Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Live each day as if it were your last.
When Ben reads his fortune-cookie fortune, he’s alarmed and inspired. Immediately, he begins drafting a bucket list of unfinished tasks and lifelong dreams (finish his 1000-piece model of the Taj Mahal, eat an entire cake, etc….). As Ben marches himself in and out of trouble, takes useful risks, and helps both his parents to see the bigger picture, readers discover how something that seems scary can instead be empowering–leading to friendships that might never have been made, neighbors that might never have been known, and apple pies that might otherwise never have been baked.
Good things come to those who wait.
Ben does his best to heed his fortune cookie’s advice, and as a result he is paired with Walter–the kid who’s always picked last–for a school scavenger hunt. Working with Walter must be a good thing if the cookie said so, but so far all he does is talk too loud and recite obscure facts about feet. Meanwhile, Ben has an argument with his best friend Janet, and waiting for her to apologize first isn’t going so well…. But eventually, Ben’s patience starts paying off: if he and Walter are able to pull out a win in the scavenger hunt, they’ll earn a half-day of recess for the whole school! Waiting may not always be a good thing, but taking the time to listen and consider all options isn’t half bad.
When Ben’s fortune cookie tells him that practice makes perfect, he refuses to settle for anything less. He demands better parents, superior hobbies, and a brand-new best friend, who might technically be a superhero.
The pursuit of perfection is thrilling until Ben is forced to give up the things he loves most–including baseball, personal integrity, and his dog’s enthusiastic kisses. Life lessons from a goldfish and a spine-tingling near-death experience help Ben realize that his flaws are also the keys to his greatest strengths–and that the people and things that make him happiest will always be perfectly imperfect.
In the early morning of April 14, 2014, the militant Islamic group Boko Haram violently burst into the small town of Chibok, Nigeria, and abducted 276 girls from their school dorm rooms. From poor families, these girls were determined to make better lives for themselves, but pursuing an education made them targets, resulting in one of the most high-profile abductions in modern history. While the Chibok kidnapping made international headlines, and prompted the #BringBackOurGirls movement, many unanswered questions surrounding that fateful night remain about the girls’ experiences in captivity, and where many of them are today.
In Beneath the Tamarind Tree, Isha Sesay tells this story as no one else can. Originally from Sierra Leone, Sesay led CNN’s Africa reporting for more than a decade, and she was on the front lines when this story broke. With unprecedented access to a group of girls who made it home, she follows the journeys of Priscilla, Saa, and Dorcas in an uplifting tale of sisterhood and survival.
Sesay delves into the Nigerian government’s inadequate response to the kidnapping, exposes the hierarchy of how the news gets covered, and synthesizes crucial lessons about global national security. She also reminds us of the personal sacrifice required of journalists to bring us the truth at a time of growing mistrust of the media. Beneath the Tamarind Tree is a gripping read and a story of resilience with a soaring message of hope at its core, reminding us of the ever-present truth that progress for all of us hinges on unleashing the potential of women.
You know you want it: More. Better. Hotter. But the editors at Men’s Health know you also have a lot of questions, especially as cultural ideas about gender, sexuality, and “taboo” desires have started to shift, making sex a little more complicated, too. Jordyn Taylor, Men’s Health’s sex and relationship editor, and sex expert Zachary Zane, tapped the top sex professionals for the best advice about getting it on.
No matter your preferences or what you’re into, and whether you’re single or in a relationship or several relationships at once, Best. Sex. Ever. is your funny and friendly authority on having awesome sex. You’ll find the answers to pressing questions like:
– Is dirty talk problematic in a post-#MeToo world? (Nope. As long as your partner is into it, curse away, my dude.)
– What’s the secret to taking a really good nude? (See: our illustrated guide to the best-ever selfie positions!)
– Is it weird that I’m a straight guy who wants to try butt stuff? (Only if you hate the mind-blowing pleasure of prostate massage.)
– Are my kinks normal? (Definitely—and we’ll show you how to try them.)
– What’s the sexiest way to ask for enthusiastic consent? (Yup, it can be sexy.)
Complete with sex position illustrations, juicy anecdotes and honest myth-busting advice for open-minded, sex-loving guys, this book is bursting with insights on achieving pleasure with your partner(s)–every single time.
Nella, the main character from Nickelodeon’s Nella the Princess Knight, is planning a “best sisters” playdate with her little sister, Princess Norma–but will two bumbling giant brothers ruin the day? Boys and girls ages 3 to 7 will love this storybook with cards and stickers.
A memoir by the internationally famous fashion designer and style icon
Mention the name “Betsey Johnson” and almost every woman from the age of 15 to 75 can rapturously recall a favorite dress or outfit; whether worn for a prom, a wedding, or just to stand out from the crowd in a colorful way. They may also know her as a renegade single mom who palled around with Edie Sedgwick, Twiggy, and The Velvet Underground, or even as a celebrity contestant on Dancing with the Stars. Betsey is also famous for her iconic pink stores (she had 65 shops across the US) and for her habit of doing cartwheels and splits down the runway at the close of her fashion shows. Throughout her decades-long career, she’s taken pride in producing fun but rule-breaking clothing at an accessible price point. What they might not know is that she built an empire from scratch, and brought stretch clothing to the masses in the 80s and 90s.
Betsey will take the reader behind the tutu and delve deeply into what it took to go from a white picket fence childhood in Connecticut to becoming an internationally known force in a tough, competitive business. The book will feature Betsey’s candid memories of the fashion and downtown scene in the 60s and how she started her own business from the ground up after designing successfully for multiple other companies. She will discuss that business’s ups and downs and reinventions (including bankruptcy), and her thoughts on body image, love, divorce, men, motherhood, and her bout with breast cancer. Betsey will be richly illustrated with many of her landmark clothes, fashion sketches, and personal photos–making the book the perfect memento and gift for every girl (of any age) for whom Betsey is, as a recent New York Times profile noted, “a role model still.”
Religious fervour culminates in an exorcism for one unfortunate maid. A harrowing encounter on a train haunts Añuli. A mother abandons her child in search of personal freedom. A wife joins her husband, only to be met with news that threatens their relationship.
This richly imagined collage of interconnected stories follows Prosperous and Agu, and the motley community of Nigerian ex-pats who gather at their apartment each week. Their reality is one of dashed hopes, twisted love and the pain of homesickness, even as they fight to make their way in this new world.
Better Never Than Late is a layered and affecting portrayal of the everyday absurdities and adversities of migrant life.
Most of us have a habit we’d like to change, and there’s no shortage of expert advice. But as we all know from tough experience, no magic, one-size-fits-all solution exists. It takes work to make a habit, but once that habit is set, we can harness the energy of habits to build happier, stronger, more productive lives.
In Better Than Before, acclaimed writer Gretchen Rubin identifies every approach that actually works. She presents a practical, concrete framework to allow readers to understand their habits—and to change them for good.
Infused with Rubin’s compelling voice, rigorous research, and easy humor, and packed with vivid stories of lives transformed, Better Than Before explains the (sometimes counterintuitive) core principles of habit formation and answers the most perplexing questions about habits:
• Why do we find it tough to create a habit for something we love to do?
• How can we keep our healthy habits when we’re surrounded by temptations?
• How can we help someone else change a habit?
Rubin reveals the true secret to habit change: first, we must know ourselves. When we shape our habits to suit ourselves, we can find success—even if we’ve failed before.
Whether you want to eat more healthfully, stop checking devices, or finish a project, the invaluable ideas in Better Than Before will start you working on your own habits—even before you’ve finished the book.
As a self-proclaimed book hater and a firm believer that the movie is always better, Drew Young didn’t anticipate inheriting her grandma’s bookstore, the Book Nook. She’s in way over her head even before the shop’s resident book club, comprising seven of the naughtiest old ladies ever, begin to do what they do best—meddle.
Bestselling author Jasper Williams is a hopeless romantic. When he meets Drew at his Book Nook signing event, he becomes determined to show her the beauty of reading. He curates a book bucket list in exchange for her help exploring the local Denver scene for his current manuscript. From going river rafting to trying local restaurants, Drew begins to connect with Jasper in a way she only thought happened in fiction.
When messy family ties jeopardize the future of the Book Nook, Drew is caught between a bookshelf and a hard place. She’s reminded that real life isn’t always big dreams and sweeping romance. But Jasper is the plot twist she never saw coming and he’s writing a happily ever after just for them.
Betty & Veronica take over the world in this collection of stories featuring America’s sweethearts! From magic acts to roller derby, and everything in between, get ready for loads of fashionable fun with the world’s most-famous BFFs!
In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.
It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.
When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.
How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.
Beyond Aesthetics is a passionate discussion of the role of identity, tradition, and originality in making , collecting, and exhibiting African art today. Soyinka considers objects that have stirred controversy, and he decries dogmatic efforts – whether colonial or religious – to suppress Africa’s artistic traditions. By turns poetic, provocative and humorous, Soyinka affirms the power of collecting to reclaim tradition. He urges African artists, filmmakers, collectors, and curators to engage with their aesthetic mand cultural histories.
The companion volume to 12 Rules for Life offers further guidance on the perilous path of modern life.
In 12 Rules for Life, clinical psychologist and celebrated professor at Harvard and the University of Toronto Dr. Jordan B. Peterson helped millions of readers impose order on the chaos of their lives. Now, in this bold sequel, Peterson delivers twelve more lifesaving principles for resisting the exhausting toll that our desire to order the world inevitably takes.
In a time when the human will increasingly imposes itself over every sphere of life—from our social structures to our emotional states—Peterson warns that too much security is dangerous. What’s more, he offers strategies for overcoming the cultural, scientific, and psychological forces causing us to tend toward tyranny, and teaches us how to rely instead on our instinct to find meaning and purpose, even—and especially—when we find ourselves powerless.
While chaos, in excess, threatens us with instability and anxiety, unchecked order can petrify us into submission. Beyond Order provides a call to balance these two fundamental principles of reality itself, and guides us along the straight and narrow path that divides them.
