Paul Park

Raised by her adoptive family in a quiet Massachusetts town, teenager Miranda Popescu is astonished to discover that she is a princess from an alternate world that is split by a deadly political battle.

In the third and final book of the Starbridge Chronicles, more than two generations have passed since the events of Sugar Rain, and barren tundra has given way to fecund, steamy jungle at the height of summer. Deep in the forest, a twin boy and girl grow up among a strange race of philosophers, oblivious to the outside world, where the secular regime is now as fanatical and orthodox as the old religious one. When their home is invaded, the pair take flight. Among the new faith called The Cult of Loving Kindness, they awaken to their mythic heritage, becoming the catalyst of another revolution and the re-ascendance of the Starbridges.The Cult of Loving Kindness was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Where the seasons last for generations, hard winter makes for hard religion. The worlds of the solar system are the hells through which all souls must incarnate on their journey to Paradise; all, that is, but the Starbridges, nobles who serve to enforce the "divine will." In the lowest slums of the city-state of Charn, a Starbridge doctor and a drunken prince defy the law to bring medicine to the poor and hear the story-music of the refugee Antinomials, a wild people who shun words, infidels pressed to the edge of extinction. As a decades-long pitched battle approaches the city and the Bishop of Charn herself is condemned for impurity, the doctor and the prince will follow their compassion into the heart of a revolution, just on the eve of spring, with its strange and treacherous sugar rain.(This is the first book of the Starbridge Chronicles, and is followed by Sugar Rain and The Cult of Loving Kindness.)

Corax, an escaped slave, flees Rome on the first ship in port. He lands at Caesarea, the city from which Pontius Pilate governs the province of Palestine. His goal is the source of the sacred Ganges River whose purifying waters flow through the country of his father's birth. To earn money for the journey he works in the marketplace as a healer using skills acquired from his father and in the household of his former master, Cornelius Celsus, a patrician collector of medical lore. Twice he encounters a burly Essene, the rebel Jeshua, before the Romans identify Corax as a runaway and imprison him. About to be branded and enslaved once more, Corax buys his freedom by betraying a secret: the hour when the bandit Bar Abbas will attack Pilate's fortress to free the prisoners there. But it is Jeshua - Jesus - who is accused of the betrayal so he, too, must flee Palestine. The two, the guilty and the unjustly accused, make the perilous journey east together. They cross the chaotic remnants of Alexander's empire, eluding violent Scythians and Huns, encountering Zoroastrian magi and Buddhist sages. And when they reach the foothills of the Himalayas, Jesus receives the life-altering revelation that will change the world.

Follows the Park family in three different areas of the nation after the Queen of the North agreed to a two-nation settlement in the Civil War, in this new alternate-history novel from the author of A Princess of Roumania.

The second book in the Starbridge Chronicles, Sugar Rain relates the stories of Thanakar and Charity Starbridge during the revolution that ended the first book in the series, Soldiers of Paradise. The generations-long winter has drawn to a close, and with it the power of the tyrannical Starbridge theocracy that maintained order during the years of hunger. But a cruelly pragmatic priest has set the stage for a new faith, and even those who defy him seem fated to play out roles that will inevitably bring it to pass. As Thanakar struggles in exile to find safe harbor for his adopted family, Charity Starbridge undertakes a mythic journey, passing through various underworlds to join him.Sugar Rain was a finalist for the Locus Reader Poll Award.

Paul Park is one of modern fiction's major innovators. With exotic settings and characters truly alien and disturbingly normal, his novels and stories explore the shifting interface between traditional narrative and luminous dream, all in the service of a deeper humanism. "Climate Change," original to this volume, is an intimate and erotic take on a global environmental crisis. "A Resistance to Theory" chronicles the passionate (and bloody) competition between the armed adherents of postmodern literary schools. "A Conversation with the Author" gives readers a harrowing look behind the curtains of an MFA program. In "A Brief History of SF" a fan encounters the ruined man who first glimpsed the ruined cities of Mars. "Creative Nonfiction" showcases a professor's eager collaboration with a student intent on wrecking his career. The only nonfiction piece, "A Homily for Good Friday," was delivered to a stunned congregation at a New England church. Plus: A bibliography, and our candid and colorful Outspoken Interview with one of today's most accomplished and least conventional authors, in which personal truth is evaded, engaged, and altered, all in one shot.

With an ever-expanding array of biomaterials and implant devices appearing in the field, this source helps surgeons assess and utilize the latest technologies to improve the reconstruction of the spine and enhance the reconstitution of diseased spinal segments. With illustrative descriptions of specific clinical scenarios, this guide helps surgeons select the best devices and materials for reconstructive procedures and considers issues in biocompatibility, biostability, and structure-function relationships for enhanced patient outcomes and mobility.