Time Of Departure

Full of spellbinding twists, Douglas Schofield's Time of Departure will appeal not only to thriller aficionados, but to readers who appreciate a strong female lead and a compelling love story. A page-turner that will keep readers on the edge of their seats, Time of Departure heralds the arrival of an immensely talented new crime novelist. Florida state prosecutor Claire Talbot is as tough as they come, and not everyone loves her for it. Newly promoted Felony Division Chief, Claire has about as many jealous detractors as she does supporters. Some colleagues are openly skeptical about her youth, her abilities, and even her gender. When a highway project construction crew unearths two skeletons in a common grave, Claire reopens an investigation into a string of abductions that took place before she was born. While researching the file, she meets retired cop Marc Hastings, who once worked on the case. He maneuvers his way into the investigation-and into Claire's life. Marc has an uncanny familiarity with Claire's habits, and she begins to realize that not all is as it seems. The detective urges Claire on, mysteriously convinced that only she can solve the case. Together, they unearth more graves. But then, disaster strikes ... and Claire finally discovers what Hastings knew all along. It's a secret almost too shocking for a sane mind to grasp. The key to the killings may lie deep in Claire's own past. But what if Claire's past lies in her future?

A measure of the degree of departure of a landscape from its range of historical conditions can provide a means for prioritizing and planning areas for restoration treatments. There are few statistics or indices that provide a quantitative context for measuring departure across landscapes. This study evaluated a set of five similarity indices commonly used in vegetation community ecology (Sorenson's Index, Chord Distance, Morisita's Index, Euclidean Distance, and Similarity Ratio) for application in estimating landscape departure (where departure = 1 - similarity). This involved comparing composition (vegetation type by area) of a set of reference landscapes to the compositions of 1,000 simulated historical landscapes. Stochastic simulation modeling was used to create a diverse set of synthetic reference and historical landscapes for departure index evaluation. Five reference landscapes were created to represent various degrees of expected departure from historical conditions. Both reference and historical landscapes were created to contain four important factors that could potentially influence departure calculation: (1) number of classes defining landscape composition, (2) dominance of the classes, (3) variability of area with the classes, and (4) temporal autocorrelation. We found that most evaluated indices are useful but not optimal for calculating departure. The Sorenson's Index appeared to perform the best with consistent and precise behavior across the ranges of the four treatments. The number of classes used to describe vegetation had the strongest influence on index performance; landscape composition defined by few classes had the least accurate, most imprecise, and most highly variable departure estimates. While results from this study show the utility of similarity indices in evaluating departure, it is also evident that a new set of statistics are needed to provide a more comprehensive analysis of departure for future applications.

Departure Time is the amazing journey of a girl in two stories. The girl in the hotel with the fox and the rat, and the girl whose father travels a lot, who suggests they write a story together, a story about talking animals. She doesn't want to. She is angry with him, because he can't make it home in time for her birthday. Again. Still, the two stories start to intertwine and come together in a surprising ending.

Death is inevitable, and yet the vast majority of the developed world seems to want to ignore this fact and avoid the sad inevitability. However, death is an inevitability, and trying to avoid talking about it is a mistake. Estimated Time of Departure takes readers on a journey of one man and his family having these discussions and how powerfully loving and revealing they were. In this funny, moving, poignant memoir, William Donaldson tells the story of how he talked with his parents over an extended period about their end-of-life thoughts and philosophy. He shares the sad, funny, maddening, sweet, and rewarding sides of this journey and makes a compelling and impassioned plea to readers to not miss this opportunity. They were not without sadness and challenges, but by virtue of talking and exploring the topic, the family came closer together and the inevitable passing became, while still sad, a cathartic, deeply rewarding event. Estimated Time of Departure was written to give readers the courage to have these discussions and shows that hope, love, and reverence can be seen by having them.