Strange Bird

The Strange Bird—from New York Times bestselling novelist Jeff VanderMeer—is a novella-length digital original that expands and weaves deeply into the world of his “thorough marvel”* of a novel, Borne. The Strange Bird is a new kind of creature, built in a laboratory—she is part bird, part human, part many other things. But now the lab in which she was created is under siege and the scientists have turned on their animal creations. Flying through tunnels, dodging bullets, and changing her colors and patterning to avoid capture, the Strange Bird manages to escape. But she cannot just soar in peace above the earth. The sky itself is full of wildlife that rejects her as one of their own, and also full of technology—satellites and drones and other detritus of the human civilization below that has all but destroyed itself. And the farther she flies, the deeper she finds herself in the orbit of the Company, a collapsed biotech firm that has populated the world with experiments both failed and successful that have outlived the corporation itself: a pack of networked foxes, a giant predatory bear. But of the many creatures she encounters with whom she bears some kind of kinship, it is the humans—all of them now simply scrambling to survive—who are the most insidious, who still see her as simply something to possess, to capture, to trade, to exploit. Never to understand, never to welcome home. With The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer has done more than add another layer, a new chapter, to his celebrated novel Borne. He has created a whole new perspective on the world inhabited by Rachel and Wick, the Magician, Mord, and Borne—a view from above, of course, but also a view from deep inside the mind of a new kind of creature who will fight and suffer and live for the tenuous future of this world. Praise for Borne *“Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy was an ever-creeping map of the apocalypse; with Borne he continues his investigation into the malevolent grace of the world, and it's a thorough marvel.” —Colson Whitehead “VanderMeer is that rare novelist who turns to nonhumans not to make them approximate us as much as possible but to make such approximation impossible. All of this is magnified a hundredfold in Borne . . . Here is the story about biotech that VanderMeer wants to tell, a vision of the nonhuman not as one fixed thing, one fixed destiny, but as either peaceful or catastrophic, by our side or out on a rampage as our behavior dictates—for these are our children, born of us and now to be borne in whatever shape or mess we have created. This coming-of-age story signals that eco-fiction has come of age as well: wilder, more reckless and more breathtaking than previously thought, a wager and a promise that what emerges from the twenty-first century will be as good as any from the twentieth, or the nineteenth.” —Wai Chee Dimock, The New York Times Book Review

From the award-winning author of The First Rule of Punk comes the story of four kids who form an alternative Scout troop that shakes up their sleepy Florida town. "Writing with wry restraint that's reminiscent of Kate DiCamillo... a beautiful tale." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review!) When three very different girls find a mysterious invitation to a lavish mansion, the promise of adventure and mischief is too intriguing to pass up. Ofelia Castillo (a budding journalist), Aster Douglas (a bookish foodie), and Cat Garcia (a rule-abiding birdwatcher) meet the kid behind the invite, Lane DiSanti, and it isn't love at first sight. But they soon bond over a shared mission to get the Floras, their local Scouts, to ditch an outdated tradition. In their quest for justice, independence, and an unforgettable summer, the girls form their own troop and find something they didn't know they needed: sisterhood.

“I intend to stand firm and let the peacocks multiply, for I am sure that, in the end, the last word will be theirs.” —Flannery O’Connor When she was young, the writer Flannery O’Connor was captivated by the chickens in her yard. She’d watch their wings flap, their beaks peck, and their eyes glint. At age six, her life was forever changed when she and a chicken she had been training to walk forwards and backwards were featured in the Pathé News, and she realized that people want to see what is odd and strange in life. But while she loved birds of all varieties and kept several species around the house, it was the peacocks that came to dominate her life. Written by Amy Alznauer with devotional attention to all things odd and illustrated in radiant paint by Ping Zhu, The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor explores the beginnings of one author’s lifelong obsession. Amy Alznauer lives in Chicago with her husband, two children, a dog, a parakeet, sometimes chicks, and a part-time fish, but, as of today, no elephants or peacocks. Ping Zhu is a freelance illustrator who has worked with clients big and small, won some awards based on the work she did for aforementioned clients, attracted new clients with shiny awards, and is hoping to maintain her livelihood in Brooklyn by repeating that cycle.

The first book about the Albatross Press, a Penguin precursor that entered into an uneasy relationship with the Nazi regime to keep Anglo-American literature alive under fascism The Albatross Press was, from its beginnings in 1932, a “strange bird”: a cultural outsider to the Third Reich but an economic insider. It was funded by British-Jewish interests. Its director was rumored to work for British intelligence. A precursor to Penguin, it distributed both middlebrow fiction and works by edgier modernist authors such as D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway to eager continental readers. Yet Albatross printed and sold its paperbacks in English from the heart of Hitler’s Reich. In her original and skillfully researched history, Michele K. Troy reveals how the Nazi regime tolerated Albatross—for both economic and propaganda gains—and how Albatross exploited its insider position to keep Anglo-American books alive under fascism. In so doing, Troy exposes the contradictions in Nazi censorship while offering an engaging detective story, a history, a nuanced analysis of men and motives, and a cautionary tale.

Woodcock are one of the oddest birds in North America. They are a shorebird that got lost and ended up in the scrubby parts of the forest, and look like they were put together with the leftover parts of other birds. Oddities aside, each spring they rise to great beauty with their sky dance at dusk. Greg Hoch combines natural history, land management, scientific knowledge, and personal observation to examine this little game bird. Woodcock have a complex life history and the management of their habitat is also complex. The health of this bird can be considered a key indicator of what good forests look like.

The Strange Bird--from New York Times bestselling novelist Jeff VanderMeer--expands and weaves deeply into the world of his "thorough marvel" of a novel, Borne. The Strange Bird is a new kind of creature, built in a laboratory--she is part bird, part human, part many other things. But now the lab in which she was created is under siege and the scientists have turned on their animal creations. Flying through tunnels, dodging bullets, and changing her colors and patterning to avoid capture, the Strange Bird manages to escape. But she cannot just soar in peace above the earth. The sky itself is full of wildlife that rejects her as one of their own, and also full of technology--satellites and drones and other detritus of the human civilization below that has all but destroyed itself. And the farther she flies, the deeper she finds herself in the orbit of the Company, a collapsed biotech firm that has populated the world with experiments both failed and successful that have outlived the corporation itself: a pack of networked foxes, a giant predatory bear. But of the many creatures she encounters with whom she bears some kind of kinship, it is the humans--all of them now simply scrambling to survive--who are the most insidious, who still see her as simply something to possess, to capture, to trade, to exploit. Never to understand, never to welcome home. With The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer has done more than add another layer, a new chapter, to his celebrated novel Borne. He has created a whole new perspective on the world inhabited by Rachel and Wick, the Magician, Mord, and Borne--a view from above, of course, but also a view from deep inside the mind of a new kind of creature who will fight and suffer and live for the tenuous future of this world.

Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- INTRODUCTION: Behind the Door -- ONE: Tauchnitz Has a Rival -- TWO: Spies for England -- THREE: Winning the Continent -- FOUR: Un-German Literature -- FIVE: Made in Britain? -- SIX: The Scissors in Their Heads -- SEVEN: A Tale of Two Publishers -- EIGHT: The Center Will Not Hold -- NINE: The Shell Game -- TEN: Suspicion -- ELEVEN: Dear Reader -- TWELVE: Allegiances -- THIRTEEN: Faces of War -- FOURTEEN: Enemy Books -- FIFTEEN: Return and Departure -- SIXTEEN: Albatross Under the Occupation -- SEVENTEEN: The Deutsche Tauchnitz -- EIGHTEEN: English Books Abroad -- NINETEEN: Rivals -- TWENTY: When the Bombs Fell -- TWENTY-ONE: Making Peace -- TWENTY-TWO: Rising from the Ashes -- TWENTY-THREE: Homecoming -- CONCLUSION: Longing -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Chapter-Opening Illustration Credits -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

The Phoenix is a Strange Bird is a novel about two honest men caught in a war that has lost both glory and support, but nevertheless remains their mission. Advisors on a team providing assistance to a provincial government north of Saigon, the Colonel and the Captain face a weakened enemy that seldom shows its face, but manages to control the villages through terror at night. The two Americans devise a way to make pacification work. Success in a war that is winding-down has many enemies.