Zoe Fleefenbacher has one blue eye and one green eye and bright red hair that goes on…forever. Her hair has always been unruly, but now she is in first grade and according to her teacher, Ms. Trisk, “first grade has rules.” It takes countless barrettes and scrunchies to finally hold Zoe’s hair. But when it can help with an uncooperative science lesson, will Ms. Trisk let Zoe’s hair free?
THE TRUTH
Sisters Kate and Lauren meet for Sunday lunch every week without fail, especially after the loss of their father.
THE LIE
But a knock at the door is about to change everything. A young woman by the name of Jess holds a note with the results of a DNA test, claiming to be their half sister.
THE UNTHINKABLE
As the fallout starts, it’s clear that they are all hiding secrets, and perhaps this family isn’t as perfect as it appears.
A box set of Margaret Atwood’s bestselling companioned novels, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments
In The Handmaid’s Tale, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War and the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s Commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive.
In The Testaments, set more than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Republic of Gilead maintains its repressive grip on power, but it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women come together, with potentially explosive results.
This beautifully designed box set will make the perfect gift.
365 days. 5 years. 1,825 happy moments. The Happiness Project One-Sentence Journal for Mothers is the ideal project for moms who want to capture the everyday moments of their child’s growth but are naturally short on time.
Based on the book, Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin, this five-year journal will help you make a time capsule of your family’s growth in the simplest way possible. You can start at any point in the year. Simply turn to today’s date, and take a few moments to think about the quote or question on the top of the page. Jot down your thoughts and perhaps a note or reflection about your child. As the years go by you’ll notice how your children evolve and discover the aspects about your family that lead to lasting happiness. The quotes are interesting, funny, and always thought provoking.
With this simple-yet-profound relationship tool, Susan Piver shows couples at any stage of their relationships–whether they are considering engagement, have been married for decades, or just want to deepen their connection–how they can forge and strengthen lasting, intimate bonds. Focusing on key areas such as home, money, work, community, and family, The Hard Questions contains 100 thought-provoking questions for couples to ask each other,
including:
• What will our home look like?
• What are our professional goals?
• How do you feel about sharing our life on social media?
• Will we try to have children, and if so, when?
The Hard Questions provides couples with guidance and support for having the kind of conversations that will lead them to a deeper understanding of each other and a happy, healthy, and prosperous future together.
Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade, shares the epic inside story of how a working-class kid from the Nebraska prairie took on Wall Street’s clubby brokerage business, busted it open, and walked away a billionaire.
Joe Ricketts always had the gift of seeing what others missed. The son of a house builder, he started life as a part-time janitor, but by the age of thirty-three he saw the chance to challenge the big brokerage firms by offering Americans an inexpensive way to take control of their own stock trading. Nowadays, we take for granted that Main Street is playing right there on Wall Street, but Ricketts made that happen. His company, begun with $12,500 borrowed from friends and family, took off like a rocket thanks to an early embrace of digital technology and irreverent marketing. But Ameritrade also faced a series of near-disasters: the SEC almost shut him down; his partners tried to force him out because of his relentless risk-taking; penny brokers swindled the company; the crash of 1989 nearly cost him everything; and he was almost shut down again when a customer committed massive fraud. By the time of the dot-com bust, he had proven that his strategy based on frontier values could survive just about anything.
The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get offers a view inside Joe Ricketts’ mind, giving readers a visceral understanding of how entrepreneurs think and act differently from the rest of us—how they see the horizon where we just see a spreadsheet. As unvarnished as the prairie he comes from, Ricketts also talks honestly about his shortcomings as a manager, the career sacrifices his wife made for his business, the complexity of being a father, and the pain of splitting with his mentor and of his brother’s death from AIDS. Overcoming these and other challenges, he built a company now worth $30 billion.
A must-read for anyone who’s ever dreamed of starting their own business, The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get is the ultimate only-in-America story.
The Hate U Give
William C. Morris Award Winner · National Book Award Longlist · Michael L. Printz Honor Book · Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book
I’ll never give up. I’ll never be quiet. I promise.
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer.
This paperback edition includes a foreword from actor Amandla Stenberg and an antiracism guide.
Concrete Rose
Beauty can come from much of nothing.
Angie Thomas revisits Garden Heights seventeen years before the events of The Hate U Give in this searing and poignant exploration of Black boyhood and manhood.
If there’s one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it’s that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad’s in prison.
Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman hate each other. Not dislike. Not begrudgingly tolerate. Hate. And they have no problem displaying their feelings through a series of ritualistic passive aggressive maneuvers as they sit across from each other, executive assistants to co-CEOs of a publishing company. Lucy can’t understand Joshua’s joyless, uptight, meticulous approach to his job. Joshua is clearly baffled by Lucy’s overly bright clothes, quirkiness, and Pollyanna attitude.
Now up for the same promotion, their battle of wills has come to a head and Lucy refuses to back down when their latest game could cost her her dream job…But the tension between Lucy and Joshua has also reached its boiling point, and Lucy is discovering that maybe she doesn’t hate Joshua. And maybe, he doesn’t hate her either. Or maybe this is just another game.
When violinist Anna Sun accidentally achieves career success with a viral YouTube video, she finds herself incapacitated and burned out from her attempts to replicate that moment. And when her longtime boyfriend announces he wants an open relationship before making a final commitment, a hurt and angry Anna decides that if he wants an open relationship, then she does, too. Translation: She’s going to embark on a string of one-night stands. The more unacceptable the men, the better.
That’s where tattooed, motorcycle-riding Quan Diep comes in. Their first attempt at a one-night stand fails, as does their second, and their third, because being with Quan is more than sex—he accepts Anna on an unconditional level that she herself has just started to understand. However, when tragedy strikes Anna’s family she takes on a role that she is ill-suited for, until the burden of expectations threatens to destroy her. Anna and Quan have to fight for their chance at love, but to do that, they also have to fight for themselves.
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.
Ernest Hemingway, a literary icon and considered one of the greatest American writers of all time, is the subject of a major documentary by award-winning filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. This intimate portrait of Hemingway – who brilliantly captured the complexities of the human condition in spare and profound prose, and whose work remains deeply influential in literature and culture – interweaves a close study of biographical events with excerpts from his work.
The Hemingway Stories features Hemingway’s most significant short stories in chronological order, so viewers of the film as well as fans old and new can follow the trajectory of his impressive life and career. Hemingway’s beloved classics, such as “The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, “Up in Michigan”, “Indian Camp”, and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, are accompanied by fresh insights from renowned writers around the world – Mario Vargas Llosa, Edna O’Brien, Abraham Verghese, Tim O’Brien, and Mary Karr. Tobias Wolff’s introduction adds a new perspective to Hemingway’s work, and Wolff has selected additional stories that demonstrate Hemingway’s talent and range.
The power of Ernest Hemingway’s revolutionary style is perhaps most striking in his short stories, and here listeners can encounter the tales that created the legend: stories of men and women in love and in war and on the hunt, stories of a lost generation born into a fractured time. Featuring the voices of Mary Karr, Edna O’Brien, Michael Katakis, and other authors whose insights are heard in the PBS documentary, this audio collection is a perfect introduction for a new generation of Hemingway listeners and a vital volume for any fan.
First and foremost, The Herbalist’s Kitchen is a cookbook, with 200 fresh and delicious, health-supportive recipes including an Asiago, Apple, and Sage Tart Tatin; Rosemary-Roasted Vegetable Spaghetti; Thyme and Pear Cake; Lemon Glazed Scallops with Citrus Salsa; and Elderberry Chicken Tagine. But it goes beyond food, with information and preparations for 40 herbs—from angelica, bergamot, calendula, and chamomile to lavender, tarragon, thyme, and turmeric—that work not just in the kitchen, but also as tinctures, infusions, and essential oils.
Throughout the world, oppressive regimes are being uprooted and replaced by budding democracies, but one exception remains: The People’s Republic of North Korea. The Kim family has clung to power for three generations by silencing dissidents, ruling with an iron fist, and holding its neighbors hostage with threats of war. Under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, North Korea has come closer than ever to creating a viable nuclear arsenal, but widespread famine and growing resistance are weakening his regime’s stability.
In The Hermit King, Asian geopolitical expert Chung Min Lee tells the story of the rise of the Kim Dynasty and its atrocities, motivations, and diplomatic goals. He also discusses the possible outcomes of its aggressive standoff with the world superpowers.
Kim Jong Un is not a crazed “Rocket Man” or a bumbling despot; he has been groomed since birth to take control of his country and stay in power at all costs. He is now at a fateful crossroads. Will he make good on decades of threats, liberalize North Korea and gain international legitimacy, or watch his regime crumble around him? Lee analyzes the likelihood and consequences of each of these possibilities, cautioning that in the end, a humanitarian crisis in the region is all but unavoidable. The Hermit King is a thoughtful and compelling look at the most complicated diplomatic situation on Earth.
Wisecracking, inquisitive, and bombastic, Selam Asmelash is the youngest child in her large, boisterous family. Even before she is born, she has a wry, bewitching omniscience that animates life in her Small Town in southwestern Ethiopia in the 1980s. Selam and her father listen to the radio in secret as the socialist military junta that recently overthrew the government seizes properties and wages civil war in the North. The Asmelashes, once an enterprising, land-owning family, are ostracized under the new regime. In the Small Town where they live, nosy women convene around coffee ceremonies multiple times a day, the gossip spreading like wildfire.
As Selam’s mother, the powerful and relentlessly dignified Degitu, grows ill, she embraces a persecuted, Pentecostal God and insists her family convert alongside her. The Asmelashes stand solidly in opposition to the times, and Selam grows up seeking revenge on despotic comrades, neighborhood bullies, and a ruthless God. Wise beyond her years yet thoroughly naive, she contends with an inner fury, a profound sadness, and a throbbing, unstoppable pursuit of education, freedom, and love.
Told through the perspective of its charming and irresistible narrator, The History of a Difficult Child is about what happens when mother, God, and country are at odds, and how one difficult child finds her voice.
Seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.
Together, this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by a galaxyful of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox—the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian (formerly Tricia McMillan), Zaphod’s girlfriend, whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; and Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he’s bought over the years.
Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? For all the answers, stick your thumb to the stars!
Only 4 percent of women around the world consider themselves to be beautiful, according to research done by Dove, and twenty million women suffer from significant eating disorders at some point in their life—The Honest Body Project was created to combat this tragic problem of poor body image in our society.
Founded by photographer Natalie McCain, this project is opening the eyes of women around the world and helping them to see the beauty both outside and inside of themselves. It is a collection of black and white portraits and stories, raw and untouched, from hundreds of women who have bared their hearts and souls to be a part of the project. Natalie tastefully photographs the women in their underwear, showing off their natural shapes and “imperfections.” There is no editing done after the fact, and the natural beauty of these women—from all backgrounds and walks of life—shines through the lens. Together, they create a beautiful, honest picture of both motherhood and what it means to be a woman. Topics include body image issues, breast cancer, depression (postpartum and otherwise), anxiety, bottle feeding versus breast feeding, aging, and more.
The Honest Body Project is a breath of fresh air, breaking down walls and helping women learn that they are not alone in their hardships. It wants to help women everywhere contribute to a better world, and to learn to love themselves and appreciate their bodies for what they are: perfectly imperfect. It is time to celebrate the true form of women.
