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As a kid, I was consistently described as one who had her head in the clouds. I was far away imagining all sorts of fantastical things; dragons soaring in the sky, a witch blasting a fireball in the grocery store, a werewolf coming to eat the gym teacher, the coffee barista is actually a vampire, etc. There is something alluring about supernatural beings existing in our often mundane world; whether they are being subjected to the same life we are or are wreaking havoc for any reason.
Who hasn’t imagined the books they read coming to life in their living room or being able to dive into the fictional world? A father and daughter have a magical ability to do just that.
Unfortunately, the villain of one story was released and this sets them off on an adventure typically only available in books.
Meggie and Mo are an endearing father/daughter team while they navigate the consequences and reaches of their magic.
The first book in Cornelia Funke's internationally celebrated trilogy - magical, thrilling and mesmerising.
'I don't think I've ever read anything that conveys so well the joys, terrors and pitfalls of reading' Diana Wynne Jones
Meggie loves books. So does her father, Mo, a bookbinder, although he has never read aloud to her since her mother mysteriously disappeared. They live quietly until the night a stranger knocks at their door. He has come with a warning that forces Mo to reveal an extraordinary secret - a storytelling secret that will change their lives for ever.
Since I was very young, I’ve had experiences with the paranormal. Whether it be a soft graze along my cheek or a spirit standing in front of me, I’ve always been drawn to things behind the veil. Joining the world of the living with the dead comes natural for me, and reading the genres of paranormal and fantasy is like a cup of hot tea on a chilly winter afternoon.
I fell in love with the characters. Even the ones I didn’t necessarily like, I wanted to read more about.
More importantly, for me, this book came out at a time when I was having difficulties in my own relationship. The idea of being apart from the one person I thought would be forever shattered me. Reading Bella’s emotions for Edward and the crushing heartbreak she felt, was like reading about my feelings on the pages of the book.
Of course there’s vampires and I love all things vampire.
When 17 year old Isabella Swan moves to Forks, Washington to live with her father she expects that her new life will be as dull as the town.
But in spite of her awkward manner and low expectations, she finds that her new classmates are drawn to this pale, dark-haired new girl in town. But not, it seems, the Cullen family. These five adopted brothers and sisters obviously prefer their own company and will make no exception for Bella.
Bella is convinced that Edward Cullen in particular hates her, but she feels a strange attraction to him, although his hostility…
As a kid, I was consistently described as one who had her head in the clouds. I was far away imagining all sorts of fantastical things; dragons soaring in the sky, a witch blasting a fireball in the grocery store, a werewolf coming to eat the gym teacher, the coffee barista is actually a vampire, etc. There is something alluring about supernatural beings existing in our often mundane world; whether they are being subjected to the same life we are or are wreaking havoc for any reason.
Rose and Lissa are dragged back to a school for vampires; though it’s a fair bit more complicated than that, with vampires of different sorts and being able to wield magic.
Rose is Lissa’s bodyguard and the school trains their powers, so that Rose will be able to protect Lissa (who is a princess) when the time comes. Their lessons don’t stop them from getting into a whole swath of familiar teenage drama.
ONLY A TRUE BEST FRIEND CAN PROTECT YOU FROM IMMORTAL ENEMIES . . .
Lissa Dragomir is a mortal vampire. She must be protected at all times from the fiercest and most dangerous vampires of all - the ones who will never die.
Rose Hathaway is Lissa's best friend - and her bodyguard.
Now, after two years of illicit freedom, they've been dragged back inside the iron gates of St. Vladimir's Academy. The girls must survive a world of forbidden romances, a ruthless social scene and terrifying night-time rituals. But above…
As someone with ADHD, anxiety, and a brain prone to rumination, life can be turbulent. Fantasy has long been my preferred method of escapism, and when I discovered the cozy variety a few years ago, I was immediately enthralled. It gives me that warm-fuzzy feeling I so desire in troubling times, while still providing my dopamine-deficient brain the hits it needs to remain immersed. More than anything, I want to share with others the way that cozy fantasy makes me feel. Crafting such fiction is my purpose.
Within a few chapters, I knew I would love this book. I could smell the coffee, feel the flour on my hands, and taste the pastries each time someone bit into one. The low-stakes trials of opening a cafe were so wonderfully written that I momentarily dreamed of doing so (which, for the record, would be a terrible idea for my chaos-goblin brain).
Even years after reading this book, Thimble and his mannerisms live rent-free in my head, which speaks to the impact this story had on my psyche.
High fantasy, low stakes - with a double-shot of coffee.
After decades of adventuring, Viv the orc barbarian is finally hanging up her sword for good. Now she sets her sights on a new dream - for she plans to open the first coffee shop in the city of Thune. Even though no one there knows what coffee actually is.
If Viv wants to put the past behind her, she can't go it alone. And help might arrive from unexpected quarters. Yet old rivals and new stand in the way of success. And Thune's shady underbelly could make it all…
I am Professor Emeritus of History at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York during the turbulent decades of the 1950s and 1960s where there were numerous social protest movements against the War in Vietnam, school segregation, and police brutality. My books explore the men and women who battled institutional racism.
Butler argues that the large increase of police assaults and killings of black men is not a breakdown in law enforcement or the activities of a few rogue cops. The system is doing what it has been designed to do. Police hurt black men, according to the author because “that is what they are paid to do.” Butler maintains that the Chokehold “is a way of understanding how American inequality is imposed.” It is a tool of oppression. One outcome of the Chokehold is mass incarceration. The construction of the thug is a means of justifying the Chokehold. Butler traces the “Ape” or “dehumanization” thesis.
The book contains loads of data showing how in city after city black people are disproportionately targeted by police officers. Programs such as Obama’s My Brothers’ Keeper ignores women and plays into perpetuating stereotypes of black men as the primary victims of racism.
Finalist for the 2018 National Council on Crime & Delinquency's Media for a Just Society Awards
Nominated for the 49th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Nonfiction)
A 2017 Washington Post Notable Book
A Kirkus Best Book of 2017
"Butler has hit his stride. This is a meditation, a sonnet, a legal brief, a poetry slam and a dissertation that represents the full bloom of his early thesis: The justice system does not work for blacks, particularly black men." -The Washington Post
"The most readable and provocative account of the consequences of the war on drugs since Michelle Alexander's…
As a youngster growing up in the segregated South, I didn’t have access to books about Black history, culture, and experiences. Although I attended all-Black schools, the curriculum and the books in our libraries were mostly selected by an all-White school board. So, I didn’t know that much about the history of my own people. I would not begin to learn that until I attended college. When I married and had children of my own, my wife and I still had problems finding a variety of books for children and young readers for our own children to read. So, we started our own publishing company to address the need for these books.
Nic Stones’s first book is a classic. When an altercation between a retired white police officer and his best friend turns violent, Justyce, a Black teenager, is forced to examine what it means to be a Black in America.
Writing letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a journal that Justyce keeps helps him come to terms with this challenging reality.
'Absolutely incredible, honest, gut-wrenching! A must-read!' Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give ' Painfully timely and deeply moving, this is the novel the next generation should be reading' Jodi Picoult 'Justyce's story is earnest, funny, achingly human, and unshakably hopeful. I am forever changed.' Becky Albertalli, author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda 'Raw and gripping' Jason Reynolds, author of Long Way Down 'A powerful, wrenching, and compulsively readable story that lays bare the history, and the present, of racism in America' John Green, author of The Fault in our Stars
--------------- Raw, captivating, and undeniably real,…
As a journalist who learned his craft on the job in the tumultuous 1960s, I happened to find myself living in states where racial history was being written. Reporting that story required me to understand why discrimination, poverty, and violence remained so deeply rooted in modern America. I wrote Ten Ways to Fight Hate, I made a movie about civil rights martyrs, and, after seeing people from around the world making a pilgrimage to the sites of the civil rights struggle, published my guidebook. Over the course of a 50-year career, I have written a million words. I am proudest of those that tried to right wrongs, and sometimes did.
As a young journalist reporting racial unrest in Connecticut
and elsewhere in the 1960s, I was stunned by a 1968 government report that
declared: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, and one white
– separate and unequal.” Its section on the media noted that except for crime
stories, people of color were largely missing from television and newspapers –
even in advertisements – and called on newsrooms, corporate boards, and
institutions to use affirmative action to hire minorities. I took the Kerner
Commission report to heart, and, as one of my proudest professional
accomplishments, hired the first Indian journalist in South Dakota, an action
that reverberates to this day. Today, we take black and brown faces and voices
on TV, movies, ads, and institutions for granted.
But as New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb explains in his
introduction, much of what the commission recommended has been ignored, to…
The Kerner Commission Report, released a month before Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 assassination, is among a handful of government reports that reads like an illuminating history book-a dramatic, often shocking, exploration of systemic racism that transcends its time. Yet Columbia University professor and New Yorker correspondent Jelani Cobb argues that this prescient report, which examined more than a dozen urban uprisings between 1964 and 1967, has been woefully neglected.
In an enlightening new introduction, Cobb reveals how these uprisings were used as political fodder by Republicans and demonstrates that this condensed edition of the Report should be essential reading…
I wasn’t a sporty teen, but I discovered rock climbing in my twenties and that later inspired my first novel, The Art of Holding On and Letting Go. I’m also a social worker, and even though my main character Cara is a competitive climber and the book features gripping (ha!) rock climbing scenes, the story is about much more – love and loss, finding home, the transformative power of nature. Sports and athleticism (or lack thereof) are something we can all relate to. What a great starting point for exploring our multi-faceted lives.
This novel is extra special because it’s written by two author friends, one Black, one white, and shows the complexity of racial inequality and police violence firsthand with basketball as the backdrop. This moving story encourages discussion and will make you reflect. It’s also a great introduction to the two authors’ work, and especially interesting to see how Jason Reynolds has since grown into his role as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.
A bag of chips. That's all sixteen-year-old Rashad is looking for. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad's pleadings that he's stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad's every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered. But how can you stay still when someone is pounding your face into the pavement?
There were witnesses: Quinn - a varsity basketball player and Rashad's classmate who has been raised by Paul since his own father died in Afghanistan - and a video camera.…
People experiencing intimate partner and other forms of violence have been taught that police, prosecutors, and courts are there to respond when they are harmed and to keep them safe. But in my practice representing survivors of gender-based violence, I have both heard about and witnessed first-hand the many ways that the criminal system punishes the survivors that it promised to protect. Survivors are harassed, harmed, and arrested by police. Their experiences of trauma are minimized and denied by prosecutors and judges. They are held criminally responsible for acting in self-defense and for the actions of the people who abuse them.
Most domestic violence shelters have this message on their voicemails: “If you are in immediate danger, call 911.” But for many survivors, particularly women of color, calling the police can lead to disaster. Ritchie’s book came out at a time when people were beginning to talk about police violence against Black men, but before #SayHerName, Sandra Bland, and Breonna Taylor were regularly included in that conversation.
You might have known that Eric Garner was choked to death by the police in New York City; you didn’t know that several weeks later, police also choked Rosann Miller, then seven months pregnant, to death. Ritchie documents how police officers verbally, emotionally, physically, and sexually abuse women of color—and how we can resist police violence.
“A passionate, incisive critique of the many ways in which women and girls of color are systematically erased or marginalized in discussions of police violence.” —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow
Invisible No More is a timely examination of how Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color experience racial profiling, police brutality, and immigration enforcement. By placing the individual stories of Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Dajerria Becton, Monica Jones, and Mya Hall in the broader context of the twin epidemics of police violence and mass incarceration, Andrea Ritchie documents the evolution of movements centered around women’s experiences…
I am a professor of history at College of DuPage, a community college outside of Chicago. Growing up in New York City and rural Vermont in the 1980s and 1990s around people who questioned everything made me think a lot about how and why the social world is organized in such an obviously unjust and irrational way. I have tried to understand the development of this organization ever since.
Taibbi lays bare the overlapping problems of poverty, policing, mass incarceration, the Democratic Party, and modern protest politics by tracing the life, murder, and movement surrounding Eric Garner, who was choked to death by a police officer on the streets of New York in 2014.
Whatever you think of Taibbi, this book has one of the clearest explanations I have ever read of how a logical and well-meaning idea can become its opposite. “Broken windows theory” began as the idea that keeping cities clean and their residents free from harassment can make people feel safer and more invested in where they live.
In the abstract, this makes sense. But in the context of the massive attacks on the working class, and the black part of the working class in particular, the application of this theory by New York politicians and police officials led to the widespread “social rape” of young…
'A brilliant work of narrative nonfiction' - Booklist 'Matt Taibbi is one of the few journalists in America who speaks truth to power' - Bernie Sanders 'A searing expose' - Kirkus Review 'Taibbi may be the only political writer in America that matters' - Hartford Advocate
The incredible story of the death of Eric Garner, the birth of the BLACK LIVES MATTER movement and the new fault lines of race, protest, policing and the power of the people.
On July 17, 2014, a forty-three-year-old black man named Eric Garner died in New York after a police officer put him in…
