Seducing The Rain God

Nine-year-old twins Emma and Martín travel into a book of legends and where they must try to stop the rain god's flood.

In Monsoon Postcards, journalist David H. Mould, notebook in hand, traverses the Indian Ocean—from Madagascar through India and Bangladesh to Indonesia. It’s an unpredictable journey on battered buses, bush taxis, auto-rickshaws, and crowded ferries. Mould travels from the traffic snarls of Delhi, Dhaka, and Jakarta to the rice paddies and ancestral tombs of Madagascar’s Central Highlands; from the ancient kingdom of Hyderabad to India’s so-called chicken neck—the ethnically diverse and underdeveloped northeast; and from the textile factories and rivers of Bangladesh to the beaches of Bali and the province of Aceh—ground zero for the 2004 tsunami. Along the way, in markets, shops, roadside cafes, and classrooms, he meets journalists, professors, students, aid workers, cab drivers, and other everyday residents to learn how they view their past and future. Much like its predecessor, Mould’s Postcards from Stanland, Monsoon Postcards offers witty and insightful glimpses into countries linked by history, trade, migration, religion, and a colonial legacy. It explores how they confront the challenges of climate change, urban growth, economic development, land, water and natural resources, and national and ethnic identity.

A shaman living on the Yucatan peninsula 3,000 years ago learns how to communicate with Rain God Chaahk. They agree to switch places so each can learn about the other's world first-hand. This story is about Chaahk's journey through our world as he tries to figure out how to return to Mictlán.

Let’s talk about the weather. After all, we’ve only just met. There’ll be plenty of time for the pleasantries to turn into confidences. Before you know it you’ll have the whole story out of me …’ Climate scientist Dr Leo Wetherill is researching rainmaking in the Australian desert. But the conundrums of weather prediction turn out to be simple next to the perplexing personal discoveries of his own imaginative ecology.

Author Stephen Currie provides readers with an intriguing look at the mythology of the Mayan culture. He explains how the beliefs, values, and experiences of that culture are represented in its treasured stories. Topics covered include creation stories, myths of culture heroes such as the Hero Twins, and tales of the gods of maize, rain, and wind, as well as the malevolent spirits of the underworld, Xilbaba. This volume has a map of the Mayan civilization, a genealogy grid for the Hero Twins, a table of major characters with name pronunciations and brief descriptions, a glossary, sidebars, fact boxes, a bibliography of sources for further study, and a subject index.

The story of chocolate, from its discovery as a food source to today's gourmet chocolate recipes and European chocolatiers.