Now, in this collection of interconnected short stories, Jennifer Haigh returns to the vividly imagined world of Bakerton, Pennsylvania, a coal mining town rocked by decades of painful transition. From its heyday during two World Wars through its slow decline, Bakerton is a town that refuses to give up gracefully, binding--sometimes cruelly - succeeding generations to the place that made them.

"The White City, 1893: In turn-of-the-century Chicago, with the World's Fair bringing bustle and excitement to her home city, sixteen-year-old Emily Wheiler should be reveling in her youthful beauty and the excitement around her. But her whole life changed when her mother died, leaving her to be the Lady of Wheiler House. Her father, a powerful bank president, is at the center of an important social hub for the booming young city, and he needs Emily to do everything her mother would have - to be a good hostess and make sure the mansion runs smoothly. As Emily uneasily tries to replace her mother, she also longs for more... for love and a life of her own. When a handsome young man notices her at one of her father's parties, it seems that her hopes may finally be coming true. Until her father forbids her to see him - or any other man - and starts revealing a darkly violent side that even he can't understand. At last, afraid for her life and with nowhere to turn, Emily is Marked by a vampyre and brought to the Chicago House of Night, where she begins a magickal new life that should allow the wounds from her past to heal. But as she gains strength, and a powerful new name, she carries a dark need to wreak vengeance on the man she trusted most. From victim to High Priestess, beautiful young woman to powerful seductress, Neferet's journey begins in NEFERET'S CURSE.."--

50 insightful entries examining the self-proclaimed urban elite. Skinny jeans? Check. Charity-shop clothing? Check. Non-essential prescription glasses? Check. Beanie balanced artfully on the back of your skull? Check. These items have become the uniform for a new breed of young people - hipsters - determined to take over cities with their "alternative" ways whilst overloading on irony and striving to be original and creative. So You Think You're a Hipster? examines what it takes to become one of this ever-growing tribe of middle-class urbanites, just as desperate to be accepted by their peers as they are to receive the next rent cheque from mum and dad. Over the following pages a series of hilarious case studies will identify typical examples of the subculture, helping you to avoid any future encounters with them. Take thrift-store guy, who at 35 still works selling worn sneakers and threadbare t-shirts for extortionate amounts and still dreams of one day getting his latest album reviewed on Pitchfork. Or the aspiring author who lugs around an oldfashioned typewriter to write down her inspirational musings at a moments notice. Then there's ironic moustache man whose facial hair makes him feel like a highly individual fashion maverick, despite the fact all his graphic designer friends have one, too.

Cupcake club member Riley Brown, who has found her bliss on Georgia's quiet Sugarberry Island after years of Chicago's city life, sets her sights on Quinn Brannigan, a bad boy author who she craves more than buttercream icing.

"When an inexplicable wave of energy slammed into North America, millions died. In the rest of the world, wars erupted, borders vanished, and the powerful lost their grip on power. Against this backdrop, with a conflicted U.S. president struggling to make momentous decisions in Seattle and a madman fomenting rebellion in Texas, three women are fighting their own battles--for survival, justice, and revenge. Special agent Caitlin Monroe moves stealthily through a South American jungle. Her target: a former French official now held prisoner by a ruthless despot. To free the prisoner, Caitlin will kill anyone who gets in her way. And then she will get the truth about how a master terrorist escaped a secret detention center in French Guadeloupe to strike a fatal blow in New York City. Sofia Peiraro is a teenage girl who witnessed firsthand the murder and mayhem of Texas under the rule of General Mad Jack Blackstone. Sofia might have tried to build a life with her father in the struggling remnants of Kansas City--if a vicious murder hadn't set her on another course altogether: back to Texas, even to Blackstone himself. Julianne Balwyn is a British-born aristocrat turned smuggler. Shopping in the most fashionable neighborhood of Darwin, Australia--now a fantastic neo-urban frontier--Jules has a pistol holstered in the small of her lovely back. She is playing the most dangerous game of all: waiting for the person who is hunting her to show his face--so she can kill him first. Three women in three corners of a world plunged into electrifying chaos. Nation-states struggling for their survival. Immigrants struggling for new lives. John Birmingham's astounding new novel--the conclusion to the series begun in Without Warning and After America--is an intense adventure that races from the halls of power to shattered streets to gleaming new cities, as humanity struggles to grasp its better angels--and purge its worst demons"--

Having left Nazi-occupied Vienna a year ago, thirteen-year-old Jewish refugee Stephie Steiner adapts to life in the cultured Swedish city of Gothenburg, where she attends school, falls in love, and worries about her parents who were not allowed to emigrate.

"Megan Flynn thought she was falling in love. Cole Williams wasn't just handsome and passionate, he was one of the good guys. Or so she thought, until he arrested her brother--the only family she has left--for a murder she knows he couldn't have possibly committed. Now, with her heart broken and her brother's life hanging in the balance, Megan will risk everything to prove his innocence. Even if that means throwing herself into the path of a sadistic killer with a hauntingly familiar MO. Seattle Detective Cole Williams had given up on making Megan see reason where her brother is concerned. But when she insinuates herself in the most shockingly brutal case Cole has ever worked, he can't stand idly by. Plunged into a secret world where the city's elite indulge their darkest desires, Cole will do whatever it takes to bring down a madman who has made Megan his most coveted prey."--P. [4] of cover.

A former NPR correspondent takes you into his own ghost-filled life as he reports on a region in turmoil. Gerry Hadden was training to become a Buddhist monk when opportunity came knocking: the offer of a dream job as NPR's correspondent for Latin America. Arriving in Mexico in 2000 during the nation's first democratic transition of power, he witnesses both hope and uncertainty. But after 9/11, he finds himself documenting overlooked yet extraordinary events in a forgotten political landscape. As he reports on Colombia's drug wars, Guatemala's deleterious emigration, and Haiti's bloody rebellion, Hadden must also make a home for himself in Mexico City, coming to terms with its ghosts and chasing down the love of his life, in a riveting narrative that reveals the human heart at the center of international affairs. -- Cover, p. [4].

Documents the role of light in history, tracing how the development of specific innovations had a pivotal influence on social and cultural evolution.