mountain parties, the long hikes . . . and at Oliver’s urging, the exploration of Buddhism at the local zendo. When Oliver agrees to accompany Essa on a three-day survival game in the Rocky Mountains, she feels a lightness she hasn’t known in a long time. Then she discovers that Puck has stowed away and followed them into the wilderness. After spending a night stuck in a mountain storm, Essa wakes to find Puck missing. Now Essa must rely on her newfound spiritual strength if she is to save her sister’s life, and ultimately her own.

The world of ZEN CITY is a world of passionate desires: the desire for power, the desire for order, and the desire for self-transcendence. ZEN CITY is a story about the struggle and violence of people who see themselves as striving for the ultimate. Along the way, ZEN CITY presents a sly critique of the practice and perversions of imported spirituality in twentieth-century America.

Part travelogue, part meditation on an author and his work, Zen and Now is a tribute to a beloved American book and the landscape that inspired it. Since it was first published in 1974, Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has become a modern classic, a beautifully constructed blend of travel narrative and philosophical inquiry that has moved generations of readers. One of those readers was journalistMarkRichardson, who after rediscovering the book at middle age, decided to retrace Pirsig’s journey. Fromthe back of his own motorcycle, Richardson investigates what happened to the reclusive Pirsig, his family, and the people described in the book in the years after its surprising success.

Saul Summerblend has a bizarre memory problem. And his Zen master, Bodhee, says he should travel to the dwarf planet Ceres to fix it. Along the way Saul meets a thirty-foot magic square whose diagonals and rows sum to 666, encounters a group of drunken Vikings and evil dwarves, works some campy mathematics and overhears amusing CB radio conversations, fights a visionary with a penchant for wrestling masks and flipping off cars all day on main street, invents neologisms like deemkrite and freeganidge. He also learns of a mystical book called 'Red Zen: Way of the Butterfly' and attempts to solve a few koans about kangaroos, split toe nails, and carts filled with hatchets. Will Saul fix his strange memory problem? Will he even make it back to Earth alive?

Sixteen-year-old Riley copes with the loss of her mother two years earlier with the help of a support group, which gets involved in a mystery surrounding a relic of St. Ignatius.

I am about to be left in charge of the office. I'm not sure I'm ready for the responsibility, so I double-check with my boss. He reassures me. "You'll be fine, Marianne. As long as no one kills Amanullah Khan, you'll be fine." By midday, Amanullah Khan is dead. Marianne Elliot is a human rights lawyer stationed with the UN in Herat when the unthinkable happens: a tribal leader is assassinated, and she must defuse the situation before it leads to widespread bloodshed. And this is just the beginning of the story in Afghanistan. Zen Under Fire lays bare the struggles of a war-torn region from a uniquely personal perspective. Honest and vivid, her story reveals the shattering effect that the high-stress environment has on Marianne and her relationships. Redefining the question of what it really means to do good in a country that is under siege from within, Zen Under Fire is an honest, moving, at times terrifying true story of a women's experience at peacekeeping in one of the most dangerous places on Earth. "This is an amazing book, kind of like if Eat, Pray, Love had happened in Afghanistan and the stakes were life and death."—Susan Piver, New York Times bestselling author of Wisdom of a Broken Heart

Chameleons are the best at fitting in. But Leon is an exception. Leon is neon! In this delightful interactive book, children can help Leon on his journey to find a place where he can fit in. Full color.