Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

California

For fans of John Green and Emily X.R. Pan, The Half-Orphan's Handbook by Joan F. Smith is a coming-of-age story and an empathetic, authentic exploration of grief with a sharp sense of humor and a big heart.

It's been three months since Lila lost her father to suicide. Since then, she's learned to protect herself from pain by following two unbreakable rules:

1. The only people who can truly hurt you are the ones you love. Therefore, love no one.

2. Stay away from liars. Liars are the worst.

But when Lila's mother sends her to a summer-long grief camp, it's suddenly harder for Lila to follow these rules. Potential new friends and an unexpected crush threaten to drag her back into life for the first time since her dad's death.

On top of everything, there's more about what happened that Lila doesn't know, and facing the truth about her family will be the hardest part of learning how a broken heart can love again.

An Imprint Book

The Half-Orphan's Handbook

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#hardcover #signededition #fiction #evocative #saga #family #sorrowful #gothic #hopeful

North Carolina

A Novel

A richly textured coming-of-age story about fathers and sons, home and family, recalling classics by Thomas Wolfe and William Styron, by a powerful new voice in fiction

Just before Henry Aster's birth, his father--outsized literary ambition and pregnant wife in tow--reluctantly returns to the small Appalachian town in which he was raised and installs his young family in an immense house of iron and glass perched high on the side of a mountain. There, Henry grows up under the writing desk of this fiercely brilliant man. But when tragedy tips his father toward a fearsome unraveling, what was once a young son's reverence is poisoned and Henry flees, not to return until years later when he, too, must go home again. 
 
Mythic in its sweep and mesmeric in its prose, THE BARROWFIELDS is a breathtaking debut about the darker side of devotion, the limits of forgiveness, and the reparative power of shared pasts.

- SIBA Okra Pick

*Signed*     The Barrowfields

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#hardcover #TheStandardGrand #JAYBARONNICORVO #Novel #Debut #NationalBookAwardFinalist #Emotional #Dark #Hopeful #Family box 27

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Texas

When an Army trucker goes AWOL before her third deployment, she ends up sleeping in Central Park. There, she meets a Vietnam vet and widower who inherited a tumbledown Borscht Belt resort. Converted into a halfway house for homeless veterans, the Standard—and its two thousand acres over the Marcellus Shale Formation—is coveted by a Houston-based multinational company. Toward what end, only a corporate executive knows. With three violent acts at its center—a mauling, a shooting, a mysterious death decades in the past—and set largely in the Catskills, The Standard Grand spans an epic year in the lives of its diverse cast: a female veteran protagonist, a Mesoamerican lesbian landman, a mercenary security contractor keeping secrets and seeking answers, a conspiratorial gang of combat vets fighting to get peaceably by, and a cougar—along with appearances by Sammy Davis, Jr. and Senator Al Franken. All of the characters—soldiers, civilians—struggle to discover that what matters most is not that they’ve caused no harm, but how they make amends for the harm they’ve caused. The Standard Grand confronts a glaring cultural omission: the absence of women in our war stories. Like the best of its characters—who aspire more to goodness than greatness—this American novel hopes to darn a hole or two in the frayed national fabric.

The Standard Grand

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Reminiscent of the beloved novels by Mary Kubica and Jodi Picoult comes a chilling portrayal of a son’s addiction and its harrowing effects on both him and his mother from New York Times bestselling author Courtney Cole. There comes a time when offering your life for your child’s doesn’t work, when you realize that it’ll never be enough. The cold needle in his warm vein was a welcome comfort to my son at first. But then it became the monster that kept us apart. Heroin lied, and my son believed. It took him to a world where the last year didn’t happen, to a place where his father was still alive. What Beck didn’t understand was that it couldn’t bring his father back from the dead. It couldn’t take away his pain, not permanently. You think it can’t happen to you, that your kids, your family, will never be in this situation. I thought that too. But you’re wrong. Step into our world, and see for yourself. Watch my golden boy become a slave to this raging epidemic. Watch me try and save him. Drug addiction comes with a price. Trust me, you’re not equipped to pay it. Don’t miss this heartwrenching, evocative, yet hopeful novel—it will leave you forever changed.

Saving Beck

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Pennsylvania

170 ways to seize the moment 

 Now Is the Time 

#paperback #family #fiction #emotional #loss #bittersweet #death #hopeful #yafiction

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Michigan

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A heartfelt story of love, grief, and renewal about two unlikely friends who discover that sometimes you don’t know you’ve lost someone until you’ve found them “A dazzling debut novel.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Tremendously moving.”—The Wall Street Journal “Touching and ultimately hopeful.”—People 1987. The only person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus is her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can be herself only in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life. At the funeral, June notices a strange man lingering just beyond the crowd. A few days later, she receives a package in the mail containing a beautiful teapot she recognizes from Finn’s apartment, and a note from Toby, the stranger, asking for an opportunity to meet. As the two begin to spend time together, June realizes she’s not the only one who misses Finn, and that this unexpected friend just might be the one she needs the most. WINNER OF THE ALEX AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal • O: The Oprah Magazine • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews • Booklist • School Library Journal

Tell the Wolves I'm Home

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Connecticut

The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America's Schools

No school district can be all charismatic leaders and super-teachers. It can't start from scratch, and it can't fire all its teachers and principals when students do poorly. Great charter schools can only serve a tiny minority of students. Whether we like it or not, most of our youngsters willcontinue to be educated in mainstream public schools.The good news, as David L. Kirp reveals in Improbable Scholars, is that there's a sensible way to rebuild public education and close the achievement gap for all students. Indeed, this is precisely what's happening in a most unlikely place: Union City, New Jersey, a poor, crowded Latino communityjust across the Hudson from Manhattan. The school district - once one of the worst in the state - has ignored trendy reforms in favor of proven game-changers like quality early education, a word-soaked curriculum, and hands-on help for teachers. When beneficial new strategies have emerged, likeusing sophisticated data-crunching to generate pinpoint assessments to help individual students, they have been folded into the mix.The results demand that we take notice - from third grade through high school, Union City scores on the high-stakes state tests approximate the statewide average. In other words, these inner-city kids are achieving just as much as their suburban cousins in reading, writing, and math. What's evenmore impressive, nearly ninety percent of high school students are earning their diplomas and sixty percent of them are going to college. Top students are winning national science awards and full rides at Ivy League universities. These schools are not just good places for poor kids. They are goodplaces for kids, period.Improbable Scholars offers a playbook - not a prayer book - for reform that will dramatically change our approach to reviving public education.

Improbable Scholars

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#paperback #classics #middlegrade #inspiring #hopeful #lighthearted #mystery #comingofage

New York

Adapted for Young Readers

A writer of popular stories for children and adults, Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) was regarded as "a born storyteller," with a talent for creating memorable characters whose state of affairs frequently improved as the narrative progressed. The Secret Garden, one of her best-loved works for young readers, is such a tale.
In it, Mary Lennox, an overindulged child suddenly orphaned, is almost magically transformed into an agreeable child when she comes to live at Misselthwaite Manor, the gloomy Yorkshire estate owned by her reclusive uncle, Archibald Craven. With the help of Dickon, an unusual local youngster with the ability to charm nature, Mary not only manages to bring life and beauty to the secret garden -- abandoned years ago when the mistress of the manor was fatally injured there -- but also persuades Colin, her uncle's frail son, to lead a normal life.
A repeated success on the motion-picture screen and the theatrical stage, this classic children's story is sure to charm new generations of readers.

The Secret Garden

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#hardcover #selfhelp #inspiration #joyful #hopeful #mustread #happiness

Missouri

Rediscover Your Childlike Wonder to Unleash Inspiration, Meaning, and Joy

The #1 bestselling author of On Fire shows us how to recapture and harness our childlike sense of wonder and curiosity in order to become more engaged, successful, and fulfilled.

NATIONALBESTSELLER . The #1 bestselling author of On Fire shows us how to recapture and harness our childlike sense of wonder in order to become more engaged, successful, and fulfilled.

"Engaging . . . O'Leary encourages us to see the world through a child's eyes."-Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays with Morrie

There once was a time when we joyfully raised our hands to answer questions, connected easily with others, believed that anything was possible, and fearlessly jumped into new experiences. A time when we viewed each day not as something to endure, but as a marvelous gift to explore and savor-when we danced through our lives in awe of the ordinary moments and eager for the promise of tomorrow.

Unfortunately, that's far from our experience today. Instead, we feel disconnected and jaded. Social media reminds us that we don't measure up, and the mainstream media barrages us with constant negativity. Many of us find ourselves caught in a life of dogged responsibility and mind-numbing repetition. The daily struggle to earn a living has caused us to lose the sense of wonder with which we once greeted every day.

In his new book, bestselling author John O'Leary invites us to consider that it is possible to once again navigate the world as a child does. Identifying five senses children innately possess and that we've lost touch with as we age, O'Leary shares emotional, humorous, and inspirational stories intertwined with fascinating new research showing how each of us can reclaim our childlike joy, and why doing so will change how we interact with the world.

In Awe reveals how we can regain that ability to see fresh insights, reach for new solutions, and live our best lives.

In Awe

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#hardcover #jrrtolkein #lordoftherings #hopeful #reflections #inspirational 

New Mexico

Shows how themes found in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy can also be found in the Bible, and describes how Tolkien's beliefs influenced his writing.

Finding God in the Lord of the Rings

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#paperback #classics #childrens #juvenilefiction #hopeful #inspiring #lighthearted #mystery #comingofage

When Mary Lennox's parents die from cholera in India, the spoiled orphan is transplanted to her uncle's 600-year-old gloomy and secretive estate in England. She is certain that she is destined for misery at Misselthwaite Manor. When Mary meets the old groundskeeper, he is the first to tell her what he thinks of her, "We was wove out of th' same cloth. We're neither of us good lookin' an' we're both of us as sour as we look. We've got the same nasty tempers, both of us, I'll warrant."

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#paperback #grief #selfhelp #hopeful #informative #inspiring #healing #mourning #loss #death

100 Practical Ideas

With sensitivity and insight, this series offers suggestions for healing activities that can help survivors learn to express their grief and mourn naturally. Acknowledging that death is a painful, ongoing part of life, they explain how people need to slow down, turn inward, embrace their feelings of loss, and seek and accept support when a loved one dies. Each book, geared for mourning adults, teens, or children, provides ideas and action-oriented tips that teach the basic principles of grief and healing. These ideas and activities are aimed at reducing the confusion, anxiety, and huge personal void so that the living can begin their lives again. Included in the books for teens and kids are age-appropriate activities that teach younger people that their thoughts are not only normal but necessary.


Healing Your Grieving Heart for Teens

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#paperback #youngadult #fiction #juvenilefiction #mentalhealth #ya #funny #contemporary #hopeful #emotional

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Like many ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner sees entry into Manhattan’s Executive Pre-Professional High School as the ticket to his future. Determined to succeed at life—which means getting into the right high school to get into the right college to get the right job—Craig studies night and day to ace the entrance exam, and does. That’s when things start to get crazy. At his new school, Craig realizes that he isn't brilliant compared to the other kids; he’s just average, and maybe not even that. He soon sees his once-perfect future crumbling away. The stress becomes unbearable and Craig stops eating and sleeping—until, one night, he nearly kills himself. Craig’s suicidal episode gets him checked into a mental hospital, where his new neighbors include a transsexual sex addict, a girl who has scarred her own face with scissors, and the self-elected President Armelio. There, isolated from the crushing pressures of school and friends, Craig is finally able to confront the sources of his anxiety. Ned Vizzini, who himself spent time in a psychiatric hospital, has created a remarkably moving tale about the sometimes unexpected road to happiness. For a novel about depression, it’s definitely a funny story.

It's Kind of a Funny Story

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Georgia

A small town pianist ponders a new life away from her embarrassing mother when a beautiful girl shows up and changes everything. Perfect for fans of Sarah Dessen, Nina LaCour (Hold Still), and Becky Albertalli (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda),  now available in paperback.



Grace, tough and wise, has nearly given up on wishes, thanks to a childhood spent with her unpredictable, larger-than-life mother. But this summer, Grace meets Eva, a girl who believes in dreams, despite her own difficult circumstances. One fateful evening, Eva climbs through a window in Grace's room, setting off a chain of stolen nights on the beach. When Eva tells Grace that she likes girls, Grace's world opens up and she begins to believe in happiness again.



How to Make a Wish is an emotionally charged portrait of a mother and daughter's relationship and a heartfelt story about two girls who find each other at the exact right time.

How to Make a Wish

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#paperback #fiction #family #emotional #loss #bittersweet #death #hopeful 

Colorado

#hardcover #fiction #jamespatterson #golf #mystery #sports #series #hopeful #uplifting #peterdejonge 

A Novel (Travis McKinley book 3)

The Miracle series continues with a pilgrimage to the mythical greens at St. Andrews. If golf novels had a leaderboard, Miracle at St. Andrews would be at the top. Though nobody has ever identified a single secret--no universally accepted truth--to the sport, every real player searches for one. Travis McKinley is one such seeker. A former professional golfer who feels like he's an amateur at the rest of life, he makes a pilgrimage to the mythical greens at St. Andrews. On the course where golf was born, every link, hole, fairway--even the gorse--feels like sacred ground. Ground that can help an ordinary player, an ordinary man, achieve a higher plane.

Miracle at St. Andrews (1st Edition)

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Virginia

“A triumphant story for anyone with a shred of faith left in the human spirit.” —David McGlynn, author of One Day You’ll Thank Me What if the end times allowed people to see and build the world anew? This is the landscape that Kimi Eisele creates in her surprising and original debut novel. Evoking the spirit of such monumental love stories as Cold Mountain and the creative vision of novels like Station Eleven, The Lightest Object in the Universe imagines what happens after the global economy collapses and the electrical grid goes down. In this new world, Carson, on the East Coast, is desperate to find Beatrix, a woman on the West Coast who holds his heart. Working his way along a cross-country railroad line, he encounters lost souls, clever opportunists, and those who believe they’ll be saved by an evangelical preacher in the middle of the country. While Carson travels west, Beatrix and her neighbors begin to construct the kind of cooperative community that suggests the end could be, in fact, a bright beginning. Without modern means of communication, will Beatrix and Carson find their way to each other, and what will be left of the old world if they do? The answers may lie with a fifteen-year-old girl who could ultimately decide the fate of the lovers. The Lightest Object in the Universe is a moving and hopeful story about resilience and adaptation and a testament to the power of community, where our best traits, born of necessity, can begin to emerge.

The Lightest Object in the Universe

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#hardcover #bees #themusicofbees #kind-hearted #naturelovers#hopeful #hoodriver #fiction 

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER! A Good Morning America BUZZ PICK | A Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick | IndieNext Pick | LibraryReads Pick | Recommended by People ∙ The Washington Post ∙ Woman's World ∙ NY Post ∙ BookRiot ∙ Bookish ∙ Christian Science Monitor ∙ Nerd Daily ∙ The Tempest ∙ Midwestness ∙ The Coil ∙ Read It Forward ∙ and more! “An exquisite debut that combines a moving tale of friendship with a fascinating primer on bees.”--People “This heartwarming, uplifting story will make you want to call your own friends, not to mention grab some honey.”--Good Housekeeping Three lonely strangers in a rural Oregon town, each working through grief and life's curveballs, are brought together by happenstance on a local honeybee farm where they find surprising friendship, healing--and maybe even a second chance--just when they least expect it. Forty-four-year-old Alice Holtzman is stuck in a dead-end job, bereft of family, and now reeling from the unexpected death of her husband. Alice has begun having panic attacks whenever she thinks about how her life hasn't turned out the way she dreamed. Even the beloved honeybees she raises in her spare time aren't helping her feel better these days. In the grip of a panic attack, she nearly collides with Jake--a troubled, paraplegic teenager with the tallest mohawk in Hood River County--while carrying 120,000 honeybees in the back of her pickup truck. Charmed by Jake's sincere interest in her bees and seeking to rescue him from his toxic home life, Alice surprises herself by inviting Jake to her farm. And then there's Harry, a twenty-four-year-old with debilitating social anxiety who is desperate for work. When he applies to Alice's ad for part-time farm help, he's shocked to find himself hired. As an unexpected friendship blossoms among Alice, Jake, and Harry, a nefarious pesticide company moves to town, threatening the local honeybee population and illuminating deep-seated corruption in the community. The unlikely trio must unite for the sake of the bees--and in the process, they just might forge a new future for themselves. Beautifully moving, warm, and uplifting, The Music of Bees is about the power of friendship, compassion in the face of loss, and finding the courage to start over (at any age) when things don't turn out the way you expect. “A hopeful, uplifting story about the power of chosen family and newfound home and beginning again . . . but it’s the bees, with all their wonder and intricacy and intrigue, that make this story sing.” --Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is "Eileen Garvin's debut novel is uplifting, funny, bold, and inspirational. The Music of Bees sings!" --Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author

The Music of Bees

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Newbery Medalist Karen Hesse emerses readers in a small Vermont town in 1924 with this haunting and harrowing taleLeanora Sutter. Esther Hirsh. Merlin Van Tornhout. Johnny Reeves . . .These characters are among the unforgettable cast inhabiting a small Vermont town in 1924. A town that turns against its own when the Ku Klux Klan moves in. No one is safe, especially the two youngest, twelve-year-old Leanora, an African-American girl, and six-year-old Esther, who is Jewish.In this story of a community on the brink of disaster, told through the haunting and impassioned voices of its inhabitants, Newbery Award winner Karen Hesse takes readers into the hearts and minds of those who bear witness.

Witness

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#paperback #romance #reallife #godly #relationship #relationships #hopeful #christian

Inspiring Stories to Help You Believe in True Love

Do You Believe in True Love?

In a world of broken relationships and hurting people, it can seem like all we ever see is heartache--that marriages are doomed from the start and romance isn't worth the risk.



But heart-fluttering, long-lasting love is all around us...we just have to look for it!



This collection of beautiful, real-life accounts will bring laughter and tears as you enjoy each story of ordinary people who found extraordinary love. Page after page, you will find inspiration to

 * rekindle the romance in your love story
 * trust in God's providence and timing
 * faithfully hope for your own happily-ever-after
 * celebrate true romance
 * believe in life-long love

Don't let the world define romance for you! See how God is at work in the hearts of His people--knitting together hearts in a love that forever endures.

Real-Life Romance

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#hardcover #hopeful #nonfiction #history #human #reuse #kind #peace 

Florida

A Hopeful History

From the author of New York Times bestseller UTOPIA FOR REALISTS, a revolutionary argument that the innate goodness and cooperation of human beings has been the greatest factor in our success. If one basic principle has served as the bedrock of bestselling author Rutger Bregman's thinking, it is that every progressive idea -- whether it was the abolition of slavery, the advent of democracy, women's suffrage, or the ratification of marriage equality -- was once considered radical and dangerous by the mainstream opinion of its time. With Humankind, he brings that mentality to bear against one of our most entrenched ideas: namely, that human beings are by nature selfish and self-interested. By providing a new historical perspective of the last 200,000 years of human history, Bregman sets out to prove that we are in fact evolutionarily wired for cooperation rather than competition, and that our instinct to trust each other has a firm evolutionary basis going back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. Bregman systematically debunks our understanding of the Milgram electrical-shock experiment, the Zimbardo prison experiment, and the Kitty Genovese "bystander effect." In place of these, he offers little-known true stories: the tale of twin brothers on opposing sides of apartheid in South Africa who came together with Nelson Mandela to create peace; a group of six shipwrecked children who survived for a year and a half on a deserted island by working together; a study done after World War II that found that as few as 15% of American soldiers were actually capable of firing at the enemy. The ultimate goal of Humankind is to demonstrate that while neither capitalism nor communism has on its own been proven to be a workable social system, there is a third option: giving "citizens and professionals the means (left) to make their own choices (right)." Reorienting our thinking toward positive and high expectations of our fellow man, Bregman argues, will reap lasting success. Bregman presents this idea with his signature wit and frankness, once again making history, social science and economic theory accessible and enjoyable for lay readers.

Humankind

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One Man's Struggle to Clean up His House and His Act

Millions of Americans struggle with severe clutter andhoarding. New York writer and bohemian BarryYourgrau is one of them. Confronted by his exasperatedgirlfriend—a globe-trotting food critic—he embarks on aheartfelt, wide-ranging, and too-often uproarious project—part Larry David, part Janet Malcolm—to take control of hiscrammed, disorderly apartment and life, and to explore thewider world of collecting, clutter, and extreme hoarding.Encounters with a professional declutterer, a Lacanian shrink,and Clutterers Anonymous (not to mention England's mostexcessive hoarder) as well as explorations of the bewilderinguniverse of new therapies and brain science, help Yourgraunavigate uncharted territory: clearing shelves, boxes, andbags; throwing out a nostalgic cracked pasta bowl; and sortingthrough a lifetime of messy relationships.

Joan F. Smith

The Half-Orphan's Handbook

Phillip Lewis

*Signed* The Barrowfields

Jay Baron Nicorvo

The Standard Grand

Courtney Cole

Saving Beck

Patrick Lindsay

Now Is the Time

Carol Rifka Brunt

Tell the Wolves I'm Home

David L. Kirp

Improbable Scholars

Francis Hodgson Burnett; Thea Kliros (Illustrator)

The Secret Garden

John O'Leary

In Awe

Courtney Cole

Saving Beck

Kurt D. Bruner; Jim Ware

Finding God in the Lord of the Rings

Francis Hodgson Burnett; Ann M. Martin (Preface by); Graham Rust (Illustrator)

The Secret Garden

Alan D. Wolfelt

Healing Your Grieving Heart for Teens

Ned Vizzini

It's Kind of a Funny Story

Ashley Herring Blake

How to Make a Wish

Carol Rifka Brunt

Tell the Wolves I'm Home

James Patterson; Peter de Jonge (As told to)

Miracle at St. Andrews (1st Edition)

Kimi Eisele

The Lightest Object in the Universe

Eileen Garvin

The Music of Bees

Karen Hesse

Witness

Rhonda Stoppe

Real-Life Romance

Rutger Bregman; Erica Moore (Translator); Elizabeth Manton (Translator)

Humankind

Barry Yourgrau

Mess

Courtney Cole

Saving Beck

Signed The Barrowfields