Adam Verner

Dragon Seed is a fictional novel which describes the lives of Chinese peasants in a village outside Nanjing, China immediately prior to and during the Japanese invasion in 1937.

Portrays the rise of anti-intellectualism in America during the McCarthy era.

"This all-new definitive guide to writing imaginative fiction takes a completely novel approach and fully exploits the visual nature of fantasy through original drawings, maps, renderings, and exercises to create a spectacularly beautiful and inspiring object. Employing an accessible, example-rich approach, Wonderbook energizes and motivates while also providing practical, nuts-and-bolts information needed to improve as a writer. Aimed at aspiring and intermediate-level writers, Wonderbook includes helpful sidebars and essays from some of the biggest names in fantasy today, such as George R. R. Martin, Lev Grossman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, Catherynne M. Valente, and Karen Joy Fowler, to name a few"--

Following his critically acclaimed The Great Reformer, Austen Ivereigh's colorful, clear-eyed portrait of Pope Francis takes us inside the Vatican's urgent debate over the future of the church in Wounded Shepherd. This deeply contextual biography centers on the tensions generated by the pope's attempt to turn the Church away from power and tradition and outwards to engage humanity with God's mercy. Through battles with corrupt bankers and worldly cardinals, in turbulent meetings and on global trips, history's first Latin-American pope has attempted to reshape the Church to evangelize the contemporary age. At the same time, he has stirred other leaders' deep-seated fear that the Church is capitulating to modernity--leaders who have challenged his bid to create a more welcoming, attentive institution. Facing rebellions over his allowing sacraments for the divorced and his attempt to create a more "ecological" Catholicism, as well as a firestorm of criticism for the Church's record on sexual abuse, Francis emerges as a leader of remarkable vision and skill with a relentless spiritual focus--a leader who is at peace in the turmoil surrounding him. With entertaining anecdotes, insider accounts, and expert analysis, Ivereigh's journey through the key episodes of Francis's reform in Rome and the wider Church brings into sharp focus the frustrations and fury, as well as the joys and successes, of one of the most remarkable pontificates of the contemporary age.

A buried secret becomes a big problem for Frank and Joe in the twenty-fifth book in the thrilling Hardy Boys Adventures series. Frank and Joe are on a history club trip to New York City, and their first stop is the Prohibition Museum where they’ll hear about how smugglers building getaway vehicles led to the rise of modern stock car racing. During a tour of damp escape tunnels beneath the museum, Frank slips and breaks a wall panel with his elbow, revealing a hidden compartment containing documents from the 1920s! The documents reveal that The Gilded Top Hat—the speakeasy which later became the Prohibition Museum—wasn’t actually owned by the Faccini brothers who were arrested for its bootlegging operations. The museum curator is eager to investigate this lead into the speakeasy’s history, and never ones to turn down a good case, Frank and Joe volunteer to help out. But before long, someone steals the documents and sends the boys warnings to stop digging into the past. Can Frank and Joe uncover the truth before it’s buried for another hundred years—and the boys along with it?