Dating Big Bird


Book Description

Ellen Franck isn't in love with Big Bird. After all, he's a big yellow Sesame Street character -- and she's an intelligent single woman with a fabulous job. On the other hand, Big Bird is looking like a better candidate for fatherhood every day: he's tall, affectionate, and steadily employed. And right now, for Ellen, thirty-five years old and dying to have a baby, almost any father will do. In her hilarious and heartbreaking new novel, Laura Zigman, bestselling author of Animal Husbandry, explores what happens when the life we've chosen isn't that life we expected it to be. And at this point Ellen Franck is rethinking all her choices. Mired in a relationship with a man who is better at brooding than breeding, sister to a woman who can't seem to stop having babies, and working under a boss who is about to have the baby shower of the decade, Ellen knows the path to motherhood is clear. All she has to do is leave her relationship, horrify her family, find an anonymous father, and become independently wealthy. Piece of cake.




Separation Anxiety


Book Description

This poignant debut by Gavin Bradley explores the emotional toll of different kinds of separation: from a partner, a previously held sense of self, or a home and the people left behind. The main narrative describes the deterioration of a long-term relationship, interweaving poems dealing with the loneliness of immigration and the anxiety of separation from Northern Ireland, the poet’s homeland. These personal poems enter their stories through a variety of characters and places, from dock builders to dogs, from shorelines to volcanoes, to “mouths soft and humming like beehives.” Other sections of the collection examine a post-Troubles’ experience in Northern Ireland (evoking the lived-experience of growing up with bombs and domineering Catholicism), tell grandfather stories, and show a lasting love for the people, the language, and the land. Separation Anxiety ultimately conveys a message of hope, reminding us that “we’ll be remembered for / ourselves, and not the spaces we / leave behind.”




Get Over Yourself!


Book Description

True love doesn’t just happen, notes professional matchmaker Patti Novak. You have to work for it–and want it. Forget eight-minute speed dates or online dating sites with twenty-page questionnaires that promise a scientifically calculated perfect match. The fact that you both like golf, stamp collecting, and pizza with anchovies is great, but it won’t mean a thing if you don’t feel that zing. But before there can be sparks, there have to be dates. And before the first date, you need to get over yourself! Taking a tough-love approach, and in her signature straight-shooting style, Patti will show you how to fix what needs to be fixed, reach your core, and identify who you are and what you want in a partner. She uses a three-part common-sense formula: • Getting Over What? Assess your dating weaknesses, recognize what’s not working, and adjust your expectations. Delve into your personal history and past relationships, and pinpoint the issues that have been holding you back. • Almost Over It Fine-tune your attitude, your look, and your behavior to maximize your dating chances. Novak lays out strategies to help you deal with the brutal dating monsters you find along the way. • Over It Learn the do’s and don’ts of the first date, the second date, and beyond. Remember, it’s not a job interview or therapy session. Pretend you’re meeting a new friend, not a prospective husband or wife. Finding your one and only isn’t about having the right shoes or a flat stomach. It’s about being true to yourself, being vulnerable, and being ready for love. Whether you’re new to the dating scene, divorced and looking, or just trying to reach that second date, Get Over Yourself! will help you get the love you’ve always wanted and deserve.




May Bird and the Ever After


Book Description

Lonely and shy, ten-year-old May Ellen Bird has no idea what awaits her when she falls into the lake and enters The Ever After, home of ghosts and the Bogey Man.




All the Birds in the Sky


Book Description

Entertainment Weekly's 27 Female Authors Who Rule Sci-Fi and Fantasy Right Now Winner of the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Novel Finalist for the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel Paste's 50 Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far) List “The book is full of quirkiness and playful detail...but there's an overwhelming depth and poignancy to its virtuoso ending.” —NPR From the former editor-in-chief of io9.com, a stunning Nebula Award-winning and Hugo-shortlisted novel about the end of the world—and the beginning of our future An ancient society of witches and a hipster technological startup go to war in order to prevent the world from tearing itself apart. To further complicate things, each of the groups’ most promising followers (Patricia, a brilliant witch and Laurence, an engineering “wunderkind”) may just be in love with each other. As the battle between magic and science wages in San Francisco against the backdrop of international chaos, Laurence and Patricia are forced to choose sides. But their choices will determine the fate of the planet and all mankind. In a fashion unique to Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky offers a humorous and, at times, heart-breaking exploration of growing up extraordinary in a world filled with cruelty, scientific ingenuity, and magic. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




All This Could Be Different


Book Description

2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ONE OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES' TOP 5 FICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF TIME AND SLATE'S TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR Named one of the BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by NPR, Vogue, Vulture, BuzzFeed, Harper's Bazaar, and more “One of the buzziest, most human novels of the year…breathless, dizzying, and completely beautiful.” —Vogue “Dazzling and wholly original...[written] with such mordant wit, insight, and specificity, it feels like watching a new literary star being born in real time.” —Entertainment Weekly From a brilliant new voice comes an electrifying novel of a young immigrant building a life for herself—a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in twenty-first century America Graduating into the long maw of an American recession, Sneha is one of the fortunate ones. She’s moved to Milwaukee for an entry-level corporate job that, grueling as it may be, is the key that unlocks every door: she can pick up the tab at dinner with her new friend Tig, get her college buddy Thom hired alongside her, and send money to her parents back in India. She begins dating women—soon developing a burning crush on Marina, a beguiling and beautiful dancer who always seems just out of reach. But before long, trouble arrives. Painful secrets rear their heads; jobs go off the rails; evictions loom. Sneha struggles to be truly close and open with anybody, even as her friendships deepen, even as she throws herself headlong into a dizzying romance with Marina. It’s then that Tig begins to draw up a radical solution to their problems, hoping to save them all. A beautiful and capacious novel rendered in singular, unforgettable prose, All This Could Be Different is a wise, tender, and riveting group portrait of young people forging love and community amidst struggle, and a moving story of one immigrant’s journey to make her home in the world.




Dating Big Bird


Book Description




Animal Husbandry


Book Description

When her boyfriend leaves her for no apparent reason and refuses to return her calls, Jane investigates the theories of Freud, Darwin, and her friends as she embarks on a journey to understand the male mind and uncover the secrets of the heart. Reprint. Tour.




No One Needs to Know


Book Description

When Olivia’s twin brother, Liam, starts dating, she tries to drive away his girlfriends in an effort to get her best friend back. But she meets her match in Zoey, Liam’s latest fling. A call-it-like-she-sees-it kind of girl, Zoey sees right through Olivia’s tricks and they fall for each other.




40 Days of Dating


Book Description

“What would happen if Harry met Sally in the age of Tinder and Snapchat? . . . A field guide to Millennial dating in New York City” (New York Daily News). When New York–based graphic designers and long-time friends Timothy Goodman and Jessica Walsh found themselves single at the same time, they decided to try an experiment. The old adage says that it takes forty days to change a habit—could the same be said for love? So they agreed to date each other for forty days, record their experiences in questionnaires, photographs, videos, texts, and artworks, and post the material on a website they would create for this purpose. What began as a small experiment between two friends became an Internet sensation, drawing five million unique (and obsessed) visitors from around the globe to their site and their story. 40 Days of Dating: An Experiment is a beautifully designed, expanded look at the experiment and the results, including a great deal of material that never made it onto the site, such as who they were as friends and individuals before the forty days and who they have become since.