From cradle to grave Juliette Sanders has her life planned out. Penn State to the Supreme Court. No surprise she’s got this plan. RBG is her hero, after all. So why is it that a letter from a grandmother she has never met—never even knew she existed—has flipped everything upside down. Vivienne Montreuil’s letter is an invitation to visit her at the Montreuil Magnolia House near New Orleans, Louisiana. How exciting, amirite? Except that there’s this thing that Juliette’s family does. Magic. And supposedly Juliette can do magic. Say what? No way, no how. And yet…Now Juliette knows about her biological mother—and father, a renowned necromancer—and she decides to visit the Crescent City Academy of Magics, you know, just to see what it’s all about. She’s not giving up on Penn State. She’s not abandoning her wish to follow RBG’s footsteps. She’ll just stay at Crescent City for a couple of weeks. That’s all. And she’s got a great—temporary—roommate, Naomi, who’s willing to show her the ropes. How did things get so complicated when she runs into a hot wolf shifter named Jackson Walsh? She’s not staying at Crescent City. No, she’s not. It’s not in the plans. No. No. No. Except… Maybe it is.

Annie is a single, working mother. She had made it to the top of her career playing the markets in the City, but since Percy was born, her marriage to a successful West End lawyer already over after she discovered he was having an affair during her pregnancy, she has found it harder and harder to cope. Strung-out and post-natally depressed she has been summarily sacked from her high-powered job, her once impressive career down-sized to a job in a high street estate agents. Feeling totally inadequate as a mother, torn by guilt at not spending more time with her son and by the need to earn money and maintain a career of some sort, Annie is struggling to keep sane. Then one morning, peering out of the office window, she sees a couple: a young woman with a baby Percy's age, apparently the very model of mother and child, and a guy - black, handsome, detached-looking. Annie is curious about them: attracted to the woman by her naturalness with her child, and to the man by his sexual allure. But when he comes into the office asking about studios to rent, Annie starts to move, semi-consciously, down a path that will lead her into a much darker world than she could ever have imagined, a world that will threaten her very freedom, but which will throw into sharp relief the things of value in her life. Through his remarkably perceptive portrait of Annie, Gareth Creer explores the realities facing single working mothers today but into her story he skilfully weaves a pacey thriller that tips the balance over from the everyday into a sinister, unfamiliar, subterranean world

A nail-biting novel of domestic suspense from a best-selling author - When Morgan Adair arrives at the small seaside town of West Briar on the Long Island shore, she is looking forward to attending the baptism of her new godson, Drew. Morgan and Drew's mother, Claire, have been friends since childhood, and Morgan was delighted when Claire married the handsome Guy Bolton. But a few days after the christening, Morgan receives a devastating phone call from her friend . . .

A manifesto for a radically different philosophy and practice of manufacture and environmentalism "Reduce, reuse, recycle" urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. But as this provocative, visionary book argues, this approach perpetuates a one-way, "cradle to grave" manufacturing model that dates to the Industrial Revolution and casts off as much as 90 percent of the materials it uses as waste, much of it toxic. Why not challenge the notion that human industry must inevitably damage the natural world? In fact, why not take nature itself as our model? A tree produces thousands of blossoms in order to create another tree, yet we do not consider its abundance wasteful but safe, beautiful, and highly effective; hence, "waste equals food" is the first principle the book sets forth. Products might be designed so that, after their useful life, they provide nourishment for something new-either as "biological nutrients" that safely re-enter the environment or as "technical nutrients" that circulate within closed-loop industrial cycles, without being "downcycled" into low-grade uses (as most "recyclables" now are). Elaborating their principles from experience (re)designing everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, William McDonough and Michael Braungart make an exciting and viable case for change.

Is Gaia becoming Thanatia, a resource exhausted planet? For how long can our high-tech society be sustained in the light of declining mineral ore grades, heavy dependence on un-recycled critical metals and accelerated material dispersion? These are all root causes of future disruptions that need to be addressed today.This book presents a cradle-to-cradle view of the Earth's abiotic resources through a novel and rigorous approach based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics: heat dissipates and materials deteriorate and disperse. Quality is irreversibly lost. This allows for the assessment of such depletion and can be used to estimate the year where production of the main mineral commodities could reach its zenith. By postulating Thanatia, one acquires a sense of destiny and a concern for a unified global management of the planet's abiotic resource endowment.The book covers the core aspects of geology, geochemistry, mining, metallurgy, economics, the environment, thermodynamics and thermochemistry. It is supported by comprehensive databases related to mineral resources, including detailed compositions of the Earth's layers, thermochemical properties of over 300 substances, historical energy and mineral resource inventories, energy consumption and environmental impacts in the mining and metallurgical sector and world recycling rates of commodities.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.