Sea State

As Jack Lee investigates a series of deadly cases, he encounters murderers, international criminals, and a robber. At the same time, his niece Jenn, an underwater archaeologist studying mermaids, arrives on the island, coinciding with a sudden crime wave. From bank robberies to vandalism to searching a lake with hidden secrets, Jack is determined to solve every case and protect the public. However, when tragedy hits the high school swim team, and someone close to Jack is kidnapped, Jack must find help to close the cases, including assistance from someone with fins, scales, and a long tail. ...

*** An American Library Association Notable Children’s Book *** The year is 1777, and America is in danger of losing the Revolutionary War because of the British blockade… Benjamin Franklin is sent to Paris to seek an alliance with France, but how will he ever be able to convince the French that the American battle is worth joining—especially when the French are still licking their wounds from their own loss to the mighty British Navy? Franklin’s only chance to prove the British Navy is not invincible—and that the American colonists are determined to fight to the end—is to put ...

Mona Mireles is a quintessential overachiever: a former spelling-bee champion and valedictorian of her college class, she has a sterling résumé and a wall of plaques and medals in her bedroom that stretches floor to ceiling. She's also broke, unemployed, back at home with her parents, and completely adrift in life and love. Seven months out of college, she’s desperately trying to reassemble the pieces of her life after the Wall Street job she had waiting for her post-graduation dissolves in the wake of the Great Recession.

Josh Peterman's Caribbean vacation has been disrupted by a catastrophic hurricane. Now giant mutated deep sea creatures are washing up on the beach. Out on the open ocean things are about to get ugly as giant Viperfish, Bristle worms and a two-hundred-foot long ceresiosaurus, thought to be long extinct, hunt for prey.

With his parents and sister, Lizzy, whom he adores, Robbie Larkin grows up in a working-class Waterford home. Then he breaks the news that for a better life he's emigrating to America. By letter, he stays in touch, regaling everyone with his adventures in New York and then Detroit. But then the second world war breaks out, and Robbie enlists in the navy. After basic training, he's assigned to the U.S.S. Tenacity, a brand-new vessel built in the shipyards of the eastern seaboard. Straight away, like the men who built her, Robbie senses that something is not right the with the Tenacity. With ...

In 1838, the U.S. government launched the largest discovery voyage the Western world had ever seen; six sailing vessels and 346 men bound for the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Four years later, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, or Ex. Ex. as it was known, returned with an astounding array of accomplishments and discoveries: 87,000 miles logged, 280 Pacific islands surveyed, 4,000 zoological specimens collected, including 2,000 new species, and the discovery of the continent of Antarctica.

The American Revolution was a naval war of immense scope and variety, including no less than 22 navies fighting on five oceans - to say nothing of rivers and lakes. In no other war were so many large-scale fleet battles fought, one of which was the most strategically significant naval battle in all of British, French, and American history.

The fundamental message of A Preface to Politics is that statesmanship cannot succeed if it focuses merely on the forms and mechanics of government and the technical development and administration of policy. Political leadership can be successful only if political leaders attune themselves to the human beings they lead, keeping themselves abreast of their wants and needs and the social and cultural movements among them. No political mechanism can function without intelligent, perceptive, and responsive people to make it work.

The English had long dreamed of colonizing America, especially after Sir Francis Drake brought home Spanish treasure and dramatic tales from his raids in the Caribbean. Ambitions of finding gold and planting a New World colony seemed within reach when, in 1606, Thomas Smythe extended overseas trade with the launch of the Virginia Company. But from the beginning the American enterprise was a disaster.

Frederick Jackson Turner was the dean of American historians in his time. He originated, and he and his students popularized, the Frontier Hypothesis of American history: that the primary driving force in the development of American society and politics was the encounter with the frontier, conceived of as a vast area of essentially free land, a seemingly limitless resource available to all comers.

Get ready to devour America. Adam Richman, the exuberant host of Travel Channel’s Man v. Food and Man v. Food Nation, has made it his business to root out unique dining experiences from coast to coast. Now, he zeroes in on some of his top-favorite cities - from Portland, Maine, to Savannah, Georgia - to share his uproariously entertaining food travel stories, top finds, and some invaluable (and hilarious) cautionary tales.

In its youth, Portland, Oregon, was a bit like a rough-and-ready logging camp with a gritty, hard-punching deep-water port. Lusty lads dallied with hard-eyed beauties in dark alleys, and captains forked over “blood money” to buy men for their crews from shanghai operators. From the seedy waterfront to the notorious North End, Portland's sin sector offered vices packaged in pint glasses and perfumed corsets.

America in the antebellum years was a deeply troubled country, divided by partisan gridlock and ideological warfare. The Civil War that followed brought America to the brink of self-destruction. But it also created a new country from the ruins of the old one - bolder and stronger than ever. No event in the war was more destructive, or more important, than William Sherman's legendary march through Georgia - crippling the heart of the South's economy, freeing thousands of slaves, and marking the beginning of a new era.

Ship figureheads resembling deities or women were used by sailors as lucky charms to protect them from harm at sea. A woman's bare breasts will always calm the sea.

In this brilliant portrait of the oceans' unlikely hero, H. Bruce Franklin shows how menhaden have shaped America's national-and natural-history, and why reckless overfishing now threatens their place in both. Since Native Americans began using menhaden as fertilizer, this amazing fish has greased the wheels of U.S. agriculture and industry.

Olive Oatman isn’t a household name, but a distinct feature on her face has made her infamous for the worst reasons. She is the girl with the blue tattoo. The story behind the distinctive tattoo is the stuff of legends. Some believed it was placed on her face during her captivity, following the brutal murders of her family members and the kidnapping of her and her sister. Others believe it was placed on her after her return.

September 3, 1939, the day of the Spanish exiles’ splendid arrival in Chile, the Second World War broke out in Europe. Victor Dalmau is a young doctor when he is caught up in the Spanish Civil War, a tragedy that leaves his life - and the fate of his country - forever changed. Together with his sister-in-law, the pianist Roser Bruguera, he is forced out of his beloved Barcelona and into exile.

Dolly Madison is one of the most intriguing women, indeed, one of the most intriguing people of either gender in American history. From the quiet rectitude of her Quaker upbringing, through the startlingly sudden romance of her marriage to James Madison, to her rise to a position of prominence and influence that created the role of the First Lady as we still know it today, through the tumult and chaos of the War of 1812, to the melancholy of her last years, marked by the bitterly disappointing career of her beloved son.

Whether you call Cape Cod a man-made island or describe it as a geographic peninsula connected to the mainland by bridges, there is one non-debatable fact. Cape Cod is surrounded by water on all four sides, jutting out prominently into the Atlantic Ocean. This characteristic accounts in large measure for its history, its economic development, its aesthetic beauty, and its maritime legacy.

In 1940 Steinbeck sailed in a sardine boat with his great friend the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, to collect marine invertebrates from the beaches of the Gulf of California. The expedition was described by the two men in Sea of Cortez, published in 1941. The day-to-day story of the trip is told here in The Log, which combines science, philosophy and high-spirited adventure. An exhilarating and highly entertaining listen.