Living Witness

For Philadelphia homicide detective Matt Payne, the news from an old law-enforcement friend sends a shiver down his spine: a connection between the Mexican drug cartels and the Russian mob. Russian girls are being smuggled in to work in the sex trade, and now some of them are dying or just disappearing. It isn’t just Russian girls who are vanishing. Teenage girls are being lured from foster homes. Police department sources are turning up dead. The lone living witness has gone into hiding, with everybody — the Russians, the cartels, some of Philadelphia’s most powerful politicians — all looking for her. It’s up to Payne to find her — and hope he gets to her first.

"Every day, I have lived through the massacre. While our country may forget this history, I cannot." Viola Ford Fletcher

Climate science can seem dense, remote, and abstract. But through the lens of this one tree, it becomes immediate and intimate. In Witness Tree, environmental reporter Lynda V. Mapes takes us through her year living with one red oak at the Harvard Forest. We learn about carbon cycles and leaf physiology but also experience the seasons as people have for centuries, watching for each new bud and listening for each new bird and frog call in spring.

As a band who has been around for thirteen years and toured all corners of the world, there comes a point when the veil of mystique must be fully lifted.