Inside The Pearl

A literary treat: a memoir of Edmund White's years among the cultural and intellectual elite of 1980s Paris

Edmund White’s charming, funny, telling series of vignettes of the Paris neighborhood where he and his lover, French architect and illustrator Hubert Sorin, lived. In this ode to Pairs, the everyday becomes extraordinary with White’s observations accompanied by Sorin’s illustrations. With characters like Father Pierre Riches, the “kind and elegant” catholic priest whose hair had been stroked by Cavafy, to Billy Boy, the jewelry designer with 16,000 Barbies, there is delightful eccentricity to this collaboration. Written during Sorin’s decline to AIDS, Our Paris is a poignant look at the couple and the city they loved.

Can a Canaanite harlot who made her living enticing men be a fitting wife for a leader of Israel? Shockingly, the Bible’s answer is yes. This 10th anniversary edition of Pearl in the Sand includes new features that will invite you into the untold story of Rahab’s journey from lowly outcast to redeemed child of God. Rahab’s home is built into a wall, a wall that fortifies and protects the City of Jericho. However, other walls surround her too, walls of fear, rejection, and unworthiness… Years of pain and betrayal have wounded Rahab’s heart—she doubts whether her dreams of experiencing true love will ever come true… A woman with a wrecked past—a man of success, of faith... of pride. A marriage only God would conceive! Through the heartaches of a stormy relationship, Rahab and Salmone learn the true source of one another’s worth and find healing in God.

Don’t miss Elizabeth Wein’s stunning new novel, Stateless Before Verity . . . there was Julie. When fifteen-year-old Julia Beaufort-Stuart wakes up in the hospital, she knows the lazy summer break she'd imagined won't be exactly what she anticipated. And once she returns to her grandfather's estate, a bit banged up but alive, she begins to realize that her injury might not have been an accident. One of her family's employees is missing, and he disappeared on the very same day she landed in the hospital. Desperate to figure out what happened, she befriends Euan McEwen, the Scottish Traveler boy who found her when she was injured, and his standoffish sister, Ellen. As Julie grows closer to this family, she witnesses firsthand some of the prejudices they've grown used to-a stark contrast to her own upbringing-and finds herself exploring thrilling new experiences that have nothing to do with a missing-person investigation. Her memory of that day returns to her in pieces, and when a body is discovered, her new friends are caught in the crosshairs of long-held biases about Travelers. Julie must get to the bottom of the mystery in order to keep them from being framed for the crime. This exhilarating coming-of-age story, a prequel to the Printz Honor Book Code Name Verity, returns to a beloved character just before she first takes flight.

One of the most popular storytellers of all time, V.C. Andrews (Flowers in the Attic, My Sweet Audrina) continues an engrossing saga of psychological suspense with this second book of the Landry Family series—soon to be a Lifetime movie! Fate has whisked Ruby away from a simple life in the Louisiana Bayou but her new riches bring more treachery than happiness in this unputdownable and darkly evocative novel. Even a year removed from living in the bayou, Ruby still wonders at the splendor of her family’s New Orleans mansion. She rejoices in the love of the father she had never known, even as true happiness remains as elusive as swamp mist. Her stepmother sneers at her backwater upbringing, and while discovering she has a twin sister should be a cause for joy, Gisselle has greeted Ruby with nothing but a bitter heart. When Ruby’s father chooses an idyllic boarding school for his daughters’ senior years, a fresh start with Gisselle seems possible. But Ruby’s kind isn’t welcome at Greenwood, and the legendarily strict headmistress plots with her stepmother to make life miserable. Worse, with her twin on a mission to break every school rule, Ruby is left to suffer the humiliating punishments. So when a terrible tragedy leaves Ruby alone in a world that never really wanted her, only her Cajun strength can give her daring escape plan any hope of success. The weather on the bayou was nothing compared to the storm about to tear through her family.

Contrary to a generally held view that pearls are found by chance in oysters, almost all are now produced from farms. This book is a comprehensive treatment of all aspects of the biology of pearl oysters, their anatomy, reproduction, genetics, diseases, etc. It considers how they are farmed from spawning and culturing larvae in hatcheries to adults in the ocean; how various environmental factors, including pollution affect them; and how modern techniques are successfully producing large numbers of cultured pearls. This is the ultimate reference source on pearl oysters and the culture of pearls, written and edited by a number of scientists who are world experts in their fields. Comprehensive treatment of pearl oyster biology and pearl culture Written by the top world authorities Highly illustrated and figured Of practical relevance to a broad readership, from professional biologists to those involved in the practicalities and practice of pearl production

The preparation of this book has been a joint labor during the spare moments of the two authors, whose time has been occupied with subjects to which pearls are not wholly foreign—one as a gem expert, and the other in the fisheries branch of the American government. For many years the writers have collected data on the subject of pearls, and have accumulated all the obtainable literature, not only the easily procurable books, but likewise manuscripts, copies of rare volumes, original edicts, and legislative enactments, thousands of newspaper clippings, and interesting illustrations, many of them unique, making probably the largest single collection of data in existence on this particular subject. It was deemed advisable to present the results of these studies and observations in one harmonious volume, rather than in two different publications. While the book is a joint work in the sense that each writer has contributed material to all of the chapters and has critically examined and approved the entire work, the senior author has more closely applied himself to the latter half of the text, covering antiquity values, commerce, wearing manipulation, treatment, famous collections, aboriginal use, and the illustrations, while the junior author has attended to the earlier half of the book, with reference to history, origin, sources, fisheries, culture, mystical properties, and the literature of the pearl.