"Of all the things humans rely on plants for—sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber—surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: People around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. But we do not usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is...

"Opium's Orphans is the first full history of drug prohibition and the "war on drugs." A no-holds-barred but balanced account, it shows that drug suppression was born of historical accident, not rational design. The war on drugs did not originate in Europe or the United States, and even less with President Nixon, but in China. Two Opium Wars followed by Western attempts to atone for them gave birth to an anti-narcotics order that has come to span...

Barely surviving a gun battle that she discovers was targeting the teen sons of Cort Wesley Masters, Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong embarks on an investigation with surprising ties to an opium smuggling operation that helped finance the Mexican Revolution.

"The next book in the Jane Austen Murder Mysteries follows sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood as they investigate the suspicious death of their late father. It could be dangerous; it could ruin their reputations; and most importantly, it won't bring back their father. But if the Dashwood sisters can combine their talents and deliver justice to their father's murderer, it may give them all some comfort--and it might even lead to love." -- Back cover....

As commander of the River Police, Monk is accustomed to violent death, but the mutilated female body found on Limehouse Pier one chilly December morning moves him with horror and pity. The victim's name is Zenia Gadney. Her waterfront neighbors can tell him little, only that the same unknown gentleman had visited her once a month for many years. She must be a prostitute, but, described as quiet and kempt, she doesn't appear to be a fallen woman. ...

"A spectacular story, the making of a dynasty, one of the great untold sagas of a gilded Jewish Bagdadi family-the merchant princes of the orient, that built a vast empire through finance and trade: opium, cotton, oil, shipping, banking, that reached across three continents, and ultimately changed the destinies of nations. For more than two centuries, from the 18th to the 20th, they were one of the richest families in the world, known as 'the Rothschilds...