The Crying Sea

Read Along or Enhanced eBook: Why do sea turtles look like they are crying? Come along on an underwater adventure and have fun learning the special things about sea creatures that help them survive in the ocean.

Life itself could never have been sustainable without seabirds. As Adam Nicolson writes: "They are bringers of fertility, the deliverers of life from ocean to land." A global tragedy is unfolding. Even as we are coming to understand them, the number of seabirds on our planet is in freefall, dropping by nearly 70% in the last sixty years, a billion fewer now than there were in 1950. Of the ten birds in this book, seven are in decline, at least in part of their range. Extinction stalks the ocean and there is a danger that the grand cry of the seabird colony, rolling around the bays and headlands of high latitudes, will this century become little but a memory. Seabirds have always entranced the human imagination and NYT best-selling author Adam Nicolson has been in love with them all his life: for their mastery of wind and ocean, their aerial beauty and the unmatched wildness of the coasts and islands where every summer they return to breed. The seabird’s cry comes from an elemental layer in the story of the world. Over the last couple of decades, modern science has begun to understand their epic voyages, their astonishing abilities to navigate for tens of thousands of miles on featureless seas, their ability to smell their way towards fish and home. Only the poets in the past would have thought of seabirds as creatures riding the ripples and currents of the entire planet, but that is what the scientists are seeing now today.

"Them that's gone through it are them that knows." In a life layered by tragedy and loss, Catherine Linehan's ingrained response is to put one foot in front of the other and not succumb to grief. For the mother of ten children, five of whom perished in a house fire, this means "making some kind of best" out of the rest of her life. If I Cry I'll Fill the Ocean is the story of how tears of cleansing and forgiveness were sacrificed to keep memories alive and sanity in reach. This kind of courage only exists in the hearts and souls of those who have endured the unendurable. Set in North Harbour, Newfoundland, this is one woman's true story of fortitude and love.

An international cult classic and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, The Crying Heart Tattoo follows the unlikely romance between a young man and a woman more than twice his age. Beginning their relationship when Sonny is just fourteen and Felicity thirty-four, the couple share a poignant history together that ends only upon Felicity's passing -- despite four marriages, numerous obstacles, and enough misadventures to challenge the most loyal of lovers. At once heartbreaking and euphoric, their story mirrors the tale that Felicity has passed down to Sonny, a story uncanny in its similarity to their own: when a prehistoric outcast locates her former tribe, she falls in love with a young boy. A masterful novel first published a quarter of a century ago, The Crying Heart Tattoo keeps the impossible within reach, proving once and for all that the struggle for true love is worth everything.

INKABA YAKHO IPHI? (WHERE IS YOUR NAVEL?) Three storiesthose of the Xhosa and the Khoikhoi tribes, the British soldiers and the settlers, and the burghers and the Boersare told in parallel. Her Khoikhoi mother, had named her Coti after the wife of Cagn, the supreme god of the San people. Her skin shone like gold, the skin of the San. He had been watching as she bathed in the lagoon, blinded by her sleek beauty as she stepped out. The fading sunlight on the water drops covered her golden skin like jewels. Coti gasped when she saw him. He was Tshane, great-great-grandson of a Xhosa chief and named after one of the first Rharhabe Xhosa kings or paramount (supreme) chiefs. His mother was from the Gcaleka Xhosa clan. Tshane represented the amaXhosa, the fierce people of Xhosa. He was magnificent as he stood still and talla warrior, black as ebony; his toned muscles rippled. He was nervous. She was not afraid of him. She prayed now to the wise and powerful Tsui-Goab, the Khoi supreme god, to protect her from Guanab, the cunning god of evil. Her grandmother had warned that this was an evil love, brought about by the trickster god, Haitsa-Aibib. Haitsa-Aibib could change his form at will. Was he the fish eagle that had thrown the cloud over her? Lt. Ian Bentley sat his horse on a hill overlooking the coastal foothills of the Amatola Mountains. From his position, he had a good view of the sea and also the Xhosa village below him. It was baking hot under the African sun, and he looked forward to the cool evening. He sweated in his thick red tunic, made for cooler climates, and his horse fidgeted from the flies. Taking his eyeglass from his tunic, he focused on the village below. Conraad du Randt, the burghers leader, raised his arm for silence. Yes, my people. First, they free the slaves and tell us to pay them. Now they have equality before the law? These heathens are our subordinates, damned in the eyes of God! Given to us to teach them Christian ways! Our land! Our lifestyle! Is God-given and earned by conquest!

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An “extraordinary meditation on mortality, grief, death, childhood and memory" (USA Today) about a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside to grieve the loss of his wife. In this luminous novel, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel—among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.