Of Things Gone Astray

Mrs Featherby had been having pleasant dreams until she woke to discover the front of her house had vanished overnight ...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Room comes a moving set of historical stories spanning centuries and continents. ​ The fascinating characters that roam across the pages of Emma Donoghue's stories have all gone astray: they are emigrants, runaways, drifters, lovers old and new. They are gold miners and counterfeiters, attorneys and slaves. They cross other borders too: those of race, law, sex, and sanity. They travel for love or money, incognito or under duress. With rich historical detail, the celebrated author of Room takes us from puritan Massachusetts to revolutionary New Jersey, antebellum Louisiana to the Toronto highway, lighting up four centuries of wanderings that have profound echoes in the present. Astray offers us a surprising and moving history for restless times.

"Most of these essays were originally published in Legs get led astray (Future Tense Books, 2012). "Silence," "Mirrors," "Major dramatic question," and "Your adventures change" are new to this edition"--Title page verso.

Welcome to the deeper dimensions of interfaith dialogue--exploring that which divides us personally, spiritually and institutionally. "We believe that interfaith dialogue holds the key to a healing that calls us back to purpose and to meaning. We have risked confronting aspects of our traditions usually hidden, and the consequences have been deeply life-affirming. We risk becoming vulnerable as we share awkward and even unacceptable texts and interpretations, but it is this very vulnerability that allows our dialogue to move forward." --from the Introduction Expanding on the conversation started with their very successful first book, the Interfaith Amigos--a pastor, a rabbi and an imam--probe more deeply into the problem aspects of our religious institutions to provide a profound understanding of the nature of what divides us. They identify four common problem areas in the Abrahamic faiths: Exclusivity Staking Claim to a One and Only Truth Violence Justifying Brutality in the Name of Faith Inequality of Men and Women The Patriarchal Stranglehold on Power Homophobia A Denial of Legitimacy They explore the origins of these issues and the ways critics use these beliefs as divisive weapons. And they present ways we can use these vulnerabilities to open doors for the collaboration required to address our common issues, more profound personal relationships, and true interfaith healing.

A haunting, provocative novel, You Feel It Just Below the Ribs is a fictional autobiography in an alternate twentieth century that chronicles one woman’s unusual life, including the price she pays to survive and the cost her choices hold for the society she is trying to save. Born at the end of the old world, Miriam grows up during The Great Reckoning, a sprawling, decades-long war that nearly decimates humanity and strips her of friends and family. Devastated by grief and loneliness, she emotionally exiles herself, avoiding relationships or allegiances, and throws herself into her work—disengagement that serves her when the war finally ends, and The New Society arises. To ensure a lasting peace, The New Society forbids anything that may cause tribal loyalties, including traditional families. Suddenly, everyone must live as Miriam has chosen to—disconnected and unattached. A researcher at heart, Miriam becomes involved in implementing this detachment process. She does not know it is the beginning of a darkly sinister program that will transform this new world and the lives of everyone in it. Eventually, the harmful effects of her research become too much for Miriam, and she devises a secret plan to destroy the system from within, endangering her own life. But is her “confession” honest—or is it a fabrication riddled with lies meant to conceal the truth? A jarring and uncanny tale of loss, trauma, and the power of human connection and deception, You Feel It Just Below the Ribs is a portrait of a disturbing alternate world eerily within reach, and an examination of the difficult choices we must make to survive in it.

Championing Science shows scientists how to persuasively communicate complex scientific ideas to decision makers in government, industry, and education. This comprehensive guide provides real-world strategies to help scientists develop the essential communication, influence, and relationship-building skills needed to motivate nonexperts to understand and support their science. Instruction, interviews, and examples demonstrate how inspiring decision makers to act requires scientists to extract the essence of their work, craft clear messages, simplify visuals, bridge paradigm gaps, and tell compelling narratives. The authors bring these principles to life in the accounts of science champions such as Robert Millikan, Vannevar Bush, scientists at Caltech and MIT, and others. With Championing Science, scientists will learn how to use these vital skills to make an impact.

Four old friends confront their darkest secrets in this fantasy steeped in nostalgia, folklore, religion, and the seductive landscape of Southern Italy—by the Italian Neil Gaiman. “A tale of adventure, mystery, friendship and heart-wrenching beauty that will make you re-examine what is holy, what is true, and what is beyond the realm of possibility.” —BookPage Four old school friends have a pact: to meet up every year in the small town in Puglia they grew up in. Art, the charismatic leader of the group and creator of the pact, insists that the agreement must remain unshakable and enduring. But this year, he never shows up. A visit to his house increases the friends’ worry: Art is farming marijuana. In Southern Italy doing that kind of thing can be very dangerous. They can’t go to the Carabinieri so must make enquiries of their own. This is how they come across the rumors about Art—bizarre and unbelievable rumors that he miraculously cured the local mafia boss’ daughter of terminal leukemia. And among the chaos of his house, they find a document written by Art, “The Book of Hidden Things”, that promises to reveal dark secrets and wonders beyond anything previously known. Set in the beguiling and seductive world of Southern Italy, Francesco Dimitri’s first novel in English is a story friendship, landscape, love, betrayal, and mystery that will entrance fans of Elena Ferrante, Neil Gaiman, and Donna Tartt.

Disquieting new work from the winner of the 2001 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. Absence and trespass permeate these poems, in which what has just occurred--or what is about to--is as palpable and ominous as it is unrevealed. In Kate Northrop's finely-wrought verse, children have gone missing, sealed-off passages are discovered, and missing dogs emerge like visions before bounding off again. Northrop has a sixth sense for where the mundane and the uncanny pass too close for comfort--and no place more so than in the book's haunted centerpiece, a visceral rendering of a sixteenth-century Hungarian countess with certain insatiable appetites. Gorgeous and strange, Things Are Disappearing Here is an imaginative tour-de-force.

In this "provocative" book (New York Times), a contrarian physicist argues that her field's modern obsession with beauty has given us wonderful math but bad science. Whether pondering black holes or predicting discoveries at CERN, physicists believe the best theories are beautiful, natural, and elegant, and this standard separates popular theories from disposable ones. This is why, Sabine Hossenfelder argues, we have not seen a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics for more than four decades. The belief in beauty has become so dogmatic that it now conflicts with scientific objectivity: observation has been unable to confirm mindboggling theories, like supersymmetry or grand unification, invented by physicists based on aesthetic criteria. Worse, these "too good to not be true" theories are actually untestable and they have left the field in a cul-de-sac. To escape, physicists must rethink their methods. Only by embracing reality as it is can science discover the truth.

Father Ted Caldwell, Rector of St. Christopher's, an inner-city parish in Connecticut, has helped his parishioners by investigating many problems they have experienced. But when Sandra Mahoney, a woman with whom he has gone through previous clashes, asks him to search for her missing daughter, Rachel, he is reluctant to take on the project. Rachel, a massage therapist, disappeared three months earlier after a bizarre murder of one of her clients. Police have reached a dead-end in the case, and Father Ted does not feel he can shed any light on Rachel's whereabouts. However, the compassion he feels for Ms. Mahoney, who is agonizing over the disappearance of her child, slowly draws him into the situation. The police lieutenant investigating the homicide shares inside information with the priest, and with the involvement of his aunt Kate, Father Ted enters into a full-blown investigation. Father Ted finds himself involved in a series of frightening events, culminating in a tragedy that brings his efforts to an end. However, after receiving more important information, he reluctantly resumes his investigation. Circumstances spiral out of control with explosive results, revealing the truth behind Rachel's disappearance and her client's murder.