Skeleton Keys

Author: Riley Black (Brian Switek)
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399184910
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
“A provocative and entertaining magical mineral tour through the life and afterlife of bone.” —Wall Street Journal Our bones have many stories to tell, if you know how to listen. Bone is a marvel, an adaptable and resilient building material developed over more than four hundred million years of evolutionary history. It gives your body its shape and the ability to move. It grows and changes with you, an undeniable document of who you are and how you lived. Arguably, no other part of the human anatomy has such rich scientific and cultural significance, both brimming with life and a potent symbol of death. In this delightful natural and cultural history of bone, Brian Switek explains where our skeletons came from, what they do inside us, and what others can learn about us when these artifacts of mineral and protein are all we've left behind. Bone is as embedded in our culture as it is in our bodies. Our species has made instruments and jewelry from bone, treated the dead like collectors' items, put our faith in skull bumps as guides to human behavior, and arranged skeletons into macabre tributes to the afterlife. Switek makes a compelling case for getting better acquainted with our skeletons, in all their surprising roles. Bridging the worlds of paleontology, anthropology, medicine, and forensics, Skeleton Keys illuminates the complex life of bones inside our bodies and out.

The Secrets of Bones

Author: Kylie Logan
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1250180600
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
Second in a new series from national bestselling author Kylie Logan, The Secrets of Bones is a riveting mystery following Jazz Ramsey as she trains a cadaver dog. Assembly Day at St. Catherine’s dawns bright and cloudless as professional woman gather from all around Ohio to talk to the schoolgirls about their careers ranging from medicine, to NASA, to yoga. Jazz Ramsey has also signed up to give the girls a taste of her lifelong passion: cadaver dog training. Her adorable new puppy Wally hasn’t been certified yet, so she borrows the fully-trained Gus from a friend and hides a few bones in the unused fourth floor of the school for him to find. The girls are impressed when Gus easily finds the first bone, but then Gus heads confidently to a part of the floor where Jazz is sure no bones are hidden—at least not any that she’s put there. But Gus is a professional, and sure enough, behind a door that no one has opened in ages, is a human skeleton. Jazz recognizes the necklace the skeleton is wearing, and that it belonged to Bernadette Quinn, an ex-teacher at the school who’d quit her job abruptly one Christmas break. But now it seems Bernadette never left the school at all, and her hiding place makes it clear: this was murder. Bernadette in life had been a difficult personality, and so there are a plethora of suspects inside the school and out of it. As Jazz gets closer to the truth she can’t help but wonder if someone might be dogging her footsteps...

Devoted to Death

Author: R. Andrew Chesnut
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190633352
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
R. Andrew Chesnut offers a fascinating portrayal of Santa Muerte, a skeleton saint whose cult has attracted millions of devotees over the past decade. Although condemned by mainstream churches, this folk saint's supernatural powers appeal to millions of Latin Americans and immigrants in the U.S. Devotees believe the Bony Lady (as she is affectionately called) to be the fastest and most effective miracle worker, and as such, her statuettes and paraphernalia now outsell those of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Saint Jude, two other giants of Mexican religiosity. In particular, Chesnut shows Santa Muerte has become the patron saint of drug traffickers, playing an important role as protector of peddlers of crystal meth and marijuana; DEA agents and Mexican police often find her altars in the safe houses of drug smugglers. Yet Saint Death plays other important roles: she is a supernatural healer, love doctor, money-maker, lawyer, and angel of death. She has become without doubt one of the most popular and powerful saints on both the Mexican and American religious landscapes.

The Secret of the Skeleton Key

Author: Penny Warner
Publisher: Darby Creek ™
ISBN: 1606842811
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 135

Book Description
Cody, Quinn, Luke, and M.E. may not have much in common with each other, but they do love playing around with codes. In fact, they love codes so much, they have their own private club, with a super-secret hideout and passwords that change every single day. When Cody and Quinn notice what could be a code on the window of their neighbor's house—the neighbor they call Skeleton Man—the club gets to work. And it is a cry for help! Now the Code Busters are on the case—and nothing will stop them from solving the mystery and finding the secret treasure that seems to be the cause of it all! This exciting interactive mystery offers more than fifteen codes for you to decipher, including the Consonant code, Morse code, and American Sign Language. Test your brain with the Code Busters and solve the mystery along with them. Answers are in the back, if you ever get stuck.

Skeleton Woman

Author: Alberto Villoldo
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 9781416989622
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
In a hauntingly beautiful and unique tale, Alberto Villoldo tells the tale of a fisherman who hooks the bones of a young girl that was swept away by a tidal wave as he comes to care for the life she had beneath the waves. A great tidal wave sweeps down on a small Aleutian village, carrying a young girl named Annuk to the bottom of the sea. Her bones lie undisturbed on the ocean floor for years… until the day a fisherman hooks her on his line and pulls Annuk out of the water. At first sight, the fisherman is terrified at the sight of a skeleton. But as he slowly begins to consider Annuk’s life, he comes to pity her as he imagines how lonely she must have been living beneath the waves for all those years.

The Secret Life of Bones

Author: Brian Switek
Publisher: Prelude Books
ISBN: 0715653806
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Book Description
Bone is a marvel, an adaptable and resilient building material developed over 500 million years of evolutionary history. It has manifested itself in wings, sails, horns, armour, and an even greater array of appendages since the time of its origin. In dinosaur fossils, skeletons are biological time capsules that tell us of lives we’ll never see in the flesh. Inherited from a common fishy ancestor, it is the stuff that binds all of us vertebrates together into one great family. Swim, slither, stomp, fly, dig, run - all are expressions of what bones make possible. But that’s hardly all. In The Secret Life of Bones, Brian Switek frames the history of our species through the importance of bone from instruments and jewellery, to objects of worship and conquest from the origins of religion through the genesis of science and up through this very day. While bone itself can reveal our individual stories, the truth very much depends on who’s telling it. Our skeletons are as embedded in our culture as they are in our bodies. Switek, an enthusiastic osteological raconteur, cuts through biology, history, and culture to understand the meaning of what’s inside us and what our bones tell us about who we are, where we came from and the legacies we leave behind.

Skeletal Secrets

Author: Dottie May
Publisher: Tate Publishing
ISBN: 1616637226
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Book Description
Running his hand over the joint, Joe felt the crumbling mortar give beneath his touch, revealing a long crack. He traced the patched mortar's jagged path from the floor almost to the ceiling. The dirt was loose. Looking in, he spotted a small opening. 'There's something back here!' At the risk of drawing worldwide media attention, Meredith Bartholomew, renowned archeologist and a young widow, and Joe Berger, a handsome geologist, must work quickly and carefully with a small team of Israeli experts to uncover the identity of the ancient skeleton. But when a fatal accident occurs on the site and several attempts are made on their lives, they begin to realize the magnitude of their discovery. Someone wants to stop them or, at the very least, influence their findings. Their search for answers leads them to uncover a traitor in their midst, a hidden secret order within the Knights of Malta, and a long-buried Islamic conspiracy. Are they pawns in a scheme to shatter Christianity to its core, or could their discovery help answer many age-old questions? Dottie May'sSkeletal Secretsis a fast-paced mystery novel that will challenge readers to search for answers beneath the foundations of Christianity. You can be sure there are manySkeletal Secretswaiting to be discovered.

The Secret of Skeleton Reef

Author: Franklin W. Dixon
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 144248604X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 105

Book Description
When Frank and Joe find a young woman washed up on the beach of the Caribbean’s St. Lucia Island, they realize there’s trouble in paradise. Who is the mystery woman? What is she hiding? The answers lie offshore, where a ship’s crew scavenges for pirate gold. But in the face of spearguns and man-eating sharks, the Hardys discover that the sea hides more than gold.

Billy Bones: Tales from the Secrets Closet

Author: Christopher Lincoln
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0316087904
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 163

Book Description
Deep within High Manners Manor, Billy and his skeleton parents live in the Secrets Closet, where they're in charge of filing all the secrets and lies of the unscrupulous Biglum family. Then Billy meets Millicent, Sir Biglum's niece who has been recently orphaned. Together, Billy and Millicent encounter ghosts and other uncanny creatures as they explore each other's worlds and uncover the biggest secret of all: Billy was once a Biglum. Chris Lincoln has created a richly imaginative, highly original world. In this spooky adventure in the tradition of filmmaker Tim Burton, friendships bloom, betrayals linger, schemes entangle - and heroism appears in the most unexpected places.

The Skeleton Code

Author: Alla Campanella
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
ISBN: 1630479543
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Book Description
A revealing look at what we hide and why: “Funny, well-written, and absolutely the best self-help book I have come across in a while” (Urban Book Reviews). In an of age of social media, computer hacking, recorders on every new device we can get our hands on, and security cameras following every shameless move we make, privacy is a thing of the past. Unfortunately, the skeletons in our closets aren’t so gone, forgotten, or protected. With one errant text, unfortunate photo, or midnight tweet, they can start rattling. This tongue-in-cheek, yet cautionary book explores the many ways, and great lengths we go to, to shield our public personas, reputations, and most embarrassing and cringe-worthy secrets. With scores of funny and alarming interviews with people who didn’t take extreme measures to guard their now-free and feral skeletons, it also outlines the strategies you can take to make sure your secrets never see the light of day. If you don’t think you need the key to The Skeleton Code, you’re treading the dark and increasing crowded waters of that infamous river called Denial.