More Miracle Than Bird

For fans of Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife and Amor Towles’s Rules of Civility, Alice Miller's sweeping debut novel charts the love story of two of literature’s most fascinating characters: Georgie Hyde-Lees and her husband, W. B. Yeats. On the eve of World War I, twenty-one-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees—on her own for the first time—is introduced to the acclaimed poet W. B. Yeats at a soirée in London. Although Yeats is famously eccentric and many years her senior, Georgie is drawn to him, and when he extends a cryptic invitation to a secret society, her life is forever changed. A shadow falls over London as zeppelins stalk overhead and bombs bloom against the skyline. Amidst the chaos, Georgie finds purpose tending to injured soldiers in a makeshift hospital, befriending the wounded and heartbroken Lieutenant Pike, who might need more from her than she is able to give. At night, she escapes with Yeats into a darker world, becoming immersed in the Order, a clandestine society where ritual, magic, and the conjuring of spirits is practiced and pursued. As forces—both of this world and the next—pull Yeats and Georgie closer together and then apart, Georgie uncovers a secret that threatens to undo it all. In bright, commanding prose, debut author Alice Miller illuminates the fascinating and unforgettable courtship of Georgie Hyde-Lees and W. B. Yeats. A sweeping tale of faith and love, lost and found and fought for, More Miracle than Bird ingeniously captures the moments—both large and small—on which the fates of whole lives and countries hinge.

On the eve of World War I, twenty-one-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees--on her own for the first time--is introduced to the acclaimed poet W. B. Yeats at a soirée in London. Although Yeats is famously eccentric and many years her senior, Georgie is drawn to him, and when he extends a cryptic invitation to a secret society, her life is forever changed. A shadow falls over London as zeppelins stalk overhead and bombs bloom against the skyline. Amidst the chaos, Georgie finds purpose tending to injured soldiers in a makeshift hospital, befriending the wounded and heartbroken Lieutenant Pike, who might need more from her than she is able to give. At night, she escapes with Yeats into a darker world, becoming immersed in the Order, a clandestine society where ritual, magic, and the conjuring of spirits is practiced and pursued. As forces?both of this world and the next?pull Yeats and Georgie closer together and then apart, Georgie uncovers a secret that threatens to undo it all. In bright, commanding prose, debut author Alice Miller illuminates the fascinating and unforgettable courtship of Georgie Hyde-Lees and W. B. Yeats. A sweeping tale of faith and love, lost and found and fought for, More Miracle than Bird ingeniously captures the moments?both large and small?on which the fates of whole lives and countries hinge.

Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told. In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers, and even art historians, Hanson asks: What are feathers? How did they evolve? What do they mean to us? Engineers call feathers the most efficient insulating material ever discovered, and they are at the root of biology's most enduring debate. They silence the flight of owls and keep penguins dry below the ice. They have decorated queens, jesters, and priests. And they have inked documents from the Constitution to the novels of Jane Austen. Feathers is a captivating and beautiful exploration of this most enchanting object.

Scared, abused and taken to the limit of a person's capacity to endure tragedy, Elizabeth "Liz" Huntley reveals the perils of a childhood that would lead most to a broken life or premature death. Liz, now a successful attorney at a prestigious southern law firm, recounts her journey from unimaginable darkness to radiance thanks to the early intervention of teachers, a pastor and caring people, strategically placed in her life by God. Decidedly unembellished, inherently poignant, More Than a Bird gives a glimpse of horror yet leaves only hope. Through her life story, Liz proves that on the wings of God, there is no height she cannot reach.

The “gripping... page-turner” (Time) hitting all the best of summer reading lists, Miracle Creek is perfect for book clubs and fans of Liane Moriarty and Celeste Ng How far will you go to protect your family? Will you keep their secrets? Ignore their lies? In a small town in Virginia, a group of people know each other because they’re part of a special treatment center, a hyperbaric chamber that may cure a range of conditions from infertility to autism. But then the chamber explodes, two people die, and it’s clear the explosion wasn’t an accident. A powerful showdown unfolds as the story moves across characters who are all maybe keeping secrets, hiding betrayals. Chapter by chapter, we shift alliances and gather evidence: Was it the careless mother of a patient? Was it the owners, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? Could it have been a protester, trying to prove the treatment isn’t safe? “A stunning debut about parents, children and the unwavering hope of a better life, even when all hope seems lost" (Washington Post), Miracle Creek uncovers the worst prejudice and best intentions, tense rivalries and the challenges of parenting a child with special needs. It’s “a quick-paced murder mystery that plumbs the power and perils of community” (O Magazine) as it carefully pieces together the tense atmosphere of a courtroom drama and the complexities of life as an immigrant family. Drawing on the author’s own experiences as a Korean-American, former trial lawyer, and mother of a “miracle submarine” patient, this is a novel steeped in suspense and igniting discussion. Recommended by Erin Morgenstern, Jean Kwok, Jennifer Weiner, Scott Turow, Laura Lippman, and more-- Miracle Creek is a brave, moving debut from an unforgettable new voice.

A big-hearted story of a family filled with secrets, and the ways they grow up—and apart—over the course of a single, life-altering summer. In a small country town during one long, hot summer, the Bloom family is beginning to unravel. Martha is straining against the confines of her life, lost in regret for what might have been, when an old flame shows up. In turn, her husband Mike becomes frustrated with his increasingly distant wife. Marital secrets, new and long-hidden, start to surface—with devastating effect. And while teenagers Tilly and Ben are about to step out into the world, nine-year-old Ada is holding onto a childhood that might soon be lost to her. When Ada discovers an abandoned well beneath a rusting windmill, she is drawn to its darkness and danger. And when she witnesses a shocking and confusing event, the well’s foreboding looms large in her mind—a driving force, pushing the family to the brink of tragedy. For each family member, it’s a summer of searching—in books and trees, at parties, in relationships new and old—for the answer to one of life’s most difficult questions: how to grow up? The Last Summer of Ada Bloom is an honest and tender accounting of what it means to come of age as a teen, or as an adult. With a keen eye for summer’s languor and danger, and a sharp ear for the wonder, doubt, and longing in each of her characters’ voices, Martine Murray has written a beguiling story about the fragility of family relationships, about the secrets we keep, the power they hold to shape our lives, and about the power of love to somehow hold it all together.

Is nowhere a place we can get closer to? In her compelling second collection, Alice Miller tackles the circularity of thought, the company of the dead, and the lure of alternative futures. These poems rip into pockets of histories, trying to change facts and voices, searching for the word's version of music's home key. They dare you to visit, through a series of cities, the futures we never let happen.

"Like all my favorite art, these paintings bring out that covetous feeling. I want to wear them, dance to them, show them off as an example of how life feels to me: dirty, dumb, terrifying, spiritual, and so funny."—Miranda July "In a time of ironic detachment, Margaux Williamson is a painter of extreme candor, but the violence of her vision is cut with wonder and love. Sometimes she recalls Phillip Guston, sometimes she's like a Pittsburgh-born van Gogh; usually she reminds me of nobody at all. Seeing as she sees feels like waking up."—Ben Lerner From the artist the Toronto Star called "one of the best artists of her generation," and whose 2010 movie Teenager Hamlet was praised by the likes of James Franco and William Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt, comes a breakthrough work for a world where the image of a painting on one's desktop is as real as the painting hanging in the gallery. Margaux Williamson has conceived of a place that never existed, called The Road at the Top of the World Museum, located in the far north, and populated it with her most accomplished paintings yet. With essays by Chris Kraus, Leanne Shapton, David Balzer, and Mark Greif, and reproductions of eighty paintings, this, her first book, transcends the boundary between the authentic and the imaginary, and collapses the distinction between art show, museum catalog, and document of something astonishing that never was. Margaux Williamson was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and lives in Toronto, Ontario. She's co-author of the cultural criticism website Back to the World.

As in her former books, Alice Miller again focusses on facts. She is as determined as ever to cut through the veil that, for thousands of years now, has been so meticulously woven to shroud the truth. And when she lifts that veil and brushes it aside, the results are astonishing, as is amply demonstrated by her analyses of the works of Nietzsche, Picasso, Kollwitz, Keaton and others. With the key shunned by so many for so long - childhood - she opens rusty looks and offers her readers a wealth of unexpected perspectives.What did Picasso express in "Guernica"? Why did Buster Keaton never smile? Why did Nietzsche heap so much opprobrium on women and religion, and lose his mind for eleven years? Why did Hitler and Stalin become tyrannical mass murderers? Alice Miller investigates these and other questions thoroughly in this book. She draws from her discoveries the conclusion that human beings are not "innately" destructive, that they are made that way by ignorance, abuse, and neglect, particularly if no sympathetic witness comes to their aid. She also shows why some mistreated children do not become criminals but instead bear witness as artists to the truth about their childhoods, even though in purely intuitive and unconscious ways.

Presents a compilation of methods that can be used to assay population size, demographics, & status of virtually all species of landbirds in a wide variety of habitats. Suggests priorities for selecting a monitoring method & determining station location. Presents general tasks that determine which species can be monitored, & methods of establishing & maintaining a study plot, journal keeping, & training of personnel. Describes two demographic methods & four types of censuses for determining population size & trends. Methods are suggested for measuring habitat, recording weather, & color banding. Illustrated.

A story inspired by the marriage between Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh traces the romance between a handsome young aviator and a shy ambassador's daughter whose relationship is marked by wild international acclaim, history-making flights and the world-shocking abduction of their child. 30,000 first printing.

"Medieval English Nunneries" from Eileen Power. British economic historian and medievalist (1889-1940).

A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 at The Verge, Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, and more. For readers of Station Eleven and Exit West, Famous Men Who Never Lived explores the effects of displacement on our identities, the communities that come together through circumstance, and the power of art to save us. Wherever Hel looks, New York City is both reassuringly familiar and terribly wrong. As one of the thousands who fled the outbreak of nuclear war in an alternate United States—an alternate timeline—she finds herself living as a refugee in our own not-so-parallel New York. The slang and technology are foreign to her, the politics and art unrecognizable. While others, like her partner Vikram, attempt to assimilate, Hel refuses to reclaim her former career or create a new life. Instead, she obsessively rereads Vikram’s copy of The Pyronauts—a science fiction masterwork in her world that now only exists as a single flimsy paperback—and becomes determined to create a museum dedicated to preserving the remaining artifacts and memories of her vanished culture. But the refugees are unwelcome and Hel’s efforts are met with either indifference or hostility. And when the only copy of The Pyronauts goes missing, Hel must decide how far she is willing to go to recover it and finally face her own anger, guilt, and grief over what she has truly lost.

The latest developments in this groundbreaking therapy approach! More Than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is a ground breaking, intellectually provocative book, revealing new advances in the widely used, evidence based Solution-focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) approach. The final work of world renowned family therapists and original developers of SFBT, the late Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg (who passed away shortly before the book’s release) this definitive resource provides the most up-to-date information available on this eminently practical, internationally acclaimed approach. New revelations about the impact of language in therapeutic change are presented precisely and clearly, illustrated with real life case examples that give readers a “hands-on” view of the newest technical refinements in the SF approach. Challenging questions about the applications of SFBT to complex problems in “difficult” settings are given thoughtful, detailed answers. The book’s unique design allows the reader to “listen in” on the lively discussions that took place as the authors watched therapy sessions. The solution-focused brief therapy approach is based upon researchers observing thousands of hours of psychotherapy sessions and studying which questions and responses were most effective in helping people develop solutions to their problems. More Than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is the most up-to-date, comprehensive review of this approach. This book discusses the latest developments in the fields of family therapy, brief therapy, and psychotherapy training and practice. A succinct overview orients the reader to the current state of SFBT, and provides three real life case transcripts that vividly illustrate the practical applications of SFBT techniques. The seminar format of More Than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy allows readers to: sit in on surprising psychotherapy sessions eavesdrop on the authors’ commentary about the sessions get a comprehensive overview on the current state of SFBT review and understand the major tenets of SFBT learn specific interventions, including the miracle question and the reasons for asking it understand treatment applicability read actual session transcripts understand the “miracle scale” get insight into the unique relationship between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and SFBT better understand SFBT and emotions examine misconceptions about SFBT and more More Than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is illuminating reading for psychotherapists, counselors, human services personnel, health care workers, and teachers.

Twins Justine and Perry have left their home in Australia and embarked on the road trip of a lifetime in the Pacific Northwest. It's been a year since their dad lost his battle with cancer and Justine became the sole caregiver for her autistic brother, Perry. Now Perry has been accepted into an assisted-living residence in their hometown, Brisbane, Australia, but before he takes up residence, they're seeking to create the perfect memory. For Perry, the trip is a glorious celebration of some of his favorite things: Ogopogo, Jackie Chan movies and earthquakes. For Justine, it's an opportunity to learn how to let go—of Perry, of her boyfriend, Marc—and to offer their mother the chance to atone for past wrongs. But the instability that has shaped their lives will not subside, and the seismic event that Perry forewarned threatens to reduce their worlds to rubble...

"I set my mind to write about battles we fight, being on the other side the other side I travel frequently. Must I add, they aren't worthy of hue and cry just times of do or die so I write as I must... profusely When I Speak is an unimpeded poetic escape into the lives, the minds and the dreams of people who live precariously being unbound by the norms of society and religion. The anthology explores the vivid shades of human norm masked under the covers of black and white. "

Reproduction of the original: Waihoura, the Maori Girl by W.H.G Kingston

Rachael, a guardian angel, is assigned to Ben, a war veteran struggling with memories of his past. Her job is complicated by the sudden appearance of Jet, a teenage girl with problems of her own.

Jane’s whole world is overturned at her eighteenth birthday party. She flees from home, disorientated, and finds refuge with Christopher, a stained-glass artist more than forty years her senior who is working on a Resurrection window. As the window takes shape, Jane tries to rebuild her own life, examining the beliefs of all those she meets – chaotic cosy Isobel, whose motherly exterior conceals a girlhood tragedy; wealthy, tormented Adrian, who uses his private chapel as a leisure-centre and sees God as Chairman of the Board; Hadley, who believes in melting down stained class to make soup for London’s tramps; Christopher himself, selfish and charismatic, the promiscuous philosopher whose art is his religion, and who regards sex as a ‘taste of the immortal’. To escape her own confusion, Jane travels to Chartres, where, surrounded by the glory of thirteenth-centry glass, she has an extraordinary experience which leads on to her ‘rebirth’ back at home, and to another, longer journey in search of her true self. In this powerful new novel, Perriam examines adult values through the eyes of a young girl, who comes to realise the necessity of lying in a world built on deception, where violence is a fact of life, and sex is far removed from both the romance of Hollywood and the frisky coupling of the sex-manuals. Bird Inside is a novel as brilliant, as inspiring, as the stained glass which forms its subject. Whilst investigating the themes of darkness and enlightenment, it is still as humorous and sensual as Wendy Perriam’s readers have come to expect. ‘A magnificently orchestrated orgy in which her potent blend of sex, religion and humour takes the reader on a spiritual odyssey from the sold rocks of safety to the wilder shores of fantasy.’ Time Out

HEAVEN AND EARTH COLLIDE. HOLY. HELL.When 18-year-old Lindsey Foster and her mother unexpectedly inherit a beautiful Antebellum home in South Carolina, they think it will be an adventure, a new start.But the house has a dark past. When Lindsey uses a Gullah ritual board to contact the spirit playing tricks on her, something vicious is unleashed. What once seemed harmless is now malevolent and hell-bent on revenge.Tensions mount when Eli, a handsome and mysterious seminarian, moves into the guest room for the summer. The draw to him is immediate. And forbidden.As she fights her feelings for the young priest-in-training, Lindsey unravels the violent history of the house. With the help of paranormal Investigators and Eli's brotherhood, she must find a way to end the haunting... Without damning both she and Eli to a hell greater than they ever imagined.