The Fragile World

With over 50 endangered and vulnerable creatures and landscapes to colour, this book will raise awareness of our fragile world and inspire conservation.

From the author of stunning debut The Mourning Hours comes a powerful new novel that explores every parent's worst nightmare… The Kaufmans have always considered themselves a normal, happy family. Curtis is a physics teacher at a local high school. His wife, Kathleen, restores furniture for upscale boutiques. Daniel is away at college on a prestigious music scholarship, and twelve-year-old Olivia is a happy-go-lucky kid whose biggest concern is passing her next math test. And then comes the middle-of-the-night phone call that changes everything. Daniel has been killed in what the police are calling a "freak" road accident, and the remaining Kaufmans are left to flounder in their grief. The anguish of Daniel's death is isolating, and it's not long before this once-perfect family finds itself falling apart. As time passes and the wound refuses to heal, Curtis becomes obsessed with the idea of revenge, a growing mania that leads him to pack up his life and his anxious teenage daughter and set out on a collision course to right a wrong. An emotionally charged novel, The Fragile World is a journey through America's heartland and a family's brightest and darkest moments, exploring the devastating pain of losing a child and the beauty of finding the way back to hope. "Heart-stopping. A gripping read that delivers a beautiful reminder of the resilience of love." —Karen Brown, author of The Longings of Wayward Girls

The sudden death of their college-age son in a car crash sends the Kaufmans reeling and leads the father, Curtis, to pack up his life—and his anxious teenage daughter, Olivia—and set out to seek revenge. By the author of The Mourning Hours. Original.

A New York Times New & Noteworthy Book One of the Daily Beast’s 5 Essential Books to Read Before the Election A collection of the New Yorker’s groundbreaking reporting from the front lines of climate change—including writing from Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert, Ian Frazier, Kathryn Schulz, and more Just one year after climatologist James Hansen first came before a Senate committee and testified that the Earth was now warmer than it had ever been in recorded history, thanks to humankind’s heedless consumption of fossil fuels, New Yorker writer Bill McKibben published a deeply reported and considered piece on climate change and what it could mean for the planet. At the time, the piece was to some speculative to the point of alarmist; read now, McKibben’s work is heroically prescient. Since then, the New Yorker has devoted enormous attention to climate change, describing the causes of the crisis, the political and ecological conditions we now find ourselves in, and the scenarios and solutions we face. The Fragile Earth tells the story of climate change—its past, present, and future—taking readers from Greenland to the Great Plains, and into both laboratories and rain forests. It features some of the best writing on global warming from the last three decades, including Bill McKibben’s seminal essay “The End of Nature,” the first piece to popularize both the science and politics of climate change for a general audience, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning work of Elizabeth Kolbert, as well as Kathryn Schulz, Dexter Filkins, Jonathan Franzen, Ian Frazier, Eric Klinenberg, and others. The result, in its range, depth, and passion, promises to bring light, and sometimes heat, to the great emergency of our age.

A family's loyalty is put to the ultimate test Kirsten Hammarstrom hasn't been home to her tiny corner of rural Wisconsin in years—not since the mysterious disappearance of a local teenage girl rocked the town and shattered her family. Kirsten was just nine years old when Stacy Lemke went missing, and the last person to see her alive was her boyfriend, Johnny—the high school wrestling star and Kirsten's older brother. No one knows what to believe—not even those closest to Johnny—but the event unhinges the quiet farming community and pins Kirsten's family beneath the crushing weight of suspicion. Now, years later, a new tragedy forces Kirsten and her siblings to return home, where they must confront the devastating event that shifted the trajectory of their lives. Tautly written and beautifully evocative, The Mourning Hours is a gripping portrayal of a family straining against extraordinary pressure, and a powerful tale of loyalty, betrayal and forgiveness.

We live in a world constantly in need of repair. Our cars break down. Marriages weaken, friendships sour, ties between nations are rent. Yet we fix things and relationships all the time, without giving these activities much thought. Repair is the first book to offer an in-depth exploration of this core aspect of human life.

This book features a career-spanning look at the images of photojournalist Peter Essick while on assignment for National Geographic magazine. In this book, Essick showcases photographs from the most beautiful natural areas in the world and documents contemporary environmental issues, such as climate change and nuclear waste. Our Beautiful, Fragile World takes the reader on a journey around the globe, from the beautiful Oulanka National Park near the Arctic Circle in Finland to the Adelie penguin breeding grounds in Antarctica. Our Beautiful, Fragile World will interest photographers of all skill levels. It carries an important message about conservation, and the photographs provide a compelling look at our environment that will resonate with people of all ages who care about the state of the natural world.

Psychoanalytic perspective on what Western philosophers from Socrates to Foucault have called “the art of living.”