And The Sky Still Sings

Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant becomes involved in a murder investigation when he accidentally finds a dead young man and an enigmatic verse in a train

The Sixth Extinction is a haunting account of the age in which we live. Ecologists are calling it the Sixth Great Extinction, and the world isn't losing just its ecological legacy; also vanishing is a vast human legacy of languages and our ways of living, seeing, and knowing. Terry Glavin confirms that we are in the midst of a nearly unprecedented, catastrophic vanishing of animals, plants, and human cultures. He argues that the language of environmentalism is inadequate in describing the unraveling of the vast system in which all these extinctions are actually related. And he writes that we're no longer gaining knowledge with every generation. We're losing it. In the face of what he describes as a dark and gathering sameness upon the Earth, Glavin embarks on a global journey to meet the very things we're losing (a distinct species every ten minutes, a unique vegetable variety every six hours, an entire language every two weeks) and on the way encounters some of the world's wonderful, rare things: a human-sized salmon in Russia; a mysterious Sino-Tibetan song-language; a Malayan tiger, the last of its kind; and a strange tomato that tastes just like black cherry ice cream. And he finds hope in the most unlikely places---a macaw roost in Costa Rica; a small village in Ireland; a relic community of Norse whalers in the North Atlantic; the vault beneath the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew; and the throne room of the Angh of Longwa in the eastern Himalayas. A fresh narrative take on the usual doom and gloom environmentalism, The Sixth Extinction draws upon zoology, biology, ecology, anthropology, and mythology to share the joys hidden within the long human struggle to conserve the world's living things. Here, we find hope in what's left: the absolute and stunning beauty in the Earth's last cultures and creatures.

It is the run-up to Christmas when two seven-year-old boys are abducted from the streets of Glasgow. For DI Colin Anderson the case is especially disturbing, because the boys look so much like his own young son Peter. When a simple house fire turns into a full-scale murder investigation, and with cold and flu season having taken many officers off the street, the force is stretched to breaking point. DS Costello’s hunch is the crimes are connected, and a killer is ingeniously hiding his trail. As the squad continues to struggle working both cases, for DI Anderson the nightmare is about to get terrifyingly close to home.

The Little Bird Sings, is a Victorian mail order bride story about a high society woman who escapes an abusive husband, when he divorces her. A Mail Order Bride For The Sheriff -- A sheriff in the West has almost everything a man could wish for, except for a bride. He asks his tavern owner aunt for advice and help and she sends him the almost perfect woman. Chastity, The Orphan & Mail Order Bride, is a story about a very feisty, intelligent and strong willed orphan, sent to Idaho as a mail order bride and to meet her future husband, a rancher from Germany. Give Love A Chance, is about a woman living in London who is to be married off to a man of her mother’s choice; a baron she has no feelings for.

Lonnie-Lew Hensley, a likeable, but sometimes short-on-common sense "good ol' boy" type, ends up marrying Daisy Faith Grogan, a big-breasted vocalist/keyboard player in a four-piece country/Western band, who specializes in performing cheatin' songs. Lonnie-Lew and Daisy Faith's marriage-all two months, twelve days and eight hours of it-is, to say the least, a rocky one. Lonnie-Lew learns the hard way that Daisy Faith regards the lyrics of the cheatin' songs she sings as just make-believe; Daisy Faith makes it clear that "If I ever catch a man of mine cheatin' on me for real, I gar-un-damn-tee you he'll never cheat on me again!" Lonnie-Lew is visited by the ghost of his uncle Norville "Knock 'em Through the Wall" Lewis, a former dirt-track racecar driver, who, in 1961, mysteriously disappeared and was never heard from again. The hilariously funny Sing Me a Cheatin' Song, Daisy Faith, which is set in the North Carolina foothills and the mountains of northwestern North Carolina and northeastern Tennessee during the summer of 1983, is Doug McGuinn's third novel.

The filming for sure-to-be-blockbuster movie Pretty Young Assassins has wrapped, and teen movie star Kaitlin Burke returns to life on the set of primetime drama Family Affair. After ten seasons of filming the hit favorite TV show, Kaitlin would have thought that she could see any curveballs coming, but with a plotting new actress on set, all bets are off. The new diva, Alexis, makes even Kaitlin's long-time nemesis Skye seem like a puppy in comparison. Can Kaitlin keep her sane boyfriend, her insane job, and her composure in the face of this new star power? The drama-filled third book in Jen Calonita's fan-favorite six-book Secrets of My Hollywood Life series.