An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These four,...

"A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory. "Richard Powers, whose novels combine the wonders of science with the marvels of art, astonishes us in different ways with each new book." -Heller McAlpin, NPR Books. The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife....

"On Easter Day, 1939, at Marian Anderson's epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish emigre scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Philadelphia Negro studying to be a concert singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and - against all odds, advice, and better judgment - they marry. They vow to raise their offspring beyond time, beyond race, beyond belonging, steeped in song. But their three children, the unwitting...

When Chicagoan Russell Stone finds himself teaching a Creative Nonfiction class, he encounters a young Algerian woman with a disturbingly luminous presence. Thassadit Amzwar's blissful exuberance both entrances and puzzles the melancholic Russell. How can this refugee from perpetual terror be so happy? Won't someone so open and alive come to serious harm? Wondering how to protect her, Russell researches her war-torn country and skims through popular...

A man's experiment in creating the ideal woman. He is Richard Powers, a professor with a taste for the cerebral. As no woman matches his expectations, he creates Helen, a talking intelligence which he programs with his favored books. The novel follows Richard and Helen's relationship to its sad and inevitable conclusion. By the author of The Gold Bug Variations.

Something is wrong with Eddie Hobson Sr., father of four, sometime history teacher, quizmaster, black humorist and virtuoso invalid. His recurring fainting spells have worsened, and with his ingrained aversion to doctors, his worried family tries to discover the nature of his sickness. Meanwhile, in private, Eddie puts the finishing touches on a secret project he calls Hobbstown, a place that he promises will save him, the world and everything that's...

"In the pediatrics ward of a public hospital in the heart of Los Angeles, a group of sick children is gathering. Surrogate parents to this band of stray kids, resident Richard Kraft and therapist Linda Espera are charged with keeping the group alive on make-believe alone. Determined to give hope where tehre is none, the adults spin a desperate anthology of stories that promise restoration and escape. But the inevitable is foreshadowed in the faces...

Wie kann eine Familie in einer unberechenbaren Welt überleben, ohne zu zerbrechen? Vater und Sohn allein: Der hochbegabte Robbie mit Asperger-Zügen kann den Tod der Mutter nicht verwinden. In der Schule unverstanden, will er die Mission seiner Mutter vollenden: Er malt Plakate, demonstriert auf den Stufen des Kapitols, um die Natur zu retten. Der verzweifelte junge Vater will ihm mit ungestümer Liebe alles geben. Als Astrobiologe sind ihm die Sterne...

Pres. Theodore Roosevelt once referred to the Apache Trail as "one of the most spectacular best-worth-seeing sights of the world." The once narrow, ancient foot trail built as a supply road for the construction of Roosevelt Dam has now evolved into a state highway with majestic scenic vistas and historical grandeur. Even in the 1920s, the Southern Pacific Railroad touted this road as a "must-see side trip." Each year, thousands of people venture along...

Life in Egypt during the 18th dynasty and the days of the boy Pharaoh Tutenkhamun. Grades 5-7.