In Blood of Dragons, the fourth and final volume in New York Times bestselling author Robin Hobb’s acclaimed Rain Wilds series, comes to an epic conclusion. Blood of Dragons completes the story of the dragons, their keepers, and their quest to find the lost city of Kelsingra—and the mythical silver wells that the dragons need to survive.
Robin Hobb was born in California and grew up in Alaska. She has lived most of her life in the Pacific Northwest and currently resides in Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of many books, including The Farseer Trilogy, The Liveship Traders Trilogy, and The Tawny Man Trilogy. Her books under the pseudonym Megan Lindholm include Wizard of the Pigeons, Windsingers, and Cloven Hooves. She is also the author of The Inheritance, a collection of stories written under both names.
Ashaunt Point—a tiny finger of land jutting into Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts—has provided sanctuary and anchored life for generations of the Porter family, who summer along its remote, rocky shore. In The End of the Point, Elizabeth Graver illuminates the powerful legacy of family and place, exploring what we are born into, what we preserve, or willingly set free.
Elizabeth Graver is the author of the novels Awake, The Honey Thief, and Unravelling. Her short story collection, Have You Seen Me?, won the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Boston College.
Anne Easter Smith, author of A Rose for the Crown and Queen by Right, once again transports readers to the glorious fifteenth-century court of the house of York. In Royal Mistress, a historical novel about the rise and fall of Jane Shore, readers learn about the woman who captivated three of England's most powerful men and has been remembered through the ages as the “merriest mistress” of Edward IV. The dramatic tale of Edward IV's final and favorite mistress, who survived court intrigue, the end of one king's reign, and the turbulent start of another, has been an inspiration to poets and playwrights for 500 years. Smith's rendering of Jane's interactions with her lover's more serious, principled sibling and her vision of the drama-packed four months between Edward's death and Richard's coronation will be especially engrossing to those interested in the legacy of Richard III.
A native of England, Anne Easter Smith has lived in the United States for more than forty years. She was the featured editor at a newspaper in New York State and now lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
Alexandra Marshall, novelist and member of the Beacon Hill Garden Club, will discuss the history of how our utilitarian backyards evolved into beautiful and charming hidden gardens. She will unlock the secrets to creating green spaces in any urban setting by discussing character, walls, paving, levels, gates and doors, ornaments, furniture, light, color and plants. The accompanying slideshow will feature photographs from the book and beyond which invite you into Beacon Hill's hidden gardens.
The Beacon Hill Garden Club's new book, Hidden Gardens of Beacon Hill: Creating Green Spaces in Urban Places describes how Beacon Hill's gardeners cope with the conditions that are typical in the city and illustrates with more than 100 photographs of members' gardens the successful techniques and solutions they employ. This is the fifth book published by this nonprofit organization and all proceeds go to local and national environmental, horticultural, and civic organizations.
On November 5, 1942, a U.S. cargo plane on a routine flight slammed into the Greenland Ice Cap. Four days later, the B-17 assigned to the search-and-rescue mission also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on the B-17 survived.In this true-life adventure, Mitchell Zuckoff offers an account of these harrowing crashes and the fate of the survivors and their would-be saviors. Full of evocative detail,
Frozen in Time brings their ordeal vividly into focus—a fight to stay alive and sane through 148 days of a brutal Arctic winter.
Mitchell Zuckoff is the author of Lost in Shangri-La, a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Winship/PEN New England Award. His previous books include Robert Altman: The Oral Biography, and Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend. He has written for national and regional publications and is a former special projects reporter for the Boston Globe, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for investigative reporting. He is a professor of journalism at Boston University.
With the threat of polio at their back door, ten-year-old Helen and her guardian, Flora, are isolated together in Helen’s decaying family house while her father is doing secret war work during the final months of World War II. This darkly beautiful novel about a child and a caretaker in isolation evokes shades of The Turn of the Screw and harks back to Godwin’s memorable novel of growing up The Finishing School. With a house on top of a mountain and a child who may be a ticking bomb, Flora tells a story of love, regret, and the things we can’t undo.
Gail Godwin, three-time National Book Award finalist, is the bestselling author of twelve critically acclaimed novels. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
The star of Animal Planet’s popular My Cat from Hell, Jackson Galaxy, a.k.a. “Cat Daddy,” isn’t what you might expect as far as cat experts are concerned (as The New York Times noted, he “looks like a Hells Angel”). Yet Galaxy’s ability to connect with even the most troubled felines is truly astonishing. In this book, Galaxy tells the story of his thirteen-year relationship with a petite gray-and-white cat named Benny—and offers his singular advice for caring for the feline in your home.
Jackson Galaxy has been called everything from a cat trainer to a cat shrink. Drawing on his years of experience in animal shelters and as a consultant, his unique approach to cat care offers people a deeper understanding of why their cats act out. He maintains a private consulting practice in Los Angeles. His show, My Cat from Hell, will be entering its fourth season in April 2013.
Suffolk Downs, part of Arcadia Publishing’s Images of Sports series, chronicles the rich history of Suffolk Downs from its construction and opening in 1935 to the present day through a collection of 200 images, many of which reside in the Boston Public Library. Built in an incredible 62 days, the facility was regarded as one of the world’s finest of its kind when it opened on July 10, 1935. Since then, Suffolk Downs has played host to some of Thoroughbred racing’s most famous horses, including Seabiscuit, War Admiral, Whirlaway, and Cigar. In addition to these legendary horses, Hall of Fame jockeys George Woolf and Jerry Bailey have all competed at the East Boston oval.
Christian Teja is the Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Suffolk Downs. He joined the historic racetrack in 2001 as Director of Public and Media Relations and was named to his current position in 2007. Chip Tuttle’s background in horseracing includes serving as Vice President of Communications for the National Thoroughbred Racing Association from 1999-2001 and as a marketing consultant to the Breeders’ Cup.
Ted Reinstein has been a reporter, producer, and occasional anchor for WCVB-TV Channel 5’s Chronicle, the nation’s longest running locally-produced nightly newsmagazine, since 1995. In 1995, Reinstein hosted the premiere season of the Discovery Channel's Popular Mechanics show.
Out of the studio, he has explored Hawaii's volcanoes, the caves of Puerto Rico, and the islands of Tahiti as host for the Travel Channel's photo/adventure series, Freeze Frame. He also provides reports and commentary on Sunday mornings during WCVB’s On the Record, a program that addresses political issues of the week. Since 2004, he has written a weekly opinion column, “And Another Thing,” which appears on WCVB.com. In 2010, he was one of five national finalists in the Washington Post’s “Great American Pundit” opinion-writing competition.
Mr. Reinstein’s first book is New England Notebook, which recounts many of Reinstein’s favorite people and stories from his travels around New England for Chronicle.
Christopher Castellani is the artistic director of Grub Street, one of the country's leading nonprofit creative writing centers. He is the author of two previous critically-acclaimed novels, A Kiss from Maddalena – winner of the Massachusetts Book Award in 2004 – and The Saint of Lost Things, a BookSense Notable Book that was long-listed for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2006. Mr. Castellani’s most recent book is All This Talk of Love, an incandescent novel about sacrifice and hope, loss and love, myth and memory.
Michael Lowenthal has been awarded the James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize. He has taught creative writing at Boston College and Hampshire College, and since 2003, has been a core faculty member in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University. Before becoming a full-time writer, Lowenthal worked as an editor for University Press of New England, where he founded the Hardscrabble Books imprint. Mr. Lowenthal’s book The Paternity Test is a provocative look at the new "family values.” It is one of the first novels to explore the experience of gay men seeking a child through surrogacy.
The Possibility Dogs is auniquely personal and inspiring journey into the rapidly emerging world of psychiatric service dogs, as Susannah Charleson works as an evaluator in shelters, plucking unwanted dogs, big and small, training them for this unique kind of service, and matching them with people in need.
Susannah Charleson, author of New York Times bestseller Scent of the Missing, is a flight instructor, service dog trainer, and canine search-and-rescue team member. She lives with Puzzle, a golden retriever certified for the recovery of missing persons; service dog in-training Jake Piper, a German Shepherd-pit bull-poodle mix; and a rabble of rescued Pomeranians and terriers.
The 1890s saw a revolution in advertising. Cheap paper, faster printing, rural delivery, railroad shipping, and the first modern catalogs. The most prominent of these, reaching American households by the thousands, were seed and nursery catalogs with beautiful pictures of middle-class homes surrounded by sprawling lawns and lush plants-the quintessential English-style garden. America’s Romance with the English Garden is the story of a growing American middle class eager to buy their products. It’s also the story of the beginnings of the modern garden industry.
Thomas Mickey is Professor of Communication Studies at Bridgewater State University. He is a graduate of Boston University, University of Iowa, and Harvard University’s Landscape Institute, and has been a garden columnist for the Brockton Enterprise, Quincy Patriot Ledger, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s Seacoast Media. His other books include Best Garden Plants for New England and Deconstructing Public Relations.
John Schwartz is a national correspondent with the New York Times, where he has covered law, science, technology, business, and a broad range of other topics. Prior to that, he worked at the Washington Post and Newsweek. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and University of Texas Law School. Mr. Schwartz’s book Oddly Normal is a parents’ bumpy ride, shared in the hopes that it will help other parents of gay children — and maybe, parents of any child who is different, who is mistreated by others, or who just may not accept himself — to know that they can find their own way to help their child handle the pain that comes from not fitting in.
Zach Wahls is a speaker, writer, and civil rights advocate. He is the founder of Scouts for Equality, a Boy Scouts of America alumni association dedicated to ending the Boy Scouts’ ban on gay members. His video testimony before the Iowa House of Representatives about his life growing up with two moms was YouTube's most-watched political video of 2011. My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family is Zach Wahls “response to all those who say I am ‘different.’” It is an exploration of the values taught by his two moms. Zach Wahls did not have to be the kid to write My Two Moms – there are over two million children of same-sex couples in the world. As Zach says himself, “This is the story of only one family and the thoughts of only one person —though I hope this inspires other kids to share their stories.”
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