Grand Obsession

Recounts the author's youth as the daughter of a professional musician, her determined efforts to acquire a rare German grand piano, and her struggles to restore the instrument when it arrived badly tone impaired. Reprint.

Legendary Grand Canyoneer Harvey Butchart climbed, hiked, floated and bushwhacked 12,000 pioneering miles below the rim during a 42-year obsession with the world-famous gorge. Here for the first time is Harvey's life story: his years as a fatherless child in the mountains of China, his struggles in America during the Great Depression, and finally, his all-consuming drive for greatness by exploring one of the West's last unknown wildernesses. Lace up your boots and follow along as the authors retrace Harvey's footsteps on dangerous cliff edges while chronicling his thrilling exploits, heart-breaking tragedies, and lasting triumphs. Part biography, part modern-day adventure, Grand Obsession will take you deeper into the soul of this fascinating man - and Grand Canyon - than you have ever been before. Contains over 170 photographs, many never-before-published, and Harvey Butchart's hand-stenciled maps showing his treks in Grand Canyon.

A portrait of the scientist and her family, winners of three Nobel prizes in two generations.

It seemed like a simple plan—visit fifty-two places in fifty-two weeks. But for author Ken Lamberton, a forty-five-year veteran of life in the Sonoran Desert, the entertaining results were anything but easy. In Chasing Arizona, Lamberton takes readers on a yearlong, twenty-thousand-mile joyride across Arizona during its centennial, racking up more than two hundred points of interest along the way. Lamberton chases the four corners of Arizona, attempts every county, every reservation, and every national monument and state park, from the smallest community to the largest city. He drives his Kia Rio through the longest tunnels and across the highest suspension bridges, hikes the hottest deserts, and climbs the tallest mountain, all while visiting the people, places, and treasures that make Arizona great. In the vivid, lyrical, often humorous prose the author is known for, each destination weaves together stories of history, nature, and people, along with entertaining side adventures and excursions. Maps and forty-four of the author’s detailed pencil drawings illustrate the journey. Chasing Arizona is unlike any book of its kind. It is an adventure story, a tale of Arizona, a road-warrior narrative. It is a quest to see and experience as much of Arizona as possible. Through intimate portrayals of people and place, readers deeply experience the Grand Canyon State and at the same time celebrate what makes Arizona a wonderful place to visit and live.

A journey inside the hearts and minds of the best bull riders in the world as they compete for their greatest prize--the championship gold buckle.

A year before retirement, Chief of Police Frank Murphy wants nothing more than to spend his golden years on HGTV marathons and endless teeoff times. What he gets is a string of abductions that makes Ted Bundy look like an amateur. The Human Obsession is the sequel to Heath Sommer's 2009 breakout psychological thriller The Manufactured Identity, where Murphy and hapless lovers Addy and John Joe scramble against inhuman odds and unpredictable twists to solve the riddles of murder, obsession, and human weakness. Focusing on the trial of Cameron Bo, alleged murderer and loony from Sommer's The Grand Delusion, The Human Obsession takes readers even deeper into the minds of Sommers' beloved-and twisted-characters. In the end, no one could have seen why those meant to protect and serve may be in the greatest danger of all.

Follows the 1998 Big Year competition between Sandy Komito, Al Levantin, and Greg Miller, during which the three rivals risked their lives to set a new North American birding record.