In the Willapa Hills of southwest Washington, both the human community and the forest community are threatened with extinction. Virtually every acre of the hills has been logged, often repeatedly, in the past hundred years, endangering both the land and the people, leaving dying towns as well as a devastated ecosystem. Weaving vivid portraits of the place and its inhabitants—animal, plant, and human—with the story of his own love affair with the hills, Robert Michael Pyle has written a book so even–handed in its passion that it has been celebrated by those who make their living with a chain saw as well as by environmentalists. As he writes, 'My sympathies lie with the people and the woods, but not with the companies that have used them both with equal disregard. In his vivid portrayal of the land, plants, people and animals of the Willapa Hills of Washington State, Bob Pyle makes the modest patch of land he writes about a metaphor for the world.

The author recounts his experiences observing the land, animals, plants, and people of the Willapa Hills region of Washington State

DIVDIVFollowing her acclaimed memoirs Against the Stream and Out of Passau, Anna Rosmus revisits the crimes perpetrated in her German hometown during the Second World War/divDIV Passau, a small Bavarian city situated along the border with Austria, had gone decades without acknowledging the roles—however small or large—its citizenry played in the atrocities of World War II. When Anna Rosmus attempted to rectify this oversight, she was met with praise from everywhere but Passau itself, where threats and vitriol from the local population eventually led her to emigrate from Germany to the United States. In Wintergreen, Rosmus writes of the prisoners of war and forced laborers, the Jews and other Eastern Europeans who lost their lives in Passau to the Nazi regime, and whose graves were hastily consigned to the cheapest plot of land in town./divDIV Deftly researched and powerfully written, Wintergreen is a tragic history of the atrocities committed in and around Passau, a searing rebuke of those who seek to suppress them, and a moving tribute to the victims of the Holocaust and the importance of keeping their memory alive./div/div

A retired detective reluctantly helps a friend investigate a homicideBill O'Shea is living the dream. After a career of fighting crime in the big city, Bill buys a condo in the bucolic mountain resort community of Wintergreen, Virginia. When he meets his attractive new neighbor, Bill knows his retirement is off to a great start.But then a local pedestrian is killed in a hit-and-run accident, and the short-staffed community police department asks Bill to help out. With no witnesses and no vehicle, it's going to be a real challenge. Plus, the snooty groundhog and irrepressible bear are certainly no help. When a break in the case proves a connection between the car and the victim, Bill goes from no suspects to too many.Is it the victim's wife--whose husband cheated on her for many years--or the betrayed business partner? Maybe it's the victim's mistress or the friend who loaned him money. It could even be a random hiker passing through on the nearby Appalachian Trail.Join Bill O'Shea as he tries to solve this murder while dodging zany wildlife and courting a new love interest in the beautiful mountaintop resort of Wintergreen, Virginia.

Nobel Prize in Literature, 1974 Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation Harry Martinson (1904-78) sailed the oceans from 1920 to 1927 as an escape from an unhappy childhood in rural southwest Sweden. Returning to his native tracts, he devoted himself to writing and eventually became one of the best-known authors of his time, his books appealing widely both to academics and to the general reader. His election to the Swedish Academy in 1949 was seen as a gesture towards a generation of more or less self-educated working-class writers, and he shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Literature with novelist Eyvind Johnson. Sections of the Swedish press responded with such vehemence to the way Academicians had rewarded two of their own that Martinson vowed never to publish again, and his last years were darkened by despair and depression as his view of the world became bleaker. His books reflect his upbringing, his travels and his interest in science and social questions. His poetry has many strands but the one most often admired is that which combines close scrutiny of the small events of the natural world with an intense awareness of cosmic distances in time and space. While his prose books have reached a wide readership in several languages, Martinson's poems have appeared only sporadically in English. Robin Fulton's translations provide the first substantial selection of Harry Martinson's poetry for English-language readers. His edition has an introductory essay by Staffan Söderblom.

First-ever revision of a classic guidebook. Essential information on each plant's characteristics, distribution, and edibility as well as updated taxonomy and 18 new species. How to find, prepare, and eat plants growing in the wild.