You Wouldn't Like Me Without My Coffee


Book Description

Sam and Lou's parents crave their morning coffee. What happens when they go without it? The brothers are determined to find out. But taking their parents' coffee proves to be a big mistake. Without it, their parents turn into monsters! Children will love this wish-fulfilling adventure of monsters wreaking havoc at home, and adults will relate to the coffee-craving monsters. One part classic monster film, one part cheesy action movie, and all parts comedy, the book will keep readers of all ages chuckling with subtle jokes and bad one-liners.




Coffee Will Make You Black


Book Description

“A funny, fresh novel about growing up African-American in 1960s Chicago” by an author who “writes like Terry McMillan’s kid sister” (Entertainment Weekly). In this hilarious and insightful coming-of-age novel, author April Sinclair introduces the charming Jean “Stevie” Stevenson, a young woman raised on Chicago’s South Side during an era of irrevocable social upheaval. Curious and witty, bold but naïve, Stevie grows up debating the qualities of good hair and dark skin. As the years pass, her family and neighborhood are changed by the times, from the War on Poverty to race riots and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., from “Black Is Beautiful” to Black Power. Against this remarkable backdrop, Stevie makes the sometimes harrowing, often comic, always enthralling transformation into a young adult—socially aware, discovering her sexuality, and proud of her identity. “Whether she’s dealing with a subject as monumental as the civil rights movement or as intimate as Stevie’s first sexual encounters,” writes the Los Angeles Times, “Sinclair never fails to make you laugh and never sacrifices the narrative to make a point.” Winner of the Carl Sandburg Award from the Friends of the Chicago Public Library and named a best book of the year in young adult fiction by the American Library Association, Coffee Will Make You Black is an exquisite portrait of adolescence that will resonate with readers of all ages.




What the Sleepy Animals Do at the Audubon Zoo


Book Description

"A precocious little girl named Renee and her wily father go to the Audubon Zoo. Renee has a great time, but the animals are a little less active and little more sleepy than she expected. Her father tells her that when the people go home, the animals come out of their cages and have fantastic festivities that keep them up all night. By the time the zoo opens, the animals are all tuckered out. Renee doesn't buy her dad's ridiculous story, but dads have a way of being right about these things"--Dust jacket flap.




Heartstopper


Book Description

Torrance, Florida. Population: 4,160. A safe place where residents feel comfortable leaving their doors unlocked and allowing their children to run freely. It's here that high school English teacher Sandy Crosbie is establishing a new life for herself and her teenage children following the painful and very public breakdown of her marriage. But when the body of the most popular girl at Torrance High is found buried in a shallow, swampy grave, everyone in the cosy community becomes a suspect - and suddenly it seems that everyone has something to hide. A down-on-his-luck sheriff must wade through the murkier depths of smalltown secrets to determine who the killer is. And when the body count rises to three, Sandy Crosbie must do everything in her power to help protect her family and target the attacker before it's too late.




Firefly Lane


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah comes a powerful novel of love, loss, and the magic of friendship. . . . now a #1 Netflix series! In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the "coolest girl in the world" moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all---beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer's end they've become TullyandKate. Inseparable. So begins Kristin Hannah's magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives. From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success . . . and loneliness. Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn't know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she'll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she'll envy her famous best friend. . . . For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship---jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they've survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart . . . and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test. Firefly Lane is for anyone who ever drank Boone's Farm apple wine while listening to Abba or Fleetwood Mac. More than a coming-of-age novel, it's the story of a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by choices. It's about promises and secrets and betrayals. And ultimately, about the one person who really, truly knows you---and knows what has the power to hurt you . . . and heal you. Firefly Lane is a story you'll never forget . . . one you'll want to pass on to your best friend.




Zizek's Jokes


Book Description

Žižek as comedian: jokes in the service of philosophy. “A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.”—Ludwig Wittgenstein The good news is that this book offers an entertaining but enlightening compilation of Žižekisms. Unlike any other book by Slavoj Žižek, this compact arrangement of jokes culled from his writings provides an index to certain philosophical, political, and sexual themes that preoccupy him. Žižek's Jokes contains the set-ups and punch lines—as well as the offenses and insults—that Žižek is famous for, all in less than 200 pages. So what's the bad news? There is no bad news. There's just the inimitable Slavoj Žižek, disguised as an impossibly erudite, politically incorrect uncle, beginning a sentence, “There is an old Jewish joke, loved by Derrida...“ For Žižek, jokes are amusing stories that offer a shortcut to philosophical insight. He illustrates the logic of the Hegelian triad, for example, with three variations of the “Not tonight, dear, I have a headache” classic: first the wife claims a migraine; then the husband does; then the wife exclaims, “Darling, I have a terrible migraine, so let's have some sex to refresh me!” A punch line about a beer bottle provides a Lacanian lesson about one signifier. And a “truly obscene” version of the famous “aristocrats” joke has the family offering a short course in Hegelian thought rather than a display of unspeakables. Žižek's Jokes contains every joke cited, paraphrased, or narrated in Žižek's work in English (including some in unpublished manuscripts), including different versions of the same joke that make different points in different contexts. The larger point being that comedy is central to Žižek's seriousness.




Desperate Strangers


Book Description

His secrets might break her heart but hers could get them killed! Nick Simon is using his “fiancée,” Julie Peterson, as an alibi—and her amnesia means she doesn’t even know they only met at the scene of her accident. But when someone starts calling with threats of murder, Julie is drawn even closer to the only man who can protect her. Will she remember the deadly secret she carries before a murderer can strike again?




Through the Alaskan Darkness


Book Description

BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS Adak, a link in the Aleutian Chain of Alaska, snuggled right in between the notorious Bering Sea and the extreme northern most edge of the Pacific Ocean. It was a rare beautiful day in October. The cusp of winter for that part of Alaska. Five Chief Petty Officers stationed at Naval Station Adak take advantage of the good weather forecast for the weekend. It wouldn't take more than a few days to boat to the other side of the island, hunt caribou, then return to base. Plenty of time to win the race against that storm expected next week. They'd done it before. No reason they can't do it again. Except, this particular storm has no intention of keeping to man's schedule.




There’s no way a side character like me could be popular, right? Volume 2


Book Description

I’m Tomoki Yuuji—just your standard, run-of-the-mill high school student. I also happen to be faking a relationship with Ike Touka, the school’s newest queen bee. While everyone’s afraid of me and avoid me like the plague, Touka’s always trying to grab their attention whenever possible. It’s so the whole school knows we’re the “real deal,” I guess. There are people who understand my situation and aren’t scared of me. There’s the actual protagonist of this story, Ike Haruma, or one of my teachers, Makiri Chiaki. But other than them and a few others, my situation hasn’t really changed ever since I started “going out” with Touka. One of the people who remains very suspicious about my relationship with her is Haruma’s childhood friend, Kana. One day, she suddenly tells me to meet her alone. When I do, she blurts out something totally unexpected: “I’m so sorry, but could we start as friends and see how things go from there?!” …Wait a sec, did she just confess her feelings and reject me at the same time?! Find out what happens to Yuuji in the second volume of ‘There’s no way a side character like me could be popular, right?’!




Selected Plays by Griselda Gambaro


Book Description

Griselda Gambaro is arguably one of Argentina's most important dramatists, as well as a playwright of international significance, whose poetics not only interpret Argentine reality but transcend cultural and geographical borders. Despite international recognition, her plays remain little performed in the UK, an absence which makes this anthology of new translations a welcome contribution to British theatre culture, and to the English-speaking stage. Prolific since the 1960s, Gambaro's plays are radical, subversive, and endlessly inventive in the use of form and theatricality. This is a theatre of resistance which has the potential to make searing comments on our own domestic and political contexts, an experience which may not be comfortable but is always vital. Dazzling, original, incisive and poetic, this anthology shows Griselda Gambaro at the height of her creative powers. Siamese Twins (1967) In this charged and forceful play, two brothers (one weak, one strong) play out a primal scene of envy, cruelty and torture as one exerts his power and aggression over the other. Mother by Trade (1999) In a stark process of truth and reconciliation, a daughter meets her estranged mother forty years after she abandoned her as an infant. As the Dream Dictates (2002) How can we look to the future if there is great trauma in our past? In this play, only the untethered thinking that comes with dreaming allows us the freedom to imagine. Asking Too Much (2004) In this enigmatic two-hander, the roles played by a man and a woman in the game of human attachment are renegotiated. Persistence (2007) Inspired by the real life event of the 2004 Beslan massacre in Russia, Persistence is a poetic play which goes to the heart of human tragedy. Dear Ibsen, I Am Nora (2013) Nora, the character created by Henrik Ibsen in A Doll's House, decides to confront her creator and to debate with him her own words and actions. The Gift (2015) Márgara is a woman with the gift of prophecy... but people do not believe her, even though she predicts hope for the world. Will humanity be able to hear her?