Hannah and Soraya’s Fully Magic Generation-Y *Snowflake* Road Trip across America


Book Description

Hannah and Soraya are in the business of making rock music with a social conscience. The way Britain currently works, that means they’re ‘snowflakes’, ‘social justice warriors’, ‘virtue signallers’. They’ve learned to live with the mudslinging, but not happily. Worse than that. It's starting to overwhelm them. Then, out of the blue, they suffer a string of personal and professional crises. Their solution? A change of scene designed to keep the lid on a looming family cataclysm and draw artistic inspiration from the pre-musical roots of rock (but without the Beats’ misogyny, plus in an eco-friendly car). Hannah and Soraya’s Fully Magic Generation-Y *Snowflake* Road Trip across America is about the value of family, friendship, human mortality, the siren call of social media, celebrity vs. anonymity, creative integrity, true love, drugs ‘n’ alcohol, literature, sexuality, the ‘special relationship’, what it means to be a millennial, what kind of world Generation Y is set to inherit, the very meaning of life itself in the 21st century. Amongst other things.




A New Theory of Justice and Other Essays


Book Description

Is justice best understood as flowing from a social contract, or is there something else going on? How can we explain the many divergent notions of justice throughout history? Is it even possible to give a separate account of justice (as opposed to, say, social convention or morality)? These are some of the questions considered in A New Theory of Justice. But there are other essays in here, other questions, and other (tentative) answers. Is it possible to talk about ‘God’ anymore? What kinds of minds do animals have, and how could we ever find out? And what about free-will: is it just a story we tell ourselves to help us navigate life and stay sane? Or not? The author has a master’s degree and a DPhil, both in Philosophy.




The Twittering Machine


Book Description

A brilliant probe into the political and psychological effects of our changing relationship with social media Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience. The Twittering Machine is an unflinching view into the calamities of digital life: the circus of online trolling, flourishing alt-right subcultures, pervasive corporate surveillance, and the virtual data mines of Facebook and Google where we spend considerable portions of our free time. In this polemical tour de force, Richard Seymour shows how the digital world is changing the ways we speak, write, and think. Through journalism, psychoanalytic reflection and insights from users, developers, security experts and others, Seymour probes the human side of the machine, asking what we’re getting out of it, and what we’re getting into. Social media held out the promise that we could make our own history–to what extent did we choose the nightmare that it has become?




Twig and Turtle 1: Big Move to a Tiny House


Book Description

Family, friendship, new school challenges, and a rather large dog problem combine as sisters adjust to their new tiny house life in this charming chapter book series starter from award-winning author Jennifer Richard Jacobson. Perfect for fans of Ivy and Bean and Judy Moody. In a tiny house, 3 shirts + 3 pants = 9 different outfits Eight- and six-year-old sisters Twig and Turtle are excited and curious about their new small town in Colorado. And for their cool, tiny house! Their family is united in living more simply, and not stressing out the Earth's resources. But the move comes with a major problem: How do you fit a Great Dane in a tiny house? A sweet chapter book series starter with humor and heart, Big Move to a Tiny House is sure to win over fans of Ivy and Bean and Judy Moody.




The Bright Fish


Book Description

Something’s not right aboard the cruise ship Aurora. Yet that’s probably what you would think when you’re with the girl you love and everyone else is about fifty years your senior. You’re 3000 miles from home, young, and high on emotion. Maybe it just ratchets up the sense of adventure. And yet perhaps something really is wrong. There’s the passenger everyone thought was dead, but who reappears one evening in the lounge without comment or explanation. And eighty-year-old Celia Soper who reads Tarot cards, but only for ‘the history of the world’ … whatever that means. And then, of course, the disappearances. Which, apparently, only you two have noticed. Above all, there are the bright fish, creatures the size of dolphins that materialise unexpectedly, at intervals, alongside the hull, glowing with indescribable colours. And which never seem to inspire the sort of delight one might expect. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Bright Fish is a love story. It deals with what it means to live, lose one’s heart, and ultimately, to die in the metaphysically reticent context of the present century. Are we always essentially alone, or is true interdependency possible? Is death our beginning or end? Or both? Conversely, is the truth stranger than we can possibly imagine?




More Than Just a Pretty Face


Book Description

Perfect for fans of Becky Albertalli and Jenny Han, this sweetly funny coming-of-age story is about falling in love, family expectations, and being a Renaissance Man. Danyal Jilani doesn't lack confidence. He may not be the smartest guy in the room, but he's funny, gorgeous, and going to make a great chef one day. His father doesn't approve of his career choice, but that hardly matters. What does matter is the opinion of Danyal's longtime crush, the perfect-in-all-ways Kaval, and her family, who consider him a less than ideal arranged marriage prospect. When Danyal gets selected for Renaissance Man, a school-wide academic championship, it's the perfect opportunity to show everyone he's smarter than they think. He recruits the brilliant, totally-uninterested-in-him Bisma to help with the competition, but the more time Danyal spends with her...the more he learns from her...the more he cooks for her...the more he realizes that happiness may be staring him right in his pretty face. In this young adult debut full of depth and heart, author Syed M. Masood will have readers laughing, sighing, tearing up, and shouting "YES!" at the top of their lungs.




Oshibana Complex


Book Description

Welcome to Shika-One City, humanity’s final home. Nations have come together. Gender and race are petty concerns of the past. But not everything is well in Shika-One. Humanity can no longer procreate and has to synthesize future generations. But there aren’t many genetic templates to go around and meeting yourself on the street is a daily occurrence. With so many people wearing the same face, the synths of Shika-One strive for individuality in a world where stepping out of line can lead to the shredder. In this pulsing neon world lives Xev and eir friends, all hard-working synths who maintain their designations to earn the XP to live and hope to afford the holographic shams that cover up their similarities. That is, until a new synth makes Xev start to ask big questions that might upset the status quo. In Shika-One, life is cheap. Xev is about to discover what e’s worth.




Mistletoe and Mischief


Book Description

Julia Rowe isn't just my best friend's little sister. She's a beautiful, talented baker and anytime I get within five feet of her, my blood heads south for the winter. She's got me more tangled than a box of Christmas lights. I've been in love with her for longer than I can remember. Too bad, she's also the only woman I'm not allowed to touch. Why? Because of a promise I made to her brother years ago. Not to mention, she hates me. Now, we're under the same roof, and I'm not sure I can resist her. With Christmas right around the corner, can I show her I've changed? Or will I ruin my chances, destroy Christmas and lose my best friend? I may be in need of a Christmas miracle.




The Weird Problem of Good


Book Description

True love isn’t always a bed of roses. Sometimes it’s a no-holds-barred battle to the death with the incarnation of evil. Prem’s wedding to Nasreen collapses when she uncharacteristically bows to her conscience and walks out of the ceremony. He wanders alone to the town centre where he bumps into Ursula, a gypsy refugee from Eastern Europe who manages to convince him she’s someone she’s not. Warming to her, despite his ordeal, and dimly sensing her predicament, he invites her to stay with him on a friends-only basis. She accepts. Fast forward a few months. The lives of all three have now become inextricably intertwined, with mutual forgiveness and a hastily agreed unity of purpose their only practical options. Through a series of misadventures, they’ve found themselves confronting a network of women-traffickers who’ll stop at nothing to protect their interests and expand their empire. If that means torturing Prem to death, and forcing Ursula and Nasreen into 21st century sex-slavery, so be it. How did they get from the first state of affairs (fairly run-of-the-mill) to the second (off-the-wall and utterly terrifying)? And just what is the ‘weird problem of good’ anyway? Don’t ask me. I’m just a blurb. You’ll have to read the book.




Letters from the Light


Book Description

A dystopian science fiction novel by Shel Calopa set in a future Australia, where light is only for the powerful and the poor struggle in darkness.