Ian S. Port

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

New York

Leo Fender, les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock 'n' Roll

"A hot-rod joy ride through mid-20th-century American history" (The New York Times Book Review), this one-of-a-kind narrative masterfully recreates the rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar's amplified sound--Leo Fender and Les Paul--and their intense competition to convince rock stars like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton to play the instruments they built.

In the years after World War II, music was evolving from big-band jazz into rock 'n' roll--and these louder styles demanded revolutionary instruments. When Leo Fender's tiny firm marketed the first solid-body electric guitar, the Esquire, musicians immediately saw its appeal. Not to be out-maneuvered, Gibson, the largest guitar manufacturer, raced to build a competitive product. The company designed an "axe" that would make Fender's Esquire look cheap and convinced Les Paul--whose endorsement Leo Fender had sought--to put his name on it. Thus was born the guitar world's most heated rivalry: Gibson versus Fender, Les versus Leo.

While Fender was a quiet, half-blind, self-taught radio repairman, Paul was a brilliant but headstrong pop star and guitarist who spent years toying with new musical technologies. Their contest turned into an arms race as the most inventive musicians of the 1950s and 1960s--including bluesman Muddy Waters, rocker Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton--adopted one maker's guitar or another. By 1969 it was clear that these new electric instruments had launched music into a radical new age, empowering artists with a vibrancy and volume never before attainable.

In "an excellent dual portrait" (The Wall Street Journal), Ian S. Port tells the full story in The Birth of Loud, offering "spot-on human characterizations, and erotic paeans to the bodies of guitars" (The Atlantic). "The story of these instruments is the story of America in the postwar era: loud, cocky, brash, aggressively new" (The Washington Post).

The Birth of Loud

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K. Ashman

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

India Sommers is a librarian and a talented historian, so when a stranger asks her opinion on an ancient coin she is happy to oblige but when the same man is murdered less than an hour later, it soon becomes apparent that there is far more to the situation than meets the eye. Recognising her unique talents for historical reference, she is quickly recruited by Brandon Walker, a Security Service intelligence officer investigating the strange disappearance of a very special young girl. As the facts unravel, they realize that an ancient artefact linked to the cult of the Vestal Virgins from ancient Rome may hold the key to her whereabouts and Brandon draws on India's vast historical knowledge to unravel clues that date right back through history to the time of the great flood. Slowly, the full horror and mind blowing truth of what they have discovered becomes clear and they become involved in a race against time in a horrific and shocking finale.

The Dead Virgins

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Cara Page

Erica Woodland

Aurora Levins Morales

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety

A profound offering and call to action—collective stories, testimonials, and incantations for renewing political and spiritual liberation grounded in Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and Queer and Trans healing justice lineages We reclaim the power, resilience, and innovation of our ancestors through this book. To embody their wisdom across centuries and generations is to continue their legacy of liberation and healing. In this anthology, Black Queer Feminist editors Cara Page and Erica Woodland guide readers through the history, legacies, and liberatory practices of healing justice—a political strategy of collective care and safety that intervenes on generational trauma from systemic violence and oppression. They call forth the ancestral medicines and healing practices that have sustained communities who have survived genocide and oppression, while radically imagining what comes next. Anti-capitalist, Black feminist, and abolitionist, Healing Justice Lineages is a profound and urgent call to embrace community and survivor-led care strategies as models that push beyond commodified self-care, the policing of the medical industrial complex, and the surveillance of the public health system. Centering disability, reproductive, environmental, and transformative justice and harm reduction, this collection elevates and archives an ongoing tradition of liberation and survival—one that has been largely left out of our history books, but continues to this day. In the first section, “Past: Reckoning with Roots and Lineage,” Page and Woodland remember and reclaim generations-long healing justice and community care work, asking critical questions like: How did our ancestors transform trauma and violence in their liberation work? What were our ancestors reckoning with—and what did they imagine? The next sections, “Origins of Healing Justice” and “Alchemy: Theory + Praxis,” explore regional stories of healing justice in response to the current political and cultural landscape. The last section, “Political + Spiritual Imperatives for the Future,” imagines a future rooted in lessons of the past; addresses the ways healing justice is being co-opted and commodified; and uplifts emergent work that’s building infrastructure for care, safety, healing, and political liberation.

Healing Justice Lineages

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Trevor Noah

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Stories from a South African Childhood

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The compelling, inspiring, and comically sublime story of one man's coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Michiko Kakutani, New York Times * USA Today * San Francisco Chronicle * NPR * Esquire * Newsday * Booklist Trevor Noah's unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents' indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa's tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man's relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother--his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother's unconventional, unconditional love. Praise for Born a Crime "[A] compelling new memoir . . . By turns alarming, sad and funny, [Trevor Noah's] book provides a harrowing look, through the prism of Mr. Noah's family, at life in South Africa under apartheid. . . . Born a Crime is not just an unnerving account of growing up in South Africa under apartheid, but a love letter to the author's remarkable mother."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "[An] unforgettable memoir."--Parade "What makes Born a Crime such a soul-nourishing pleasure, even with all its darker edges and perilous turns, is reading Noah recount in brisk, warmly conversational prose how he learned to negotiate his way through the bullying and ostracism. . . . What also helped was having a mother like Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah. . . . Consider Born a Crime another such gift to her--and an enormous gift to the rest of us."--USA Today "[Noah] thrives with the help of his astonishingly fearless mother. . . . Their fierce bond makes this story soar."--People

Born a Crime

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Jennifer Guttman

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

The 6 Secrets of Lifetime Satisfaction

Change the Goal, Not the Feeling

A psychologist's six-step roadmap to a life beyond happiness--one of sustainable lifetime satisfaction.

Dr. Jennifer Guttman is a strong advocate of providing guidance for self-improvement outside of the confines of traditional therapy, and to that end, her strategy works so well because of its universal applicability. In Beyond Happiness, Dr. Guttman lays out six techniques that will empower you to gain control over your own happiness: avoiding assumptions; reducing people-pleasing behaviors; facing fears; making decisions; closing; and active self-reinforcement.

The immense success that Dr. Guttman has had using these techniques within her practice is a testament to just how effective they are. She has shown how moving beyond happiness to satisfaction and contentment is a very achievable and rewarding journey.

Beyond Happiness

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Jesmyn Ward

A Novel

WINNER of the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD and A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and a New York Times bestseller, this majestic, stirring, and widely praised novel from two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward, the story of a family on a journey through rural Mississippi, is a “tour de force” (O, The Oprah Magazine) and a timeless work of fiction that is destined to become a classic. Jesmyn Ward’s historic second National Book Award–winner is “perfectly poised for the moment” (The New York Times), an intimate portrait of three generations of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. “Ward’s writing throbs with life, grief, and love… this book is the kind that makes you ache to return to it” (Buzzfeed). Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. He doesn’t lack in fathers to study, chief among them his Black grandfather, Pop. But there are other men who complicate his understanding: his absent White father, Michael, who is being released from prison; his absent White grandfather, Big Joseph, who won’t acknowledge his existence; and the memories of his dead uncle, Given, who died as a teenager. His mother, Leonie, is an inconsistent presence in his and his toddler sister’s lives. She is an imperfect mother in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is Black and her children’s father is White. She wants to be a better mother but can’t put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. Simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high, Leonie is embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances. When the children’s father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another thirteen-year-old boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all of the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He too has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love. Rich with Ward’s distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic and unforgettable family story and “an odyssey through rural Mississippi’s past and present” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

Sing, Unburied, Sing

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Jennifer B. Lee

Some edge wear and a few dogearred pages. 

Adventures in the World of Chinese Food

If you think McDonald's is the most ubiquitous restaurant experience in America, consider that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendys combined. New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese). In her search, Jennifer 8 Lee traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole, and the way it has shaped our country.

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles

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Jeff Haase

Balcony Gardening 

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Héctor García

Francesc Miralles

The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life

Los Angeles Times bestseller * More than 1.5 million copies sold

"Workers looking for more fulfilling positions should start by identifying their ikigai." ―Business Insider
 
"One of the unintended--yet positive--consequences of the [pandemic] is that it is forcing people to reevaluate their jobs, careers, and lives. Use this time wisely, find your personal ikigai, and live your best life." ―Forbes

*And from the same authors, don't miss The Book of Ichigo Ichie--about making the most of every moment in your life.*

*          *          *

Find your ikigai (pronounced ee-key-guy) and bring meaning and joy to all your days.

"Only staying active will make you want to live a hundred years." --Japanese proverb
 
According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai--a reason for living. And according to the residents of the Japanese village with the world's longest-living people, finding it is the key to a happier and longer life. Having a strong sense of ikigai--where what you love, what you're good at, what you can get paid for, and what the world needs all overlap--means that each day is infused with meaning. It's the reason we get up in the morning. It's also the reason many Japanese never really retire (in fact there's no word in Japanese that means retire in the sense it does in English): They remain active and work at what they enjoy, because they've found a real purpose in life--the happiness of always being busy.

In researching this book, the authors interviewed the residents of the Japanese village with the highest percentage of 100-year-olds--one of the world's Blue Zones. Ikigai reveals the secrets to their longevity and happiness: how they eat, how they move, how they work, how they foster collaboration and community, and--their best-kept secret--how they find the ikigai that brings satisfaction to their lives. And it provides practical tools to help you discover your own ikigai. Because who doesn't want to find happiness in every day?

A PENGUIN LIFE TITLE

Ikigai

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J. K. Rowling

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

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Rosalyn Schanzer

Line new conditioner except for being loved bit by my cat. 

The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem

Tackling the same twisted subject as Stacy Schiff's much-lauded book The Witches: Salem, 1692, this Sibert Honour book for young readers features unique scratchboard illustrations, chilling primary source material, and powerful narrative to tell the true tale.

In the little colonial town of Salem Village, Massachusetts, two girls began to twitch, mumble, and contort their bodies into strange shapes. The doctor tried every remedy, but nothing cured the young Puritans. He grimly announced the dire diagnosis: the girls were bewitched! And then the accusations began. The riveting, true story of the victims, accused witches, crooked officials, and mass hysteria that turned a mysterious illness affecting two children into a witch hunt that took over a dozen people's lives and ruined hundreds more unfolds in chilling, novelistic detail--complete with stylized black-white-and-red scratchboard illustrations of young girls having wild fits in the courtroom, witches flying overhead, and the Devil and his servants terrorizing the Puritans-- in this young adult book by award-winning author and illustrator Rosalyn Schanzer. Taught in middle and high schools around the U.S., the 17th-century saga remains hauntingly resonant as people struggle even today with the urgent need to find someone to blame for their misfortunes.  

Witches! has been honoured with many prestigious awards, including:. Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Honour Book



2012 Notable Children's Books--ALSC



NCSS--Notable Social Studies Trade Books in the Field of Social Studies 2012



School Library Journal Best Books of 2011



SLJ's 100 Magnificent Children's Books of 2011



Chicago Public Library Best of the Best 2011

Witches

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Jane Reichhold

A Hands-on Guide

Writting and Enjoying Haiku

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Molly Prentiss

The author of the "ethereal and brutally realistic" (The New York Times) Tuesday Nights in 1980 returns with a highly anticipated new novel exploring what it means to be a woman in her many forms--daughter, friend, partner, lover, and mother.

Emily writes for women's catalogs for a living, but she'd rather be writing books. She has a handsome photographer boyfriend, but she actively wonders how and when they will eventually hurt each other. Her best work friend Megan is her lifeline, until Megan is abruptly laid off. When her world is further upended by an unplanned pregnancy, Emily is forced to make tough decisions that will change her life forever.

What will she sacrifice from her old life to make room for a new one? What fires will she be forced to extinguish, and which will keep burning? Old Flame is a story about the essential--and often existential--choices that define a woman's life at every level, from which dress to wear to when to have a child to how to be in the world.

Old Flame

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Lindsay Ward

Gray just wants to be included. But the other colors are always leaving him out. So he decides to create his own project: an all-gray book. Once upon a time, there lived a wolf, a kitten, and a hippo...

Gray just knows it's going to be perfect. But as he adds page after page, the Primary and Secondary colors show up...and they aren't quite so complimentary.

A book within a book, this colorful tale explores the ideas of fitting in, appreciating others, and looking at things from another perspective and also uses personality and wit to introduce basic color concepts.

This Book Is Gray

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Meomi

The Octonauts are a crew of eight talented adventurers who love to explore the great big ocean. One day, Tunip wonders where he and the rest of the Vegimals originally came from. The Octonauts set off on an exciting mission to search all the wonderful and unusual underwater habitats. Will Tunip ever find somewhere truly special to call "home"?

The Octonauts Explore the Great Big Ocean

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Jason Chin

A Story of the Galápagos

Charles Darwin first visited the Galápagos Islands almost 200 years ago, only to discover a land filled with plants and animals that could not be found anywhere else on earth. How did they come to inhabit the island? How long will they remain?

Thoroughly researched and filled with intricate and beautiful paintings, this extraordinary book by Award-winning author and artist Jason Chin is an epic saga of the life of an island--born of fire, rising to greatness, its decline, and finally the emergence of life on new islands. Chin's approach makes this book a must-have common core tool for teachers and librarians introducing scientific principals to young students.

Island is one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Children's Books of 2012

Island

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Seuss

What's better than a lost treasure? Seven lost treasures! These rarely seen Dr. Seuss stories were published in magazines in the early 1950s and are finally available in book form. They include "The Bippolo Seed" (in which a scheming feline leads a duck toward a bad decision), "The Rabbit, the Bear, and the Zinniga-Zanniga" (about a rabbit who is saved from a bear by a single eyelash), "Gustav, the Goldfish" (an early rhymed version of the Beginner Book A Fish Out of Water), "Tadd and Todd" (about a twin who is striving to be an individual), "Steak for Supper" (in which fantastic creatures follow a boy home in anticipation of a steak dinner), "The Strange Shirt Spot" (the inspiration for the bathtub-ring scene in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back), and "The Great Henry McBride" (about a boy whose far-flung career fantasies are bested only by those of Dr. Seuss himself). An introduction by Seuss scholar Charles D. Cohen traces the history of the stories, which demonstrate an intentional move toward the writing style we now associate with Dr. Seuss. Cohen also explores the themes that recur in well-known Seuss stories (like the importance of the imagination or the perils of greed). With a color palette enhanced beyond the limitations of the original magazines, this is a collection that no Seuss fan (whether scholar or second grader) will want to miss.

The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories

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Laura Numeroff

A Treasury





This sweet hardcover collection features four complete books from the bestselling If You Give... series, as well as tons of fun recipes, songs, and activities for kids and parents to enjoy.



The four classic stories included are:

 * If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
 * If You Take a Mouse to School
 * If You Give a Pig a Pancake
 * If You Give a Moose a Muffin

Join your friends Mouse, Moose, and Pig as they read stories, bake sweet treats, play games, and sing songs!

Mouse Cookies and More

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Geronimo Stilton

An Epic Kingdom of Fantasy Adventure

I, Geronimo Stilton, traveled on the wings of the Dragon of Fortune back to the Kingdom of Fantasy! I was called there by my friend Blossom, Queen of the Fairies, who needed my help. The enchanted Winged Ring had gone missing! This was terrible news. The ring allows its owner to travel between the Kingdom of Fantasy and the real world-which would be a dangerous power if it fell into evil hands. Could I find the ring before it was too late?

The Dragon of Fortune

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After discovering a secret staircase in his attic, Geronimo travels to the Kingdom of Fantasy where he must battle strange creatures in order to save the Queen of the Fairies.

The Kingdom of Fantasy

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The Quest for Paradise

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Geronimo joins the effort to rescue Blossom, Queen of the Fairies, who has been kidnapped by the Queen of the Witches and taken to the Kingdom of Nightmares.

The Amazing Voyage

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Princess Sterling sends the Dragon of the Rainbow and Scribblehopper to bring Geronimo Stilton back to the Kingdom of Fantasy because he is the hero in the dragon prophecy who will find the stolen dragon egg and restore harmony to the kingdom.

The Dragon Prophecy

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After receiving a mysterious message summoning him to a meeting, Geronimo Stilton finds himself back in the Kingdom of Fantasy, summoned by the Elves, who want him to travel to the Great Explanatorium to find an answer to the earthquakes that are threatening the Kingdom.

The Volcano of Fire

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sweet gotham

Browse by categories

Ian S. Port

The Birth of Loud

K. Ashman

The Dead Virgins

Cara Page; Erica Woodland; Aurora Levins Morales

Healing Justice Lineages

Trevor Noah

Born a Crime

Jennifer Guttman

Beyond Happiness

Jesmyn Ward

Sing, Unburied, Sing

Jennifer B. Lee

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles

Jeff Haase

Balcony Gardening

Héctor García; Francesc Miralles

Ikigai

J. K. Rowling

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

Rosalyn Schanzer

Witches

Jane Reichhold

Writting and Enjoying Haiku

Molly Prentiss

Old Flame

Lindsay Ward

This Book Is Gray

Meomi

The Octonauts Explore the Great Big Ocean

Jason Chin

Island

Seuss

The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories

Laura Numeroff

Mouse Cookies and More

Geronimo Stilton

The Dragon of Fortune

Geronimo Stilton

The Kingdom of Fantasy

Geronimo Stilton

The Quest for Paradise

Geronimo Stilton

The Amazing Voyage

Geronimo Stilton

The Dragon Prophecy

Geronimo Stilton

The Volcano of Fire

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