Nature

Whether you're eyeing a hybrid tea you remember from your mother's garden, or one of the new easy-care landscaping varieties, this book makes it easy to add the unmatched beauty of roses to your garden. Inside you'll find:

- Expert advice on choosing the right rose for your space and nurturing it for years of beauty.

- Detailed descriptions of more than 200 varieties of perennials in the illustrated plant encyclopedia.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction

In Amity and Prosperity, the prizewinning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold tells the story of the energy boom's impact on a small town at the edge of Appalachia and one woman's transformation from a struggling single parent to an unlikely activist.

Stacey Haney is a local nurse working hard to raise two kids and keep up her small farm when the fracking boom comes to her hometown of Amity, Pennsylvania. Intrigued by reports of lucrative natural gas leases in her neighbors' mailboxes, she strikes a deal with a Texas-based energy company. Soon trucks begin rumbling past her small farm, a fenced-off drill site rises on an adjacent hilltop, and domestic animals and pets start to die. When mysterious sicknesses begin to afflict her children, she appeals to the company for help. Its representatives insist that nothing is wrong.

Alarmed by her children's illnesses, Haney joins with neighbors and a committed husband-and-wife legal team to investigate what's really in the water and air. Against local opposition, Haney and her allies doggedly pursue their case in court and begin to expose the damage that's being done to the land her family has lived on for centuries. Soon a community that has long been suspicious of outsiders faces wrenching new questions about who is responsible for their fate, and for redressing it: The faceless corporations that are poisoning the land? The environmentalists who fail to see their economic distress? A federal government that is mandated to protect but fails on the job? Drawing on seven years of immersive reporting, Griswold reveals what happens when an imperiled town faces a crisis of values, and a family wagers everything on an improbable quest for justice.

Scott Turner has brought to these pages his keen and nuanced sensitivity to the natural world that surrounds us. Turner's engaging prose reminds us how important it is to pay very close attention to nature and appreciate the lessons it can teach us -- over and over again -- about how to live meaningfully. Frederic Reamer, Host, This I Believe: New England, The Public's Radio and Professor, Rhode Island College

Scott Turner's essays display an extraordinarily wide range of knowledge and curiosity about the natural world -- the plants, wild animals (a few of them human), landscapes, weather and the seasons in the countryside, in cities and small towns, on the coasts and in the mountains and, sometimes with mordant humor, humans' reactions to them. We enjoy his take on the tough trees growing in gritty parts of New York City as well as his pleasure hiking in such bucolic settings as the Green Mountains. His observational intensity and precision energize us to appreciate the wonders all around us. Robert Whitcomb, President of The Boston Guardian, GoLocal24.com columnist, former editorial page editor of The Providence Journal and former senior editor at the International Herald Tribune

Hummingbirds and herons, pelicans and pigeons, blackbirds, Blue Jays, goldfinches, redpolls, and Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers--these birds and many more flock through the pages of Birdwise, a great kids' introduction to our feathered friends.Did you know that owls can see 100 times better than you can? That a scientist did a mating dance with his whooping crane so that she could lay her eggs? And that you can have fun spotting and looking after the birds in your own neighborhood? This book presents hundreds of fascinating facts and amazing activities that will make you birdwise.Watch birds at home in their nests or in one of the four birdhouses you can build yourself. Observe what different birds eat, and feed them yourself with six special feeders and your own gourmet birdfood. You can even help your feathered friends take baths the way they like: in water and in dust! Starting a feather collection, learning bird songs, birdproofing your windows with a cutout of a hawk, and many more fun projects will keep you wise as an owl.