A Measure of Darkness

A Measure of Darkness
Author: Jonathan Kellerman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2018-07-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0399594647

Deputy coroner Clay Edison goes to extreme lengths for a forgotten Jane Doe in the new thriller from a father-son team of bestselling authors who write “brilliant, page-turning fiction” (Stephen King). “As for the keen sense of drama, it must be a genetic trait. . . . The Kellermans show compassion for the survivors, including conscientious officials like Edison.”—The New York Times Book Review Former star basketball player Clay Edison is busy. He’s solved a decades-old crime and redeemed an innocent man, earning himself a suspension in the process. Things are getting serious with his girlfriend. Plus his brother’s fresh out of prison, bringing with him a whole new set of complications. Then the phone rings in the dead of night. A wild party in a gentrifying East Bay neighborhood. A heated argument that spills into the street. Gunshots. Chaos. For Clay and his fellow coroners, it’s the start of a long night and the first of many to come. The victims keep piling up. What begins as a community tragedy soon becomes lurid fodder for social media. Then the smoke clears and the real mystery emerges—one victim’s death doesn’t match the others. Brutalized and abandoned, stripped of ID, and left to die: She is Jane Doe, a human question mark. And it falls to Clay to give her a name and a voice. Haunted by the cruelty of her death, he embarks upon a journey into the bizarre, entering a hidden world where innocence and perversity meet and mingle. There, his relentless pursuit of the truth opens the gateway to a dark and baffling past—and brings him right into the line of fire. Praise for A Measure of Darkness “Edison is an interesting protagonist, a good man for whom finding the truth is more important than anything else, including his own safety. He’s gentle and strong, compassionate and ruthless, methodical and impulsive. A strong sequel to Crime Scene that will leave readers wanting to see more of Edison.”—Booklist

Measure of Darkness

Measure of Darkness
Author: Chris Jordan
Publisher: Speaking Volumes
Total Pages: 387
Release:
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1645406989

HERE ARE THE FACTS For the parents whose children have been taken, for the broken lives we piece back together one relentless investigation at a time, our town house is a sanctuary. My name is Alice Crane. I'm just one of a talented team working for Naomi Nantz, the brilliant and very private detective. Today that sanctuary was violated. The famous kid-finder Randall Shane was taken away by unknown assailants, possibly government agents. Shane's client is dead, and a boy known as "the keyboard kid" is missing. What is the boy's connection to a top secret physics lab? Unknown—for now. But under Naomi's lead, we will infiltrate every illicit boardroom and bedroom and war room. We'll find that little boy or die trying. The only thing guaranteed in this life is that Naomi Nantz won't give up. Not now, not ever. "Filled with page-turning suspense and intrigue that keeps you guessing to the end” —Rick Mofina, bestselling author of In Desperation "Jordan's full-throttle style makes this an emotionally rewarding thriller that moves like lightning." —Publishers Weekly on Taken

Measure of My Days

Measure of My Days
Author: Florida Scott-Maxwell
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 93
Release: 2013-07-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307828344

At eighty-two, Florida Scott-Maxwell felt impelled to write about her strong reactions to being old, and to the time in which we live. Until almost the end this document was not intended for anyone to see, but the author finally decided that she wanted her thoughts and feelings to reach others. Mrs. Scott-Maxwell writes: “I was astonished to find how intensely one lives in one’s eighties. The last years seemed a culmination and by concentrating on them one became more truly oneself. Though old, I felt full of potential life. It pulsed in me even as I was conscious of shrinking into a final form which it was my task and stimulus to complete.” The territory of the old is not Scott-Maxwell’s only concern. In taking the measure of the sum of her days as a woman of the twentieth century, she confronts some of the most disturbing conflicts of human nature—the need for differentiation as against equality, the recognition of the evil forces in our nature—and her insights are challenging and illuminating. The vision that emerges from her accumulated experience of life makes this a remarkable document that speaks to all ages.

Crime Scene

Crime Scene
Author: Jonathan Kellerman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2017-08-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0399594612

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A former star athlete turned deputy coroner is drawn into a brutal, complicated murder in this psychological thriller from a father-son writing team that delivers “brilliant, page-turning fiction” (Stephen King). Natural causes or foul play? That’s the question Clay Edison must answer each time he examines a body. Figuring out motives and chasing down suspects aren’t part of his beat—not until a seemingly open-and-shut case proves to be more than meets his highly trained eye. Eccentric, reclusive Walter Rennert lies cold at the bottom of his stairs. At first glance the scene looks straightforward: a once-respected psychology professor, done in by booze and a bad heart. But his daughter Tatiana insists that her father has been murdered, and she persuades Clay to take a closer look at the grim facts of Rennert’s life. What emerges is a history of scandal and violence, and an experiment gone horribly wrong that ended in the brutal murder of a coed. Walter Rennert, it appears, was a broken man—and maybe a marked one. And when Clay learns that a colleague of Rennert’s died in a nearly identical manner, he begins to question everything in the official record. All the while, his relationship with Tatiana is evolving into something forbidden. The closer they grow, the more determined he becomes to catch her father’s killer—even if he has to overstep his bounds to do it. The twisting trail Clay follows will lead him into the darkest corners of the human soul. It’s his job to listen to the tales the dead tell. But this time, he’s part of a story that makes his blood run cold. Praise for Crime Scene “You could drive yourself crazy trying to figure out who wrote what. . . . But whoever came up with the fine line, ‘When I meet new people, they’re usually dead,’ should pat himself on the back.”—The New York Times Book Review “A terrific book . . . Put Crime Scene at the top of your reading pile.”—Bookreporter “A character-driven, intricately plotted whodunit . . . Mystery readers will devour the book and look forward to the next father and son collaboration.”—Press Republican

A Marker to Measure Drift

A Marker to Measure Drift
Author: Alexander Maksik
Publisher: Bond Street Books
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2013-07-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385679181

Alexander Maksik's electrifying novel tracks a woman's journey from the horrors of Charles Taylor's Liberia to abject poverty and self-exile on a Greek island, where she must grapple with a haunted past and find a way back into human society. On an island somewhere in the Aegean, Jacqueline, a young Liberian woman, veers between starvation and satiety, between the brutality of her past and the precarious uncertainty of her present in the aftermath of experiences so unspeakable that she prefers homeless numbness to the psychological confrontation she knows is inevitable. Hypnotic, highly sensual, exquisitely written, and extraordinary in its depiction of both pleasure and pain, of excruciating physical and spiritual hungers, A Marker to Measure Drift is a novel about memory, how we live with what we know, and whether and how we go forward, intact and whole, after the ravages of loss. It is beautiful, lacerating, impossible to put down. A breakthrough work from a prodigiously gifted young writer.

A Measure of All Things

A Measure of All Things
Author: Ian Whitelaw
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2007-08-07
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780312370268

Discusses the origins of standard units of measurement and how they have changed from ancient times to modern day, and describes systems of measurement, including the metric and Imperial systems and the Système International.

Saving the Starry Night

Saving the Starry Night
Author: Patrizia Caraveo
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2021-11-13
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030850641

This book takes a close look at our relationship with the sky, the stars, light and darkness. In particular, it examines how light pollution has interfered with the culture of astronomy and our ability to appreciate this essential facet of our natural world. The sky has always held significance for humanity, in both cultural and scientific terms. And yet we persistently pollute it with (sometimes unnecessary) light in our obsessive desire to chase away the darkness. This effectively switches off the stars, hampering our ability to enjoy one of the most inspiring sights nature has to offer to humankind. In addition, too much light is hazardous to both our health and that of the fauna and flora of this planet. This book also features a comprehensive look at the current controversy regarding efforts to expand internet access through the launch into low Earth orbits of thousands of new satellites, which will pollute the night with moving lights while filling to saturation the capability of the circumterrestrial space. This conflict does not mean that the interests of astronomy and those of space technology have to be at odds, and potential compromises are explored between the satellite initiative and the desire to maintain a dark, radio silent sky.

Things of Darkness

Things of Darkness
Author: Kim F. Hall
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2018-09-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501725459

The "Ethiope," the "tawny Tartar," the "woman blackamoore," and "knotty Africanisms"—allusions to blackness abound in Renaissance texts. Kim F. Hall's eagerly awaited book is the first to view these evocations of blackness in the contexts of sexual politics, imperialism, and slavery in early modern England. Her work reveals the vital link between England's expansion into realms of difference and otherness—through exploration and colonialism-and the highly charged ideas of race and gender which emerged. How, Hall asks, did new connections between race and gender figure in Renaissance ideas about the proper roles of men and women? What effect did real racial and cultural difference have on the literary portrayal of blackness? And how did the interrelationship of tropes of race and gender contribute to a modern conception of individual identity? Hall mines a wealth of sources for answers to these questions: travel literature from Sir John Mandeville's Travels to Leo Africanus's History and Description of Africa; lyric poetry and plays, from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and The Tempest to Ben Jonson's Masque of Blackness; works by Emilia Lanyer, Philip Sidney, John Webster, and Lady Mary Wroth; and the visual and decorative arts. Concentrating on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Hall shows how race, sexuality, economics, and nationalism contributed to the formation of a modern ( white, male) identity in English culture. The volume includes a useful appendix of not readily accessible Renaissance poems on blackness.

The White Darkness

The White Darkness
Author: David Grann
Publisher: Doubleday
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2018-10-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0385544588

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Wager, a thrilling and powerful true story of adventure and obsession in the Antarctic, lavishly illustrated with color photographs. "[Grann is] one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today."—New York Magazine Henry Worsley was a devoted husband and father and a decorated British special forces officer who believed in honor and sacrifice. He was also a man obsessed. He spent his life idolizing Ernest Shackleton, the nineteenth-century polar explorer, who tried to become the first person to reach the South Pole, and later sought to cross Antarctica on foot. Shackleton never completed his journeys, but he repeatedly rescued his men from certain death, and emerged as one of the greatest leaders in history. Worsley felt an overpowering connection to those expeditions. He was related to one of Shackleton's men, Frank Worsley, and spent a fortune collecting artifacts from their epic treks across the continent. He modeled his military command on Shackleton's legendary skills and was determined to measure his own powers of endurance against them. He would succeed where Shackleton had failed, in the most brutal landscape in the world. In 2008, Worsley set out across Antarctica with two other descendants of Shackleton's crew, battling the freezing, desolate landscape, life-threatening physical exhaustion, and hidden crevasses. Yet when he returned home he felt compelled to go back. On November 13, 2015, at age 55, Worsley bid farewell to his family and embarked on his most perilous quest: to walk across Antarctica alone. David Grann tells Worsley's remarkable story with the intensity and power that have led him to be called "simply the best narrative nonfiction writer working today." Illustrated with more than fifty stunning photographs from Worsley's and Shackleton's journeys, The White Darkness is both a gorgeous keepsake volume and a spellbinding story of courage, love, and a man pushing himself to the extremes of human capacity. Look for David Grann’s latest bestselling book, The Wager!