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Set during the swampy summer in 1982, this stunning debut novel follows eleven-year-old Sunshine Turner and her troubled father Billy as the secrets of their family’s past swirl around them. During a hot summer of June moods, grubworms, and dark storms, Sunshine discovers stones in her chest – and learns the dangers her coming-of-age will bring about in the yellow house she shares with her father. Without the vocabulary to comprehend Billy’s actions or her own changing body, Sunshine turns to an apocryphal story passed down from her grandmother: in the dark waters of the Black Bayou lives a crocodile with an insatiable appetite and a woman with a mysterious healing gift. As Sunshine’s summer unspools, she turns to the one person who will need no explanation of the family secrets she carries - the crocodile bride. The Crocodile Bride is at once a heartbreakingly tender coming-of-age tale and a lyrical, haunting reflection on generational trauma. Reminiscent of Jesmyn Ward and Helen Oyeyemi, Ashleigh Bell Pedersen is a promising new voice in American fiction. |
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An irresistible story of a woman remaking her life after her husband’s betrayal leads to a year of travel, art, and passion in Paris. Vincent, having grown up as the privileged daughter of artists, has a lovely life in many ways. At forty-four, she enjoys strolling the streets of Paris and teaching at the modern art museum; she has a vibrant group of friends; and she’s even caught the eye of a young, charismatic man named Loup. But Vincent is also in Paris to escape a painful betrayal: her husband, Cillian, has published a bestselling book divulging secrets about their marriage and his own past, hinting that when he was a teenager, he may have had a child with a young woman back in Dublin—before he moved to California and never returned. Now estranged from her husband, Vincent has agreed to see Cillian again at their son’s wedding the following summer, but Loup introduces new complications. Soon they begin an intense affair, and somewhere between dinners made together, cigarettes smoked in the moonlight, hazy evenings in nightclubs, and long, starry walks along the Seine, Vincent feels herself loosening and blossoming. In a journey that is both transportive and intimate, Half-Blown Rose traverses Paris, art, travel, liminal spaces, and the messy complexities of relationships and romance, with excerpts from Cillian’s novel, playlists, and journal entries woven throughout. As Cillian does all he can to win her back, Vincent must decide what she wants . . . and who she will be. |
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For fans of Where'd You Go, Bernadette? and My Sister, the Serial Killer, Jameela Green Ruins Everything is a whip-smart black comedy about the price of success, and a biting look at what has gone wrong with American foreign policy in the Middle East. Jameela Green only has one wish. To see her memoir on the New York Times bestseller list. When her dream doesn’t come true, she seeks spiritual guidance at her local mosque. New imam and recent immigrant Ibrahim Sultan is appalled by Jameela’s shallowness, but agrees to assist her on one condition: that she perform a good deed. Jameela reluctantly accepts his terms, kicking off a chain of absurd and unfortunate events. When the person the two do-gooders try to help is recruited by a terrorist group called D.I.C.K. - Dominion of the Islamic Caliphate and Kingdoms - the federal authorities become suspicious of Ibrahim, and soon after, the imam mysteriously disappears. Certain that the CIA have captured Ibrahim for interrogation via torture, Jameela decides to set off on a one-woman operation to rescue him. Her quixotic quest soon finds her entangled in an international plan targeting the egomaniacal leader of the terrorist organization - a scheme that puts Jameela, and countless others, including her hapless husband and clever but disapproving daughter, at risk. |
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A page-turning generational saga about a young man's search for a parent he never knew, and a moving portrait of motherhood, race, and the truths we hide in the name of family
Jenry Castillo is a musical prodigy, raised by a single mother in Miami. He arrives at Brown University on a scholarship - but also to learn more about his late father, Jasper Patterson, a famous ballet dancer who died tragically when Jenry was two. On his search, he meets his estranged grandfather, Winston Patterson, a legendary professor of African American history and a fixture at the Ivy League school, who explodes his world with one question: Why is Jenry so focused on Jasper, when it was Winston’s daughter, Juliet, who was romantically involved with Jenry’s mother? Juliet is the parent he should be looking for - his other mother.
Revelation follows revelation as each member of Jenry’s family steps forward to tell the story of his origin, uncovering a web of secrecy that binds this family together even as it keeps them apart. Moving seamlessly between the past and the present, The Other Mother is a daring, ambitious novel that celebrates the complexities of love and resilience - masterfully exploring the intersections of race, class, and sexuality; the role of biology in defining who belongs to whom; and the complicated truth of what it means to be a family. |
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Summer fiction at its page-turning best for fans of Elin Hilderbrand, Holly Chamberlin, and Nancy Thayer.
Each year, the start of summer brings bustle and much-needed tourist dollars to the little town of Albany Beach, Delaware. For Natalie Sullivan, this season is proving more stressful than others. It’s make-or-break time for the Irish pub her husband, Conor, recently bought with his brothers. Their two children are thriving, but she’s experiencing pangs of loss at the end of her childbearing years.
When sixteen-year-old McKenzie starts gushing about Bella, the new coworker at her summer job, Natalie suddenly finds her past and present in conflict. Bella, two years older than McKenzie, looks so similar that a customer remarks that they could be sisters. And when Natalie learns that Bella was adopted, she is propelled back into a heartbreaking decision. As a college student, Natalie became pregnant and put her baby up for adoption. Now, the more McKenzie talks about Bella, the more Natalie wonders: could Bella be her daughter?
Conor insists it’s a mistake to pursue the matter. Natalie’s child belongs to another family now; that was the agreement in the closed adoption. Still, Natalie can’t resist spending time with Bella. As their bond deepens, McKenzie accuses her mother of caring more for a stranger than for her, and Natalie begins imagining what it would be like to have Bella as a second daughter. What will the impact be if Bella really is her biological child? And if she isn’t, can Natalie embrace the joy and potential in her own family, without always wondering about what could have been? |
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A beautifully written and emotionally stirring dystopian novel about how our dreams of the future may shift as our environment changes rapidly, even as the earth continues to spin.
The year is 1873, and a bison hunter named Samson travels the Kansas plains, full of hope for his new country. The year is 1975, and an adolescent girl named Bea walks those very same plains; pregnant, mute, and raised in extreme seclusion, she lands in an institution, where a well-meaning psychiatrist struggles to decipher the pictures she draws of her past. The year is 2027 and, after a series of devastating storms, a tenacious engineer named Paul has left behind his banal suburban existence to build a floating city above the drowned streets that were once New Orleans. There with his poet daughter he rules over a society of dreamers and vagabonds who salvage vintage dresses, ferment rotgut wine out of fruit, paint murals on the ceiling of the Superdome, and try to write the story of their existence. The year is 2073, and Moon has heard only stories of the blue planet - Earth, as they once called it, now succumbed entirely to water. Now that Moon has come of age, she could become a mother if she wanted to - if only she understood what a mother is. Alone on Mars with her two alien uncles, she must decide whether to continue her family line and repopulate humanity on a new planet.
A sweeping family epic, told over seven generations, as America changes and so does its dream, Walk the Vanished Earth explores ancestry, legacy, motherhood, the trauma we inherit, and the power of connection in the face of our planet’s imminent collapse.
This is a story about the end of the world - but it is also about the beginning of something entirely new. Thoughtful, warm, and wildly prescient, this work of bright imagination promises that, no matter what the future looks like, there is always room for hope.
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What if our dead remain with us? What if closure is not the goal? No matter what you believe about the afterlife, what if the hereafter intersects with the here and now? Caleb Wilde, author of the acclaimed memoir Confessions of a Funeral Director, was a skeptic. The baffling stories people told him - deathbed visions of long-dead parents, visits from the other side - must be hallucinations or wishful thinking, he thought. But the more stories he heard, and the more he learned about non-Western understandings of body and spirit, the less sure he was. All the Ways Our Dead Still Speak takes readers on a lyrical and tender quest to encounter the hereafter. As Wilde picks up bodies, organizes funerals, and meets with grieving families in a small town in Pennsylvania, those who remain share with him - and us - what they experience in the thin places between life and death. Entwining these stories with his own as a sixth-generation funeral director, and with the findings of neuroscience and the solace of faith, Wilde creates a searching, reverent inquiry into all the ways our dead remain with us. In the process, he takes on prevailing dogmas about death: from a narrow Christian view of heaven and hell, to secular assumptions that death is the end, to pop-psychology maxims that say we all need "closure" after our loved ones die. The dead don't have to be buried twice, once in the ground and again in our hearts. In the pages of this unforgettable book, learn how love and memory and mystery fuse this world to the next. |
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This revised edition of The Art of Horror Movies includes more films, rare images, and in-depth explorations to bring this award-winning book completely up to date, cementing its position as the definitive and essential guide to horror movies. Through a series of informative chapters and fascinating sidebars chronologically charting the evolution of horror movies for more than a century, profusely illustrated throughout with over 600 rare and unique images including posters, lobby cards, advertising, promotional items, tie-in books and magazines, and original artwork inspired by classic movies, this handsomely designed hardcover traces the development of the horror film from its inception and celebrates the actors, filmmakers, and artists who were responsible for scaring the pants off successive generations of moviegoers! Edited by multiple award-winning writer and editor Stephen Jones and boasting a foreword by director and screenwriter John Landis (An American Werewolf in London), this volume brings together fascinating and incisive commentary from some of the genre's most highly respected experts. With eye-popping images from all over the world, The Art of Horror Movies: Revised Edition is the definitive guide for anyone who loves horror films and movie fans of all ages. |
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Perfect for Downton Abbey fans, the official film companion provides a unique, behind-the-scenes look at the art and making of the sequel to the globally successful Downton Abbey film.
The worldwide phenomenon and multi-award winning Downton Abbey returns to the big screen with a movie sequel starring the Crawley family and their household staff - and Downton Abbey: A New Era: The Official Film Companion is the Downton fan’s front-row ticket to all the behind-the-scenes action.
In addition to the original principal cast - including Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess, Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary, and Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern as Lord and Lady Grantham - fans will gain an unprecedented look at the new Downton characters, including those played by new cast members Hugh Dancy, Laura Haddock, Nathalie Baye, and Dominic West.
Featuring spectacular photographs from the production, interviews with the cast and crew, and insight from Downton Abbey writer and creator Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey: A New Era: The Official Film Companion gives fans an in-depth experience of the magic and elegance of Downton Abbey. |
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A poignant and beautiful memoir told in essays and graphic shorts about what life looks like twenty years after recovery from addiction - and how to live with the past as a parent, writer, and sober person.
Mother Noise opens with Cindy, twenty years into recovery after a heroin addiction, grappling with how to tell her nine-year-old son about her past. She wants him to learn this history from her, not anyone else; but she worries about the effect this truth may have on him. Told in essays and graphic narrative shorts, Mother Noise is a stunning memoir that delves deep into our responsibilities as parents while celebrating the moments of grace and generosity that mark a true friendship - in this case, her benefactor and champion through the years, David Sedaris.
This is a powerful memoir about addiction, motherhood, and Cindy’s ongoing effort to reconcile the two. Are we required to share with our children the painful details of our past, or do we owe them protection from the harsh truth of who we were before?
With dark humor and brutal, clear-eyed honesty, Mother Noise brilliantly captures and gorgeously renders our desire to look hopefully forward - while acknowledging the darkness of the past. |
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"Anyone whose interests are in cinema and Florida would do well to experience Sunshine in the Dark: Florida in the Movies."--Jeffrey E. Farance, film critic and entertainment editor, Daytona Beach News-Journal
Florida has been the location and subject of hundreds of feature films, from Cocoanuts (1929) to Monster (2004). Portraying the state and its people from the silent era to the present, these films have explored the multitude of Florida images and cliches that have captured the public's imagination - a nature lover's paradise, a wildlife refuge, a tourist destination, home to the "cracker," and a haven for the retired, the rich, the immigrant, and the criminal. Sunshine in the Dark is the first complete study of how the movie industry has immortalized Florida’s extraordinary scenery, characters, and history on celluloid.
Historians Fernández and Ingalls have identified more than 300 films about Florida - many of them shot on location in the state - to analyze how filmmakers from the Marx Brothers and John Huston to Oliver Stone and Francis Ford Coppola have portrayed the state and its people.
Featuring more than 100 still photographs from movies, as well as filmographies by year and genre, Sunshine in the Dark is an encyclopedic resource for movie fans and anyone interested in Florida popular culture. |
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Who Made That? uncovers the fascinating true stories behind the inventions and items that the world would be unimaginable without!
From the computer to the coat hanger, the world is simply unimaginable without certain items. Stop taking all that you enjoy for granted, step behind the curtain of boring, everyday existence, and discover a vibrant realm filled with genius and illumination. Who Made That? brings together history’s very best tales of innovation, providing endless inspiration to those who seek to launch their own revolution. With breathtaking storytelling and humorous, thought-provoking illustrations, Who Made That? brings you right inside the minds of humanity’s brightest lights, helping you make your own way in the world. |
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