Turtle Girl

As her grandmother taught her, Magdalena continues to protect the sea turtles that nest near her home even after Grandma's death.

Emily is a Swiss woman with a unique disfigurement: a shell covers her body. Successful as a writer but privately resigned to a life without love, she undertakes a trip to Ireland to explore her partly Irish roots. This proves to be a turning point in her life. She discovers a spiritual bond with the Emerald Isle and meets a man who is her counterpart. Niall, an Irish patriot, guesses what her condition is and where it comes from, because he had once experienced it himself. He offers her his understanding and help. They open up to each other, disclosing their dark secrets. In a difficult and painful process Emily overcomes her physical and emotional boundaries with Nialls assistance. Together they start on an emotional and spiritual journey as soul mates. Niall takes Emily to the Aran Island of Inishmore, where she meets her Irish grandmother for the first time. A few obstacles have to be overcome before Emily and Niall finally understand where their happiness lies.

When what is assumed to be a gas explosion destroys a woman’s home, a witness is drawn into events that lead far beyond the victim’s passion for protecting turtles and into a criminal plot that will test lifelong friendships, endanger a dam and involve a once-famous imprisoned eco-terrorist. A mysterious van that was once used in a plot to damage the Lincoln Memorial is found disabled atop a dam in rural Idaho, bringing to light the burglary, twenty-five years earlier, of the Federal Ordinance Arsenal in Washington State and creating suspicion about the motives of a group of locals caring for their recently injured friend—the Turtle Lady. Law enforcement initially pursues R.A. Endicott—an unlikely suspect most comfortable tending his pumpkins—and his good friend Skipper for their vague involvement with the damaged home, but information is gathered that suggests a conspiracy and imminent plot aimed at eliminating Double Falls Reservoir in the name of salmon habitat. However, when the plan is ultimately exposed, that proves not to have been the case at all. The target is something no one imagined and the goal far more sinister than anyone suspected.

A rape. A war. A society where women are bought and sold but no one can speak of shame. Shanghai 1937. Violence throbs at the heart of The Dancing Girl and the Turtle.Song Anyi is on the road to Shanghai and freedom when she is raped and left for dead. The silence and shamethat mark her courageous survival drive her to escalating self-harm and prostitution. From opium dens to high- class brothels, Anyi dances on the edge of destruction while China prepares for war with Japan. Hers is the voice of every woman who fights for independence against overwhelming odds.The Dancing Girl and the Turtle is one of four interlocking novels set in Shanghai from 1929 to 1954. Through the eyes of the dancer, Song Anyi, and her brother Kang, the Shanghai Quartet spans a tumultuous time in Chinese history: war with the Japanese, the influx of stateless Jews into Shanghai, civil war and revolution. How does the love of a sister destroy her brother and all those around him?

"The island of East Pukapuka lies in the path of a tsunami that will kill everyone but Butter, a little girl more worried about the lives of the injured animals she cares for than her own. Butter is rescued by a Loggerhead sea turtle who carries her away on his back. As she and her exhausted savior begin to sink, the girl is plucked out of the sea by Jesus Dobby, the boozy owner of a salvage boat who is thrilled, at first, to have found a genuine "turtle-girl" hybrid. Downhill racer Dante Wheeler "dies" in a terrible skiing accident and revives in a twilight state, having lost all memories of his former life. When he heals enough to leave the rehab facility, Dante heads to Polynesia, where he has found a home in his dreams. There he encounters Ophelia, a beautiful blond policewoman who reluctantly agrees to transport him to East Pukapuka. Jope and Ratu, a pair of bumbling pirates, steal a vessel laden with cocaine. They are hotly pursued by the drug-runners' hit man Albino Paul, the descendant of cannibals, whose goal is to reclaim his heritage."--Publisher's website.

Charles Pendleton and Simone duPont seek, but don’t always see. Simone seeks love; Charles seeks a way to feel settled and be satisfied. Neither can see that their love and security is right before them until it is taken away. New things become visible in the dark moments of deception and greed-driven ambition; things that were once overlooked; things that were better left unseen. Out of the darkness, like a new sunrise, like a second chance to refocus, Pendleton and duPont change their perspectives and see, feel, believe, and experience things for what they are. This inspirational, dramatic, adventurous love story blends elements of career, life, loss, and recovery, and shares a clear and insightful message through the eyes of a man, woman, their friends and their families and a year of life opportunities in France, Italy, England and North America.

This is a story about faith, perseverance, determination, and will. It is a story about love, music, travel, family, and friends. It is a story about change, loss, and forced separation. The novel is a work of fiction weaving life experiences into a multi-dimensional story: Charles Pendleton, unable to be settled and determined to do more than merely exist, sacrifices the present in search of the future; Simone duPont seeks love, had the love of a father, was betrayed by the love of an impulse, but is devoted to keeping her love alive; Raul Montenegro, a man who finds his strength in helping others, seeks peace through acts of kindness and generosity; Napoleon Brice, a man of small stature and lofty dreams, achieves a moment of fame and leaves a legacy of pain and suffering. As a web of family and friends serve as constant reminders of stability and security the demons and memories of the past tug at the true calling of life—the challenge: to find the thing that is meaningful, hold on to it at all costs, and achieve the dream, the goal, and the true purpose of life.

Bringing together new perspectives in childhood studies and animal studies, this book is the first collection to critically address the manifold alignments and frequent co-constitutions of children and pets in our families, our cultures, and our societies. The cultural politics of power shaping relationships between children, pets, and adults inform the wide range of essays included in this collection, as they explore issues such as protection, discipline, mastery, wildness, play, and domestication. The volume use the frequent social and cultural intersections between children and pets as an opportunity to analyze institutions that create pet and child subjectivity, from education and training to putting children and pets on display for entertainment purposes. Essays analyze legal discourses, visual culture, literature for children and adults, migration narratives, magazines for children, music, and language socialization to discuss how notions of nationalism, race, gender, heteronormativity, and speciesism shape cultural constructions of children and pets. Examining childhood and pethood in America, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific, this collection shows how discourses linking children and pets are pervasive and work across cultures. By presenting innovative approaches to the child and the pet, the book brings to light alternative paths toward understanding these figures, leading to new openings and questions about kinship, agency, and the power of care that so often shapes our relationships with children and animals. This will be an important volume for scholars of animal studies, childhood studies, children’s literature, cultural studies, political theory, education, art history, and sociology.