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Rivers, on a long view, are alive. They are born; they change; they shift their channels; they forge new routes to the sea; they move both gradually and violently; they can teem (usually) with life; they may die a quasi-natural death; they are frequently maimed and even murdered. It is the annual flood pulse—the brief time when the river occupies the floodplain—that gives a river its vitality, but it is human engineering that kills it, suppressing the flood pulse with dams, irrigation, siltation, dikes, and levees.

Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry? Author James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not - and cannot - be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge.

Fire is rarely out of the headlines, from large natural wildfires raging across the Australian or Californian countrysides to the burning of buildings such as the disasters of Grenfell tower and Notre Dame. Fire on these scales can represent a serious risk to human life and property. But the advent of fire made and controlled by humans also represented a crucial point in our evolution, allowing us to cook our food, forge our weapons, and warm our homes.

James Scott taught us what's wrong with seeing like a state. Now, in his most accessible and personal book to date, the acclaimed social scientist makes the case for seeing like an anarchist. Inspired by the core anarchist faith in the possibilities of voluntary cooperation without hierarchy, Two Cheers for Anarchism is an engaging, high-spirited, and often very funny defense of an anarchist way of seeing - one that provides a unique and powerful perspective on everything from everyday social and political interactions to mass protests and revolutions.

Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.

Ten people, each with a dark past, are invited to an isolated mansion on Hare Island by a mysterious host. Once on the island, they are cut off from the outside world. Accusations are made and secrets revealed as guests die one by one, indicating one of them to be the culprit.

After the liberation of Front Royal from the Magus’ tyranny, Ryan Cawdor and his companions grieve the heart-wrenching loss of loved ones, but must carry on. Ryan and his surviving friends assume leadership roles in Front Royal, contributing to the rebuilding of the ville and the struggle to carve out a future for the beleaguered community. Ryan must learn how to be a good father for his unique baby daughter, and with the support of his larger family do his best to help her navigate the treacherous future that is her destiny.

On the blood-stained battlefields of a divided nation, Dr. Samuel Knight used his surgical skills to treat wounded Confederate soldiers. In the brutal prison camps of the Union Army, he offered his healing services to fellow captives who’d given up hope. But now, with the war over and the South in ruins, the good doctor faces his hardest challenge yet: to save himself.

In This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald gives us Amory Blaine, who, from boyhood through his early 20s, is on a quest for his identity, his philosophy, and his sense of place in a world never quite his own, a world in which he moves with barely concealed ego-fueled disgust and contempt. Fitzgerald's breakthrough novel, written in 1920 when the author was 23, manages to be both a thinly veiled autobiography and a sincere attempt by Fitzgerald to get into the head of the young, privileged personages of his time.

Tales of the Jazz Age is a delightful, sobering, thought-provoking, and downright curious collection of 11 of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories, published after his first two novels - This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and Damned (1922) - but before The Great Gatsby (1925).

The lizard, known only as the Mainland Detective, investigates a theft of diamonds only to uncover a tangled web of lies and murder seemingly connected to a family curse. The lizard can’t get away from Odette Wembley because every time he solves one issue, another arises.

Filled with gangsters, cops on the take, and a peregrine desperate to reclaim his territory, Ashton teeters on the brink of an all-out gang war. A Mainland Investigations detective is called into town by Paul Mason, who is murdered before briefing the lizard on the case. Pitting faction against faction, and with a target on his own back, the detective must save Ashton before his number is up.

Lucius Anoraq is getting paid to follow the mysterious and lovely canary, Sheila De Havilland. And wherever the canary goes, trouble seems to follow. Anoraq’s happy to do as he’s told, all in the name of chivalry. But one dead body later, and what started out as a lazy afternoon’s snooping soon becomes a deadly cocktail of blackmail, lies, mistaken identity, and murder.

Lucius Anoraq befriends a Labrador who is a down-on-his-luck war veteran with the scars to prove it. Then he finds out that Robert Herriot has a very wealthy nymphomaniac wife whom he divorced and remarried and who ends up dead. Now Herriot is on the lam, and the cops and a crazy gangster are after Anoraq.

Lucius Anoraq is about to give up on a completely routine case. That is until he ends up in the wrong place at the right time and gets caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, a fortune-teller, corruption, and multiple murders.

After waking up from a coma - as a result of two slugs in a shootout - Private Detective Kaiser Wrench becomes embroiled in a deadly search for billions of dollars of missing mob money.

Some of his enemies think Kaiser Wrench has softened with age, but he leaps into action when he finds his secretary severely beaten and a mutilated tiger in his desk chair. Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to The Carnage Male, and experience the compelling world of detective fiction.

Kaiser Wrench’s voluptuous, long-lost love and lynx is alive and targeted by the infamous assassin known as the Chimera.

Playing protector to a runaway puppy-faced poodle, Kaiser Wrench trades barbs and lead with crooked politicos, snarling hoods, and a sex-hungry female.

The doe was desperate, terrified, and out of her mind. Now she’s dead. Acting as an avenging angel, Private Detective Kaiser Wrench heads into an underground urban nightmare.