Books published by publisher Harcourt Brace

Europe was in the long slumber of the Dark Ages, the Roman Empire was in tatters, and the Greek language was all but forgotten, until a group of Arab, Jewish, and Christian scholars rediscovered and translated the works of Aristotle. His ideas spread across Europe like wildfire, offering the scientific point of view that the natural world, including the soul of man, was a proper subject of study. The Catholic Church convulsed, and riots took place at the universities of Paris and Oxford. Richard Rubenstein recounts with energy and vigor this magnificent story of the intellectual ferment that planted the seeds of the scientific age in Europe and reflects our own struggles with faith and reason.

It is mid-October, 1997, harvest time in the Columbia Basin of central Washington state, a rich apple- and pear-growing region. Ben Givens, recently widowed, is a retired heart surgeon, once admired for his steadiness of hand, his precision, his endurance. He has terminal colon cancer. While Ben does not readily accept defeat, he is determined to avoid suffering rather than engage it. And so, accompanied by his two hunting dogs, he sets out through the mythic American West-sage deserts, yawning canyons, dusty ranches, vast orchards-on his last hunt. The main issues for Ben as a doctor had been tactical and so it would be with his death. But he hadn't considered the persuasiveness of memory-the promise he made to his wife Rachel, the love of his life, during World War II. Or life's mystery. On his journey he meets a young couple who are "forever," a drifter offering left-handed advice that might lessen the pain, a veterinarian with a touch only a heart surgeon would recognize, a rancher bent on destruction, a migrant worker who tests Ben's ability to understand. And just when he thinks there is no turning back, nothing to lose that wasn't lost, his power of intervention is called upon and his very identity tested. Full of humanity, passion, and moral honesty, East of the Mountains is a bold and beautiful novel of personal discovery.

Edie, Hubert, Theodore, and Jane are four indomitable children who lived at the turn of the century. If you have already met them in "A Lemon and a Star", you will need no further word to tell you what rare adventure awaits you in this second book, recounting the year that follows the coming of "Madam", as Theodore calls thei new stepmother. True, it was not Madam who set the hilarious incidents in motion. Father did that with his definite and explosive decisions. It was he, for instance, who decided they should have the French governess whoses stay ended in such an aromatic fashion. And it was Father who bundled them off to Mr. Carpenter's cabin in "the Far North" to rough it for a while. But it was elegant Aunt Charlotte who maneuvered them into dancing school and then herded them to the costume ball with such uproarious results. The way in which this resourceful quarter copes with the varied events of the year defies prediction. But the resulting escapades provide reading that is delightful. Excitement and laughter, danger and despair, are combined in this vividly alive and absorbing book.

When Willa Dixon's brother dies on the family lobster boat, her father forbids Willa from stepping foot on deck again. With her family suffering, she’ll do anything to help out—even visit the Grey Man. Everyone in her small Maine town knows of this legendary spirit who haunts the lighthouse, controlling the fog and the fate of any vessel within his reach. But what Willa finds in the lighthouse isn’t a spirit at all, but a young man trapped inside until he collects one thousand souls. Desperate to escape his cursed existence, Grey tries to seduce Willa to take his place. With her life on land in shambles, will she sacrifice herself?