Mountain Echoes

Joanne Walker has survived an encounter with the Master at great personal cost, but now her father is missing – stolen from the timeline. She must finally return to North Carolina to find him – and to meet Aidan, the son she left behind long ago. That would be enough for any shaman to face, but Joanne's beloved Appalachians are being torn apart by an evil reaching forward from the distant past. Anything that gets in its way becomes tainted – or worse. And Aidan has gotten in the way. Only by calling on every aspect of her shamanic powers can Joanne pull the past apart and weave a better future. It will take everything she has – and more. Unless she can turn back time...

‘The history of women is left to us in folklore and tradition, in faintly-remembered lullabies and the half-forgotten touch of a grandmother’s hand, in recipes, ancestral jewellery, and cautionary tales about the limits of a woman’s empowerment. Mountain Echoes describes the Kumaoni way of life through the eyes of four highly-talented and individualistic women. Their recollections mirror a social universe that no longer exists, that has been dissolved in the mainstream of modernization and urbanization, of democracy, education and emancipation. Shivani, Tare Pande, Jiya, and Shakuntala Pande were all alive and well when this book was first published in 1998. In the midst of all the rapid and unrecognizable charge that surrounds us, their stories and their memories are distilled into an even more precious evocation of times past.’

Joanne Walker has survived an encounter with the Master at great personal cost, but now her father is missing--stolen from the timeline. She must finally return to North Carolina to find him--and to meet Aidan, the son she left behind long ago.

★ “Historical fiction at its finest.” –The Horn Book “There has never been a better time to read about healing, of both the body and the heart.” –The New York Times Book Review Echo Mountain is an acclaimed best book of 2020! An NPR Best Book of the Year • A Horn Book Fanfare Selection • A Kirkus Best Book of the Year • A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year • A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year • A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year After losing almost everything in the Great Depression, Ellie’s family is forced to leave their home in town and start over in the untamed wilderness of nearby Echo Mountain. Ellie has found a welcome freedom, and a love of the natural world, in her new life on the mountain. But there is little joy after a terrible accident leaves her father in a coma. An accident unfairly blamed on Ellie. Ellie is a girl who takes matters into her own hands, and determined to help her father she will make her way to the top of the mountain in search of the healing secrets of a woman known only as “the hag.” But the hag, and the mountain, still have many untold stories left to reveal. Historical fiction at its finest, Echo Mountain is celebration of finding your own path and becoming your truest self. Lauren Wolk, the Newbery Honor– and Scott O'Dell Award–winning author of Wolf Hollow and Beyond the Bright Sea, weaves a stunning tale of resilience, persistence, and friendship across three generations of families. “Soothing and exquisitely written.” –People “This is a book that will soothe readers like a healing balm.” –The Wall Street Journal “Brilliant.” –Lynda Mullaly Hunt, bestselling author of Fish in a Tree

Reconsiders mostly German narratives from around 1800 to recover echoes of a queer messianic that still resonate today. Queer theory has focused heavily on North American and contemporary contexts, but in this book Richard O. Block helps to expand that reach. Deftly combining the two main currents of recent queer theory, the asocial and the reparative, he reconsiders mostly German narratives from around 1800, while relating his findings to recent texts such as A Lover’s Discourse and Brokeback Mountain. He offers novel readings of well-known texts by Shelley, Kleist, and Goethe, arguing that this early writing serves as a creative font for much of the subsequent work in sexology. These texts also provide echoes of a kind of love overlooked or suppressed in favor of a politics of appeasement or one intended to make queers model citizens. This book charts the unexplored possibilities for queer love in an attempt to map a future for gay politics in the age of homonormativity. Richard O. Block is Associate Professor of Germanics at the University of Washington, Seattle and the author of The Spell of Italy: Vacation, Magic, and the Attraction of Goethe.

Afghanistan, 1975: Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what will happen to Hassan that afternoon, an event that is to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return to Afghanistan under Taliban rule to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant him: redemption.

A riveting and powerful story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship and an indestructible love

Lightning sparks a forest fire deep in the mountains near the town of Waterton. Days later, the sky is blue and the air is clear, so it doesn’t seem like an emergency, until crews of firefighters begin to arrive and townspeople start to prepare. Cricket and her friends watch deer and birds flee the forest and run right through town. But what about the slower animals? What about the porcupines and squirrels, the salamanders and snakes? Cricket searches for a way to help until the fire surprises everyone by quickly switching directions and racing towards the town. She hopes that the preparations and the firefighters' experience will be enough to save her home. But what about all the animals she loves? This is the fifth title in the Cricket McKay series, following Cougar Frenzy, Bats in Trouble, Ospreys in Danger and Salamander Rescue.