Marie Rutkoski's startling debut novel, the first book in the Kronos Chronicles, about the risks we take to protect those we love, brims with magic, political intrigue, and heroism. Petra Kronos has a simple, happy life. But it's never been ordinary. She has a pet tin spider named Astrophil who likes to hide in her snarled hair and give her advice. Her best friend can trap lightning inside a glass sphere. Petra also has a father in faraway Prague who is able to move metal with his mind. He has been commissioned by the prince of Bohemia to build the world's finest astronomical clock. Petra's life is forever changed when, one day, her father returns home – blind. The prince has stolen his eyes, enchanted them, and now wears them. But why? Petra doesn't know, but she knows this: she will go to Prague, sneak into Salamander Castle, and steal her father's eyes back. Joining forces with Neel, whose fingers extend into invisible ghosts that pick locks and pockets, Petra finds that many people in the castle are not what they seem, and that her father's clock has powers capable of destroying their world. The Cabinet of Wonders is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Finalist for Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Pronged ants, horned humans, a landscape carved on a fruit pit--some of the displays in David Wilson's Museum of Jurassic Technology are hoaxes. But which ones? As he guides readers through an intellectual hall of mirrors, Lawrence Weschler revisits the 16th-century "wonder cabinets" that were the first museums and compels readers to examine the imaginative origins of both art and science.

Let the inimitable aesthete Viktor Wynd guide you through a subversive celebration of curiosities, art, mess, decay, and self indulgence, passionately arguing that the world is full of wonder that is in danger of being sanitized and that collectors are the ultimate artists. The book visits rarified locations lovingly curated by bohemians and artists: from a rambling Devon farmhouse and its historic taxidermy to an Italianate villa in East London to the House of Dreams Museum. It also includes advice on how to start a collection of your own, covering details on auction houses, private dealers, flea markets and fairs, and shows that having distinctive taste does not necessarily require a massive budget.

It's time to peek inside the world's most famous museums. Welcome to Lonely Planet Kids' Incredible Cabinet of Wonders - the greatest little museum in the world! 12 collectors, from toy makers and monster hunters, to sailors and archaeologists, have created their own themed cabinets and filled them with their favourite things. Kids can lift the flaps and open the cabinet doors to discover 100 extraordinary objects from our planet's weird and wonderful past and present, then read fascinating stories behind each one and find out where to see them in real life. What objects will they find? And what stories will they tell? The 12 themed collections are: Toy Maker's Cabinet Sailor's Cabinet Monster Hunter's Cabinet Naturalist's Cabinet Miniaturist's Cabinet Doctor's Cabinet Treasure Hunter's Cabinet Archaeologist's Cabinet Costume Maker's Cabinet Musician's Cabinet Scientist's Cabinet Make Believer's Cabinet Each cabinet is illustrated by a different artist and features photos of every astonishing and unusual artefact. About Lonely Planet Kids: Come explore! Let's start an adventure. Lonely Planet Kids excites and educates children about the amazing world around them. Combining astonishing facts, quirky humour and eye-catching imagery, we ignite their curiosity and encourage them to discover more about our planet. Every book draws on our huge team of global experts to help share our continual fascination with what makes the world such a diverse and magnificent place - inspiring children at home and in school.

Preston & Child continue their #1 bestselling series featuring FBI Special Agent Pendergast and Constance Greene, as they cross paths with New York’s deadliest serial killer: Pendergast’s own ancestor…and now his greatest foe. AN INCREDIBLE JOURNEY Astoundingly, Constance has found a way back to the place of her origins, New York City in the late 1800s, leaping at the chance, although it means leaving the present forever. A DESPERATE OPPORTUNITY Constance sets off on a quest to prevent the events that lead to the deaths of her sister and brother. But along the road to redemption, Manhattan’s most infamous serial killer, Dr. Enoch Leng, lies in wait, ready to strike at the slightest provocation. UNIMAGINABLE ODDS Meanwhile, in contemporary New York, Pendergast feverishly searches for a way to reunite with Constance—but will he discover a way back to her before it’s too late?

Twelve-year-old Petra, accompanied by her magical tin spider, goes to Prague hoping to retrieve the enchanted eyes the Prince of Bohemia took from her father, and is aided in her quest by a Roma boy and his sister.

Libraries, museums, and the ways patrons use them have drastically changed in the past decades. Digitization projects, infotainment, and the Internet are redefining the library's and the museum's roles in the community. What are the implications for the future of these institutions? The authors examine, and set out an exciting vision of, a new library-museum hybrid. The juxtaposition of library collections and museum artefacts, they assert, has the potential to create authentic, interactive experiences, and can help establish a distinct, meaningful, and sustainable role for libraries. In the authors' words, libraries can then "reassert themselves as places devoted to contemplation, wonder, knowledge acquisition, and critical inquiry". Commercialization, edutainment, and the library as a learning community are just some of the fascinating topics addressed as the authors explore the future's terrain, and how libraries might situate themselves upon it.

Curious Collectors, Collected Curiosities: An Interdisciplinary Study asks its readers to enter into an investigation of the nature of collecting as an aesthetic exercise. Spanning the sixteenth century through today, this book gathers together the work of current scholars to re-envision the task of collectors and their collections in broad strokes. Each chapter appropriates the idea of a cabinet of curiosity in order to expand its boundaries of meaning and to complicate our understanding of the acts of display and observation. These chapters also demonstrate that collecting is a universal trope which nevertheless depends on time and place for its particular expressions. Whether the collection is made up of literary texts and criticism, visual art, including mechanical reproductions, taxidermy and photography, historical travelogues, museum exhibitions, blockbuster films, or airline in-flight briefing cards, it conveys an urgent relevance to our consumer age, in which information is abundant and attention is a commodity.