Root Science

The first instalment of the weird and wonderful Ayla Trilogy. Growing up in a New York orphanage, Ayla has no idea who her family is. It is not until she comes to Ireland that she finds out just how deep her roots really are. Then her past rises up to haunt her and seeks to destroy her as Ayla is abducted and buried alive in the bowels of the earth. Above ground, her three best friends set out to find and save her from a fate that has been lying in wait for centuries. Guided by Ayla’s uncles, they must make a treacherous journey that takes them down among the very roots of time.

On the surface, Henry White and Radcliffe Green seem like your typical old “middle of nowhere” farmers. But beneath the façade of Midwestern American homesteading, these two rivals are secretly brilliant (and wild!) scientists, dedicated to exploring and controlling the secrets of nature and technology. White and Green both have hidden labs beneath their farms, and an ever-evolving collection of remarkable robots, cyborgs, super-plants, gadgets, and more!

Beware Euphoria uncovers the roots of America's moral obsession with drug regulation, offering a lively and fascinating history of the nation's racialized fear of intoxication. Challenging the idea that early anti-drug laws in the United States arose from racial animus, George Fisher instead shows in textured detail how United States drug laws were driven by a deep-seated cultural taboo against euphoria and a preoccupation with white moral integrity.

“All is Krynoid, all will be Krynoid..." On an isolated Yorkshire hill farm a strange species of plant has been discovered. Between the stalks of wheat and through the ancient hedgerows an alien horror is silently choking the land. Eve Black a young biologist working for the Ministry of Agriculture is called to the farm to investigate, but instead of finding a simple case of weed infestation her enquiries uncover a sentient hostile life form.

The Appalachian Trail, a thin ribbon of wilderness running through the densely populated eastern United States, offers a refuge from modern society and a place apart from human ideas and institutions. But as environmental historian - and thru-hiker - Sarah Mittlefehldt argues, the trail is also a conduit for community engagement and a model for public-private cooperation and environmental stewardship. In Tangled Roots, Mittlefehldt tells the story of the trail’s creation.

This Mardi Gras festival is like none ever seen before or will ever see in the future. Experience sibling rivalry at its finest as two sisters square off against each other for control of the book of roots. Unite with our hero George Genois as he is drawn deeper into the realm of magic and the forces of good and evil.

When 10-year-old Merry Maddock makes a holiday wish on a shooting star, she has no idea how her life will change. Suddenly, she's become the parent to a strange baby owl, and the caretaker of what appears to be an enchanted tree. But will her wish for a family Christmas be granted? Or will her mother's desire for a year without a holiday win out?

A century ago, Europe's diplomats mismanaged the crisis triggered by the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the continent plunged into World War I, which killed millions, toppled dynasties, and destroyed empires. Today, as the 100th anniversary of the Great War prompts renewed debate about the war's causes, scholars and policy experts are also considering the parallels between the present international system and the world of 1914. Are China and the United States fated to follow in the footsteps of previous great power rivals?

Millions of threads so thin as to be invisible, so vaporous as to be ductile, drift through the classroom, emitting a chill and leaving a sense of unease. Hidden deep in their cloaks, the Blue Lights analyze the odors that cling to the individual cells of every child, from the top of each little head to the bottom of their ticklish feet and every dark secret place in between, from their gathering brains to their blood-soaked spleens. One girl feels dizzy; one boy throws up.

My heart is a kaleidoscope, and when we kiss it makes my world unravel.... Last summer, Gottie's life fell apart. Her beloved grandfather, Grey, died, and Jason left her - the boy to whom she lost her virginity (and her heart) - and he wouldn't even hold her hand at the funeral! This summer, still reeling from twin heartbreaks, Gottie is lost and alone and burying herself in equations. Until, after five years' absence, Thomas comes home: former boy next door. Former best friend. Former everything.

Can a teenage time traveller be the saviour the world desperately needs while finding the strength to save himself? Joe's come a long way on his time travels. He's discovered the true meaning of friendship and the depths of his love for his family. But as time itself begins to unravel, and boundaries between the worlds of mortals and magic rip apart, Joe is faced with his greatest challenge yet.

Things are tough in Dark Root. Shane is missing and presumed dead. Julianna Benbridge is haunting the town. And the mysterious curse has tightened its grip on Maggie. The clock is ticking down and it's not looking good. Can Maggie save herself and her family from the deal made with Larinda? Or will she be too late this time?

When it all began, it all had to be much more beautiful than it is now. This is an introduction to facts about the most beautiful, precious, and wonderful planet in the galaxies. From love and happiness to war and peace. Struggle, pain, misery, torture, crimes, and hate. What will be the tremendous outcome of it all? This is the true thriller and historical fiction short story. The ultimate, intriguing, and thought-provoking point of view. A classic and rare take on the entire world and its inhabitants.

Everything is changing. It's the last semester of junior year for the Elemental, Sophie Briggs and her friends at The School of Roots and Vines. But will it be for better or worse? Classes take a priority for the teenagers but work and figuring out how to be a Defender is a close second. Both Marcus and Sophie's mysterious new tutor at the EBI have secrets to hide. Will Sophie harness a new curiosity in pursuit of the truth about them both?

Sophie Briggs has made it to her junior year at the School of Roots and Vines, but it isn't all fun and games for the Defenders. Change is coming. Some good and some . . . not so much. Friends are breaking up—will Sophie have to take sides? Sophie and Marcus are struggling, too. Marcus is pushing Sophie and the rest of the gang away, worried that being a Templeton will put them all at risk. He thinks he needs to do this by himself. Does he have to go it alone?

This fourth edition of Racist America is significantly revised and updated, with an eye toward racism issues arising regularly in our contemporary era. This edition incorporates many recent research studies and reports on U.S. racial issues that update and enhance the last edition’s chapters. It expands the discussion and data on social science concepts such as intersectionality and gendered racism, as well as the concepts of the white racial frame, systemic racism, and the elite-white-male dominance system from research studies by Joe Feagin and his colleagues.

Eminent scholar Peter Irons makes a powerful and persuasive case that Blacks have always been held back by systemic racism in all major institutions that can hold power over them. Based on a wide range of sources, from the painful words of former slaves to test scores that reveal how our education system has failed Black children, this searing and sobering account of legal and extra-legal violence against Blacks peels away the fictions and myths expressed by White racists.

Sophie Briggs will have to fight her way out this time but without her elemental gift of life. It's the spring semester of Year Two at the famous School of Roots and Vines. The National Elemental Skills Trials are coming up, and Sophie and her friends are called to represent the school in faraway Colorado. Dark forces and powerful, all-too-familiar enemies are out to kidnap Sophie and steal her elemental powers. They'll stop at nothing to get their revenge.

Contrary to competing popular beliefs, police violence against African Americans has neither remained unchanged since the era of slavery nor is it a recent phenomenon disconnected from the past. In Bluecoated Terror, Jeffrey S. Adler draws on rich archival accounts to show how racialized police brutality is part of a larger system of state oppression with roots in the early twentieth-century South, particularly New Orleans.

In 1948, the Orioles, a Baltimore-based vocal group, recorded "It's Too Soon to Know". Combining the sound of Tin Pan Alley with gospel and blues sensibilities, the Orioles saw their first hit reach #13 on the pop charts, thus introducing the nation to vocal rhythm & blues and paving the way for the most successful groups of the 1950s. In the first scholarly treatment of this influential musical genre, Stuart Goosman chronicles the Orioles' story and that of myriad other black vocal groups in the postwar period.