John Lane

After reading J. A. Baker's fifty-year-old British nature classic The Peregrine, John Lane found himself an ocean away, stalking resident red-shouldered hawks in his neighborhood in Spartanburg, South Carolina. What he observed was very different from what Baker deduced from a decade of chronicling the lives of those brooding migratory raptors. Baker imagined a species on the brink of extinction because of the use of agricultural chemicals on European...

"In an age that values faster and faster travel, Lane's river memoir affirms the great value of floating and observing."-Booklist Three months after a family vacation in Costa Rica ends in tragedy when two fellow rafters die on the flooded Rio Reventazón, John Lane sets out with friends from his own backyard in upcountry South Carolina to calm his nerves and to paddle to the sea. Like Huck Finn, Lane sees a river journey as a portal to change,...

Before the novel and the film Deliverance appeared in the early 1970s, any outsiders one met along the Chattooga River were likely serious canoeists or anglers. In later years, untold numbers and kinds of people have felt the draw of the river's torrents, which pour down the Appalachians along the Georgia-South Carolina border. Because of Deliverance the Chattooga looms enigmatically in our shared imagination, as iconic as Twain's Mississippi-or maybe...

After many years of limited commitments to people or places, writer and naturalist John Lane married in his late forties and settled down in his hometown of Spartanburg, in the South Carolina piedmont. He, his wife, and two stepsons built a sustainable home in the woods near Lawson's Fork Creek. Soon after settling in, Lane pinpointed his location on a topographical map. Centering an old, chipped saucer over his home, he traced a circle one mile in...

"Travelogue, memoir and outrageous cinematic spectacle converge in this kaleidoscopic valentine to the Eternal City, composed by one of its most iconic inhabitants. Leisurely one moment and breathless the next, this urban fantasia by Federico Fellini interweaves recollections of the director's young adulthood in the era of Mussolini with an impressionistic portrait of contemporary Rome, where he and his film crew are shooting footage of the bustling...

"While investigating a criminal network, Detective Crosby Albertson keeps crossing paths with members of the highly trained, suspiciously well-informed McKenzie family. They're always one step ahead of him--especially their alarmingly attractive intel specialist, Madison. And Crosby needs to find out why. Madison McKenzie is the tech and surveillance whiz of her family's operation. A recent case introduced her to Detective Albertson. She finds herself...

"Charlotte Parrish has always wanted a certain kind of man: someone responsible, settled, boring. Bad boys need not apply. But when her car leaves her stranded and a mysterious stranger with brooding eyes and a protective streak comes to her rescue, she can't deny how drawn she is to him. In town searching for family he's never met, Mitch is everything she never thought she wanted--and suddenly everything she craves." --

"Mary Daniels doesn't let anything get in the way of her job acquiring rare artifacts for her wealthy boss. But this particular obstacle--huge, hard-muscled, unashamedly masculine--is impossible to ignore. Stuck in a cramped car with Brodie Crews for hours en route to their new assignment, Mary feels her carefully crafted persona--and her trademark self-control--is slipping, and she won't allow it. But Brodie needs this job, so he'll play by her...