Is It Still Good to Ya?


Book Description

Is It Still Good to Ya? sums up the career of longtime Village Voice stalwart Robert Christgau, who for half a century has been America's most widely respected rock critic, honoring a music he argues is only more enduring because it's sometimes simple or silly. While compiling historical overviews going back to Dionysus and the gramophone along with artist analyses that range from Louis Armstrong to M.I.A., this definitive collection also explores pop's African roots, response to 9/11, and evolution from the teen music of the '50s to an art form compelled to confront mortality as its heroes pass on. A final section combines searching obituaries of David Bowie, Prince, and Leonard Cohen with awed farewells to Bob Marley and Ornette Coleman.




The Last Lecture


Book Description

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.




Quilvio


Book Description

Quilvio McFurgus is a man with problems. Problems with the bottle, problems with dealing with the departure of his wife. Problems in dealing with his boss. Problems in the raising of his two children and the problem in looking for a new mate. Then theres the problems of coping with setbacks that never seem to end, and mother nature herself. The unusual weather, storms and earthquakes. The eco-terrorists he doesnt know about until later. Surviving a tidal wave and the journey back to civilization. But he finds out that life has a way of working out for the best.




When You Learn the Alphabet


Book Description

Kendra Allen’s first collection of essays—at its core—is a bunch of mad stories about things she never learned to let go of. Unifying personal narrative and cultural commentary, this collection grapples with the lessons that have been stored between parent and daughter. These parental relationships expose the conditioning that subconsciously informed her ideas on social issues such as colorism, feminism, war-induced PTSD, homophobia, marriage, and “the n-word,” among other things. These dynamics strive for some semblance of accountability, and the essays within this collection are used as displays of deep unlearning and restoring—balancing trauma and humor, poetics and reality, forgiveness and resentment. When You Learn the Alphabet allots space for large moments of tenderness and empathy for all black bodies—but especially all black woman bodies—space for the underrepresented humanity and uncared for pain of black girls, and space to have the opportunity to be listened to in order to evolve past it.




Wait!


Book Description

"Our girl Wendy Burger stands on the edge of a summer that will change her life forever. It's the summer she moves out of her father's house (and into the UPS truck). The summer she starts a theatre ..."--Page 4 cover.




We've Come a 'Fer Piece


Book Description

Looking through his crystal clear rose colored lenses, Arner examines his boyhood as he searches for the answer to the age old question each of us asks from time to time, Why am I who I am? Through his warm, rich, engaging, and humorous style, readers meet and get to know unforgettable characters like The Mastermind, Jerry Yellsalot, and Claude Hopper as they explore and relive hilarious life-altering events told through the eyes of the boy who actually lived them. Hilarious and thought provoking, stories like Fudge? What Fudge?, The Stagecoach, Setting Pins, and Trust Me, This Wont Hurt, lead the reader through the maze we call childhood and the pattern-maker's mold of our teen years through which the die is made and cast that shapes us into the adults we become. Travel back now to a time not so long ago when the world seemed to spin a little slower and life was a lot simpler; a time when dreams were dreamed and adventures were lived and a boy grew into a man.




Beulah Hill


Book Description

A novel of rare literary distinction, an erotic thriller combined with a true mystery, and a look back at a little-known part of the American societal patchwork -- Beulah Hill, by bestselling author William Heffernan, is a brilliant and deeply original work of fiction. Set in the 1930s, the story follows the investigation of a racially motivated murder in a rural Vermont town and the shocking ramifications it has on that backwoods community, which had once served as a stopping place for runaway slaves. Having made new lives for themselves there, many of these former slaves had married interracially. As a result, over several generations, the progeny of what were originally black families became what was known as "bleached" and were absorbed by the white community. Still, they were not accepted by all, and not all the blacks joined in interracial unions. The result was an atmosphere of tension and distrust that -- as so vividly rendered in this novel -- occasionally exploded in acts of violence...and even murder. Played out against this vivid backdrop, at a time when the Great Depression had created an atmosphere of fear and Adolf Hitler was just beginning his reign in Germany, Beulah Hill tells the story of a white man who was murdered in an almost ritualistic manner on land owned by the only remaining black family in that small town. Heading the investigation is a young constable who is himself a deeply conflicted member of the "bleached" underclass and who is intimately involved with the proud and headstrong black woman at the center of the killing. Depicting larger-than-life characters, including a black patriarch who rules his farm on Beulah Hill with an iron fist, Heffernan paints a startlingly authentic portrait of a town caught in the grip of seething prejudice, forbidden eroticism, and hard times.




Burkie


Book Description

THE STORY: The place is South Philadelphia, where Ed Burke (Burkie to his late wife) has lived for more than thirty years. A plumber by trade, Burkie is now dying of cancer and has become progressively more dependent on his unmarried son, Jon, wh




Show Business


Book Description




The Love Comes Softly Collection


Book Description

Collects the eight novels of Janette Oke's pioneering historical romance Love Comes Softly series into one volume! Includes: 1. Love Comes Softly 2. Love's Enduring Promise 3. Love's Long Journey 4. Love's Abiding Joy 5. Love's Unending Legacy 6. Love's Unfolding Dream 7. Love Takes Wing 8. Love Finds a Home