Burn The Sea

In the whole course of the war,’ conceded Britain’s chief press censor, ‘there was no story which gave me so much trouble as that of the attempted German invasion, flaming oil on the water and 30,000 burned Germans.’ Sparked by the Directorate of Military Intelligence and MI6, rumours that Britain had set fire to the English Channel to defeat a German invasion in 1940 quickly spread around the world. Highly popular in America, the incendiary ‘Big Lie’ became Britain’s first significant propaganda victory of the Second World War.Yet the unlikely deception was founded in fact. Dead German soldiers were washed ashore on British beaches, a secret Petroleum Warfare Department tested lethal flame barrages on land and sea, and fire ships were hastily dispatched to enemy ports as part of Operation Lucid. British intelligence agencies even managed to plant the burning sea story on their opposite numbers in Nazi Germany.Burn the Sea is the definitive account of the origin, circulation and astonishing longevity of the myth of the ‘invasion that failed’ in 1940, as well as its remarkable revival in 1992.

In the City of Nightmares, death is far from the end . . . "The edges of this world's map are not bordered with monsters but with ghosts." Losing her magic was one thing, but getting bodyjacked by the ghost of her past self? That’s a whole new low for teenage dream-weaving threadwitch Cole. And when sea monsters shipwreck her hard-won backup, there’s only one hope left to contain the nightmares and escape a bodiless purgatory of eternal torment. "I'm afraid I'll go mad long before Cadence breaks." But sacrificing the life of a child—however eerie and backstabbing—is too great a price to pay, even to save her friends and her city. As her remaining allies fall and resistance mounts, Cole fights to hold back the monsters at the cost of her own rapidly draining life force. Can she bring herself to destroy her body-snatching young frenemy for good before everyone she loves goes up in flames? In this explosive conclusion to the Threads of Dreams trilogy, the spark of revolution is lit—and even a drowned city can burn. Read Burn the Skies for a red-hot, unrelentingly inventive finish today!

One of the foremost researchers in human metabolism reveals surprising new science behind food and exercise. We burn 2,000 calories a day. And if we exercise and cut carbs, we'll lose more weight. Right? Wrong. In this paradigm-shifting book, Herman Pontzer reveals for the first time how human metabolism really works so that we can finally manage our weight and improve our health. Pontzer's groundbreaking studies with hunter-gatherer tribes show how exercise doesn't increase our metabolism. Instead, we burn calories within a very narrow range: nearly 3,000 calories per day, no matter our activity level. This was a brilliant evolutionary strategy to survive in times of famine. Now it seems to doom us to obesity. The good news is we can lose weight, but we need to cut calories. Refuting such weight-loss hype as paleo, keto, anti-gluten, anti-grain, and even vegan, Pontzer discusses how all diets succeed or fail: For shedding pounds, a calorie is a calorie. At the same time, we must exercise to keep our body systems and signals functioning optimally, even if it won't make us thinner. Hunter-gatherers like the Hadza move about five hours a day and remain remarkably healthy into old age. But elite athletes can push the body too far, burning calories faster than their bodies can take them in. It may be that the most spectacular athletic feats are the result not just of great training, but of an astonishingly efficient digestive system. Revealing, irreverent, and always entertaining, Pontzer has written a book that will change how you eat, move, and live.

Carl Safina has been hailed as one of the top 100 conservations of the 20th century (Audubon Magazine) and A Sea in Flames is his blistering account of the months-long manmade disaster that tormented a region and mesmerized the nation. Traveling across the Gulf to make sense of an ever-changing story and its often-nonsensical twists, Safina expertly deconstructs the series of calamitous misjudgments that caused the Deepwater Horizon blowout, zeroes in on BP’s misstatements, evasions, and denials, reassesses his own reaction to the government’s crisis handling, and reviews the consequences of the leak—and what he considers the real problems, which the press largely overlooked. Safina takes us deep inside the faulty thinking that caused the lethal explosion. We join him on aerial surveys across an oil-coated sea. We confront pelicans and other wildlife whose blue universe fades to black. Safina skewers the excuses and the silly jargon—like “junk shot” and “top kill”—that made the tragedy feel like a comedy of horrors—and highlighted Big Oil’s appalling lack of preparedness for an event that was inevitable. Based on extensive research and interviews with fishermen, coastal residents, biologists, and government officials, A Sea In Flames has some surprising answers on whether it was “Obama’s Katrina,” whether the Coast Guard was as inept in its response as BP was misleading, and whether this worst unintended release of oil in history was really America’s worst ecological disaster. Impassioned, moving, and even sharply funny, A Sea in Flames is ultimately an indictment of America’s main addiction. Safina writes: “In the end, this is a chronicle of a summer of pain—and hope. Hope that the full potential of this catastrophe would not materialize, hope that the harm done would heal faster than feared, and hope that even if we didn’t suffer the absolutely worst—we’d still learn the big lesson here. We may have gotten two out of three. That’s not good enough. Because: there’ll be a next time.”

From award-winning author E. J. Mellow comes the thrilling second installment in the Mousai series, featuring a powerful sorceress who finds her loyalties tested by a ruthless pirate lord. Within the world of Aadilor, there is a hidden place called the Thief Kingdom, where both magic and pleasure abound. There, the Mousai, a trio of deadly sorceresses bound by oath and blood, use their powers to protect the kingdom's treasures. Niya Bassette brings the potent gift of dance to the Mousai, but behind her tempting twirls, she carries a heavy secret--that the infamous pirate lord, Alōs Ezra, has been threatening to exploit for years. Now banished from the Thief Kingdom for smuggling, Alōs resurfaces in Niya's life with a plot to hold her hostage, leveraging what he knows to extort a pardon from the Thief King. But Niya makes her own deal with Alōs to guard her secret and guarantee her freedom--yet in doing so binds herself aboard his pirate ship, where she must navigate deadly waters, a bloodthirsty crew, and her own traitorous heart. Soon, a simmering attraction between her and Alōs threatens their delicate truce and makes for a tumultuous ride on the open seas. Far from her kingdom, Niya is entangled in a dangerous dance indeed. Welcome to the world of Aadilor, where dark deeds can mask noble hearts and the most alluring of sways often ends with a burn. Care for a spin?