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West Des Moines Public Library Receives Accreditation from the State Library of Iowa
The State Library of Iowa has announced that the West Des Moines Public Library has met the conditions for state accreditation as outlined in “In Service to Iowa: Public Library Standards Sixth Edition.”

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Stranger Things: Lucas on the Line
Dive into this revealing portrait of Stranger Things fan favorite Lucas Sinclair and get to know Lucas like never before.
The thrilling adventure of Stranger Things continues where season three left off, with fan favorite Lucas Sinclair finally telling his own story in his own words.
Lucas has been in the fight against the evil forces in his town since the beginning, but he is tired of feeling like an outsider. When the start of high school presents Lucas with options beyond D&D and being bullied, he wonders if he can be more than invisible. After connecting with one of the few other Black students at school, Lucas starts to learn more about himself apart from his friend group. And he begins to understand himself as a Black teen in Hawkins, which feels unlike anything--in this world or any other--he's ever experienced.
From Suyi Davies, contributor to the New York Times bestselling Black Boy Joy, comes an exploration of love and identity within the beloved Stranger Things universe, through the eyes of Lucas Sinclair.
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Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Vampire Menace
Never underestimate a librarian. Readers learned that lesson with the Prefect's first adventure (Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar: "marvelous" and "a laugh-out-loud farce" [Publishers Weekly, starred review]). Now a certain Count from Transylvania is about to learn it as well, when the intrepid Shona McMonagle (comfortably padded, in her middle years, and a whiz at obscure martial arts) time-travels to 19th-century France to help a village being menaced by a mysterious killer. It's true that Dracula's name has for more than a hundred years been a byword for terror, but nothing can stop an agent trained by the Marcia Blaine School for Girls.
Added by Ann R.
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Bad Girls Drink Blood
Part sun fae, part blood fae, all abomination.
After a life spent dodging slurs, threats, and assassination attempts, Lane gave her past the one finger salute and ditched her former fae home for good.
The detective agency she and her sisters run on the edge of Las Vegas continues to limp along, with Lane doing more debt collecting and intimidating than investigating, but anything to pay the bills. Between working for low-lifes to bring down even lower-lifes, eating cheesy poofs by the bucket, and flirting with the criminally attractive bartender where she conducts business, life is good.
That ends when a routine job goes sideways leaving Lane with a sack full of stolen sun shards-the source of sun fae power. Without the shards, the sun fae face giving up their magic completely, or risk death if they use their power.
As far as Lane's concerned, good riddance, considering they would rather see her dead-except her father and adopted sister are sun fae. Lane must choose to return home to save the fae bastards that almost killed her...or let them burn.
"With tantalizing hints of a wolfy blood tryst, a heavy dose of sisterly love, and plot twists to make the ride a surprise, S.L. Choi's, Bad Girls Drink Blood is too much fun. If you like the Hollows, you will love this." - Kim Harrison, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Hollows series.
Added by Ann R.
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Blade Breaker
In the sequel to Victoria Aveyard's instant #1 New York Times bestselling Realm Breaker, a divided world must rally, an unstoppable enemy must be defeated, and the fate of the world rests on a blade's edge.
Andry, a former squire, continues to fight for hope amid blood and chaos.
Dom, a grieving immortal, strives to fulfill a broken oath.
Sorasa, an outcast assassin, faces her past when it returns with sharpened teeth.
Valtik, an old sorceress, summons a mighty power.
And Corayne, a pirate's daughter with an ancient magic in her blood, steps closer to becoming the hero she's destined to be.
Together they must assemble an army to face Queen Erida and Taristan's wicked forces. But something deadly waits in the shadows, something that might consume the world before there's any hope for victory.
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The Promise of Lost Things
A medium desperate to save his town, a grieving brother wanting revenge, and a girl who's decided to end ghosts once and for all, converge in the town of St. Hilaire, where the spirits of the dead roam the streets and there's no such thing as resting in peace.
Russ Griffin has always wanted to be a fantastic medium. Growing up in the town of St. Hilaire, where most residents make their living by speaking to the dead, means there's a lot of competition, and he's always held his own. But Russ knows the town he loves is corrupt, and he's determined to save it before the sinister ruling body, The Guild, ruins all he's ever wanted.
Willow Rogers is St. Hilaire royalty. An orphan, raised by The Guild, she's powerful and mysterious. But she has secrets that might change everyone's fate. She's done with St. Hilaire, done with helping spirits move on. She wants to end the cycle for good and rid the town of ghosts, even if that means destroying the only home she's ever known.
Asher Mullen lost his sister, and his parents can't get over her death. They sought answers in St. Hilaire and were turned away. Now they want revenge. Asher is tasked with infiltrating the town, and he does that by getting to know Russ. The only problem is, he might be falling for him, which will make betraying him that much harder.
Russ, Willow, and Asher all have their own agendas for St. Hilaire, but one thing's for certain, no one will be resting in peace.
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That Summer Night on Frenchmen Street
Set in magical New Orleans, two teens from vastly different worlds discover that sharing their strengths, including the love of their friends and family, may just be the path to finding wholeness within themselves.
Being there for her family is the most important thing to Jessamine Monet. And her family is complicated. Her twin brother Joel has a secret boyfriend, and her transgender cousin Solange is flourishing, despite the disapproval of Solange's dying mother. Yet Jessamine doesn't mind being caught up in family drama. Being busy keeps the water at bay -- the water of memories, of Katrina, of past trauma. So when Tennessee Williams -- a rich white boy named after the writer -- asks her out, she hesitantly says yes. He'll be like a library book, she figures, something to read and return. Falling for him is another burden she can't afford to carry.
Tennessee has always lived his life at the mercy of his mom's destructive creativity and his dad's hypermasculine expectations. Jessamine's caring and aloof nature is a surprisingly welcome distraction. While she fights her attraction to him, Tennessee is pulled into her inner family circle and develops a friendship with Joel's boyfriend, Saint Baptiste. Together Saint and Tennessee bond over the difficulty of loving the emotionally unavailable Monet twins.
As senior year progresses, old traumas and familial pressures rise higher than hurricane waves. Can this group of friends make peace with each other, their families, and most importantly, with themselves?
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Mai Tais for the Lost
Marrow Nightingale is a professional pain in the ass. As Electric Blue Moon's only licensed private investigator, she's the one who snoops the closets of the elite who think the laws don't apply to them. But when the son of a wealthy family turns up dead, it's Marrow's closet that everyone is suddenly interested in. That dead playboy in the foyer? It's her adoptive sibling, Rocket Nightingale.
Now, Marrow's dodging gossip columnists who smell blood in the water, renegade corporate IP with minds of their own, and badge-wearing bone-breakers who would love nothing more than to ship her back to the surface.
Which is still on fire, thank you very much.
If Marrow can't catch the killer, this case is going to sink the Nightingale Electric Detective Agency.
Welcome to the city under the sea, an old-money refuge for the environmentally ravaged. Where humanity is trying to forget its past with ink-stained cocktails, designer drugs, and genetic modifications. Where Marrow Nightingale may be the last honest scoundrel.
Added by Ann R.
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Oleander City
In the wake of the 1900 Galveston hurricane, three lives converge despite persecution from the Ku Klux Klan, a bare-knuckle boxing match gone wrong, and the recovery efforts of the American Red Cross.
Based on a true story
The hurricane of 1900, America's worst natural disaster, left the island city of Galveston in ruins. Thousands perished, including all ninety-three children at the Sisters of the Incarnate Word orphanage--except six-year-old Hester, who miraculously survived. Oleander City is the tale of this little girl and the volatile collision between the American Red Cross, the Ku Klux Klan, and one of the most famous boxing matches in American history. The bout, organized to raise money for the recovery effort, featured the enigmatic veteran "Chrysanthemum Joe" Choynski, the most successful Jewish boxer in America, and Jack Johnson, a young hometown hero known as "the Galveston Giant." The storied battle forged a bond between the two legendary fighters and put Johnson on the path to become the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time.
Meanwhile, Clara Barton and the Red Cross minister to the sick and hungry as mounted vigilantes use the chaotic situation to settle old scores. After witnessing a terrible crime, Hester finds sanctuary with the ladies of the Red Cross, in a heartrending convergence of these historic figures.
Added by Ann R.
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The King Falls
In R.J. Lee's fourth Mississippi-set Bridge to Death Mystery, it's up to newly-married reporter and bridge player Wendy Winchester Rierson to finesse a homicide investigation where the killer holds a master hand...
King Kohl, scion of the Kohl and Son real estate firm, has a reputation for loving three things: the ladies, closing on properties, and playing bridge. Still, when he invites Wendy, the president of the Rosalie, Mississippi, Country Club Bridge Bunch, to a small, exclusive bridge party, her investigative instincts as a reporter for the Rosalie Citizen are on the alert. In fact, King means to use the occasion to make a surprising announcement to his selected guests. But before he can lay his cards on the table, tragedy strikes.
After receiving a mysterious message to hurry to King's home, Wendy almost collides with the man's real-estate rival, running out the front door insisting he found King dead when he arrived. Not just dead, it turns out, but murdered--crowned with one of his own award plaques.
Is the rival as guilty as he looks? Was it a crime of passion by one of Kohl's scorned lovers? With her detective husband Ross and her father Bax Winchester, the chief of police, Wendy is determined to find the offender who dropped the unguarded King...Added by Ann R.
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Summer Island
New York Times bestselling author Shelley Noble pens a heartwarming story of a mother-daughter road trip to the beach and to self-discovery.
When reporter Phoebe Adams loses her job and her fiancé on the same day, it never occurs to her that she'll also have to support her mother, Ruth, through her divorce from Phoebe's father after thirty-five years of marriage. They both need a safe haven, and Phoebe knows just the place--Summer Island where Grandma Alice still rules the roost from the big New England beach house Phoebe and Ruth once called home.
But "home" has changed. There's a trendy new look downtown. Large beach houses are replacing the old; the Harken house next door is in disrepair.
Phoebe's plan for a peaceful retreat is quickly hijacked when globe-trotting Great Aunt Vera makes an unannounced pit stop. With Vera around, no one can stay morose for long, not even Lars, the grumpy widower next door, or his son Ty, formerly geeky middle child all grown up into a handsome and enigmatic man. Soon they're all enjoying things they used to do and discovering new ones. Each adventure opens a part of themselves they've neglected for too long and brings them closer together.
But when an accident threatens to destroy the tenuous tie between them, Phoebe realizes how fragile life can be, and that she has some serious choices to make about her own life. It will take the support of her newly awakened family and the magic of Summer Island for Phoebe to embrace the challenge of an unexpected future and to trust her own heart.
In Summer Island, Shelley Noble once again creates a thought-provoking and life-affirming beach read that will stay with you long after the last tan of summer fades.
Added by Ann R.
New Non-Fiction
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Reading the Water
"A father shares the joys of fly-fishing with his daughters. In this eloquent memoir ... [Mark] Hume vividly conveys the sensory details of their adventures and the stunning surroundings ... A heartfelt, beautifully written celebration of the wonders of nature and comfort of family."--Kirkus STARRED Review
Fishing was Mark Hume's passion since he was a young boy, a lifeline through a childhood marked by his family's frequent moves. When he became a father, he knew he wanted to pass on his love of water, fishing, and the natural world to his daughters. Most of all, he wanted to give them hope for their future even as they were coming of age during uncertain times.
As soon as they were old enough, Mark taught his girls how to read the water and see the patterns in nature. He showed them how to cast, how to catch fish and release them, and--only when needed--how to kill them. He discovered that fly fishing and fatherhood require many of the same skills: patience, flexibility, and the knowledge of when to reel in and when to let go.
Illuminating and heartfelt, Reading the Water is a much-needed, positive story about a father raising daughters, and a meditation on finding faith in a deep connection with the natural world.
Edited by Kate
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Androids
The fascinating inside story of how the Android operating system came to be.
In 2004, Android was two people who wanted to build camera software but couldn't get investors interested. Today, Android is a large team at Google, delivering an operating system (including camera software) to over 3 billion devices worldwide. This is the inside story, told by the people who made it happen.
Androids: The Team that Built the Android Operating System is a first-hand chronological account of how the startup began, how the team came together, and how they all built an operating system from the kernel level to its applications and everything in between. It describes the tenuous beginnings of this ambitious project as a tiny startup, then as a small acquisition by Google that took on an industry with strong, entrenched competition. Author Chet Haase joined the Android team at Google in May 2010 and later recorded conversations with team members to preserve the early days of Android's history leading to the launch of 1.0. This engaging and accessible book captures the developers' stories in their own voices to answer the question: How did Android succeed?Edited by Kate
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Mushroom Foraging and Feasting
A beguiling invitation to the world of mushroom hunting--combining practical advice and recipes with tales and photographs from a lifetime on the hunt
Victoria Romanoff picked her first mushroom--a brown-capped butterpilz or sticky bun--at the age of four, at her family's summer dacha on the shores of the Baltic Sea. Little did she realize that her newfound interest in mushrooming would soon become an essential survival skill, as she and her mother spent eight years in displaced persons camps in the aftermath of World War II, foraging wild foods to supplement their diets. Resettled in the United States, Romanoff has continued to pursue her mycological passion ever since, deploying her considerable culinary skills to convert friends and strangers to the joys of wild mushrooms. Now, in this marvelously written book, rich with anecdote, she shares the wisdom gathered from a lifetime on the hunt.
Romanoff introduces readers to twelve of the most easily foraged and delicious mushrooms, including the chanterelle, the morel, and the oyster. She describes the appearance, habits, and lore of each variety, and provides a recipe for each; her recipes include both refined kitchen creations and rustic dishes meant to be prepared over an open fire at the end of a successful hunt. Romanoff also shares personal stories from her eight decades of mushrooming. From serendipitous discoveries while canoeing to habitual hikes with Piglet (in fact a terrier, not a truffle pig), her detailed accounts bring alive the sensory experience of the hunt, and the particular connection with nature that a forager enjoys.
Illustrated throughout with photos by Romanoff's partner Sarah Adams--which are instructive and sometimes whimsical--Mushroom Foraging and Feasting will be a friendly primer for novice mushroom hunters and an unexpected delight for veteran mycophiles.
Edited by Kate
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Epic Hikes of the Americas 1
Lace up your hiking boots for the next in Lonely Planet's highly successful Epic Hikes series, this time exploring 50 of the Americas' most rewarding treks and trails. From Canada's longest hut-to-hut hike, the Sunshine Coast Trail, to a descent through Havasu Canyon in the USA, and the Santa Cruz Trail of northern Peru, we cover a huge variety of themes and experiences across routes that range from one-day walks to multi-day treks.
Each of the featured hikes includes:
- First-person accounts from writers who have completed the hike
- Challenge level grading: easy / harder / epic
- Inspirational photography, maps and practical information to follow in the writer's footsteps
- Orientation toolkit: when is the best time of year to hike, how to get there, special equipment required
- Expert travel advice: where to stay, recommended tours, the best places to eat
- Suggestions for similar hikes
50 epic hikes across the Americas, including:
- The Chilkoot Trail, Alaska (USA)
- Joshua Tree Trail, California (USA)
- Highline Trail, Glacier National Park, Montana (USA)
- Halawa Valley, Hawaii (USA)
- Wonderland Trail, Washington (USA)
- Huemul Circuit, Parque Nacional Los Glaciares (Argentina)
- The Black Rock Lodge Summit Hike (Belize)
- Wild Pacific Trail (Canada)
- Isla Navarino (Chile)
- Tayrona National Park (Colombia)
- Corcovado National Park (Costa Rica)
- Comandancia de la Plata and Pico Turquino (Cuba)
- Boiling Lake Hike (Dominica)
- Quilotoa Loop (Ecuador)
- The Arctic Circle Trail (Greenland)
- Camino del Cobre (Mexico)
- Santa Cruz Trail (Peru)
With a vibrant cover illustrated by Ross Murray, this beautiful hardback continues this collectible series. Whether you're a seasoned hiker, a novice embarking on your very first trek, or looking for a gift to suit an adventurer in your life, Epic Hikes of the Americas will inspire a lifetime of epic journeys on foot.
About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and phrasebooks for 120 languages, and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. You'll also find our content online, and in mobile apps, videos, 14 languages, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more, enabling you to explore every day.
'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times
'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)
Edited by Kate
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Just Work
From Kim Scott, author of the revolutionary New York Times bestseller Radical Candor, comes Just Work—how we can recognize, attack, and eliminate workplace injustice—and transform our careers and organizations in the process.
We—all of us—consistently exclude, underestimate, and underutilize huge numbers of people in the workforce even as we include, overestimate, and promote others, often beyond their level of competence. Not only is this immoral and unjust, it's bad for business. Just Work is the solution.
Just Work is Kim Scott's new book, revealing a practical framework for both respecting everyone’s individuality and collaborating effectively. This is the essential guide leaders and their employees need to create more just workplaces and establish new norms of collaboration and respect.Edited by Kate
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Ways of Being
Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle’s Ways of Being is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence—plant, animal, human, artificial—and how they transform our understanding of humans’ place in the cosmos.
What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans or shared with other beings— beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in “artificial” intelligence. But rather than a friend or companion, AI increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined, an alien invention that threatens to decenter and supplant us.
At the same time, we’re only just becoming aware of the other intelligences that have been with us all along, even if we’ve failed to recognize or acknowledge them. These others—the animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us—are slowly revealing their complexity, agency, and knowledge, just as the technologies we’ve built to sustain ourselves are threatening to cause their extinction and ours. What can we learn from them, and how can we change ourselves, our technologies, our societies, and our politics to live better and more equitably with one another and the nonhuman world?
The artist and maverick thinker James Bridle draws on biology and physics, computation, literature, art, and philosophy to answer these unsettling questions. Startling and bold, Ways of Being explores the fascinating, strange, and multitudinous forms of knowing, doing, and being that make up the world, and that are essential for our survival.
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The Scandalous Hamiltons
An Alexander Hamilton heir, a beautiful female con artist, an abandoned baby, and the shocking courtroom drama that was splashed across front pages from coast to coast--this is the fascinating true story behind one of the greatest scandals of the Gilded Age . . .
Adultery? Check. Attempted murder? Check. Baby-trafficking? Check. These are just a few of the missteps of the woman who rained humiliation onto the House of Hamilton. --Marlene Wagman-Geller, author of Women of Means: Fascinating Biographies of Royals, Heiresses, Eccentrics and Other Poor Little Rich Girls
It's a story almost too tawdry to be true--a con woman prostitute who met the descendant of a Founding Father in a brothel, duped him into marriage using an infant purchased from a baby farm, then went to prison for stabbing the couple's baby nurse--all while in a common-law marriage with another man. The scandal surrounding Evangeline and Robert Ray Hamilton, though little known today, was one of the sensations of the Gilded Age, a sordid, gripping tale involving bigamy, bribery, sex, and violence.
When the salacious Hamilton story emerged in during Eva's trial for the August 1889 stabbing, it commanded unprecedented national and international newspaper coverage thanks to the telegraph and the recently founded Associated Press. For the New York dailies, eager to capture readers through provocative headlines, Ray and Eva were a godsend.
As lurid details emerged, the public's fascination grew--how did a man of Hamilton's stature become entangled with such an adventuress? Nellie Bly, the world-famous investigative reporter, finagled an exclusive interview with Eva after her conviction. Hamilton's death under mysterious circumstances, a year after the stabbing, added to the intrigue.
Through personal correspondence, court records, and sensational newspaper accounts, The Scandalous Hamiltons explores not only the full, riveting saga of ill-fated Ray and Eva, but the rise of tabloid journalism and celebrity in a story that is both a fascinating slice of pop culture history and a timeless tale of ambition, greed, and obsession.
"Historical true crime buffs will be engrossed." - Publishers Weekly
"Shaffer has an appealing writing style and a talent for sneaking up on the reader with each big reveal...Rich period detail." - Booklist
Edited by Kate
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The Desperate Hours
AWARD-WINNING VANITY FAIR WRITER Marie Brenner shares a remarkable depiction of New York—a city in crisis—based on new, behind-the-scenes reporting that captures the resilience, peril, and compassion of the early days of the Covid pandemic.
In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 arrived in New York City.
Before long, America’s largest metropolis was at war against a virus that mercilessly swept through its five boroughs. It became apparent that if Covid wasn’t somehow halted, the death count in New York alone would be in the hundreds of thousands. And if New York’s hospitals failed, what chance did the rest of the country have?
Brenner, having been granted unprecedented 18-month access to the entire New York-Presbyterian hospital system, tells the story of the doctors, nurses, residents, researchers, and suppliers who tried to save lives across Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn and the northern periphery of the city. Drawing on more than 200 interviews, Brenner takes us inside secure ICU units, sealed operating rooms, locked executive suites, unknown basement workshops, and makeshift clinics to provide extraordinary witness to the war as it was waged on the front line.
But The Desperate Hours is more than a thrilling account of medicine under extreme pressure. It is an intimate portrait of courageous men and women coming together in their devotion to duty, their families, each other, and the city they loved more than any other.Edited by Kate
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The Neuroscience of You
From University of Washington professor Chantel Prat comes The Neuroscience of You, a rollicking adventure into the human brain that reveals the surprising truth about neuroscience, shifting our focus from what’s average to an understanding of how every brain is different, exactly why our quirks are important, and what this means for each of us.
With style and wit, Chantel Prat takes us on a tour of the meaningful ways that our brains are dissimilar from one another. Using real-world examples, along with take-them-yourself tests and quizzes, she shows you how to identify the strengths and weakness of your own brain, while learning what might be going on in the brains of those who are unlike you. With sections like “Focus,” “Navigate,” and “Connect,” The Neuroscience of You helps us see how brains that are engineered differently ultimately take diverse paths when it comes time to prioritize information, use what they’ve learned from experience, relate to other people, and so much more.
While other scientists focus on how “the” brain works “on average,” Prat argues that our obsession with commonalities has slowed our progress toward understanding the very things that make each of us unique and interesting. Her field-leading research, employing cutting-edge technology, reveals the truth: Complicated as it may be, no two brains are alike. And individual differences in brain functioning are as pervasive as they are fundamental to defining what “normal” looks like. Adages such as, “I’m not wired that way” intuitively point to the fact that the brains we’re piloting, educating, and parenting are wonderfully distinct, explaining a whole host of phenomena, from how easily a person might learn a second language in adulthood to whether someone feels curious or threatened when faced with new information. This book invites the reader to understand themselves and others by zooming in so close that we all look gray and squishy.Edited by Kate
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The Comic Book Lesson
An aspiring young creator learns the fundamentals of visual storytelling from three comic book mentors in this charming illustrated tale--a graphic novel that teaches you how to turn your stories into comics!
Acclaimed illustrator and graphic novelist Mark Crilley returns with a new approach to learning the essential elements of making comics. His easy-to-follow instruction about comic book art, design, and storytelling provides aspiring creators a one-of-a-kind how-to experience.
In The Comic Book Lesson, you'll meet Emily--an enthusiastic young comics fan who has a story she needs to tell. On her quest to turn that story into a comic book, Emily meets three helpful mentors who share their knowledge. Trudy, a high school student who works at the local comics shop, teaches Emily how to create expressive characters and how art can convey action and suspense. Madeline, a self-published manga artist, teaches Emily how to use panel composition and layout to tell a story visually and how to develop a comic from script to sketch to finished pages. Sophie, a professional graphic novelist, guides Emily through fine-tuning the details of dialogue, sequence, and pacing to lead readers through the story.
Page by page, you'll discover more about the events that drive Emily to create her comic book as her mentors teach her (and you!) about the fundamentals of visual narrative and comic book art. Each lesson builds on the previous one, guiding you through the steps of planning and creating your comic, with accompanying exercises you can try for yourself. Are you ready to start your comic book lesson today?
Edited by Kate
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Asian American Histories of the United States
An inclusive and landmark history, emphasizing how essential Asian American experiences are to any understanding of US history
Original and expansive, Asian American Histories of the United States is a nearly 200-year history of Asian migration, labor, and community formation in the US. Reckoning with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the surge in anti-Asian hate and violence, award-winning historian Catherine Ceniza Choy presents an urgent social history of the fastest growing group of Americans. The book features the lived experiences and diverse voices of immigrants, refugees, US-born Asian Americans, multiracial Americans, and workers from industries spanning agriculture to healthcare.
Despite significant Asian American breakthroughs in American politics, arts, and popular culture in the 21st century, a profound lack of understanding of Asian American history permeates American culture. Choy traces how anti-Asian violence and its intersection with misogyny and other forms of hatred, the erasure of Asian American experiences and contributions, and Asian American resistance to what has been omitted are prominent themes in Asian American history. This ambitious book is fundamental to understanding the American experience and its existential crises of the early 21st century.Edited by Kate
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Death by Landscape
From the acclaimed author of the novel Oval comes a book of “fan nonfiction” about living and writing in the age of extinction
In this constellation of essays, Elvia Wilk asks what kinds of narratives will help us rethink our human perspective toward Earth. The book begins as an exploration of the role of fiction today and becomes a deep interrogation of the writing process and the self.
Wilk examines creative works across time and genre in order to break down binaries between dystopia and utopia, real and imagined, self and world. She makes connections between works by such wide-ranging writers as Mark Fisher, Karen Russell, Han Kang, Doris Lessing, Anne Carson, Octavia E. Butler, Michelle Tea, Helen Phillips, Kathe Koja, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, and Hildegard von Bingen.
What happens when research becomes personal, when the observer breaks through the glass? Through the eye of the fan, this collection delves into literal and literary world-building projects—medieval monasteries, solarpunk futures, vampire role plays, environments devoid of humans—bridging the micro and the macro and revealing how our relationship to narrative shapes our relationships to the natural world and to one another.Edited by Kate
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The Power of Plus
"The Power of Plus will leave you feeling inspired, motivated, and ready to push for real change, as well as confident and encouraged to embrace yourself, just as you are. This is essential reading for anyone who truly cares about the future of fashion, and for anyone who believes in the power of being yourself." --Versha Sharma, editor in chief, Teen Vogue
Plus-size fashion revolutionizes the way women view themselves and their bodies.
Exclusivity runs within the foundation of fashion. While calls for diversity have intensified recently, long-held attitudes are only beginning to change. But through social media, plus-size people have been able to create supportive communities that show their confidence, strength, and beauty.
Plus-size fashionistas have been writing their own narrative for the past three decades, creating a market all on their own that is now worth more than $21 billion. The Power of Plus features interviews with trailblazers such as Tess Holliday, Emme Aronson, Gabi Gregg, and more as it follows the evolution of plus-size fashion from its start on small blogs to its current boom, examining the way this market has changed women's relationships with their bodies and how plus-size fashion is integral to the future success of the industry.
Plus-size fashion is not a PR stunt. It is a culture-changing market created by and for the people who have always deserved to feel stylish but never had the visibility to be . . . until now.
By honoring our progress so far, The Power of Plus celebrates the next stage of the plus-size fashion movement.
Edited by Kate
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Fearless
In the spirit of the bestseller Fly Girls comes the definitive and compelling true story of Harriet Quimby, the first American woman to receive a pilot's license.
In the early twentieth century, headlines declared that the era of women has dawned. Against this changing historical backdrop, Harriet Quimby's extraordinary life stands out as the embodiment of this tumultuous, exciting era--when flight was measured in minutes, not miles.
This untold piece of feminist history unveils Quimby's incredible story: rising from humble beginnings as a dirt-poor farm girl to become a globe-trotting journalist, history-making aviator, and international celebrity. With her tragic death in 1912 at the age of thirty-seven, her story faded, with her many accomplishments--the first woman to fly solo over the English Channel among them--overshadowed by major events, including the sinking of the Titanic.
With black and white illustrations throughout, Fearless, /i> is the definitive biography of the first licensed female American pilot: one of the most inspiring hidden figures of history.
Edited by Kate
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All Down Darkness Wide
"Rapturous...Hewitt beautifully illuminates his own darknesses so that we might also see our own." — Melissa Febos, The New York Times Book Review
"Unique and singularly captivating...This memoir is gripping and deserves to be read by anyone looking for hope in these especially dark times." — David Vogel, Buzzfeed
“Exquisitely written.” —Claire Messud, Harper’s Magazine
Named a Best Book of July by Buzzfeed * A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction 2022 Summer Read * Observer Book of the Week
By turns devastating and soaring, an ambitious memoir debut from one of Irish literature’s rising stars
When Seán Hewitt meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe mental illness, they soon come face-to-face with crisis.
All Down Darkness Wide is a perceptive and unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds, and a tender and honest portrayal of what it’s like to be caught in the undertow of a loved one’s deep depression. As lives are made and unmade, this memoir asks what love can endure and what it cannot.
Delving into his own history, enlisting the ghosts of queer figures before him, Hewitt plumbs the darkness in search of answers. From a nineteenth-century cemetery in Liverpool to a sacred grotto in the Pyrenees, it is a journey of lonely discovery followed by the light of community. Haunted by the rites of Catholicism and spectres of shame, it is nevertheless marked by an insistent search for beauty.
Hewitt captures transcendent moments in nature with exquisite lyricism, honours the power of reciprocated desire and provides a master class in the incredible force of unsparing specificity. All Down Darkness Wide illuminates a path ahead for queer literature and for the literature of heartbreak, striking a piercing and resonant chord for all who trace Hewitt’s dauntless footsteps.Edited by Kate