Natural Science

From acclaimed actor and producer Wendell Pierce, an insightful and poignant portrait of family, New Orleans and the transforming power of art. On the morning of August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina barreled into New Orleans, devastating many of the city's neighborhoods, including Pontchartrain Park, the home of Wendell Pierce's family and the first African American middle-class subdivision in New Orleans. The hurricane breached many of the city's levees, and the resulting flooding submerged Pontchartrain Park under as much as 20 feet of water.

Red is a brilliantly told, captivating history of red hair throughout the ages. An audiobook that breaks new ground, dispels myths, and reinforces the special nature of being a redhead, with a look at multiple disciplines, including science, religion, politics, feminism and sexuality, literature, and art. With an obsessive fascination that is as contagious as it is compelling, author Jacky Colliss Harvey (herself a redhead) begins her exploration of red hair in prehistory and traces the redhead gene as it made its way out of Africa with the early human diaspora.

Most of us give little thought to the hidden systems that bring us water and take it away when we’re done. But these underappreciated marvels of engineering face an array of challenges that cannot be solved without a fundamental change to our relationship with water.

One of the greatest threats to mankind's existence has become a reality. The Yellowstone Caldera erupts with a force of a thousand nuclear warheads, expelling seven hundred cubic miles of ash and rock all at once into the sky. And it's not finished . . .

Gay werewolves in Victorian London? Why yes, yes there are.

Biffy, newly minted Alpha of the London Pack, is not having a good Christmas. His Beta abandoned him, his werewolves object to his curtain choices, and someone keeps leaving babies on his doorstep.

Professor Randolph Lyall returns home to London after 20 years abroad, afraid of what he might find. With his pack in chaos and his Alpha in crisis, it will take all his Beta efficiency to set everything to rights. Perhaps, in the process, he may even determine how to mend his own heart.

Welcome to Darkblood Prison, where the worst criminals in the supernatural realm roam the murky corridors, aka my new home. According to my cellmate, there are three rules to survive the notorious prison: Don’t mix with the other supes, stick to your own kind. Anything can be made into a weapon so get creative. Stay away from the infamous Triad, the three brothers who run the prison. Rules aren’t really my thing, so I doubt I’ll survive my first week, let alone my 10-year sentence for soul sucking an entire Fae village I have no memory of.

Diana now has everything she ever wanted - her memories and the soul mate she didn't realize she was missing. There’s just one problem: The old gods expect her to make amends for her absence. And her work starts now. But time is lost as the Oracle isn’t the only thing she has to atone for. Her friend Demetri was stripped of his powers - and it was all her fault. Unfortunately, Demetri wants nothing to do with her. To make matters worse, people have been flocking to Inner Sanctum to have a word with her.

From the oldest rocks, formed three billion years ago in Karnataka, to the arrival of our ancestors 50,000 years ago on the banks of the Indus, the author meticulously sifts through wide-ranging scientific disciplines and through the layers of earth to tell us the story of India, filled with a variety of fierce reptiles, fantastic dinosaurs, gargantuan mammals and amazing plants.

Earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanoes - they stem from the same forces that give our planet life. Earthquakes give us natural springs; volcanoes produce fertile soil. It is only when these forces exceed our ability to withstand them that they become disasters. Together they have shaped our cities and their architecture; elevated leaders and toppled governments; influenced the way we think, feel, fight, unite, and pray. The history of natural disasters is a history of ourselves.

Ofelia Archer is the top witch in New Orlean’s French Quarter, who also owns the premiere supernatural speakeasy in the state, and she’s not to be trifled with. Zach Sully is one of the top detectives with the police department…and one of only a handful of law enforcement representatives in the city who is in on the big paranormal secret. Of course, as a panther-shifter, he’s part of that secret. Together, they make a fearsome duo...who have to learn to trust one another if they’re going to keep the monsters in the Big Easy in check.

Silent film actor Casimir Moreau had imagined that life as a vampire would be freewheeling and glamorous. Instead, he’s plunged into a restrictive society whose rules he runs afoul of at every turn. To “rehabilitate” him, the vampire council orders him mated to an incubus with impeccable breeding. As an inactive beaver shifter, construction engineer Rusty Johnson has fought - and overcome - bias and disrespect his entire life. Rusty can’t face returning to his clan, and Cas needs somebody on his arm to keep the council happy, so they agree to pretend to be married.

Rivers, more than any road, technology, or political leader, have shaped the course of human civilization. They have opened frontiers, founded cities, settled borders, and fed billions. They promote life, forge peace, grant power, and can capriciously destroy everything in their path. Even today, rivers remain a powerful global force - one that is more critical than ever to our future. In Rivers of Power, geographer Laurence C. Smith explores the timeless yet underappreciated relationship between rivers and civilization as we know it.

In Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils, the award-winning author David Farrier explores the traces we will leave for the very distant future. Modern civilization has created objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time, whether it is plastic polluting the oceans and nuclear waste sealed within the earth or the 30 million miles of roads spanning the planet.

Marc is all too aware that the end of the acclimatization year the System has provided to Earth is quickly drawing to a close and that others will be allowed onto the planet to start claiming areas shortly. Zeus has promised that his series of quests will get Marc, at least, to the maximum level reachable in that first year, but Marc is nervous that it isn't going to happen.

Marc and his party have finished their zeppelin and taken it out to try to discover other Safe Zones. Their intent is to set up trade routes between all the different Safe Zones in order to give them a better chance to survive. The second Safe Zone they discover with the zeppelin is nearly as large as Any Port. It even has its own ring of outlier Safe Zones, or a partial ring at least. It appears that several of the smaller Safe Zones have been taken and converted into dungeons. With the safety of the larger Safe Zone at stake, they bring the zeppelin down to help the larger Safe Zone.

Marc and his party are seeking the sarcophagus that they were sent on a quest to find, only to discover that it is now protected by far more than just the Guardian they'd been told would await them. When they return to Any Port, Marc discovers that Bastet's obsession with Beggar has reached new heights, forcing Beggar and Marc into taking action to foil Bastet's plan to kidnap the raccoon.

The show must go on...even when there's been a murder. I'm Paige Harper and I'm still trying to get back on my feet after being kidnapped. When my housemate, Darron, offers me a gig cleaning at the theater where he's directing his first play, it seems like an easy job. Until the girl playing Titania falls to her death during rehearsal. Of course, I'm gonna help Darron find the murderer. But somehow I also get roped into taking a part on stage too. Even worse, Nico, the one-eyed PI werewolf, joins the cast as well - as my love interest.

Before becoming America's first-ever female network chief meteorologist or appearing on Dancing with the Stars, ABC News's Ginger Zee checked herself into a mental health hospital.

Natural Disaster: I Cover Them. I Am One. is Ginger's heartbreaking, hilarious, and harshly honest life story - from Dickhead's (you won't soon forget that name) deck on Lake Michigan to her storm-chasing dream at ABC News.

Lovelorn kangaroo shifter Hamish Mulherne, drummer for the mega-hit rock band Hunter’s Moon, waited years for the band’s jaguar shifter bassist to notice him. Instead, she’s just gotten married and is in a thriving poly relationship. How is Hamish supposed to compete with that? But with everyone else in the band mated and revoltingly happy, he needs somebody. Since he can’t expect true love to strike twice, he signs up with Supernatural Selection. Because what the hell?

David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion had not yet been published when he died in 1776. Even though the manuscript was mostly written during the 1750s, it did not appear until 1779. The subject itself was too delicate and controversial, and Hume's dialectical examination of religious knowledge was especially provocative. What should we teach young people about religion? The characters Demea, Cleanthes, and Philo passionately present and defend three sharply different answers to that question.