Recommended Reads
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Library Centennial Celebration 2
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Library Centennial Celebration 3
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Library Centennial Celebration 4
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The Ultimate Wildlife Habitat Garden: attract and support birds, bees, and butterflies
"The Ultimate Wildlife Habitat Garden helps you become more intentional about attracting birds, bees, and more to the garden...you can build a beautiful garden for all seasons while simultaneously striving to support wildlife."―Horticulture
The Ultimate Wildlife Habitat Garden is a beginner-friendly handbook that helps homeowners create a beautiful garden that attracts birds, bees, butterflies, and more. Everyone wants a garden buzzing with life, and Stacy Tornio makes it easy by sharing details about which plants attract specific creatures.
Stacy Tornio makes it easy to attract birds, bees, and butterflies to your home garden by sharing details about which plants attract specific creatures. The simple organization makes it easy to find exactly what you want, with chapters on attracting birds, bringing in bees butterflies, and welcoming wildlife. If you are looking to build a garden from scratch, there are ten plans with specific plant choices. The plans include a hummingbird garden, a birdseed garden, and options that are low-maintenance and drought-resistant. You'll also find expert advice on finding the right feeder, avoiding pesticides, and choosing native plants. The Ultimate Wildlife Habitat Garden is a beautiful, photo-filled guide that will help you grow the earth-friendly garden of your dreams. -
The Weight of Nature: how a changing climate changes our brains
A New York Times Editors' Choice
A Next Big Idea Club and Sierra Magazine Must-Read Book
A Behavioral Scientist’s Summer Book List Pick
A Financial Times Best Summer Book
A deeply reported, eye-opening book about climate change, our brains, and the weight of nature on us all.
The march of climate change is stunning and vicious, with rising seas, extreme weather, and oppressive heat blanketing the globe. But its effects on our very brains constitute a public-health crisis that has gone largely unreported. Based on seven years of research, this book by the award-winning journalist and trained neuroscientist Clayton Page Aldern, synthesizes the emerging neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics of global warming and brain health. A masterpiece of literary journalism, this book shows readers how a changing environment is changing us today, from the inside out.
Aldern calls it the weight of nature.
Hotter temperatures make it harder to think clearly and problem-solve. They increase the chance of impulsive violence. Immigration judges are more likely to reject asylum applications on hotter days. Umpires, to miss calls. Air pollution, heatwaves, and hurricanes can warp and wear on memory, language, and sensory systems; wildfires seed PTSD. And climate-fueled ecosystem changes extend the reach of brain-disease carriers like mosquitos, brain-eating amoebas, and the bats that brought us the mental fog of long COVID.
How we feel about climate change matters deeply; but this is a book about much more than climate anxiety. As Aldern richly details, it is about the profound, direct action of global warming on our brains and behavior—and the most startling portrait yet of unforeseen environmental influences on our minds. From farms in the San Joaquin Valley and public schools across the United States to communities in Norway’s Arctic, the Micronesian islands, and the French Alps, this book is an unprecedented portrait of a global crisis we thought we understood. -
Container Gardening - The Permaculture Way: sustainably grow vegetables & more in your small space
Permaculture--rooted in centuries-old techniques for growing food with care for the Earth--is the key to producing a bigger harvest than you ever thought possible on your balcony, patio, driveway, deck, and anywhere in between!
With sustainability as her guiding principle, Valéry Tsimba enthusiastically instructs home gardeners of all skill levels and backgrounds in her proven container gardening methods, from start to finish.
- Use the principles of permaculture to increase your garden's productivity, biodiversity, and beauty by starting small and going slow.
- Get set up: Pick the best planters and tools for your space and learn how to adapt to natural conditions like wind and sun exposure.
- Increase your harvest naturally with companion planting, small-space composting, chemical-free fertilizers, and staggered harvests.
- Learn which plants are best suited to container gardens, from leafy greens and pollinator-friendly flowers to strawberries and even melons!
Containers make gardening more accessible for everyone. Whether you live in an apartment, have a disability or chronic illness, have never gardened before, or are an experienced gardener new to permaculture, Container Gardening--The Permaculture Way brings sustainable gardening within reach.
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What to Wear and Why: your guilt-free guide to sustainable fashion
It's time to rethink what clothes we buy, wear, and toss out, knowing that we can have a positive environmental impact while still looking good and dressing well.
Reportedly, the clothing industry produces 80 billion garments a year, employs 15 percent of the world's population, exploits labor, and seriously pollutes the environment. However, we as consumers have the power to make a difference with the clothing choices we make. In What to Wear and Why, top fashion writer turned sustainability activist Tiffanie Darke sheds light on the unsustainable practices and immense environmental impact of the fashion industry and presents a compelling argument for why transformative change is urgently needed.
Drawing on her extensive fashion experience and expertise, Darke offers practical guidance on how we as consumers can make a difference in the industry's environmental impact. What to Wear and Why also celebrates those who are already doing so, from environmental activists to sustainable fashion pioneers, giving us examples of how fashion sustainability can work in the real world.
Whether you're a fashionista who cares passionately about sustainability, an environmental advocate seeking to learn more about the impact of fashion, or simply someone who wants to be a part of the change, What to Wear and Why is your go-to guide to a more sustainable future.
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101 Tips for a Zero-Waste Kitchen
Kathryn Kellogg is taking her accessible tips for a zero-waste lifestyle and focusing on the heart of the house. Our kitchens can produce a shocking amount of waste and, even though food scraps may seem harmless, they can't properly decompose in a landfill. What's more: wasting food can strain your wallet. The average American family of four will lose $1,500 annually on food waste. It's time to turn things around!
101 Tips for a Zero Waste Kitchen is your guide to reducing waste in your kitchen. Kathryn will teach you how to buy in bulk, avoid unnecessary packaging, upcycle jars, and more. Plus, she'll give you recipes that make use of your scraps: preserve your lemon peels for extra flavor, create simple syrup from strawberry tops, and revive shriveled mushrooms. With a little work and Kathryn in your corner, you'll have the tools you need to reach the ultimate goal: no produce left behind!
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Well Worn: visible mending for the clothes you love
Mend and revive your favorite well-worn garments with this comprehensive guide to visible mending techniques from the founder of Slow Stitch Club.
From the creator of the popular Slow Stitch Club, Well Worn is a fresh and engaging clothing repair guide and accessible introduction for anyone looking to explore visible mending to revolutionize their wardrobe, whether you are a stitching pro or have never picked up a needle and thread.
Mending is a creative outlet and a slow and therapeutic skill, and author and textile artist Skye Pennant shares the joys of mending by teaching traditional darning and sashiko techniques to help fight against wardrobe perfectionism as well as fast fashion, making for gorgeous visible mending results. Her introduction includes a short history of mending followed by key techniques, fabrics, tools, and materials. Sections are organized by type of clothing to mend: Jeans & Denim, Sweaters & Knitwear, T-Shirts, Socks, and more.
An outstanding gift or self-purchase for anyone interested in refreshing their wardrobe, fostering a more sustainable lifestyle, saving money and avoiding fast fashion, or simply engaging with a crafty new creative outlet, this sewing basics book is all about mending clothes you love, one slow stitch at a time. -
Total Garbage
An investigative narrative that dives into the waste embedded in our daily lives—and shows how individuals and communities are making a real difference for health, prosperity, quality of life and the fight against climate change, by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist
What happens to our trash? Why are our oceans filling with plastic? Do we really waste 40 percent of our food 65 percent of our energy? Waste is truly our biggest problem, and solving our inherent trashiness can fix our economy, our energy costs, our traffic jams, and help slow climate change—all while making us healthier, happier and more prosperous. This story-driven and in-depth exploration of the pervasive yet hard-to-see wastefulness that permeates our daily lives illuminates the ways in which we've been duped into accepting absolutely insane levels of waste as normal. Total Garbage also tells the story of individuals and communities who are finding the way back from waste, and showing us that our choices truly matter and make a difference.
Our big environmental challenges – climate, energy, plastic pollution, deforestation, toxic emissions—are often framed as problems too big for any one person to solve. Too big even for hope. But when viewed as symptoms of a single greater problem—the epic levels of trash and waste we produce daily--the way forward is clear. Waste is the one problem individuals can positively impact—and not just on the planet, but also on our wallets, our health, and national and energy security. The challenge is seeing our epic wastefulness clearly.
Total Garbage will shine a light on the absurdity of the systems that all of us use daily and take for granted--and it will help both individuals and communities make meaningful changes toward better lives and a cleaner, greener world. -
Wild Fire
Welcome to the Custer Hill Club - a men's club set in an Adirondack hunting lodge whose members include some of America's most powerful business leaders, military men, and government officials. Ostensibly, the club is a place to relax with old friends. But one fall weekend, the club's Executive Board gathers to talk about 9/11 - and finalize a retaliation plan, known only by its code name: WILD FIRE. That same weekend, a member of the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force is found dead. Soon it's up to Detective John Corey and his wife, FBI Agent Kate Mayfield, to unravel a plot that starts with the Custer Hill Club and ends with American cities locked in the crosshairs of a nuclear device. Only Corey and Mayfield can stop the button from being pushed, and global chaos from being unleashed ... More chilling than yesterday's headlines and as prophetic as tomorrow's, Wild Fire will challenge you to question everything you thought you knew about your leaders and your country. Golden Voice Scott Brick proves himself a superb match for bestselling suspense writer Nelson DeMille. With his trademark tones of irony, sarcasm, and self-confidence, Brick brings to life the wisecracking and independent Corey in ways that will make the listener laugh even as the tension builds. Brick's quiet and level tones for the more even-tempered Mayfield make it seem as though there are two narrators at work.
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Up Country
"At first Paul Brenner, himself a Vietnam vet, isn't interested in the case. After his forced retirement from the army's Criminal Investigation Division, he has adapted to civilian life. Then his old boss tells Brenner of the circumstances surrounding the officer's death; the incident happened over three decades ago in Vietnam."--Jacket.
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Word of Honor
Read the gripping story of a Vietnam vet whose secret past threatens his family, career, and honor, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold over 50 million copies worldwide, and is "a true master" (Dan Brown).
He is a good man, a brilliant corporate executive, an honest, handsome family man admired by men and desired by women. But sixteen years ago Ben Tyson was a lieutenant in Vietnam.
There, in 1968, the men under his command committed a murderous atrocity-and together swore never to tell the world what they had done. Not the press, army justice, and the events he tried to forget have caught up with Ben Tyson. His family, his career, and his personal sense of honor hang in the balance. And only one woman can reveal the truth of his past--and set him free. -
The Charm School
#1 New York Times bestselling author, Nelson DeMille, delivers an explosive thriller of international intrigue and high-voltage political tension set in contemporary Russia.On a dark road deep inside Russia, a young American tourist picks up a most unusual passenger a U.S. POW on the run with an incredible secret to reveal to an unsuspecting world. The secret concerns "The Charm School," a vast and astounding KGB conspiracy that stands poised against the very heartland of America. Arrayed against this renegade power of the Soviet state are three Americans: an Air Force officer, who will fly one last covert mission into the center of a mad experiment; an embassy liaison, who will have her hopes for a saner superpower balance brutally tested; and the chief of the CIA's Moscow station, who will find his intricate dance of destiny and death reaching its devastating conclusion.
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The Gold Coast
Welcome to the fabled Gold Coast, that stretch on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America. Here two men are destined for an explosive collision: John Sutter, Wall Street lawyer, holding fast to a fading aristocratic legacy; and Frank Bellarosa, the Mafia don who seizes his piece of the staid and unprepared Gold Coast like a latter-day barbarian chief and draws Sutter and his regally beautiful wife, Susan, into his violent world. Told from Sutter's sardonic and often hilarious point of view, and laced with sexual passion and suspense, The Gold Coast is Nelson DeMille's captivating story of friendship and seduction, love and betrayal.
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The General's Daughter
Here is an intriguing and sophisticated murder mystery of an upstanding military officer - the base commander's daughter - who's been leading an unsavory double life.
When a professional military woman with a pristine reputation is found raped and murdered, a preliminary search turns up certain paraphernalia, and sex toys that point to a scandal of major proportions, The chief investigator is reluctant to take the case when he learns that his partner will be a woman with whom he had a tempestuous affair and an unpleasant parting. But duty calls and intrigue begins when they learn that several top-level people may have been involved with the "golden girl" - and many have wanted her dead.
It's Nelson DeMille at his best - exciting, suspenseful and highly provocative. -
Night Fall
On a Long Island beach at dusk, Bob Mitchell and Janet Whitney conduct their illicit love affair in front of a video camera, set to record each steamy moment. Suddenly a terrible explosion lights up the sky. Grabbing the camera, the couple flees as approaching police cars speed toward the scene. Five years later, the crash of Flight 800 has been attributed to a mechanical mal-function.
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The Gate House
#1 New York Times bestselling author Nelson DeMille delivers the long-awaited follow-up to his classic novel The Gold Coast.
When John Sutter's aristocratic wife killed her mafia don lover, John left America and set out in his sailboat on a three-year journey around the world, eventually settling in London. Now, ten years later, he has come home to the Gold Coast, that stretch of land on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America, to attend the imminent funeral of an old family servant. Taking up temporary residence in the gatehouse of Stanhope Hall, John finds himself living only a quarter of a mile from Susan who has also returned to Long Island. But Susan isn't the only person from John's past who has reemerged: Though Frank Bellarosa, infamous Mafia don and Susan's ex-lover, is long dead, his son, Anthony, is alive and well, and intent on two missions: Drawing John back into the violent world of the Bellarosa family, and exacting revenge on his father's murderer--Susan Sutter. At the same time, John and Susan's mutual attraction resurfaces and old passions begin to reignite, and John finds himself pulled deeper into a familiar web of seduction and betrayal. In THE GATE HOUSE, acclaimed author Nelson Demille brings us back to that fabled spot on the North Shore -- a place where past, present, and future collides with often unexpected results. -
The Panther
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"Bracing and spectacular." - Providence Sunday Journal
Anti-Terrorist Task Force agent John Corey and his wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield, have been posted overseas to Sana'a, Yemen-one of the most dangerous places in the Middle East. While there, they will be working with a small team to track down one of the masterminds behind the USS Cole bombing: a high-ranking Al Qaeda operative known as The Panther. Ruthless and elusive, he's wanted for multiple terrorist acts and murders-and the U.S. government is determined to bring him down, no matter the cost. As latecomers to a deadly game, John and Kate don't know the rules, the players, or the score. What they do know is that there is more to their assignment than meets the eye-and that the hunters are about to become the hunted.
Filled with breathtaking plot turns and told in John Corey's inimitable voice, THE PANTHER raises disturbing questions about whether we can ever know who our enemies - or our allies - really are. -
The Lion's Game
"The Lion" will be landing. And at New York's JFK Airport, an elite American task force waits as the notorious Libyan terrorist prepares to defect to the West. Then, aboard Flight 175, something goes eerily, horribly wrong -- a mere prelude to the terror that is to come. Ex-NYPD cop, now Federal Task Force agent John Corey -- together with his formidable and beautiful new partner, Kate Mayfield -- will follow a trail of smoke and blood across the country. His quarry: a foe withteh cunning of a lion and all the bloodlust of a man. To win a desperate game with no rules at all, Corey must invent a strategy that leaves no room for mistakes.
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Radiant Angel
Prescient and chilling, DeMille's #1 New York Times bestselling novel takes us into the heart of a new Cold War with a clock-ticking plot that has Manhattan in its crosshairs.
After a showdown with the notorious Yemeni terrorist known as The Panther, John Corey has left the Anti-Terrorist Task Force and returned home to New York City, taking a job with the Diplomatic Surveillance Group. Although Corey's new assignment with the DSG-surveilling Russian diplomats working at the U.N. Mission-is thought to be "a quiet end," he is more than happy to be out from under the thumb of the FBI and free from the bureaucracy of office life.
But Corey realizes something the U.S. government doesn't: The all-too-real threat of a newly resurgent Russia.
When Vasily Petrov, a colonel in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service posing as a diplomat with the Russian U.N. Mission, mysteriously disappears from a Russian oligarch's party in Southampton, it's up to Corey to track him down. What are the Russians up to and why? Is there a possible nuclear threat, a so-called radiant angel? Will Corey find Petrov and put a stop to whatever he has planned before it's too late? Or will Corey finally be outrun and outsmarted, with America facing the prospect of a crippling attack unlike anything it's ever seen before?
Please note: Radiant Angel is published in the UK under the title A Quiet End. -
The Cuban Affair
INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From the legendary #1 New York Times bestselling author of Plum Island and Night Fall, Nelson DeMille’s blistering new novel features an exciting new character—U.S. Army combat veteran Daniel “Mac” MacCormick, now a charter boat captain, who is about to set sail on his most dangerous cruise.
Daniel Graham MacCormick—Mac for short—seems to have a pretty good life. At age thirty-five he’s living in Key West, owner of a forty-two-foot charter fishing boat, The Maine. Mac served five years in the Army as an infantry officer with two tours in Afghanistan. He returned with the Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, scars that don’t tan, and a boat with a big bank loan. Truth be told, Mac’s finances are more than a little shaky.
One day, Mac is sitting in the famous Green Parrot Bar in Key West, contemplating his life, and waiting for Carlos, a hotshot Miami lawyer heavily involved with anti-Castro groups. Carlos wants to hire Mac and The Maine for a ten-day fishing tournament to Cuba at the standard rate, but Mac suspects there is more to this and turns it down. The price then goes up to two million dollars, and Mac agrees to hear the deal, and meet Carlos’s clients—a beautiful Cuban-American woman named Sara Ortega, and a mysterious older Cuban exile, Eduardo Valazquez.
What Mac learns is that there is sixty million American dollars hidden in Cuba by Sara’s grandfather when he fled Castro’s revolution. With the “Cuban Thaw” underway between Havana and Washington, Carlos, Eduardo, and Sara know it’s only a matter of time before someone finds the stash—by accident or on purpose. And Mac knows if he accepts this job, he’ll walk away rich…or not at all.
Brilliantly written, with his signature humor, fascinating authenticity from his research trip to Cuba, and heart-pounding pace, Nelson DeMille is a true master of the genre. -
The Deserter
*NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*
An “outstanding” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) blistering thriller featuring a brilliant and unorthodox Army investigator, his enigmatic female partner, and their hunt for the Army’s most notorious—and dangerous—deserter from #1 New York Times bestselling author Nelson DeMille and Alex DeMille.
When Captain Kyle Mercer of the Army’s elite Delta Force disappeared from his post in Afghanistan, a video released by his Taliban captors made international headlines. But circumstances were murky: Did Mercer desert before he was captured? Then a second video sent to Mercer’s Army commanders leaves no doubt: the trained assassin and keeper of classified Army intelligence has willfully disappeared.
When Mercer is spotted a year later in Caracas, Venezuela, by an old Army buddy, top military brass task Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor of the Criminal Investigation Division to fly to Venezuela and bring Mercer back to America—preferably alive. Brodie knows this is a difficult mission, made more difficult by his new partner’s inexperience, by their undeniable chemistry, and by Brodie’s suspicion that Maggie Taylor is reporting to the CIA.
With ripped-from-the-headlines appeal, an exotic and dangerous locale, and the hairpin twists and inimitable humor that are signature DeMille, The Deserter is the first in a timely and thrilling new series from an unbeatable team of True Masters: the #1 New York Times bestseller Nelson DeMille and his son, award-winning screenwriter Alex DeMille. -
The Maze
#1 New York Times bestselling author Nelson DeMille returns with a “genuinely thrilling” (The New York Times) suspense novel featuring his most popular character, former NYPD homicide detective John Corey, called out of retirement to investigate a string of grisly murders—inspired by the actual Gilgo Beach murders.
In his #1 New York Times bestseller Plum Island, Nelson DeMille introduced readers to NYPD Homicide Detective John Corey, who we first met on the back porch of his uncle’s waterfront mansion on Long Island, recovering from wounds incurred in the line of duty.
Six novels later, The Maze finds Corey on the same porch, having survived new law enforcement roles and romantic relationships—wiser and more sarcastic than ever. Corey is restless and looking for action, so when his former lover Detective Beth Penrose appears with a job offer, Corey has to once again make some decisions about his career—and about reuniting with Beth.
Inspired by the real-life Gilgo Beach murders, The Maze takes us on a dangerous hunt for an apparent serial killer who has murdered nine—and maybe more—sex workers and hidden their bodies in the thick undergrowth on a lonely stretch of beach.
As Corey digs deeper into this case, he comes to suspect that the failure of the local police to solve this sensational mystery may not be a result of their incompetence—it may be something else. Something more sinister.
Featuring John Corey’s politically incorrect humor and brilliant, unorthodox investigative skills, The Maze “finally gives DeMille’s readers the John Corey fix they’ve been craving,” along with the shocking plot twists that are the trademark of the bestselling author Nelson DeMille, “the master of smart, entertaining suspense” (Bookreporter). -
Blood Lines
In this “highly entertaining” New York Times bestseller from Nelson DeMille and Alex DeMille, Army CID Special Agents Brodie and Taylor “are the modern warriors the world needs” (BookReporter) and they’re on the hunt for the cold-blooded murderer of one of their fellow agents.
Army Criminal Investigation Agents Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor have been separated for five months following their last assignment, a dangerous mission in Venezuela to locate and detain an infamous Army deserter. Now, in Berlin, they are reunited and tasked with investigating the murder of one of their own: CID Special Agent Harry Vance of the 5th MP Battalion, an accomplished counterterrorism agent who had been stationed in western Germany, and whose body was discovered in a city park in the heart of Berlin’s Arab refugee community.
The authorities suspect this is an act of Islamic terrorism, but Brodie and Taylor soon believe there is more to this case. The reason for Vance’s presence in Berlin is unknown, and as Brodie and Taylor work to discover what the murder victim was doing in the days and weeks preceding his death, they become immersed in the many conflicts and contradictions of modern Germany—the Arab refugee crisis, the dark legacy of the Cold War and the Stasi secret police, and the imminent threats of a rising neo-Nazi movement. At the same time, they are butting heads with the authorities—both German and American—and facing a possible threat from American intelligence agents who fear that Brodie and Taylor might have learned too much about US clandestine operations during their mission in Venezuela.
Ultimately, Brodie and Taylor realize that the murder of Harry Vance was merely the prelude to a much more sinister future event—unless they can unravel the mystery in time to stop it. -
A Black Women's History of the United States
The award-winning Revisioning American History series continues with this “groundbreaking new history of Black women in the United States” (Ibram X. Kendi)—the perfect companion to An Indigenous People’s History of the United States and An African American and Latinx History of the United States.
An empowering and intersectional history that centers the stories of African American women across 400+ years, showing how they are—and have always been—instrumental in shaping our country.
In centering Black women’s stories, two award-winning historians seek both to empower African American women and to show their allies that Black women’s unique ability to make their own communities while combatting centuries of oppression is an essential component in our continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism. Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross offer an examination and celebration of Black womanhood, beginning with the first African women who arrived in what became the United States to African American women of today.
A Black Women’s History of the United States reaches far beyond a single narrative to showcase Black women’s lives in all their fraught complexities. Berry and Gross prioritize many voices: enslaved women, freedwomen, religious leaders, artists, queer women, activists, and women who lived outside the law. The result is a starting point for exploring Black women’s history and a testament to the beauty, richness, rhythm, tragedy, heartbreak, rage, and enduring love that abounds in the spirit of Black women in communities throughout the nation. -
We Were Eight Years in Power: an American tragedy
In this “urgently relevant”* collection featuring the landmark essay “The Case for Reparations,” the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me “reflects on race, Barack Obama’s presidency and its jarring aftermath”*—including the election of Donald Trump.
New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize
Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times • USA Today • Time • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Essence • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Week • Kirkus Reviews
*Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“We were eight years in power” was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s “first white president.”
But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period—and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation’s old and unreconciled history. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective—the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president.
We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates’s iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including “Fear of a Black President,” “The Case for Reparations,” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates’s own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era. We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America, from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment. -
The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the paradox of progress
For acclaimed historian William Jelani Cobb, the historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency is not the most remarkable development of the 2008 election; even more so is the fact that Obama won some 90 percent of the black vote in the primaries across America despite the fact that the established black leadership since the civil rights era�men like Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, Andrew Young, who paved the way for his candidacy�all openly supported Hillary Clinton. Clearly a sea change has occurred among black voters, ironically pushing the architects of the civil rights movement toward the periphery at the moment when their political dreams were most fully realized.
How this has happened, and the powerful implications it holds for America's politics and social landscape, is the focus of The Substance of Hope, a deeply insightful, paradigm-shifting examination of a new generation of voters that has not been shaped by the raw memory of Jim Crow and has a different range of imperatives. Cobb sees Obama's ascendancy as "a reality that has been taking shape in tiny increments for the past four decades," and examines thorny issues such as the paradox and contradictions embodied in race and patriotism, identity and citizenship; how the civil rights leadership became a political machine; why the term "postracial" is as iniquitous as it is inaccurate; and whether our society has really changed with Obama's election.
Elegantly written and powerfully argued, The Substance of Hope challenges conventional wisdom as it offers original insight into America's future. -
The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: his early life as a slave, his escape from bondage, and his complete history
Born around 1817 in Maryland, Frederick Douglass was a former plantation slave who went on to become a brilliant writer and eloquent orator. In this amazing first-hand narrative, published in 1881, he vividly recounts his early years, which were filled with physical abuse, deprivation, and tragedy; his dramatic escapes to the North, recapture, and eventual freedom; his work for the Anti-Slavery Society and influential role in speaking for other African-Americans; his abolitionist campaigns, and crusade for full civil rights for former slaves.
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On Juneteenth
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
The essential, sweeping story of Juneteenth’s integral importance to American history, as told by a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and Texas native.Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. All too aware of the stories of cowboys, ranchers, and oilmen that have long dominated the lore of the Lone Star State, Gordon-Reed—herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s—forges a new and profoundly truthful narrative of her home state, with implications for us all.
Combining personal anecdotes with poignant facts gleaned from the annals of American history, Gordon-Reed shows how, from the earliest presence of Black people in Texas to the day in Galveston on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger announced the end of legalized slavery in the state, African-Americans played an integral role in the Texas story.
Reworking the traditional “Alamo” framework, she powerfully demonstrates, among other things, that the slave- and race-based economy not only defined the fractious era of Texas independence but precipitated the Mexican-American War and, indeed, the Civil War itself.
In its concision, eloquence, and clear presentation of history, On Juneteenth vitally revises conventional renderings of Texas and national history. As our nation verges on recognizing June 19 as a national holiday, On Juneteenth is both an essential account and a stark reminder that the fight for equality is exigent and ongoing.
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Four Hundred Souls: a community history of African America, 1619-2019
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A chorus of extraordinary voices tells the epic story of the four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present—edited by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, and Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire.
FINALIST FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post, Town & Country, Ms. magazine, BookPage, She Reads, BookRiot, Booklist • “A vital addition to [the] curriculum on race in America . . . a gateway to the solo works of all the voices in Kendi and Blain’s impressive choir.”—The Washington Post
“From journalist Hannah P. Jones on Jamestown’s first slaves to historian Annette Gordon-Reed’s portrait of Sally Hemings to the seductive cadences of poets Jericho Brown and Patricia Smith, Four Hundred Souls weaves a tapestry of unspeakable suffering and unexpected transcendence.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
The story begins in 1619—a year before the Mayflower—when the White Lion disgorges “some 20-and-odd Negroes” onto the shores of Virginia, inaugurating the African presence in what would become the United States. It takes us to the present, when African Americans, descendants of those on the White Lion and a thousand other routes to this country, continue a journey defined by inhuman oppression, visionary struggles, stunning achievements, and millions of ordinary lives passing through extraordinary history.
Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume “community” history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. They approach history from various perspectives: through the eyes of towering historical icons or the untold stories of ordinary people; through places, laws, and objects. While themes of resistance and struggle, of hope and reinvention, course through the book, this collection of diverse pieces from ninety different minds, reflecting ninety different perspectives, fundamentally deconstructs the idea that Africans in America are a monolith—instead it unlocks the startling range of experiences and ideas that have always existed within the community of Blackness.
This is a history that illuminates our past and gives us new ways of thinking about our future, written by the most vital and essential voices of our present. -
Envisioning Emancipation
The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important documents in American history. As we approach its 150th anniversary, what do we really know about those who experienced slavery? In their pioneering book, Envisioning Emancipation, renowned photographic historian Deborah Willis and historian of slavery Barbara Krauthamer have amassed 150 photographs--some never before published--from the antebellum days of the 1850s through the New Deal era of the 1930s. The authors vividly display the seismic impact of emancipation on African Americans born before and after the Proclamation, providing a perspective on freedom and slavery and a way to understand the photos as documents of engagement, action, struggle, and aspiration. Filled with powerful images of lives too often ignored or erased from historical records, Envisioning Emancipation will be a keepsake for many years to come. Deborah Willis, a leading historian and curator of African American photography and culture, is Chair and Professor of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Her most recent books are Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present and Black Venus 2010: They Called Her "Hottentot" (Temple). Barbara Krauthamer is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is the author of Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South as well as many articles and essays on the history of slavery and emancipation.
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There Was an Old Mermaid Who Swallowed a Shark!
Scholastic's bestselling Old Lady stars in a brand-new adventure series for beginning readers chock-full of hilarious laughs and fun facts!
There was an old mermaid who swallowed a shark. I don't know why she swallowed a shark, but it left no mark!Scholastic's bestselling Old Lady is starring in a brand-new adventure series that will make you laugh AND learn! In this new spin-off, the Old Lady turns into an Old Mermaid, travels down into the ocean, and swallows a shark . . . and a squid, and a fish, and an eel, and a crab, and a sea star, and a clam . . . Why? Well, it was fun to cram her mouth with a clam! Two new characters lead the reader through this hilarious adventure while exchanging some awesome facts about the creatures down under for a light take on nonfiction that's perfect for this age. With expanded sea creature back matter and a search-and-find game at the end, this Old Mermaid is making quite a splash!
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Swap!
An old ship. A sad friend. A button . . . An idea. Let’s SWAP!
In a young scalawag's first tale of bartering, a peg-legged youngster sets out to help his captain repair his vessel. One button for three teacups. SWAP! Two teacups for four coils of rope. SWAP! And so it goes, until the little swashbuckler secures sails, anchors, a ship’s wheel, and more . . . including a happy friend. Steve Light’s intricate pen-and-ink illustrations, punctuated by brilliant blue and other hues, anchor this clever tale of friendship and ingenuity. -
The Princess in Black and the Mermaid Princess
There’s trouble under the sea! Can the Princess in Black and her new mermaid friend put a stop to a big blue kraken’s shenanigans?
The Princess in Black and her friends are enjoying a day of sun and sea on Princess Sneezewort’s royal boat when a real, live mermaid princess emerges from the waves! Eeeeeee! Princess Posy needs their help protecting her very cute sea goats from being eaten by a very greedy kraken. But the princesses and the Goat Avenger quickly realize that fighting underwater can be tough for land dwellers, and only the mermaid Princess Posy can save the day. Can the masked heroes help her learn that being a princess means more than just being nice—it means speaking up? An ode to using your voice (along with a kelp-tree swing or two), this newest installment in the New York Times best-selling series is a splish-splashing good time. -
Pirates Past Noon Graphic Novel
The #1 bestselling chapter book series is now a graphic novel! Magic. Mystery. Time-travel. Get whisked to the time of pirates with Jack and Annie!
Captured by pirates! When Jack and Annie are whisked away in the magic tree house, they arrive on a beautiful beach. It’s paradise! That is, until the pirates arrive. . .
The dreaded Cap’n Bones is looking for buried treasure. He thinks Jack and Annie know where it is. And he’s not letting them out of his sight until they find it!
Sail back in time and around the world with Jack and Annie in Magic Tree House® graphic novels! The vibrant and energetic art of Kelly and Nichole Matthews perfectly captures the adventure, mystery, and magic of the original #1 New York Times bestselling series.
For the first time in graphic novel--live the adventure again with new full-color art that brings the magic to life! -
Mystery at Mermaid Lagoon (Disney The Never Girls: Graphic Novel #1)
The Never Girls’ adventures with the fairies in Never Land continue in this all-new series of hardcover graphic novels perfect for fans of the bestselling chapter book series!
Kate, Mia, Lainey, and Gabby are back—along with Tinker Bell and their fairy friends from Pixie Hollow—for more magical adventures together. In this first Disney: The Never Girls graphic novel, the girls find themselves in the middle of a mermaid-pirate feud that has all of Never Land taking sides! With old friends and new, an engaging mystery to solve, and fun full-color illustrations and comic panels, this book is sure to delight readers ages 6 to 9 and Never Girls fans of all ages.
Kate craves adventure and excitement.
Mia loves dresses, roses, and anything beautiful.
Lainey dreams of talking to animals.
Gabby believes in fairies more than anyone.
Together, they are the Never Girls—four real girls in a fairy's world! -
Pirate Stew
Meet LONG JOHN McRON, SHIP'S COOK . . . and the most unusual babysitter you've ever seen.
Long John has a whole crew of wild pirates in tow, and--for one boy and his sister--he's about to transform a perfectly ordinary evening into a riotous adventure beneath a pirate moon. It's time to make some PIRATE STEW.
Marvelously silly and gloriously entertaining, this tale of pirates, flying ships, doughnut feasts and some rather magical stew is perfect for all pirates, both young and old.
With a deliciously rhyming text from master storyteller Neil Gaiman and spellbinding illustrations by the supremely talented Chris Riddell, this is the picture book of the year!
Pirate Stew! Pirate Stew!
Pirate Stew for me and you!
Pirate Stew, Pirate Stew
Eat it and you won't be blue
You can be a pirate too! -
The Mermaid
A New York Times bestselling striking under-the-sea version of Goldilocks with bonus storytelling in the borders, as only Jan Brett could create.
When Kiniro, a young mermaid, comes upon a gorgeous house made of seashells and coral, she is so curious that she goes inside. She’s thrilled to find a just-right breakfast, pretty little chair, and, best of all, a comfy bed that rocks in the current.
But when the Octopus family returns home, they are not happy to find that someone has been eating their food and breaking their things. Baby has the biggest shock when she finds the mermaid asleep in her bed!
Luckily, shock turns to happiness when Kiniro gives her a thoughtful gift before escaping from the twenty-four arms coming her way.
Vibrant, intricate scenes of an underwater paradise transport this classic fairy tale to a magical setting inspired by the seas off the coast of Okinawa, Japan. Along with fun details that enrich the storytelling in Jan Brett's trademark borders, this visual treat will enchant readers of all ages. -
Pirate Queens
This wow-worthy book proves that women have been making their mark in all aspects of history--even the high seas!
Meet Ching Shih, a Chinese pirate who presided over a fleet of 80,000 men (by contrast, Blackbeard had some 300). Get the scoop on Anne Bonny who famously ran away from an arranged marriage to don trousers and brandish a pistol in the Bahamas. And there are more!
Each pirate profile includes a dramatic original poem presented against a backdrop of gorgeous full-color art by award-winning illustrator Sara Gómez Woolley. Each profile is followed by fascinating information about the real life and times of these daring (and dangerous!) women.
Vetted by the world's leading pirate experts and historians, this book is a cool and edgy gift. It's also perfect for any curious kid who dreams of adventure and for parents who are eager to show their tweens and teens that history is more diverse, daring, and surprising than what is typically found in textbooks.
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The Little Mermaid Step into Reading (Disney Princess)
Ariel is one of the most beloved Disney princesses of all time, and now children ages 4-6 can relive the magic of Disney's The Little Mermaid with this Step 2 Step into Reading leveled reader. Step 2 readers use basic vocabulary and short sentences to tell simple stories. For children who recognize familiar words and can sound out new words with help.
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P is for Pirate
The word pirate means one who plunders on the sea, and piracy has been around for as long as men and women have longed for adventure and lusted for riches. But it wasn't all fun and pillaging! Being a pirate was not an easy life. Written by award-winning author Eve Bunting, poetry and expository text are used in this alphabetical examination of the history of piracy. Topics include legendary ships, fabled hideouts, and notorious villains like Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard. Includes the pirate code of conduct as well as the different occupations aboard ship.
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The Good Little Mermaid's Guide to Bedtime
This little mermaid is too FIERCE and SCARY and FEROCIOUS to follow The Good Little Mermaid's Guide to Bedtime . . . well, except the part about snuggling her shark stuffie. A hilarious picture book for kids ages 3 to 7 who are experts at resisting sleep.
Once upon an evening, a good little mermaid begins to get ready for bed.
Once upon? No. Not once upon. I know what that means. And I'm NOT a good little mermaid. I am a PREDATOR!
Thus begins our story of a little mermaid who is anything but good.
Sleep? Sleep is for guppies! This little mermaid is a TERROR of the DEEP.
Cleaning up and putting toys away? This little mermaid doesn't need TOYS. The ocean is her playground, and everything in it is afraid of HER.
Brushing her teeth and flossing? Never! Well . . . maybe a little bit so they gleam like RAZOR-SHARP BLADES.
Cleverly told through a back and forth between The Good Little Mermaid's Guide to Bedtime and a mermaid who is resisting bedtime at every turn, this story will delight readers with its hilarious illustrations and adorable but VERY SCARY main character. Will she ever go to sleep? Read on to find out. -
Little Captain Jack
Laugh along with the adventures and misadventures of Little Captain Jack. Great things can come in all shapes and sizes, big or small.
Once upon a time, there was a little pirate.
He was so very little that everyone called him Little Captain Jack.
One day, the bad pirate Badlock, took Little Captain Jack and locked him in a dark
cellar. Our pirate was scared but he was helped by a mouse. And the mouse was helped by a seagull...---
Alicia Acosta is a professional storyteller from Andalusia (Spain). She works with groups of children in schools and for Government organizations. She combines her background as a psychologist to promote the love of reading in children. She is also a radio announcer and organizes theater workshops.
Mónica Carretero is a renowned illustrator in Spain. She has published more than 70 books in England, Australia, and the USA. She was awarded by the London Children's Book Fair for her illustrations. She has received five International Latino Book Awards and one Living Now Award.
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Pearl
Caldecott Honor author-illustrator Molly Idle dazzles with an original mermaid tale about how small, persistent actions can achieve great things.Sometimes the tiniest light can shine the brightest! Like the other mermaids of the deep, Pearl longs to care for the endless beaches, coral reefs, and towering kelp forests of her vast ocean world. So when her mother asks her to tend to a mere grain of sand, Pearl is heartbroken. It takes all her patience and determination to discover how even the littlest mermaid can transform the world.
Caldecott Honor-winning author and artist Molly Idle has masterfully crafted a modern classic in this mesmerizing tale about the immense power of small actions. -
Geronimo Stilton Graphic Novels #17: The Mystery of the Pirate Ship
The Pirate Cats travel to the 18th Century to do what they do best... be pirates! So they steal an old ship sailing on the Indian Ocean to pillage the East India Company's merchant ships! It's up to Geronimo Stilton to travel through time, become a sailor, and stop the cats from changing history forever! Will Geronimo get his sea legs in time to save the day?
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Mermaids of the Deep Blue Sea
The Aldens have joined Dr. Iris Perez as she investigates legendary creatures around the world. In this adventure, the children investigate what might be living in the deep trench off the coast of Puerto Rico. From manatees to mermaids to sea monsters, creatures of the sea have been attracting tourists to the area for years. But when a man on a nearby island goes missing, it’s up to the Aldens to sort out fact from fiction.
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Curse of the Forgotten City
From #BookTok phenomenon and New York Times bestselling author of the YA fantasy novel, Lightlark, the second book in this fast-paced middle grade series steeped in Colombian mythology and full of adventure, perfect for fans of Aru Shah and the End of Time and Percy Jackson. In this tale Tor, Engle, and Melda must stop a band of cursed pirates from taking over their home.
Tor is adjusting to life with the Night Witch's powers, with his best friends Engle and Melda by his side. But when a mysterious girl named Vesper washes ashore claiming a band of cursed pirates is on their way to Emblem Island, life changes fast.
Vesper is from an underwater city that was destroyed by the terrible Calavera pirates and she warns Tor that his village is next. To stop the pirates, Tor, Engle, and Melda join Vesper on the hunt for the famed Pirate's Pearl, an ancient relic that would give them complete control of the high seas.
But the journey is perilous, filled with legendary sea creatures that are determined to see them fail. To save his village and everyone he loves, Tor must accept his new abilities--and use them--in the race to find the pearl.
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The Sunken Ship
Dive under the sea with Mermaid Days, a series perfect for beginning readers!
Pick a book. Grow a Reader!
This series is part of Scholastic's early reader line, Acorn, aimed at children who are learning to read. With easy-to-read text, a short-story format, plenty of humor, and full-color artwork on every page, these books will boost reading confidence and fluency. Acorn books plant a love of reading and help readers grow!
Swim along with mermaid Vera and octo-kid Beaker! In these three stories, Vera and Beaker go on adventures in their town of Tidal Grove. They explore a sunken ship, and Vera helps Beaker with an unusual octopus problem. With text from Stonewall award-winning author Kyle Lukoff, and bright, colorful artwork from artist Kat Uno, Mermaid Days is sure to be every young reader's favorite new series. Balancing easy-to-read-text, endless humor and charm, light nonfiction, and a loveable cast of underwater creatures, these laugh-out-loud stories are the perfect fit for new readers!
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Compass South
Get ready for a thrilling journey in Compass South, a New York Times–bestselling middle-grade graphic novel full of pirates and adventure, from the same team who created the Eisner Award-winner Salt Magic.
It's 1860 in New York City. When 12-year-old twins Alexander and Cleopatra's father disappears, they join the Black Hook Gang and are caught by the police pulling off a heist. They agree to reveal the identity of the gang in exchange for tickets to New Orleans. But once there, Alex is shanghaied to work on a ship that is heading for San Francisco via Cape Horn. Cleo stows away on a steamer to New Granada where she hopes to catch a train to San Francisco to find her brother. Neither Alexander nor Cleo realizes the real danger they are in-they are being followed by pirates who think they hold the key to treasure. How they outwit the pirates and find each other makes for a fast-paced, breathtaking adventure.
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Magical Mermaids! (Shimmer and Shine)
Leah’s day at the petting zoo becomes a magical adventure when Nickelodeon’s Shimmer and Shine lend a hand. Children ages 4 to 6 will love this deluxe Step 1 Step into Reading leveled reader.
Step 1 Readers feature big type and easy words. Rhymes and rhythmic text paired with picture clues help children decode the story. For children who know the alphabet and are eager to begin reading. -
Captain Jack and the Pirates
The boys from King Jack and the Dragon are back in this swashbuckling pirate adventure with pictures by the New York Times bestselling illustrator of Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes
Jack, Zack, and Caspar are building a ship—on the beach, out of sand. When they set sail on their imaginary adventure, Jack spies an enemy pirate ship nearby. They chase after the pirates, but a storm wrecks their ship and sweeps them up on a desert island. The island isn't totally deserted, though—their pirate enemies are there too. Just as the boys discover the pirates' treasure (an array of delicious desserts), the pirates (their parents) capture them. But these pirates are friendly—they're willing to share the treasure, and they throw in some ice cream just for good measure!
Perfect for storytime read-alouds, this picture book is just right for fans of Three Bears in a Boat, How I Became a Pirate, and We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. -
How to Catch a Mermaid
An enchanting mermaid tale from the New York Times and USA Today bestselling How to Catch series!
Many claim to have caught a mermaid, but can YOU? Perfect for mermaid lovers, summer reading, and gifts for kids ages 4-10, this funny mermaid picture book offers an irresistible under-the-sea adventure that parents, educators, and children will love! Brimming with fun STEAM-based traps, clever rhymes, and plenty of laughs to share in at-home and classroom read alouds, this magical story makes a perfect stocking stuffer and birthday, Easter, or back to school gift for kids and mermaid lovers alike!
How do you catch a mermaid? You must be very clever.
With mirrors, crowns, and pearls galore, this quest can't last forever!
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Blackbeard
Discover the life of Blackbeard (Edward Teach), among the most famous pirates of all time.
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Emily Windsnap and the Pirate Prince
Feisty girls take to the helm of a pirate ship in this new Emily Windsnap adventure! Ordinary girl on land, magical mermaid in water... Bubbling with magic, fun, friendship and oceans of adventure. A must-read for girls aged 8+.
When Emily Windsnap's boyfriend Aaron is captured by pirates there's only one option - join a rival pirate crew and persuade them to help rescue him. The Pirate Prince agrees, as long as Emily assists in finding the Trident's Treasure first.
But as if boarding a pirate ship weren't dangerous enough, Emily soon discovers that pirates hate mermaids. If her true identity is revealed, her life - and Aaron's - will be at risk.
How will Emily keep her secret when the only way to win the treasure is by turning into a mermaid? -
Bad Pirate
Barnacle Garrick is bold and saucy and selfish. And for a pirate captain, that’s good, very good. And his crew are all scurvy sea dogs—selfish down to the last fleabitten scuttle-butt. And that’s good too. But Augusta Garrick is shy, polite, and selfless. For a pirate, that’s bad, very bad. Despite her father’s horrible example, the sea pup can’t stop helping out. It just might take one terrible storm, a ripped sail, a missing peg leg and a panicked crew before Augusta can prove that being selfless is a bold and saucy move after all. And that’s good, very good indeed.
A rollicking tale peppered with pirate talk, Kari-Lynn Winters’ Bad Pirate is a story about being true to yourself, even if it means you must go against the pack. Dean Griffiths’ artwork glows with rich colours, fine detail and spot-on doggie characters. A scurvy delight. For landlubbers, the endpaper design includes a glossary of pirate and sailing terms.
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Aqualicious
Fun in the sun becomes an aqualicious adventure when Pinkalicious meets a miniature mermaid in #1 New York Times bestselling author Victoria Kann's popular hardcover picture book starring Pinkalicious.
Pinkalicious and her family go on a trip to the beach for a day of sun, fun, and sand castles! The day gets even more exciting when Pinkalicious finds a mini-mermaid named Aqua while she's collecting shells. Aqua wants to find her way home, and Pinkalicious and Peter decide to help—after they show her all of the pinkamazing things to do at the seashore!
Pinkalicious stars in five picture books—Pinkalicious, Goldilicious, Silverlicious, Emeraldalicious, and Aqualicious—as well as I Can Reads, doodle books, and more!
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Arrr, Mustache Baby!
Arrr, babies! Mustache Baby and his first mate Beard Baby set sail on the high seas and turn into big bad pirates in this newest addition to the popular Mustache Baby books! "Occasional badness has never been so good." (Kirkus)
In this swashbuckling tale, Mustache Baby and Beard Baby work hard to recover stolen treasure and convince baby buccaneers Captain Kid and Short John Silver to go legit. But when the scallywags refuse to play nice, Billy and Javier see red and go rogue, turning into bad guy pirates themselves. High spirits, plenty of pirate talk, and a mild message about not letting emotions get the best of you make for a rollicking read-aloud full of side-splitting, silly fun. -
From Here: a memoir
In her coming-of-age memoir, refugee advocate Luma Mufleh writes of her tumultuous journey to reconcile her identity as a gay Muslim woman and a proud Arab-turned-American refugee.
With no word for “gay” in Arabic, Luma may not have known what to call the feelings she had growing up in Jordan during the 1980s, but she knew well enough to keep them secret. It was clear that not only would her family have trouble accepting her, but trapped in a conservative religious society, she could’ve also been killed if anyone discovered her sexuality. Luma spent her teenage years increasingly desperate to find a way out, and finally found one when she was accepted into college in the United States. Once there, Luma begins the agonizing process of applying for political asylum, which ensures her safety—but causes her family to break ties with her.
Becoming a refugee in America is a rude awakening, and Luma must rely on the grace of friends and strangers alike as she builds a new life and finally embraces her full self. Slowly, she’s able to forge a new path forward with both her biological and chosen families, eventually founding Fugees Family, a nonprofit dedicated to the education and support of refugee children in the United States.
As hopeful as it is heartrending, From Here is a coming-of-age memoir about one young woman’s search for belonging and the many meanings of home for those who must leave theirs. -
Martyr!
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.
“Kaveh Akbar is one of my favorite writers. Ever.” —Tommy Orange, Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of There There
“The best novel you'll ever read about the joy of language, addiction, displacement, martyrdom, belonging, homesickness.” —Lauren Groff, best-selling author of Matrix and Fates and Furies
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.
Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others. -
The Collected Works of Kahlil Gibran
For the first time, all the major works of this beloved writer are gathered together in one hardcover volume.
Poet, artist, and mystic, Kahlil Gibran was born in 1883 to a poor Christian family in Lebanon and immigrated to the United States as an adolescent. His masterpiece, The Prophet, a book of poetic essays that he began while still a youth in Lebanon, is one of the most cherished books of our time and has sold millions of copies in more than twenty languages since its publication in 1923. But all of Gibran’s works—essays, stories, parables, and prose poems—are imbued with equally powerful simplicity and wisdom, whether they are addressing marriage or children, friendship or grief, work or pleasure. Perhaps no other twentieth-century writer has touched the hearts and minds of so remarkably varied and widespread a readership.
Included in this volume are The Prophet, The Wanderer, Jesus the Son of Man, A Tear and a Smile, Spirits Rebellious, Nymphs of the Valley, Prose Poems, The Garden of the Prophet, The Earth Gods, Sand and Foam, The Forerunner, and The Madman.
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Darius the Great Deserves Better
In this companion to the award-winning Darius the Great Is Not Okay, Darius suddenly has it all: a boyfriend, an internship, a spot on the soccer team. It's everything he's ever wanted--but what if he deserves better?
Darius Kellner is having a bit of a year. Since his trip to Iran, a lot has changed. He's getting along with his dad, and his best friend Sohrab is only a Skype call away. Between his first boyfriend, Landon, varsity soccer practices, and an internship at his favorite tea shop, things are falling into place.
Then, of course, everything changes. Darius's grandmothers are in town for a long visit, and Darius can't tell whether they even like him. The internship is not going according to plan, Sohrab isn't answering Darius's calls, and Dad is far away on business. And Darius is sure he really likes Landon . . . but he's also been hanging out with Chip Cusumano, former bully and current soccer teammate--and well, maybe he's not so sure about anything after all.
Darius was just starting to feel okay, like he finally knew what it meant to be Darius Kellner. But maybe okay isn't good enough. Maybe Darius deserves better. -
This Is All Your Fault
Set over the course of one day, Aminah Mae Safi's This Is All Your Fault is a smart and voice-driven YA novel that follows three young women determined to save their indie bookstore.
Rinn Olivera is finally going to tell her longtime crush AJ that she’s in love with him.
Daniella Korres writes poetry for her own account, but nobody knows it’s her.
Imogen Azar is just trying to make it through the day.
When Rinn, Daniella, and Imogen clock into work at Wild Nights Bookstore on the first day of summer, they’re expecting the hours to drift by the way they always do. Instead, they have to deal with the news that the bookstore is closing. Before the day is out, there’ll be shaved heads, a diva author, and a very large shipment of Air Jordans to contend with.
And it will take all three of them working together if they have any chance to save Wild Nights Bookstore. -
A Stranger in Your Own City
An award-winning journalist’s powerful portrait of his native Baghdad, the people of Iraq, and twenty years of war
The history of reportage has often depended on outsiders—Ryszard Kapuściński witnessing the fall of the shah in Iran, Frances FitzGerald observing the aftermath of the American war in Vietnam. What would happen if a native son was so estranged from his city by war that he could, in essence, view it as an outsider? What kind of portrait of a war-wracked place and people might he present? A Stranger in Your Own City is award-winning writer Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s beautiful, shattering response. This is not a book about Iraq’s history, nor an inventory of the many Middle Eastern wars that have consumed the nation over the past several decades. This is the tale of a people who once lived under the rule of a megalomaniacal leader who shaped the state in his own image; a people who watched a foreign army invade, topple that leader, demolish the state, and then invent a new country; who experienced the horror of having their home fragmented into a hundred different cities.
When the “Shock and Awe” campaign began in March of 2003, Abdul-Ahad was an architect. Within months he would become a translator, then a fixer, then a reporter for The Guardian and elsewhere, chronicling the unbuilding of his centuries-old cosmopolitan city. Beginning at that moment and spanning twenty years, Abdul-Ahad’s book offers a remarkable decentering of the West, and in its place emerges space for everyday people, soldiers, mercenaries, people blown sideways through life by the war. What comes to the fore is the effect on the ground: the human cost, the shifting allegiances, the generational change. A Stranger in Your Own City is a rare work of beauty and tragedy whose power and relevance lies in its attempt to return the land to the people to whom it belongs. -
Between Two Moons
A deeply moving family story about identity, faith, and belonging set in the Muslim immigrant enclave of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn following three siblings coming of age over the course of one Ramadan.
It’s the holy month of Ramadan, and twin sisters Amira and Lina are about to graduate high school in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. On the precipice of adulthood, they plan to embark on a summer of teenage revelry, trying on new identities and testing the limits of what they can get away with while still under their parents’ roof. But the twins' expectations of a summer of freedom collide with their older brother's return from prison, whose mysterious behavior threatens to undo the delicate family balance.
Meanwhile, outside the family’s apartment, a storm is brewing in Bay Ridge. A raid on a local business sparks a protest that brings the Arab community together, and a senseless act of violence threatens to tear them apart. Everyone’s motives are called into question as an alarming sense of disquiet pervades the neighborhood. With everything spiraling out of control, how will Amira and Lina know who they can trust?
A gorgeously written, intimate family story and a polyphonic portrait of life under the specter of Islamophobia, Between Two Moons challenges the reader to interrogate their own assumptions, asking questions of allegiance to faith, family, and community, and what it means to be a young Muslim in America. -
Eyeliner: a cultural history
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Pick
“Cosmetic, tool of rebellion, status signifier: Eyeliner has been all these and more. Moving through millenniums and across civilizations, Hankir gives the makeup its eye-opening due.” —The New York Times Book Review
“An impressive, rigorously researched, winding path through centuries and over continents.” —NPR.org
“I loved Eyeliner. Hankir approaches her subject with dedicated curiosity, humility, and humor, blending anthropology, travel writing, memoir and history. A treat.” —Kassia St. Clair, author of The Secret Lives of Color
From the acclaimed editor of Our Women on the Ground comes a dazzling exploration of the intersections of beauty and power around the globe, told through the lens of an iconic cosmetic
From the distant past to the present, with fingers and felt-tipped pens, metallic powders and gel pots, humans have been drawn to lining their eyes. The aesthetic trademark of figures ranging from Nefertiti to Amy Winehouse, eyeliner is one of our most enduring cosmetic tools; ancient royals and Gen Z beauty influencers alike would attest to its uniquely transformative power. It is undeniably fun—yet it is also far from frivolous.
Seen through Zahra Hankir’s (kohl-lined) eyes, this ubiquitous but seldom-examined product becomes a portal to history, proof both of the stunning variety among cultures across time and space and of our shared humanity. Through intimate reporting and conversations—with nomads in Chad, geishas in Japan, dancers in India, drag queens in New York, and more—Eyeliner embraces the rich history and significance of its namesake, especially among communities of color. What emerges is an unexpectedly moving portrait of a tool that, in various corners of the globe, can signal religious devotion, attract potential partners, ward off evil forces, shield eyes from the sun, transform faces into fantasies, and communicate volumes without saying a word.
Delightful, surprising, and utterly absorbing, Eyeliner is a fascinating tour through streets, stages, and bedrooms around the world, and a thought-provoking reclamation of a key piece of our collective history. -
The Thirty Names of Night
Winner of the ALA Stonewall Book Award—Barbara Gittings Literature Award
Named Best Book of the Year by Bustle
Named Most Anticipated Book of the Year by The Millions, Electric Literature, and HuffPost
The author of the “vivid and urgent…important and timely” (The New York Times Book Review) debut The Map of Salt and Stars returns with this remarkably moving and lyrical novel following three generations of Syrian Americans who are linked by a mysterious species of bird and the truths they carry close to their hearts.
Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother’s ghost has begun to visit him each evening. As his grandmother’s sole caretaker, he spends his days cooped up in their apartment, avoiding his neighborhood masjid, his estranged sister, and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria.
One night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting the birds of North America. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths. In fact, Laila Z’s past is intimately tied to his mother’s—and his grandmother’s—in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z’s story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his own community that he never knew. Realizing that he isn’t and has never been alone, he has the courage to officially claim a new name: Nadir, an Arabic name meaning rare.
As unprecedented numbers of birds are mysteriously drawn to the New York City skies, Nadir enlists the help of his family and friends to unravel what happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save. Following his mother’s ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along.
Featuring Zeyn Joukhadar’s signature “magical and heart-wrenching” (The Christian Science Monitor) storytelling, The Thirty Names of Night is a timely exploration of how we all search for and ultimately embrace who we are. -
The Other Americans
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • Timely, riveting, and unforgettable, The Other Americans is at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture.Late one spring night in California, Driss Guerraoui—father, husband, business owner, Moroccan immigrant—is hit and killed by a speeding car. The aftermath of his death brings together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter Nora, a jazz composer returning to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; her mother, Maryam, who still pines for her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora’s and an Iraqi War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son’s secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself.
As the characters—deeply divided by race, religion, and class—tell their stories, each in their own voice, connections among them emerge. Driss’s family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love—messy and unpredictable—is born.
Winner of the Arab American Book Award in Fiction
Finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Fiction
Finalist for the California Book Award
Longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize
A Los Angeles Times bestseller
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dallas Morning News, The Guardian, Variety, and Kirkus Reviews -
Homeland Elegies: a novel
This "beautiful novel . . . has echoes of The Great Gatsby": an immigrant father and his son search for belonging--in post-Trump America, and with each other (Dwight Garner, New York Times).
One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020
A Best Book of 2020 * Entertainment Weekly * Washington Post * O Magazine * New York Times Book Review * Publishers Weekly * NPR * The Economist * Shelf Awareness * Library Journal * St. Louis Post-Dispatch * Slate
Finalist for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ayad Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless lives and the gods of finance rule, where immigrants live in fear, and where the nation's unhealed wounds wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerrilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one--least of all himself--in the process.
"Passionate, disturbing, unputdownable." --Salman Rushdie
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A Speck in the Sea: a story of survival and rescue
The harrowing adventure-at-sea memoir recounting the heroic search-and-rescue mission for lost Montauk fisherman John Aldridge, which Daniel James Brown calls "A terrific read."
I am floating in the middle of the night, and nobody in the world even knows I am missing. Nobody is looking for me. You can't get more alone than that. You can't be more lost.
I've got too many people who love me. There's no way I'm dying like this.
In the dead of night on July 24, 2013, John Aldridge was thrown off the back of the Anna Mary while his fishing partner, Anthony Sosinski, slept below. As desperate hours ticked by, Sosinski, the families, the local fishing community, and the U.S. Coast Guard in three states mobilized in an unprecedented search effort that culminated in a rare and exhilarating success.
A tale of survival, perseverance, and community, A Speck in the Sea tells of one man's struggle to survive as friends and strangers work to bring him home. Aldridge's wrenching first-person account intertwines with the narrative of the massive, constantly evolving rescue operation designed to save him. -
Sutton
Born in the squalid Irish slums of Brooklyn, in the first year of the twentieth century, Willie Sutton came of age at a time when banks were out of control. If they weren't taking brazen risks, causing millions to lose their jobs and homes, they were shamelessly seeking bailouts. Trapped in a cycle of bank panics, depressions and soaring unemployment, Sutton saw only one way out, only one way to win the girl of his dreams.
So began the career of America's most successful bank robber. Over three decades Sutton became so good at breaking into banks, and such a master at breaking out of prisons, police called him one of the most dangerous men in New York, and the FBI put him on its first-ever Most Wanted List.
But the public rooted for Sutton. He never fired a shot, after all, and his victims were merely those bloodsucking banks. When he was finally caught for good in 1952, crowds surrounded the jail and chanted his name.
Blending vast research with vivid imagination, Pulitzer Prize-winner J.R. Moehringer brings Willie Sutton blazing back to life. In Moehringer's retelling, it was more than need or rage at society that drove Sutton. It was one unforgettable woman. In all Sutton's crimes and confinements, his first love (and first accomplice) was never far from his thoughts. And when Sutton finally walked free--a surprise pardon on Christmas Eve, 1969--he immediately set out to find her.
Poignant, comic, fast-paced and fact-studded, Sutton tells a story of economic pain that feels eerily modern, while unfolding a story of doomed love, which is forever timeless.
Praise for Sutton:
"With a voice at once sentimental and muscular, Moehringer is like the kid brother of John Irving or Roddy Doyle. He brings a raconteur's grace and rhythm to his first novel, Sutton, a stirring portrait of Willie 'The Actor' Sutton. A-." -- Entertainment Weekly
"A captivating and absorbing read." -- Kirkus (starred)
“Moehringer relays, in electrifying prose, the highs and lows of Sutton's dramatic life . . . Readers will be riveted by this colorful portrayal of a life in crime."-- Booklist (starred)
"A mesmerizing portrait of a remarkable man . . . The author's eye for detail and sense of place make every stop on Sutton's internal and external journeys resonate--from smoking a Chesterfield to Sutton's first sight of the moon as a free man, every scene is saturated with life."-- Publishers Weekly
"In Moehringer's more-than capable hands, the story has a life all its own beyond the historical fact." --The Daily Beast
"A moving and thoroughly absorbing novel. Filled with vibrant and colorful re-creations of not one but several times in the American past."-- Kevin Baker, author of Strivers Row
"In Willie Sutton, the greatest bank-robber of all time, thinker and lover, escape artist extraordinaire, [J.R. Moehringer] has found an historical subject equal to his vivid imagination, gimlet journalistic eye, and pitch-perfect ear for dialogue. The result is a terrific first novel by turns suspenseful, funny, romantic, and sad--in short, a book you won't be able to put down."-- John Burnham Schwartz, author of Reservation Road and The Commoner
"Sutton presents a glorious romance, a riveting heist novel, a financial history of the 20th century, a loving portrait of New York, and an empathetic portrait of the bank robber as a young man, all in one crisp, sad, and often hilarious novel. It is an utter joy to read."-- Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collector and Memory Wall
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The Living and the Lost: a novel
From the author of Paris Never Leaves You, Ellen Feldman's The Living and the Lost is a gripping story of a young German Jewish woman who returns to Allied Occupied Berlin from America to face the past and unexpected future
“A deeply satisfying and truly adult novel.” —Margot Livesey, New York Times best-selling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy
Millie (Meike) Mosbach and her brother David, manage to escape to the States just before Kristallnacht, leaving their parents and little sister in Berlin. Millie attends Bryn Mawr on a special scholarship for non-Aryan German girls and graduates to a magazine job in Philadelphia. David enlists in the army and is eventually posted to the top-secret Camp Ritchie in Maryland, which trains German-speaking men for intelligence work.
Now they are both back in their former hometown, haunted by ghosts and hoping against hope to find their family. Millie, works in the office responsible for rooting out the most dedicated Nazis from publishing; she is consumed with rage at her former country and its citizens, though she is finding it more difficult to hate in proximity. David works trying to help displaced persons build new lives, while hiding his more radical nighttime activities from his sister. Like most of their German-born American colleagues, they suffer from conflicts of rage and guilt at their own good fortune, except for Millie’s boss, Major Harry Sutton, who seems much too eager to be fair to the Germans.
Living and working in bombed-out Berlin, a latter day Wild West where drunken soldiers brawl; the desperate prey on the unsuspecting; spies ply their trade; werewolves, as unrepentant Nazis were called, scheme to rise again; black markets thrive, and forbidden fraternization is rampant, Millie must come to terms with a decision she made as a girl in a moment of crisis, and with the enigmatic sometimes infuriating Major Sutton who is mysteriously understanding of her demons.
Atmospheric and page-turning, The Living and the Lost is a story of love, survival, and forgiveness of others and of self. -
Spaceman: an astronaut's unlikely journey to unlock the secrets of the universe
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NASA astronaut Mike Massimino shares incredible true stories from space—a rare, wonderful world where science meets the most thrilling adventure.
“Mike is a spaceman through and through; he tells how hard work can take you out of this world.”—Bill Nye the Science Guy
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to find yourself strapped to a giant rocket that’s about to go from zero to 17,500 miles per hour? Or to look back on Earth from outer space and see the surprisingly precise line between day and night? Or to stand in front of the Hubble Space Telescope, wondering if the emergency repair you’re about to make will inadvertently ruin humankind’s chance to unlock the universe’s secrets?
Mike Massimino has been there, and in Spaceman he puts you inside the suit, with all the zip and buoyancy of life in microgravity.
Massimino’s childhood space dreams were born the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. Growing up in a working-class Long Island family, he catapulted himself to Columbia and then MIT, only to flunk his first doctoral exam and be rejected three times by NASA before making it through the final round of astronaut selection.
Taking us through the surreal wonder and beauty of his first spacewalk, the tragedy of losing friends in the Columbia shuttle accident, and the development of his enduring love for the Hubble Telescope—which he and his fellow astronauts were tasked with saving on his final mission—Massimino has written an ode to never giving up, revealing just what having “the right stuff” really means. -
Aloft
Set on affluent Long Island, Aloft follows the life of a suburban, upper-middle-class man during a time of family crisis. Jerry Battle's favorite diversion is to fly his small plane over the neighboring towns and villages. When his daughter and her fianc? arrive from Oregon to announce their marriage plans, he looks back on his life and faces his disengagement with it-his urge to fly solo-and the people he loves.
Chang-rae Lee burst on the scene with Native Speaker, which won numerous awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award. His second novel, "A Gesture Life," established him as one of the preeminent writers of his generation. Now, with "Aloft," Lee has expanded his range and proves himself a master storyteller, able to observe his characters' flaws and weaknesses and, at the same time, celebrate their humanity. Aloft is an unforgettable portrait, filled with vitality and urgency, of a man who has secured his life's dreams but who must now figure out its meaning. -
The River of Doubt
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait—the bestselling author of River of the Gods brings us the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.
“A rich, dramatic tale that ranges from the personal to the literally earth-shaking.” —The New York Times
The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron.
After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever.
Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. The River of Doubt brings alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived. -
The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island
Mac Griswold's The Manor is the biography of a uniquely American place that has endured through wars great and small, through fortunes won and lost, through histories bright and sinister—and of the family that has lived there since its founding as a Colonial New England slave plantation three and a half centuries ago.
In 1984, the landscape historian Mac Griswold was rowing along a Long Island creek when she came upon a stately yellow house and a garden guarded by looming boxwoods. She instantly knew that boxwoods that large—twelve feet tall, fifteen feet wide—had to be hundreds of years old. So, as it happened, was the house: Sylvester Manor had been held in the same family for eleven generations.
Formerly encompassing all of Shelter Island, New York, a pearl of 8,000 acres caught between the North and South Forks of Long Island, the manor had dwindled to 243 acres. Still, its hidden vault proved to be full of revelations and treasures, including the 1666 charter for the land, and correspondence from Thomas Jefferson. Most notable was the short and steep flight of steps the family had called the "slave staircase," which would provide clues to the extensive but little-known story of Northern slavery. Alongside a team of archaeologists, Griswold began a dig that would uncover a landscape bursting with stories.
Based on years of archival and field research, as well as voyages to Africa, the West Indies, and Europe, The Manor is at once an investigation into forgotten lives and a sweeping drama that captures our history in all its richness and suffering. It is a monumental achievement. -
Leaving Time
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A deeply moving, gripping, and intelligent page-turner about a daughter’s search for her mother, Leaving Time is Jodi Picoult at the height of her powers.
Includes the novella Larger Than Life
Throughout her blockbuster career, Jodi Picoult has seamlessly blended nuanced characters, riveting plots, and rich prose, brilliantly creating stories that “not only provoke the mind but touch the flawed souls in all of us” (The Boston Globe). Now, in Leaving Time, she has delivered a book unlike anything she’s written before.
For more than a decade, Jenna Metcalf has never stopped thinking about her mother, Alice, who mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a tragic accident. Refusing to believe she was abandoned, Jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pores over the pages of Alice’s old journals. A scientist who studied grief among elephants, Alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved, yet Jenna hopes the entries will provide a clue to her mother’s whereabouts.
Desperate to find the truth, Jenna enlists two unlikely allies in her quest: Serenity Jones, a psychic who rose to fame finding missing persons, only to later doubt her gifts, and Virgil Stanhope, the jaded private detective who’d originally investigated Alice’s case along with the strange, possibly linked death of one of her colleagues. As the three work together to uncover what happened to Alice, they realize that in asking hard questions, they’ll have to face even harder answers.
As Jenna’s memories dovetail with the events in her mother’s journals, the story races to a mesmerizing finish.
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The Color of Water
From the bestselling author of Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird: The modern classic that spent more than two years on The New York Times bestseller list and that Oprah.com calls one of the best memoirs of a generation. Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride, journalist, musician, and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut, The Color Of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother.
The son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white, James McBride grew up in "orchestrated chaos" with his eleven siblings in the poor, all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. "Mommy," a fiercely protective woman with "dark eyes full of pep and fire," herded her brood to Manhattan's free cultural events, sent them off on buses to the best (and mainly Jewish) schools, demanded good grades, and commanded respect. As a young man, McBride saw his mother as a source of embarrassment, worry, and confusion—and reached thirty before he began to discover the truth about her early life and long-buried pain.
In The Color of Water, McBride retraces his mother's footsteps and, through her searing and spirited voice, recreates her remarkable story. The daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska) in Poland on April 1, 1921. Fleeing pogroms, her family emigrated to America and ultimately settled in Suffolk, Virginia, a small town where anti-Semitism and racial tensions ran high. With candor and immediacy, Ruth describes her parents' loveless marriage; her fragile, handicapped mother; her cruel, sexually-abusive father; and the rest of the family and life she abandoned.
At seventeen, after fleeing Virginia and settling in New York City, Ruth married a black minister and founded the all- black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her Red Hook living room. "God is the color of water," Ruth McBride taught her children, firmly convinced that life's blessings and life's values transcend race. Twice widowed, and continually confronting overwhelming adversity and racism, Ruth's determination, drive and discipline saw her dozen children through college—and most through graduate school. At age 65, she herself received a degree in social work from Temple University.
Interspersed throughout his mother's compelling narrative, McBride shares candid recollections of his own experiences as a mixed-race child of poverty, his flirtations with drugs and violence, and his eventual self- realization and professional success. The Color of Water touches readers of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son.
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Snow in August
Brooklyn, 1947. The war veterans have come home. Jackie Robinson is about to become a Dodger. And in one close-knit working-class neighborhood, an eleven-year-old Irish Catholic boy named Michael Devlin has just made friends with a lonely rabbi from Prague.Snow in August is the story of that unlikely friendship -- and of how the neighborhood reacts to it. For Michael, the rabbi opens a window to ancient learning and lore that rival anything in Captain Marvel. For the rabbi, Michael illuminates the everyday mysteries of America, including the strange language of baseball. But like their hero Jackie Robinson, neither can entirely escape from the swirling prejudices of the time. Terrorized by a local gang of anti-Semitic Irish toughs, Michael and the rabbi are caught in an escalating spiral of hate for which there's only one way out -- a miracle....Deeply affecting and wonderfully evocative of old New York, Snow in August is a brilliant fable for our time and all time -- and another triumph for Pete Hamill.
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The Great Gatsby
In The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald captures the flamboyance, the carelessness and the cruelty of the wealthy during America's Jazz Age.
Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition features an afterword by David Stuart Davies.
The Great Gatsby lives mysteriously in a luxurious Long Island mansion, playing lavish host to hundreds of people. And yet no one seems to know him or how he became so rich. He is rumoured to be everything from a German spy to a war hero. People clamour for invitations to his wild parties. But Jay Gatsby doesn't heed them. He cares for one person alone - Daisy Buchanan, the woman he has waited for all his life. Little does he know that his infatuation will lead to tragedy and end in murder. -
Life of Pi
Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional-but is it more true? Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative nature of fiction. It's a story, as one character puts it, to make you believe in God. Publisher Fact Sheet. A fabulist novel that combines the delight of Kipling's Just So Stories with the metaphysical adventure of Jonah and the Whale
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Nomadland
New York Times Bestseller
From the beet fields of North Dakota to the National Forest campgrounds of California to Amazon’s CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older Americans. Finding that social security comes up short, often underwater on mortgages, these invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in late-model RVs, travel trailers, and vans, forming a growing community of nomads: migrant laborers who call themselves “workampers.”On frequently traveled routes between seasonal jobs, Jessica Bruder meets people from all walks of life: a former professor, a McDonald’s vice president, a minister, a college administrator, and a motorcycle cop, among many others—including her irrepressible protagonist, a onetime cocktail waitress, Home Depot clerk, and general contractor named Linda May.
In a secondhand vehicle she christens “Van Halen,” Bruder hits the road to get to know her subjects more intimately. Accompanying Linda May and others from campground toilet cleaning to warehouse product scanning to desert reunions, then moving on to the dangerous work of beet harvesting, Bruder tells a compelling, eye-opening tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy—one that foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, she celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these quintessential Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive. Like Linda May, who dreams of finding land on which to build her own sustainable “Earthship” home, they have not given up hope.
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To Kill a Mockingbird
"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."
A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel—a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man's struggle for justice—but the weight of history will only tolerate so much.
One of the best-loved classics of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many dis-tinctions since its original publication in 1960. It has won the Pulitzer Prize, been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, and been made into an enormously popular movie. It was also named the best novel of the twentieth century by librarians across the country (Library Journal). HarperCollins is proud to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the book's publication with this special hardcover edition.
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A Beautiful Mind
In this dramatic and moving biography, Sylvia Nasar re-creates the life of a mathematical genius whose brilliant career was cut short by schizophrenia and who, after three decades of devastating mental illness, miraculously recovered and was honored with a Nobel Prize.
"A Beautiful Mind" traces the meteoric rise of John Forbes Nash, Jr., from his lonely childhood in West Virginia to his student years at Princeton, where he encountered Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, and a host of other mathematical luminaries. At twenty-one, the handsome, ambitious, eccentric graduate student invented what would become the most influential theory of rational human behavior in modern social science. Nash's contribution to game theory would ultimately revolutionize the field of economics.
As a young professor at MIT, still in his twenties, Nash dazzled the mathematical world by solving a series of deep problems deemed "impossible" by other mathematicians. As unconventional in his private life as in his mathematics, Nash fathered a child with a woman he did not marry. At the height of the McCarthy era, he was expelled as a security risk from the supersecret RAND Corporation -- the Cold War think tank where he was a consultant.
At thirty, Nash was poised to take his dreamed-of place in the pantheon of history's greatest mathematicians. His associates included the most renowned mathematicians and economists of the era: Norbert Wiener, John Milnor, Alexandre Grothendieck, Kenneth Arrow, Robert Solow, and Paul Samuelson. He married an exotic and beautiful MIT physics student, Alicia Larde. They had a son. Then Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown.
Nasar details Nash's harrowingdescent into insanity -- his bizarre delusions that he was the Prince of Peace; his resignation from MIT, flight to Europe, and attempt to renounce his American citizenship; his repeated hospitalizations, from the storied McLean, where he came to know the poet Robert Lowell, to the crowded wards of a state hospital; his "enforced interludes of rationality" during which he was able to return briefly to mathematical research. Nash and his wife were divorced in 1963, but Alicia Nash continued to care for him and for their mathematically gifted son, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager. Saved from homelessness by his loyal ex-wife and protected by a handful of mathematical friends, Nash lived quietly in Princeton for many years, a dreamy, ghostlike figure who scrawled numerological messages on blackboards, all but forgotten by the outside world.
His early achievements, however, fired the imagination of a new generation of scholars. At age sixty-six, twin miracles -- a spontaneous remission of his illness and the sudden decision of the Nobel Prize committee to honor his contributions to game theory -- restored the world to him. Nasar recounts the bitter behind-the-scenes battle in Stockholm over whether to grant the ultimate honor in science to a man thought to be "mad." She describes Nash's current ambition to pursue new mathematical breakthroughs and his efforts to be a loving father to his adult sons.
Based on hundreds of interviews with Nash's family, friends, and colleagues and scores of letters and documents, "A Beautiful Mind" is a heartbreaking but inspiring story about the most remarkable mathematician of our time and his triumph over a tragic illness.
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
Lewis Carroll’s brilliantly timeless tales—in a deluxe 150th-anniversary edition. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
Original, experimental, and unparalleled in their charm, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There have enchanted readers for generations. The topsy-turvy dream worlds of Wonderland and the Looking-Glass realm are full of the unexpected: A baby turns into a pig, time stands still at a “mad” tea-party, and a chaotic game of chess turns seven-year-old Alice into a queen. These unforgettable tales—filled with sparkling wordplay and unbridled imagination—balance joyous nonsense with poignant moments of longing for the lost innocence of childhood.
For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. -
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey's bracing, inslightful novel about the meaning of madness and the value of self-reliance, and the inspiration for the new Netflix original series Ratched
Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Turning conventional notions of sanity and insanity on their heads, the novel tells the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the story through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them all imprisoned.
Hailed upon its publication as "a glittering parable of good and evil" (The New York Times Book Review) and "a roar of protest against middlebrow society's Rules and the invisible Rulers who enforce them" (Time), Kesey's powerful book went on to sell millions of copies and remains as bracing and insightful today as when it was first released. This new deluxe hardcover edition commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the original publication of the novel on February 1, 1962, and will be a must have for any literature lover.
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No Country for Old Men
Set in our own time along the bloody frontier between Texas and Mexico, this is Cormac McCarthy’s first novel since Cities of the Plain completed his acclaimed, best-selling Border Trilogy.
Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, instead finds men shot dead, a load of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash. Packing the money out, he knows, will change everything. But only after two more men are murdered does a victim’s burning car lead Sheriff Bell to the carnage out in the desert, and he soon realizes how desperately Moss and his young wife need protection. One party in the failed transaction hires an ex–Special Forces officer to defend his interests against a mesmerizing freelancer, while on either side are men accustomed to spectacular violence and mayhem. The pursuit stretches up and down and across the border, each participant seemingly determined to answer what one asks another: how does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?
A harrowing story of a war that society is waging on itself, and an enduring meditation on the ties of love and blood and duty that inform lives and shape destinies, No Country for Old Men is a novel of extraordinary resonance and power. -
The Revenant
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA thrilling tale of betrayal and revenge set against the nineteenth-century American frontier, the astonishing story of real-life trapper and frontiersman Hugh Glass
The year is 1823, and the trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Hugh Glass is among the company’s finest men, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker. But when a scouting mission puts him face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive. Two company men are dispatched to stay behind and tend to Glass before he dies. When the men abandon him instead, Glass is driven to survive by one desire: revenge. With shocking grit and determination, Glass sets out, crawling at first, across hundreds of miles of uncharted American frontier. Based on a true story, The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession, the human will stretched to its limits, and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution.
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Forrest Gump
The modern classic that inspired the beloved movie starring Tom Hanks.
Six foot six, 242 pounds, and possessed of a scant IQ of 70, Forrest Gump is the lovable, surprisingly savvy hero of this classic comic tale. His early life may seem inauspicious, but when the University of Alabama’s football team drafts Forrest and makes him a star, it sets him on an unbelievable path that will transform him from Vietnam hero to world-class Ping-Pong player, from wrestler to entrepreneur. With a voice all his own, Forrest is telling all in a madcap romp through three decades of American history. -
Schindler's List
During the Holocaust at the German concentration camp near Plaszow, thousands of Jews lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis. More than a thousand others would have been counted among the dead if not for a womanizing, heavydrinking, German-Catholic industrialist and Nazi Party member named Oskar Schindler.
One of the most remarkable narratives of the Holocaust, "Schindler's List" masterfully recreates the daring exploits of Schindler, who used his enormous fortune to build a factory near the concentration camp and saved the lives of over 1,300 Jews. An absorbing, suspenseful and moving account of Oskar Schindler's legacy of life, this is an unforgettable audio program.
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Peter Shaffer's Amadeus
The creator of Equus enters the world of Vienna in the time of Mozart, where the court musician Salieri reconstructs his efforts to destroy his archrival, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart--efforts that build to a chilling conclusion.
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Sense and Sensibility
In its marvelously perceptive portrayal of two young women in love, Sense and Sensibility is the answer to those who believe that Jane Austen’s novels, despite their perfection of form and tone, lack strong feeling.
Its two heroines, Marianne and Elinor—so utterly unlike each other–both undergo the most violent passions when they are separated from the men they love. What differentiates them, and gives this extraordinary book its complexity and brilliance, is the way each expresses her suffering: Marianne–young, impetuous, ardent–falls into paroxysms of grief when she is rejected by the dashing John Willoughby; while her sister, Elinor—wiser, more sensible, more self-controlled—masks her despair when it appears that Edward Ferrars is to marry the mean-spirited and cunning Lucy Steele. All, of course, ends happily—but not until Elinor’s “sense” and Marianne’s “sensibility” have equally worked to reveal the profound emotional life that runs beneath the surface of Austen’s immaculate and irresistible art. -
Room
Held captive for years in a small shed, a woman and her precocious young son finally gain their freedom, and the boy experiences the outside world for the first time.
Inspiration for the MAJOR MOTION PICTURE starring Academy Award winner Brie Larson
To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. . . . It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.
Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.
Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating--a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child. -
Old Man and the Sea
*Winner of the Pulitzer Prize*
“A beautiful tale, awash in the seasalt and sweat, bait and beer of the Havana coast. It tells a fundamental human truth: in a volatile world, from our first breath to our last wish, through triumphs and pitfalls both trivial and profound, what sustains us, ultimately, is hope.” —The Guardian
The last of his novels Ernest Hemingway saw published, The Old Man and the Sea has proved itself to be one of the most enduring works of American fiction. The story of a down-on-his-luck Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal—a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream—has been cherished by generations of readers.
Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of adversity and personal triumph won from loss and transforms them into a magnificent twentieth-century classic. First published in 1952, this hugely popular tale confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. -
Memoirs of a Geisha
Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. Sayuri's story begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. Through her eyes, we see the decadent heart of Gion - the geisha district of Kyoto - with its marvelous teahouses and theaters, narrow back alleys, ornate temples, and artists' streets. And we witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance and music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup and hair; competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it. But as World War II erupts and the geisha houses are forced to close, Sayuri, with little money and even less food, must reinvent herself all over again to find a rare kind of freedom on her own terms. Memoirs of a Geisha is a book of nuance and vivid metaphor, of memorable characters rendered with humor and pathos. And though the story is rich with detail and a vast knowledge of history, it is the transparent, seductive voice of Sayuri that the reader remembers.
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Habari Gani?
December 26 to January 1 will never be the same for seven year-old Kia and her family. The Edward are celebrating Kwanzaa, the only indigenous, non-heroic African American holiday in the US. "Habari Gani" replaces "Hi." As each day unfolds Kia experiences the 7 principles of Kwanzaa woven into her family and community life, and learns that Kwanzaa is a cultural and political celebration of the African American experience.
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My First Kwanzaa Book
This festive book introduces the history and practices of Kwanzaa--the annual week-long reunion of family and friends when millions of African-Americans celebrate their heritage. The first book about Kwanzaa written especially for young children.
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The Gifts of Kwanzaa
With bold and colorful paintings and simple, straightforward text, the author explains the Kwanzaa holiday.
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Kwanzaa Crafts
Late in December, families and friends gather to celebrate the joy-filled African-American holiday of Kwanzaa, inspired by African traditions and harvest festivals. Kwanzaa Crafts offers creative projects for making a Kwanzaa place mat and candle holder, and other Kwanzaa symbols, and for holiday decorations, gifts, games, and wonderful treats to eat.