On A Sea Of Glass

A sumptuously illustrated history of the Titanic, her sinking and its aftermath.

"The author makes an eloquent plea for marine biodiversity conservation."—Library Journal "Harvell seems to channel the devotion that motivated the Blaschkas."—The Guardian Winner of the 2016 National Outdoor Book Award, Environment Category It started with a glass octopus. Dusty, broken, and all but forgotten, it caught Drew Harvell’s eye. Fashioned in intricate detail by the father-son glassmaking team of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, the octopus belonged to a menagerie of unusual marine creatures that had been packed away for decades in a storage unit. More than 150 years earlier, the Blaschkas had been captivated by marine invertebrates and spun their likenesses into glass, documenting the life of oceans untouched by climate change and human impacts. Inspired by the Blaschkas’ uncanny replicas, Harvell set out in search of their living counterparts. In A Sea of Glass, she recounts this journey of a lifetime, taking readers along as she dives beneath the ocean's surface to a rarely seen world, revealing the surprising and unusual biology of some of the most ancient animals on the tree of life. On the way, we glimpse a century of change in our ocean ecosystems and learn which of the living matches for the Blaschkas’ creations are, indeed, as fragile as glass. Drew Harvell and the Blaschka menagerie are the subjects of the documentary Fragile Legacy, which won the Best Short Film award at the 2015 Blue Ocean Film Festival & Conservation Summit. Learn more about the film and check out the trailer here.

A boy, who has known nothing in his brief life but love and darkness, forces open a window and sees for the first time the outside world, which also sees him: an illegal immigrant by birth. Arrested, his parents tortured to death, we see through Thomas Windom's eyes a race preparing to deal with overpopulation in the only manner left.

With all the narrative power and emotional immediacy that have made her novels acclaimed international bestsellers, Anita Shreve unfolds a richly engaging tale of marriage, money, and troubled times-the story of a pair of young newlyweds who, setting out to build a life together in a derelict beach house on the Atlantic coast, soon discover how threatening the world outside their front door can be.

It is 1943, and 11-year-old Dewey Kerrigan is traveling west on a train to live with her scientist father—but no one, not her father nor the military guardians who accompany her, will tell her exactly where he is. When she reaches Los Alamos, New Mexico, she learns why: he's working on a top secret government program. Over the next few years, Dewey gets to know eminent scientists, starts tinkering with her own mechanical projects, becomes friends with a budding artist who is as much of a misfit as she is—and, all the while, has no idea how the Manhattan Project is about to change the world. This book's fresh prose and fascinating subject are like nothing you've read before.

As the owner of one of the world's most elaborate sea glass collections, Mary Beth Beuke gets to talk about these prized ocean gems on a daily basis. Unfortunately, with each passing day, sea glass becomes more and more difficult to find, making the hunt more of a challenge to the seeker—especially one with limited experience in sea glass hunting. There are several reasons why the hunt is so important to the sea glass seeker. Some find their Zen moments in the solitude and beauty of the hunt. Some collect to add color to their life. The history, mystery, and discovery of sea glass are also strong forces that draw collectors to shorelines around the world, looking for these pieces of physically and chemically weathered frosted glass. Whatever your reason for wanting to learn about and start your own collection of sea glass, the window for doing so is closing as pieces are becoming more elusive due to a growth in sea glass popularity and a decrease in recent glass bottle production. In The Ultimate Guide to Sea Glass, Beuke provides information that will help first-time seekers start new collections and veteran hunters learn more about their current sets. Beuke shares her experiences in gathering her own collection via photographs of vibrant and rare pieces, as well.

Some people's passion for sea glass goes beyond collecting—they use it to create something of beauty. Carole Lambert, author of Sea Glass Chronicles, gives us entree into the studios of those who do everything from gathering and amassing sea glass mulch for landscaping to designing stained-sea-glass windows. This volume will arouse a renewed sense of wonder in those who already possess a passion for sea glass and win legions of new sea-glass devotees.

Old Mrs. Ellison doesn't have much longer to live, and her scheming son Cedric is counting the days until he inherits her fortune. But his plans are upset by the arrival of his niece Varvara, a beautiful and wild young woman from a remote Chinese region known as the 'Sea of Glass', a strange land where wars are fought with crossbows and 'highly damaging curses' and where death may come at any moment in the form of a venomous barking spider. With the aid of a love-struck law student and a bibulous butler, Varvara aims to thwart the wiles of her evil uncle-but events take an unexpected and fatal turn in this unusual story, which is by turns hilarious and macabre. An exquisite blend of comedy, murder mystery, and surreal fantasy, Dennis Parry's masterpiece Sea of Glass (1955) was published to near-universal acclaim and has counted Edward Gorey among its admirers, but sank into an undeserved obscurity following Parry's untimely death a month after publication. This edition features a new introduction by Simon Stern. Parry's novel of possession from beyond the grave, The Survivor (1940), is also available from Valancourt. 'Amazingly original and brilliant' - Illustrated London News 'How well Mr. Parry writes!' - New Statesman 'Preposterous, often wonderfully funny' - The Guardian