Miniature Lives

We can’t avoid insects. They scurry past us in the kitchen, pop up in our gardens, or are presented to us in jars by inquisitive children. Despite encountering them on a daily basis, most people don’t know an aphid from an antlion, and identifying an insect using field guides or internet searches can be daunting. Miniature Lives provides a range of simple strategies that people can use to identify and learn more about the insects in their homes and gardens. Featuring a step-by-step, illustrated identification key and detailed illustrations and colour photographs, the book guides the reader through the basics of entomology (the study of insects). Simple explanations, amusing analogies and quirky facts describe where insects live, how they grow and protect themselves, the clues they leave behind and their status as friend or foe in a way that is both interesting and easy to understand. Gardeners, nature lovers, students, teachers, and parents and grandparents of bug-crazed kids will love this comprehensive guide to the marvellous diversity of insects that surrounds us and the miniature lives they lead.

We can’t avoid insects. They scurry past us in the kitchen, pop up in our gardens, or are presented to us in jars by inquisitive children. Despite encountering them on a daily basis, most people don’t know an aphid from an antlion, and identifying an insect using field guides or internet searches can be daunting. Miniature Lives provides a range of simple strategies that people can use to identify and learn more about the insects in their homes and gardens. Featuring a step-by-step, illustrated identification key and detailed illustrations and colour photographs, the book guides the reader through the basics of entomology (the study of insects). Simple explanations, amusing analogies and quirky facts describe where insects live, how they grow and protect themselves, the clues they leave behind and their status as friend or foe in a way that is both interesting and easy to understand. Gardeners, nature lovers, students, teachers, and parents and grandparents of bug-crazed kids will love this comprehensive guide to the marvellous diversity of insects that surrounds us and the miniature lives they lead.

Among all women, Mary of Nazareth is the only one in history to have united the apparently mutually exclusive dignities of Virgin and Mother of Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God. This set of 31 short meditations and examples for every day of the month gives a short outline of her life, sufferings and virtues. Learn about and imitate Mary to grow closer to her and her Son, Jesus Christ.

From a powerful new voice in fiction comes a compelling debut about the delicate bond between daughters and mothers, and about leaving everything you know in order to find the place where you belong. Adie has always known she was different. There's her size, for one thing. Born three months premature, Adie is the smallest of her peers. Then there's Adie's mother, who at first glance seems like so many other 1980s moms--clipping coupons and attending Feel the Burn aerobics classes. But beneath the surface is something erratic and unpredictable, something that makes her drag Adie and her older sister, Miriam, from one rental apartment to the next--until Miriam runs away. Adie is left behind with her mother, who is convinced their lives are in real danger and takes Adie on a crazy run across northern California. Now Adie faces a stark choice: submit to this increasingly surreal adventure, or grow up in ways she never imagined. . . "Life in Miniature is a stunning double portrait, subtly capturing a daughter's misconceptions of her mother's delusions--while simultaneously revealing the consequences for both--in a compulsively readable and deeply insightful first novel." --Jonathon Keats, author of The Book of the Unknown ". . .a book of intelligence and grace that will make you laugh and cry." --Terry Gamble, author of Good Family Linda Schlossberg received her PhD in English literature from Harvard University, where she is the Assistant Director of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program. Her fiction has been recognized by the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, the National League of American PEN Women, and Writers at Work. She has also received research and writing grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as several awards for excellence in teaching. Linda lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Explore the miracles of the microscopic world. Find out all about the unique and beautiful kingdoms of life at a microscopic scale and how every organism meets the challenges of survival no matter its size. The perfect book for people who enjoy photography, nature and biology. Inside the pages of this exciting educational nature book, you’ll find: • Microscopic life-forms (often neglected), and their life-forms in extreme close-ups, revealing details such as nerve cells and hair follicles. • Artworks support the beautiful images, providing a deeper insight into structure and function and building a picture of how living organisms work at a microscopic level. • Comprehensive coverage of the natural world, including all the main groups of living things. • Explores overlooked groups that have a huge role in the natural world: insects, which make up 80% of the world’s animal species, and bacteria — of which there are more in a human mouth than there are people in the world. • The book is organized according to the main functions of life: movement, reproduction, energy and feeding, sensing the surroundings, defense, etc. • Optional 80-page section containing a catalog of the major kingdoms of life. The beauty of nature under a microscope Explore the inhabitants of an invisible world in incredible detail with this book, which contains macro photography and spectacular microscope imagery. You'll have so much information about the hidden world of intricate structures beyond the naked eye. From the tiniest spiders and insects to even microscopic creatures like bacteria and viruses, this book contains it all! See the beauty of a pollen grain, a butterfly egg, the spore of a fungus and a human’s nerve cell in extreme close up. The amazing imagery in Micro Life contains focus-stacked macro photographs and micrographs (microscope images), including scanning electron micrographs. Illustrations in this book explain the science — from the workings of an insect’s eye to how a plant “breathes” through its leaves. Micro Life is an unexpectedly breathtaking look at the natural world. Find out how life works and how organisms solve the fundamental problems of movement, reproduction, energy, communication and defense. This book belongs on the bookshelves of schools, libraries and homes for those interested in photography, nature or biology.

In the tradition of George Saunders and Aimee Bender, an exuberantly imagined debut that chronicles an ordinary world marked by unusual phenomena. The eighteen stories of Manuel Gonzales’s exhilarating first book render the fantastic commonplace and the ordinary extraordinary, in prose that thrums with energy and shimmers with beauty. In “The Artist’s Voice” we meet one of the world’s foremost composers, a man who speaks through his ears. A hijacked plane circles a city for twenty years in “Pilot, Copilot, Writer.” Sound can kill in “The Sounds of Early Morning.” And, in the title story, a man is at war with the wife he accidentally shrank. For these characters, the phenomenal isn’t necessarily special—but it’s often dangerous. In slightly fantastical settings, Gonzales illustrates very real guilt over small and large marital missteps, the intense desire for the reinvention of self, and the powerful urges we feel to defend and provide for the people we love. With wit and insight, these stories subvert our expectations and challenge us to look at our surroundings with fresh eyes. Brilliantly conceived, strikingly original, and told with the narrative instinct of a born storyteller, The Miniature Wife is an unforgettable debut.

Tatsuya Tanaka, the photographer behind "Miniature Calendar," creates scenes with everyday objects and tiny figures.