The author covers conflicts from 1837 through 1886 in Arizona, New Mexico, and California. Important chiefs covered include Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, Victorio, Geronimo, and Captain Jack. Army officers covered include George Crook and Nelson Miles.

In the late fourth century, the world of Christianity was torn apart by debate over the teachings of the third-century theologian Origen and his positions on the incorporeality of God. In the year 400, Archbishop Theophilus of Alexandria convened a council declaring Origen's later followers as heretics. Shortly thereafter, Theophilus banished the so-called Tall Brothers, four Origenist monks who led monastic communities in the western Egyptian desert, along with hundreds of their brethren. In some accounts, Theophilus leads a violent group of drunken youths and enslaved Ethiopians in sacking and desecrating the monastery; in others, he justly exercises his episcopal duties. In some versions, Theophilus' violent actions effectively bring the Golden Age of desert monasticism to an end; in others, he has shown proper respect for the desert fathers, whose life of asceticism is subsequently destroyed by bands of barbarian marauders. For some, the desert came to be inextricably connected to violence and trauma, while for others, it became a site of nostalgic recollection. Which of these narratives subsequent generations believed depended in good part on the sources they were reading. In Death of the Desert, Christine Luckritz Marquis offers a fresh examination of this critical juncture in Christian history and brings into dialogue narrative strands that have largely been separated in the scholarly tradition. She takes the violence perpetrated by Theophilus as a turning point for desert monasticism and considers how monks became involved in acts of violence and how that violence came back to haunt them. More broadly, her careful attention to the dynamic relations between memory practices, the rhetorical constructions of place, racialized discourse, and language and deeds of violence speak to us in our own time.

Migrant Deaths in the Arizona Desert addresses the tragic results of government policies on immigration. The book's central question is why are migrants dying on our border? The authors constitute a multidisciplinary group reflecting on the issues of death, migration, and policy.

Bea Rivers' new job at Shandley Gardens seems to be idyllic; a stimulating career at a desert garden full of botanical wonders. But a slow rot has spread within Shandley Gardens as financial woes add stress to the small board of directors, putting Bea's job at risk. When one of the Gardens' founders, Liz Shandley, is killed in what appears to be a tragic accident, the immediate worry is the survival of the Gardens. But then the police determine that Liz was murdered, and suddenly Bea's job is less than idyllic. The tangled web of relationships is almost as confusing as the enigmatic botanical clues someone keeps dropping. Bea struggles to balance her life as a committed single parent dating a struggling writer while she's drawn further into the investigation of Liz's death. As Bea tries to decipher the strange clues to find the murderer, she uncovers deep secrets and surprises among the staff and board that will forever change the Gardens.

True crime stories from THE DALLAS OBSERVER.

Death in a Red Desert, a ground breaking case in animal DNA forensic investigation, was featured on the television network Animal Planet. The manuscript chronicles the unusual triangle between a woman, her lover and his transvestite partner, and the events leading up to the disappearance and murder of Elizabeth Langhorst-Ballard. The authors based the work on depositions, trial transcripts and tapes, and on interviews with the detectives, officials in the district attorney's office, the victim's parents and with Charles Martinez, one of the two convicted murderers. Some of the information, using as a guide court documentation and letters written by the other defendant Chris Faviell, is related in a conversational manner to enhance the flow of the story. Names of a few minor figures were changed. Many of the events and the trials are viewed through the eyes of the lead detective, Wolfgang Born, who was an invaluable resource in writing the account, as was the lead prosecutor Canon Stevens. After Born's dogged search for the victim's body in thousands of square miles of red desert in the Tularosa Basin of Otero County, New Mexico, yielded success, the persistence of the late Jim Biggs, a Ruidoso detective, led to Dr. Joy Halverson, whose DNA work on the case made history and was highlighted on the Animal Witness series in 2008. Canines played key roles in solving the crime from the pit bull pet of one of the killers to desert coyotes and a cadaver dog on his last assignment before retirement.

Experience the sweltering heat of California's Death Valley and learn about the different species of plants and animals that are able to survive on almost no water. Readers will make language arts connections as they practice vocabulary related to desert climates and their characteristics.