Sisterhood is difficult for Su and Emerald. Su leads a sheltered, moneyed life as the picture-perfect wife of a conservative politician in Singapore. Emerald is a nihilistic sugar baby in New York, living from whim to whim and using her charms to make ends meet. But they share a secret: once, they were snakes, basking under a full moon in Tang dynasty China. A thousand years later, their mysterious history is the only thing still binding them together.

Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She's always felt there was something more out there. She still believes in the old stories. Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he's been cast from home. He's found a new one on the banks of the bottomless lake. Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists. But a catastrophic event on Earth, and a strange sickness that befalls Oli's best friend, will drive their worlds together in ways they haven't been in centuries.

When Prince Xian was a boy, a white snake bit his mother and condemned her to a slow, painful death. The only known cure is an elusive spirit pearl—or an antidote created from the rare white snake itself. Desperate and determined, Xian travels to the city of Changle, where an oracle predicted he would find and capture a white snake.

Budapest, autumn 1943. After four years of war, Hungary was firmly allied with Nazi Germany. Budapest swirled with intrigue and betrayal, home to spies and agents of every kind. But the city remained an oasis in the midst of conflict where Allied POWs and Polish and Jewish refugees found sanctuary. All that came to an end in March 1944 when the Nazis invaded. By the summer Allied bombers were pounding Budapest’s grand boulevards and historic squares.

In The Ocean’s Menagerie, world-renowned marine ecologist Dr. Drew Harvell takes us diving from Hawaii to the Salish Sea, from St. Croix to Indonesia, to uncover the incredible underwater “superpowers” of spineless creatures: we meet corals many times stronger than steel or concrete, sponges who create potent chemical compounds to fight off disease, and sea stars who garden the coastlines, keeping all the other nearby species in perfect balance.

Our ability to find meaning in things is one of the most important aspects of human life. But it is also one of the most mysterious. Where does meaning come from? What sorts of things have meaning? And how do we grasp the meaning others want to convey? Meaning: A Very Short Introduction is shaped by exploring possible answers to these questions.

Prophecies that the dollar will lose its status as the world's dominant currency have echoed for decades—and are increasing in volume. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts claim that Bitcoin or other blockchain-based monetary units will replace the dollar. Foreign policy hawks warn that China's renminbi poses a lethal threat to the greenback. And sound money zealots predict that mounting US debt and inflation will surely erode the dollar's value to the point of irrelevancy.

Consider a world without weather prediction. How would we know when to evacuate communities ahead of fires or floods, or figure out what to wear tomorrow? Until 40 years ago, we couldn’t forecast weather conditions beyond ten days. Renowned climate scientist Dr. Jagadish Shukla is largely to thank for modern weather forecasting. Born in rural India with no electricity, plumbing, or formal schools, he attended classes that were held in a cow shed. Shukla grew up amid turmoil: overwhelming monsoons, devastating droughts, and unpredictable crop yields.

A remedy to climate anxiety by one of the most important voices on humanity’s relationship with the Earth, Hope Dies Last fills a crucial gap in the global conversation: Having reached a point of no return in our climate confrontation, how do we feel, behave, act, plan, and dream as we approach a future decidedly different from what we had expected?

Dr. Hugh Meyer believed he had created the ultimate miracle. Using the DNA of ancient creatures preserved in the Arctic, he had genetically engineered one of the most remarkable species of sea creature to ever exist: the Serpent Eel. Believed to possess the cure for countless diseases, the creature holds great promise for the medical community. All goes awry when the beast escapes containment. With a rapid growth rate and remarkable physical evolution, the beast travels to the coastal town of Spiral Bay. There, the creature designed to save human life instead starts taking it.

From the bestselling author of Why We Swim comes a mind-expanding exploration of muscle—from our ancient obsession with the ideal human form to the modern science of this amazing and adaptable tissue—that will change the way you think about what moves us through the world.

Dill has had to wrestle with vipers his whole life - at home, as the only son of a Pentecostal minister who urges him to handle poisonous rattlesnakes, and at school, where he faces down bullies who target him for his father’s extreme faith and very public fall from grace. He and his fellow outcast friends must try to make it through their senior year of high school without letting the small-town culture destroy their creative spirits and sense of self. Graduation will lead to new beginnings for Lydia, whose edgy fashion blog is her ticket out of their rural Tennessee town.

Polly has set up a pets' holiday home for the summer and with a house full of greedy guinea pigs, pesky parrots and slithering snakes, Mum is getting more fed up by the day! Especially when Doris the snake goes missing! Can Polly find Doris before the snake finds the guinea pigs?

What is a good life? And how can we create that life in a world filled with uncertainty? Beyond Stoicism invites you to find your own answers to these big questions with help from thirteen of the most prominent Greco-Roman philosophers―many of whom inspired, or were inspired by, the Stoics.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, the first comprehensive history of the Western Hemisphere, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both.