Arizona's rugged Chiricahua Mountains have a special place in frontier history. They were the haven of many well-known personalities, from Cochise to Johnny Ringo, as well as the home of prospectors, cattlemen, and hardscrabble farmers eking out a tough living in an unforgiving landscape. In this delightful and well-researched book, Alden Hayes shares his love for the area, gained over fifty years. From his vantage point near the tiny twin communities of Portal and Paradise on the eastern slopes of the Chiricahuas, Hayes brings the famous and the not-so-famous together in a profile of this striking landscape, showing how place can be a powerful formative influence on people's lives. When Hayes first arrived in 1941 to manage his new father-in-law's apple orchard, he met folks who had been born in Arizona before it became a state. Even if most had never personally worried about Indian attacks, they had known people who had. Over the years, Hayes heard the handed-down stories about the area's early days of Anglo settlement. He also researched census records, newspaper archives, and the files of the Arizona Historical Society to uncover the area's natural history, prehistory, Spanish and Mexican regimes, and particularly its Anglo history from the mid nineteenth century to the beginning of World War II. His book is a rich account of the region and more, a celebration of rural life, brimming with tales of people whose stories were shaped by the landscape. Today the Chiricahuas are a magnet for outdoor enthusiasts and the site of the American Museum of Natural History's Southwestern Research StationÑand still a rugged area that remains off the beaten track. Hayes brings his straightforward and articulate style to this captivating account of earlier days in southeastern Arizona and opens up a portal to paradise for readers everywhere.

"Saving Paradise" offers a fascinating new lens on the history of Christianity, asking how its early vision of beauty evolved into a vision of torture, and what changes in society and theology marked that evolution.

Is it a novel? A neurolinguistic operating system? A textbook? Or all of the above? For the first time ever, discover the most scientifically accurate and leading edge truths about the plant in Cannabis Paradise. Join Silex Stone as he learns about cannabis and experience the world in the year 2045. The United States has divided into two different societies and Silex is caught in the middle of both worlds as he tries to find the truth about the plant.

The first substantial collection of short fiction from "a writer with enough electricity to light up the country" (Ann Patchett) "I guess the things that scare you are the things that are almost normal," observes one narrator in this collection of effervescent and often uncanny stories. Drawing on fifteen years of work, See You in Paradise is the fullest expression yet of J. Robert Lennon's distinctive and brilliantly comic take on the pathos and surreality at the heart of American life. In Lennon's America, a portal to another universe can be discovered with surprising nonchalance in a suburban backyard, adoption almost reaches the level of blood sport, and old pals return from the dead to steal your girlfriend. Sexual dysfunction, suicide, tragic accidents, and career stagnation all create surprising opportunities for unexpected grace in this full-hearted and mischievous depiction of those days (weeks, months, years) we all have when things just don't go quite right.

Florida possesses more wetlands than any other state except Alaska, yet since 1990 more than 84,000 acres have been lost to development despite presidential pledges to protect them. How and why the state's wetlands are continuing to disappear is the subject of Paving Paradise. Journalists Craig Pittman and Matthew Waite spent nearly four years investigating the political expedience, corruption, and negligence on the part of federal and state agencies that led to a failure to enforce regulations on developers. They traveled throughout the state, interviewed hundreds of people, dug through thousands of documents, and analyzed satellite imagery to identify former wetlands that were now houses, stores, and parking lots. Exposing the unseen environmental consequences of rampant sprawl, Pittman and Waite explain how wetland protection creates the illusion of environmental protection while doing little to stem the tide of destruction.

What do you call a group of super-powered people trying to save the world? Not heroes, that’s for sure... It’s been over 20 years since mysterious impact points opened up, bringing forth frightening creatures and infecting certain people with strange and terrible powers. Fortunately, normal people can rest easy thanks to Sentinel—a private security force equipped to handle threats both monstrous and human. There’s just one problem: Kali, the daughter of Sentinel president Gregory Zakorra, is infected. Her ability has brought her nothing but bad luck and she has spent her life trying to hide it. Then, a chance mistake pits her against the company she was set to inherit. Sentinel is up to something way off the business plan, but no one would move against humanity’s saviour. Looks like it’s up to Kali to become the villain the city needs. What could go wrong? With illustrations by four artists