The Crossing Place

A revised and updated edition of Philip Marsden's classic travel book, published to coincide with the centenary of the Armenian massacres. After centuries of prominence as a world power, Armenia has withstood every attempt during the 20th century to destroy it. With a name redolent both of dim antiquity and of a modern world and its tensions, the Armenians founded a civilization and underwent a diaspora that brought many of the great ideas of the East to Western Europe. The Crossing Place is Philip Marsden's gripping account of his remarkable journey through the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus in a quest to discover the secret of one of the world's most extraordinary peoples. Caught between opposing empires, between warring religions and ideologies -- at the crossing place of history -- the Armenians have somehow survived against the odds. This is their story -- told by one of the finest travel writers at work today.

Winner of the 2008 Washington State Book Award for History/Biography In traditional scholarship, Native Americans have been conspicuously absent from urban history. Indians appear at the time of contact, are involved in fighting or treaties, and then seem to vanish, usually onto reservations. In Native Seattle, Coll Thrush explodes the commonly accepted notion that Indians and cities-and thus Indian and urban histories-are mutually exclusive, that Indians and cities cannot coexist, and that one must necessarily be eclipsed by the other. Native people and places played a vital part in the founding of Seattle and in what the city is today, just as urban changes transformed what it meant to be Native. On the urban indigenous frontier of the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s, Indians were central to town life. Native Americans literally made Seattle possible through their labor and their participation, even as they were made scapegoats for urban disorder. As late as 1880, Seattle was still very much a Native place. Between the 1880s and the 1930s, however, Seattle's urban and Indian histories were transformed as the town turned into a metropolis. Massive changes in the urban environment dramatically affected indigenous people's abilities to survive in traditional places. The movement of Native people and their material culture to Seattle from all across the region inspired new identities both for the migrants and for the city itself. As boosters, historians, and pioneers tried to explain Seattle's historical trajectory, they told stories about Indians: as hostile enemies, as exotic Others, and as noble symbols of a vanished wilderness. But by the beginning of World War II, a new multitribal urban Native community had begun to take shape in Seattle, even as it was overshadowed by the city's appropriation of Indian images to understand and sell itself. After World War II, more changes in the city, combined with the agency of Native people, led to a new visibility and authority for Indians in Seattle. The descendants of Seattle's indigenous peoples capitalized on broader historical revisionism to claim new authority over urban places and narratives. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Native people have returned to the center of civic life, not as contrived symbols of a whitewashed past but on their own terms. In Seattle, the strands of urban and Indian history have always been intertwined. Including an atlas of indigenous Seattle created with linguist Nile Thompson, Native Seattle is a new kind of urban Indian history, a book with implications that reach far beyond the region. Replaced by ISBN 9780295741345

The second thrilling novel in Kevin Crossley-Holland's bestselling Arthur trilogyArthur de Caldicot has achieved his dream: He now serves as squire to Lord Stephen of Holt Castle. But this new world opens up fresh visions as well as old concerns. Arthur longs to escape the shadow of his unfeeling father and meet his birth mother. To marry the beautiful Winnie, but maintain his ties with his friend Gatty. And to become a Crusader, with all the questions of might and right involved. Just as he so brilliantly did in THE SEEING STONE, Kevin Crossley-Holland weaves Arthurian legend with everyday medieval life in the unforgettable story of one hero's coming of age.

Terra Froese has spent most of her adult life bouncing from job to job, man to man, and drink to drink. But when her latest relationship and job simultaneously fall apart, she leaves Seattle for rural Montana to visit her sister, Leslie VandeKeere, to whom she hasn't spoken in over a year. If anyone can help Terra sort out her life, it'll be Leslie, who has managed success despite family odds and a recent move from city to country. With plans to rescue herself and her sister from the threat of going nowhere, Terra's in for a big surprise--Leslie likes her new country life. When Terra rebels against her sister's conformity, how much wildness can the VandeKeeres stand in order to keep the family ALL IN ONE PLACE?

An inspiring tale of fugitive slave who finds freedom in Canada, but still struggles to find a real home. Eleven-year-old Solomon is a fugitive slave on a dangerous journey north to Canada, and to freedom. His young life has seen many losses: his mother was sold in a slave auction when he was a baby; his father escaped from the plantation and hasn't been seen in five years; and now his grandfather, who has been injured during the last leg of their journey to freedom, and is forced to stay behind.Solomon continues with their group leader, but his feelings of loss and isolation haunt him, as he attempts to forge a new home in Canada. It soon becomes apparent that racial prejudices know no borders, and while Solomon works hard and begins to experience some newfound freedoms, he faces discrimination and segregation and lives with the ongoing fear of being caught by slavecatchers and dragged back to the South. With all of these barriers facing him, Solomon must find the strength — the same strength that brought him north, the same strength that gives him hope of finding his father — to persevere and understand the true meaning of freedom.

The Crossing forms the second part of Cormac McCarthy's critically acclaimed Border Trilogy, a story that began with All the Pretty Horses and concludes with Cities of the Plain. Set on the south-western ranches in the years before the Second World War, Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing follows the fortunes of sixteen-year-old Billy Parham and his younger brother Boyd. Fascinated by an elusive wolf that has been marauding his family's property, Billy captures the animal - but rather than kill it, sets out impulsively for the mountains of Mexico to return it to where it came from. When Billy comes back to his own home he finds himself and his world irrevocably changed. His loss of innocence has come at a price, and once again the border beckons with its desolate beauty and cruel promise. 'The Crossing is like a river in full spate: beautiful and dangerous' The Times This edition is part of the Picador Collection, a new list of the best in contemporary literature published in Picador's 50th Anniversary year. McCarthy's eagerly anticipated new novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, will be published by Picador in October 2022.

Arthur de Caldicot arrives at Holt to be squire to Lord Stephen and accompany him on crusade. It is an exciting and bewildering time for him as he finds a warhorse, is fitted with armour, and improves his fighting skills. He dreads a confrontation with his blood-father, the violent Sir William, and dreams of finding his true mother; he discovers girls ¿ including the vivacious Winnie de Verdon whom he rescues from burning to death; he has to deal with the aftermath of a murder; he sees the sea for the first time, sails to France and finally takes the Cross. And meanwhile these events are reflected in his seeing stone, in stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Packed with incident, wonderful characters, and fascinating historical detail, and interwoven with brilliant retellings of Arthurian legends, this is a glorious follow-up to THE SEEING STONE.