The Thicket

Would you recognize a real scream at Halloween? That's the question haunting Norah Lewis. She heard -and ignored-her brother's last screams on the night he died. Because nothing in the haunted house was supposed to be real. Not the screams. Not the knife-wielding psychopaths. And not the blood.In the wake of the slayings, parent groups and PTAs lobby for a shutdown while thrill seekers-including many of Norah's classmates- clamor to visit the "real" haunted house.Tormented by survivor's guilt, Norah secretly plans to retrace her brother's final steps.But the killer hasn't chosen his hunting ground at random. And, like Norah, he plans to return.

Love and vengeance at the dark dawn of the East Texas oil boom from Joe Lansdale, "a true American original" (Joe Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box). Jack Parker thought he'd already seen his fair share of tragedy. His grandmother was killed in a farm accident when he was barely five years old. His parents have just succumbed to the smallpox epidemic sweeping turn-of-the-century East Texas -- orphaning him and his younger sister, Lula. Then catastrophe strikes on the way to their uncle's farm, when a traveling group of bank-robbing bandits murder Jack's grandfather and kidnap his sister. With no elders left for miles, Jack must grow up fast and enlist a band of heroes the likes of which has never been seen if his sister stands any chance at survival. But the best he can come up with is a charismatic, bounty-hunting dwarf named Shorty, a grave-digging son of an ex-slave named Eustace, and a street-smart woman-for-hire named Jimmie Sue who's come into some very intimate knowledge about the bandits (and a few members of Jack's extended family to boot). In the throes of being civilized, East Texas is still a wild, feral place. Oil wells spurt liquid money from the ground. But as Jack's about to find out, blood and redemption rule supreme. In The Thicket, award-winning novelist Joe R. Lansdale lets loose like never before, in a rip-roaring adventure equal parts True Grit and Stand by Me - - the perfect introduction to an acclaimed writer whose work has been called "as funny and frightening as anything that could have been dreamed up by the Brothers Grimm -- or Mark Twain" (New York Times Book Review).

The Thicket opens into intimate encounters with the more-than-human world—rivers, birds, stones—and with a “you” that is not a person, necessarily, but also not not a person: maybe God, maybe an aspect of the self, maybe neither or both. Often speaking of/to the small or overlooked (weeds by a roadside, an abandoned silo), the poems orient themselves toward edges, transitional spaces like the one where fields shift into woods. Where does one body stop? The Thicket takes an interest in becoming, one thing flowing into something else.

A nonfiction picture book of poetry about fascinating insects with accompanying facts, notes, and illustrations by the Caldecott-winning Melissa Sweet. Pray tell us, Mr. Mantis, Do you pray or simply prey? Do you scout about for victims Or fold your hands all day? In addition to the playful rhyming poems, the supplementary text highlights surprising facts about bugs of all kinds—from familiar ants to exotic dragonflies, cringe-worthy ticks and magnificent fireflies. Melissa Sweet’s collage-inspired mixed-media illustrations beautifully render these creatures and compliment the poems’ whimsical tones. This is an enchanting and informative look at a perennial topic of interest for kids—cool bugs! A Christy Ottaviano Book

A descendant of one of the pioneering boarding house families, Wanda Landrey searched the Big Thicket to find survivors of the boarding house era and to collect their stories and recipes.

When a bill creating the Big Thicket National Preserve was signed into law, it climaxed more than half a century of environmental debate, planning and destruction. The preserve opened new vistas for recreation. In this revised and updated version, Gunter not only describes the history and rich diversity of the region saved from the bulldozers of real estate developers and lumber companies, but also the dimensions of the new Big Thicket Preserve. He makes it possible to plan a trip there by including descriptions of each stream corridor unit, maps and canoeing conditions, hiking trails, and camping facilities. He lists representative flora and fauna. The book provides a background—both historical and biological—which will make clear just what the visitor to the Big Thicket is seeing; why it has mattered, and why it will continue to matter.

In Into the Thicket, H. Palmer Hall, reminds us that an East Texas pine tree blown over by a storm simply clears the land for seedlings that follow, that the crunch of Gulf oyster shells under your boots beckons you back to the ocean, that sometimes you have to rub the bark of an oak tree to get under someone's skin. From the Neches to the Rio Grande to Tigris River, Hall's stories confirm the collective identity between man and woman and beast and soil, blurring time and space and life and death with his poetic pen.