Desert Blooms

Desert Blooms, by Millie Miller, is a bestselling pocket nature guide with beautifully illustrations of desert flowers of the Southwest.

#1 New York Times bestseller Iris Johansen pairs an exotic locale with an irresistible man in this classic love story that proves anything is possible when a woman knows in her heart that it’s right…. Don’t look for me. I’ll come back when I’m ready. Pandora Madchen wrote those words when she ran off six years ago. In that time she’d become a sensation with the rock group Nemesis, toured the world, and grown up, but she never forgot the promise she made herself. Now Pandora was ready to return to the desert state of Sedikhan and the man she’d loved too soon and too much. Sheik Philip El Kabbar was a businessman whose power and influence extended throughout the world—but for six long years he’d been unable to find the woman he still considered it his duty to protect. She’d come back on her own terms and to take the kind of erotic gamble that Philip always won. Only this time he wasn’t sure that in winning they wouldn’t both lose what matters most. Or that in loving her, he wouldn’t be hurting them both.

Discover an oasis of tranquility with 31 beautiful illustrations of the hardy plants and flowers that dot desert landscapes. A wide range of natural marvels includes prickly pear cacti, spiky saguaros, the solitary Coryphantha borwigii, and other realistic images, many enhanced by native wildlife and insects. Pages are printed on one side only and perforated for easy removal. Specially designed for experienced colorists, Desert Blooms and other Creative Haven® adult coloring books offer an escape to a world of inspiration and artistic fulfillment. Each title is also an effective and fun-filled way to relax and reduce stress.

Line drawings with some color photgraphs; 190 species of flowers arranged by petal color with descriptions and introductory notes.

Early Spanish explorers in the late eighteenth century found springtime California covered with spectacular carpets of wildflowers from San Francisco to San Diego. Yet today, invading plant species have devastated this nearly forgotten botanical heritage. In this lively, vividly detailed work, Richard A. Minnich synthesizes a unique and wide-ranging array of sources—from the historic accounts of those early explorers to the writings of early American botanists in the nineteenth century, newspaper accounts in the twentieth century, and modern ecological theory—to give the most comprehensive historical analysis available of the dramatic transformation of California's wildflower prairies. At the same time, his groundbreaking book challenges much current thinking on the subject, critically evaluating the hypothesis that perennial bunchgrasses were once a dominant feature of California's landscape and instead arguing that wildflowers filled this role. As he examines the changes in the state's landscape over the past three centuries, Minnich brings new perspectives to topics including restoration ecology, conservation, and fire management in a book that will change our of view of native California.