Calamities & Catastrophes - The Ten Absolutely Worst Years in History

The Water Dreamers is a story for all Australians.

For thousands of years, water has shaped where we live, how we struggle with each other and how we imagine our country. The first settlers' dreams of mighty inland rivers evaporated in the silent deserts of Australia. But the water dreamers refused to accept this disappointment. They saw a country that could be transformed by irrigation and hydro-engineering. Today, thanks to their vision, many of our rivers are in crisis and, more than ever, Australians realise that our destiny will be shaped by water.

The Water Dreamers is an enthralling new account of Australian history and of who we are today.

Today, many of the historic coal-mining communities of the Rocky Mountains are uninhabited ghost towns. Yet behind the crumbled ruins are tales of perseverance, danger and romance. A devastating mine explosion on Halloween shatters the lives of mining families in Nordegg. The miners of Mountain Park build a hockey rink still celebrated in local lore. A young immigrant couple in Mercoal establishes a successful business only to have their love story sadly cut short. These 11 dramatic and poignant ghost-town tales are sure to fascinate all who love pioneer history.

Twenty years after the fact, the mere mention of the 1992-93 NHL season brings back vivid memories for hockey fans across North America. The last time that the Montreal Canadiens hoisted the Stanley Cup, Wayne Gretzky's last appearance in a playoff final, and Mario Lemieux's most inspirational season, these years are rightly considered some of the greatest in NHL history. Now, in A Season in Time: Super Mario, Killer, St. Patrick, the Great One, and the Unforgettable 1992-93 NHL Season, acclaimed hockey writer Todd Denault looks back to those heady days.

The story of a truly magical age for hockey in North America, a time that came to be known as "the last great season," where hope reigned, where the unthinkable seemed possible, and some of the greatest legends the game has ever seen took to the ice, A Season in Time is a true trip down memory lane. Covering the stories of Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky, Patrick Roy, and Doug Gilmour, and capturing the frenzy and excitement that hasn't been seen since, the book is essential reading for hockey lovers of all ages.

• Captures the passion, the glory, and the magic of one of the greatest NHL seasons of all time
• Celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the 1992-1993 season
• Covers everything from Patrick Roy's legendary goaltending exhibition to Wayne Gretzky's famous high stick on Doug Gilmour to Kerry Fraser's blown call

Insightful and informative, A Season in Time is a loving look back at a season for the ages.

The world's foremost expert on Maya culture looks at 2012 hysteria and explains the truth about what the Maya meant and what we want to believe.

Apocalypse 2012: An Investigation into Civilizations End. The World Cataclysm in 2012. 2012: The return of Quetzalcoatl. According to many of these alarmingly titled books, the ancient Maya not only had a keen insight into the mystical workings of our planet and the cosmos, but they were also able to predict that the world will end in the year 2012.

David Stuart, the foremost scholar of the Maya and recipient of numerous awards for his work, takes a hard look at the frenzy over 2012 and offers a fascination (and accurate) trip through Mayan culture and belief. Stuart shows how the idea that the "end of the Mayan calendar," which supposedly heralds the end of our own existence, says far more about our culture than about the ancient Maya. The Order of Days explores how the real intellectual achievement of ancient Maya timekeeping and worldview is far more impressive and remarkable than any of the popular, and often outrageous, claims about this advanced civilization.

As someone who has studied the Maya for nearly all of his life and who specializes in reading their ancient texts, Stuart sees the 2012 hubbub as the most recent in a long chain of related ideas about Mesoamericans, the Maya in particular, that depicts them as somehow oddball, not "of this world," or as having some strong mystical link to other realms.

Because the year 2012 has no prominent role in anything the ancient Maya ever actually wrote, Stuart takes a wider look at the Maya concepts of time and their underlying philosophy as we can best understand them. The ancient Maya, Stuart contends, were worthy of study and admiration not because they were strange but because they were altogether human, and they developed a compelling vision of time unlike any other civilization before or since.