Alarmed by her father's unexplained disappearance, Julia Castro travels from California to her family's ancestral home in the Azores to find the islands abuzz with tales of ghost ships, seductive sirens, and witchcraft. The mystery deepens when a drowned man's body is discovered on a mountainside and an unknown island emerges from the sea. While she is on the hunt for her father, Julia succumbs to the bewitching allure of the islands--and to Nicolau, a fellow musician. History, legend, poetry, and myth are seamlessly interwoven as the novel explores relationships between personal and cultural identity, fate and self-determination, reality and illusion. This revised edition of The Undiscovered Island features a new introduction from Katherine Vaz.

In The Un-Discovered Islands, critically acclaimed author Malachy Tallack takes the reader on fascinating adventures to the mysterious and forgotten corners of the map. Be prepared to be captivated by the astounding tales of two dozen islands once believed to be real but no longer on the map. These are the products of the imagination, deception, and human error: an archipelago of ex-islands and forgotten lands. From the well-known story of Atlantis and the mysteries of frozen Thule to more obscure tales from around the globe, and from ancient history right up to the present day, this is an atlas of legend and wonder, with glorious illustrations by Katie Scott.

Winner of the 2010 IPPY Independent Publisher's Award for Multicultural Fiction Adult

Oxford Textual Perspectives is a series of informative and provocative studies focused upon literary texts (conceived of in the broadest sense of that term) and the technologies, cultures, and communities that produce, inform, and receive them. It provides fresh interpretations of fundamental works and of the vital and challenging issues emerging in English literary studies. By engaging with the materiality of the literary text, its production, and reception history, and frequently testing and exploring the boundaries of the notion of text itself, the volumes in the series question familiar frameworks and provide innovative interpretations of both canonical and less well-known works. The Aesthetics of Island Space discusses islands as central figures in the modern experience of space. It examines the spatial poetics of islands in literary texts, from Shakespeare's The Tempest to Ghosh's The Hungry Tide, in the journals of explorers and scientists such as James Cook and Charles Darwin, and in Hollywood cinema. It traces the ways in which literary and cinematic islands have functioned as malleable spatial figures that offer vivid perceptual experiences as well as a geopoetic oscillation between the material energies of words and images and the energies of the physical world. The chapters focus on America's island gateways (Roanoke and Ellis Island), visions of tropical islands (Tahiti and imagined South Sea islands), the islands of the US-Canadian border region in the Pacific Northwest, and the imaginative appeal of mutable islands. It argues that modern voyages of discovery posed considerable perceptual and cognitive challenges to the experience of space, and that these challenges were negotiated in complex and contradictory ways via poetic engagement with islands. Discussions of island narratives in postcolonial theory have broadened understanding of how islands have been imagined as geometrical abstractions, bounded spaces easily subjected to the colonial gaze. There is, however, a second story of islands in the Western imagination which runs parallel to this colonial story. In this alternative account, the modern experience of islands in the age of discovery went hand in hand with a disintegration of received models of understanding global space. Drawing on and rethinking (post-)phenomenological, geocritical, and geopoetic theories, The Aesthetics of Island Space argues that the modern experience of islands as mobile and shifting territories implied a dispersal, fragmentation, and diversification of spatial experience, and it explores how this disruption is registered and negotiated by both non-fictional and fictional responses.

With its treasure-filled ancient sites, folklore and island flora, the Greek Islands are the jewel in Greece's crown. Be inspired by the new edition of Insight Guide Greek Islands, a detailed full-colour guide to this fascinating region. Insight Guides' unrivaled coverage of history and culture provides an essential introduction to what makes the Greek Isles unique, including its people and identities as well as its sailing scene. Consult the Best of Greek Islands selection for an at-a-glance guide to the region's most evocative attractions, such as the improbably perched Panagia Hozoviotissa Monastery and the eminently strollable Corfu Old Town, and the editor's choice of recommendations for the best museums and hikes, amongst others. Descriptive accounts of where to go in the Greek Islands, from the impressive Place of Knossos, the centre of Europe's first civilisation, to the exquisite beaches on Levkada and Crete, are enhanced by beautiful photographs, while all major sights are cross-referenced with full-colour maps. The travel tips section provides a wealth of information on how to plan your trip, plus our selection of the best hotels.

Forget about rockets to Mars – the future of space science lies with the search for exoplanets Twenty years ago, the search for planets outside the Solar System was the preserve of science-fiction writers. Now it's one of the fastest-growing fields in astronomy, with thousands of exoplanets discovered to date, and the number rising fast. These new-found worlds are more alien than anything in fiction. Planets larger than Jupiter with years lasting a week; others with two suns lighting their skies, or with no sun at all. Planets with diamond mantles supporting oceans of tar; possible Earth-sized worlds with split hemispheres of perpetual day and night; waterworlds drowning under global oceans and volcanic lava planets awash with seas of magma. The discovery of this diversity is just the beginning. There is a whole galaxy of possibilities. The Planet Factory tells the story of these exoplanets. What can we learn about these faraway surface environments and planetary atmospheres? And do the results hint at the tantalising possibility of alien life?