For over 300 years, Banyan has taught and protected the mysteries of the forest. It is Banyan who keeps the mystery of why the leaves change color; why the trees shed their cover and stand naked against the sky; and why the willow weeps. It is Banyan and the other Keepers that protect the mysteries that lie between the realms in a tiny kingdom at the bottom of Grashot Forest. But, most of all, it is a story of a mystical being who sets out on a spirit quest hoping to find the spell caster, Shanador, who can help him save his kingdom.

Engage in the life stories of fourteen people whose lives have been shaped by trees—featuring the true stories of a tree doctor, big tree hunter Will Blozan, Plant Amnesty’s pruner, and ninety-four-year-old logger Merve Wilkinson. Also interviewed is Vietnam veteran Bud Pearson, whose post-traumatic stress disorder found healing and acceptance as a wood carver in the wilds of Montana, as well as Andy Lipkis, founder of TreePeople, who has spent thirty-five years ripping up concrete in L.A. to plant over two million trees in an effort to stop flooding and reduce air pollution. Each tree keeper reveals the inspiration and organization behind their advocacy with detailed explanations and touching stories of how their lives have come to be shaped by the forests they are fighting to preserve. Keepers of the Trees includes stories from all over North America, including Vancouver, Chicago, L.A., and Montana. This book includes one hundred color photographs of the tree keepers in action as well as diagrams illustrating the keepers’ work. These are inspirational stories of conservation, healing, passion, and advocacy for any classroom, conservationist, activist, and nature lover.

The Keeper of the Trees is an epic tale that chronicles the adventures, adversities, and longings of three generations of Monarchs who ruled mythical Oxymora, a primeval world doomed to cataclysmic destruction by collision with a passing star. Facing the inevitability of apocalyptic demise, humankind grapples with its search for purpose, meaning, and direction amid aimlessness, chaos, and despair. It is only the prophecy of The Keeper of the Trees that lures each generation to strive for a higher purpose than the last.As the saga unfolds, each of the three central characters struggles to resolve the eternal conflict between reason and passion and, in so doing, each faces hardships, misfortunes, and calamities that exemplify humankind's duplicity. Greed clouds judgment, lust dominates reason, and pride overshadows humility as they endure love and abandonment, peace and war, trust and betrayal. In fulfilling the prophecy of The Keeper of the Trees, the unexpected paradoxes of success through failure, power through surrender, victory through defeat, and love through letting go, illustrate that it matters not how a truth is discovered, it is more valuable than knowledge or wisdom or goodness, and that each moment of truth holds its own purpose and its own eternity.

A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK Winner of the 2022 BookTube Silver Medal in Fiction * Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction "A wise novel of love and grief, roots and branches, displacement and home, faith and belief. Balm for our bruised times." -David Mitchell, author of Utopia Avenue A rich, magical new novel on belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he's searching for lost love. Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited--- her only connection to her family's troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world. A moving, beautifully written, and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history, and eco-consciousness, The Island of Missing Trees is Elif Shafak's best work yet.

Funny, thoughtful, and deeply moving—with a unique blend of fantasy and actual science—this novel explores both personal grief in the face of family loss and collective grief in the face of climate crisis, and how the only way to move forward is through friendship of all kinds. In Shajarpur, everyone is always happy. The weather is always perfect. But newcomer Savi, a lonely teenager, doesn’t know what happiness means anymore. If she were to make a list of things that were the absolute worst, moving to Shajarpur would be right on top. Well, right after missing her father, who just died of a heart attack. As Savi grapples with loss in a strange new town, she discovers something startling. Not only can she communicate with her father’s plants—all forty-two of them—she can talk to the giant ficus tree behind her school. Savi soon learns that Tree (as they are known) knew her father as well and that their friendship was at the heart of a magical network of animals and plants working together to protect Shajarpur. However, Tree is in danger, along with everything else, and needs Savi’s help. As she joins with all kinds of living things to save the town, Savi is shocked to find she is happy again, even if forces of nature are beyond her control.