Flower Science

In this beautiful and empowering book, Jennifer Jewell - host of public radio's award-winning program and podcast Cultivating Place - introduces 75 inspiring women. Working in wide-reaching fields that include botany, floral design, landscape architecture, farming, herbalism, and food justice, these influencers are creating change from the ground up.

In a world fraught with patriarchal norms and expectations, feminism isn't just a word it's a journey, a struggle, and a reclaiming of identity. Dr. Mica Vidal-Taylor, a renowned psychotherapist and neuropharmacologist, takes you on a profound exploration of feminism in "It's Time to Buy Your Own Flowers. From the suffragette movement to #MeToo, Dr. Vidal-Taylor delves into the complex tapestry of feminism, examining its historical roots and its present-day manifestations.

When Ulla Tulin took her internship at the Mimirin, the only mystery she thought she'd have to solve was that of her birth parents. After a girl named Eliana gets kidnapped while in her care, Ulla knows she has to find out the truth of who Eliana really is - and the only way to do that means traveling to the Omte capital, the place she suspects her mother is from. Ulla didn’t expect that when she arrived she would discover the identity of a Skojare man who crossed paths with her mother - a man who could very well be her father.

Princess Madalina and her twin sister Inessa were born attached at the hand and separated right after. That’s the only time the sisters ever held hands. The girls’ personalities have been shaped in the Sinet family’s drive to make their kingdom more than it is: unrespectable and loathsome, a damp place where deceit fills the palace walls like mold. Madalina is different from her family. She’s considered the weak one and only finds peace in the garden, tending the flowers, which are pejoratively called grave flowers because they are ideal for tortures and torments.

What do plants eat? Why do some plants have flowers and others don’t? And what’s the tallest plant out there? Ada Twist, Scientist: The Why Files is the perfect nonfiction resource for all these questions and more. Based on the bestselling series and the new Netflix show, this new nonfiction series is perfect for the youngest scientists of tomorrow as they learn along with Ada.

Drawing directly from the actual surviving Icelandic books of magic, Stephen Flowers presents a complete system of magic based on Icelandic lore and magical practices from the 16th century onward. He explores the history of magic in Iceland in pagan and early Christian times and reveals specific practical techniques and ritual templates that readers can adapt to their unique purposes. Illustrating traditional Icelandic magical practices and the Icelanders’ attitudes toward them, he shares original translations of Icelandic folktales.

Why We Fight is a collection of essays written in the midst of the largest resurgence of the far-right in fifty years, and the explosion of antifascist, antiracist, and revolutionary organizing that has risen to fight it. The essays in this audiobook, narrated by Bea Flowers, unpack the moment we live in, confronting the apocalyptic feelings brought on by nationalism, climate collapse, and the crisis of capitalism, but also delivering the clear message that a new world is possible through the struggles communities are leveraging today.

One of the most unique aspects of anarchism as a political philosophy is that it seeks to abolish the state. But what exactly is “the state”? The State is like a vast operating system for ordering and controlling relations among human society, the economy, and the natural world, analogous to a digital operating system. Anyone concerned with entrenched power, income inequality, lack of digital privacy, climate change, the response to COVID-19, or military-style policing will find eye-opening insights into how states operate and build more power for themselves—at our expense.

Spending the night in juvie wasn't the worst thing to happen to seven-year-old Teresa that summer. When her much-anticipated cross-country vacation turns to abduction, Teresa is forced to care for her mother, sister, and twin brothers. Homeless, abused, and afraid in the slums of San Francisco's Tenderloin District, Teresa finds joy in her adventures while fantasizing of a better life. Keeping this dream alive throughout her childhood is what drives her to end the cycle of abuse and poverty.

Florapedia is an eclectic A-Z compendium of botanical lore. With more than 100 enticing entries - on topics ranging from achlorophyllous plants that use a fungus as an intermediary to obtain nutrients from other plants to zygomorphic flowers that admit only the most select pollinators - this collection is a captivating journey into the realm of botany. Writing in her incomparably engaging style, Carol Gracie discusses remarkable plants from around the globe, botanical art and artists, early botanical explorers, ethnobotanical uses of plants, botanical classification, and more.

For 16 years, Kitrin has longed for freedom from her parents' secluded manor. However, one day, her emotions trigger flowers to bloom, roots to grasp, and trees to bend. Unable to control her unexplained abilities, she finds an anchor in a young man with sad eyes and his own secrets. Palace outcast and nephew of the king, Prince Bryce lives under the shadow of his father's execution for treason. To escape the toxic court, he takes comfort in the company of the kindhearted Kitrin. However, he soon realizes the girl he loves is someone his family wants dead.

The battle has been fought and won, and all have been transformed by the struggle. Imago of Lockwood has become Lord Mayor of the City Imperishable, though at a price beyond his wildest imagination. Bijaz the Dwarf has been imbued with a godlike power and a responsibility he scarcely understands. And Jason the Factor, resurrected from death at the hands of his sister, the Tokhari sandwalker Kalliope, has become the sula ma-jieni na-dia, the fabled Dead Man of Winter.

Author Clarissa Katsef is struggling to write her next book. She’s just snagged a brand new artist residency in an ultra-modern apartment, with a view of all of Paris, a dream for any novelist in search of tranquility. But since moving in, she has had the feeling of being watched. Is there reason to be paranoid? Or is her distraction and discomfort the result of her husband’s recent shocking betrayal? Or is that her beloved Paris lies altered outside her windows? A city that will never be quite the same, a city with a scar at its center?

Dragonrider Academy is a secret society I’m not even supposed to know exists. It has knights with talking swords, professors who breathe fire, and a hot guy named Killian who seriously gets on my nerves. It’s his fault I’m stuck here in the first place. He wants me to be his partner and face all the challenges Dragonrider Academy has to offer. He says we’re fated to be together, that I was the one who called him! Crazy talk. Or is it?

The best-laid plans of geroo and ringel often go awry. Nobody knows that as well as the crew of the White Flower II, the geroo ship whose captain still bears the literal scars of his last failure. Despite their best efforts, his ship and its crew still languish in slavery to the cruel krakun. But when a new opportunity for freedom presents itself, will the geroo be able to pull off an even more daring escape plan - right under the nose of a krakun overseer?

In a war-torn land where magic talent is both something to be hidden and a part of nature itself, trouble is brewing. A demonic god, sealed away eons ago by a legendary warrior called the Maiden of Flowers, is rumored to be about to rise once more. A new Maiden of Flowers must rise, as well, and her survival is key to defeating the demonic god - and her death, the key to his resurrection. At the heart of this conflict lies Princess Orchid, who may or may not be the Maiden of Flowers reborn.

Centuries ago, we lost our world. Planetary Acquisitions keeps us alive solely to maintain their vast fleet of gate ships in an endless quest to find them new worlds to settle - or to conquer. Years flutter by like a tree shedding its spring petals, and so we desperately cling to this chunk of dirt-and-machine we call home.

Teen influencer Naema Bradshaw has it all: she’s famous, stylish, gorgeous - and she’s an Eloko, a charismatic person gifted with a melody that people adore. Everyone loves her - until she's cast as the villain who exposed a Siren to the whole world. Dragged by the media, and canceled by her fans, no one understands her side: not her boyfriend, not her friends, not even her fellow Eloko.

In a cruise-ship stateroom, a soul awakens in the afterlife, still dressed in the Roman servant garbs of his previous life. He can’t remember much, but a silent woman stands out in his memory: his first and only love. Unable to cope with an eternity without her, he leaps from the ship and back into the depths of the life stream. Five hundred years later, he awakens again in the same stateroom, alone and fueled with new memories of her.

Opium tells the extraordinary and at times harrowing tale of how we arrived at today's crisis, "mak[ing] timely and startling connections among painkillers, politics, finance, and society" (Laurence Bergreen). The story begins with the discovery of poppy artifacts in ancient Mesopotamia, and goes on to explore how Greek physicians and obscure chemists discovered opium's effects and refined its power, how colonial empires marketed it around the world, and eventually how international drug companies developed a range of powerful synthetic opioids that led to an addiction epidemic.