Fiction Memoir

In the summer of '61, Homer "Sonny" Hickam, a year of college behind him, is dreaming of sandy beaches and rocket ships. But before Sonny can reach the seaside fixer-upper where his mother is spending the summer, a telephone call sends him back to the place he thought he had escaped, the gritty coal-mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. There, Sonny's father, the mine's superintendent, has been accused of negligence in a man's death.

Funny, poignant and reflective, The Weight of a Cherry Blossom is a fable of rootlessness and belonging in the modern world. It is equal parts a story of urban loneliness and self-discovery and of the healing powers of kinship and love. Revisiting the awkwardness of adolescence and the chaos of growing up, it looks the foibles of adulthood irreverently in the eye.

No one could have predicted even two years ago that an African American would take the oath of office as president of the United States in January of 2009. For many, the occasion marks the climax to the civil rights movement and the fulfillment of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream that Americans could be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. This collection, with about 400 letters from Americans of all walks of life, is being created to stand as a symbol of this exciting moment in history.

Remnants of Passion is a collection of essays that examine one woman's search for love, sex, and a sense of belonging from adolescence into middle age. It's equal parts queer and quotidian, ranging in its focus from lesbians fighting over the politics of penetration to first kisses, from apologies never made to a marriage held together with spaghetti.

Winner of Child magazine's Book of the Year award for her hilarious and candid book on single motherhood, The Lunch-Box Chronicles, Marion Winik returns to the topic of parenting in these nine essays. Beginning with the story of her second wedding and her move to rural Pennsylvania, she covers everything from blending families and having a child in one's 40s to dealing with the legal problems of teenage boys to the evolution of the values of a family over generations.

Through his fiction, essays, poems, and art, Kahlil Gibran inspired a devoted international following and transformed modern Arabic literature. In this book, Joseph P. Ghougassian brings together the philosophical elements present across Gibran’s diverse writings, including his best-selling work The Prophet, as well as other significant works such as The Broken Wings, which tells the story of doomed young lovers, and the collection of aphorisms in Sand and Foam.

"Over the last few years I've started writing a number of stories that, for various reasons, I never finished writing..." So begins Special Problems, the comic tale of Christie Hodges, a writer who can't seem to finish a story. The problem isn't that Hodges has nothing to write about - there's her recent divorce, her paralyzed foot, trouble with her daughter and job - it's that once she starts writing, she can't stop. One problem leads to another, and another.

You may never have heard of him, but you've probably heard of the many people civil rights activist Bayard Rustin influenced. He was a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and refused to move to the back of the bus many years before Rosa Parks did. The son of a freed slave, Bayard Rustin grew up during the peak of the Jim Crow laws, which segregated Blacks and Whites.

This is the saga of the Hittite King Suppiluliumas, and rings with authenticity and the passion of a world that existed 1400 years before the birth of Christ. They called him Great King, Favorite of the Storm God, the Valiant. He conquered more than forty nations and brought fear and war to the very doorstep of 18th Dynasty Egypt, but he could not conquer the one woman he truly loved.

Here are some of the best of Churchill’s letters, many of a more personal and intimate nature, presented in chronological order, with a preface to each letter explaining the context. The recipients include a vast range of people, including his schoolmaster, his American grandmother and former President Eisenhower. They are taken from within the Churchill Archive in Cambridge, where there is a mass of Churchill’s correspondence. Several of the letters included have never appeared in book form before.

Death isn't the end. Marie didn't expect to be given the opportunity to go to a new universe when she died, but when it was offered she held to the offer with all her might. Taking the name of Talyn, she was accompanied to the new world by the goddess Melody as her assistant, as she seeks out a more rewarding life for herself, no matter what challenges may stand before her. Even if the introduction of some game mechanics and a goddess to her life has unanticipated consequences.

Sir John Betjeman, poet, broadcaster, journalist, prose writer and critic, was one of the best-loved figures of the 20th century. Betjeman was a prolific writer and his poems still resonate today. This release celebrates the centenary of Betjeman's birth.

In Robyn’s 2010 track Dancing on My Own, the Swedish pop-singer chronicles a night on the dance floor in the shadow of a former lover. She is bitter, angry, and at times desperate, and yet by the time the chorus arrives her frustration has melted away. She decides to dance on her own, and in this way, she transforms her solitude into a more complex joy. Taking inspiration from Robyn’s seminal track, emerging art critic and curator Simon Wu dances through the institutions of art, capitalism, and identity in these expertly researched, beautifully rendered essays.

As King Henry VI slips into insanity and the realm of England teeters on the brink of civil war, a child is married to the mad king's brother. Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, takes his child bride into Wales, where she discovers a land of strife and strangers. At Caldicot Castle and Lamphey Palace, Margaret must put aside childhood, acquire the dignity of a Countess, and, despite her tender years, produce Richmond with a son and heir.

When the Japanese invade in 1942, the Australian men and women stationed at the New Guinea port of Rabaul flee into the jungle. Written off by their government as ‘hostages to fortune', the little-known garrison on Australia's tropic frontier has been left with no modern equipment, no lifeline to the outside, and no means of escape. Most are captured and killed in the sinking of the prison ship Montevideo Maru, which remains Australia's worst sea disaster. But the surviving soldiers and nurses carry on.

Ironworker Wayne Colson and his spirited wife Carmen are witnesses to a shakedown scam — witnesses who must be eliminated. Enter Armand Degas (a.k.a. Blackbird), the brains of the operation, and his partner Richie Nix, an ex-con whose highest goal is to rob a bank in every state. After the Colsons enter the Federal Witness Security Program, a lively chase ensues — with two bumbling but determined killers on Wayne and Carmen's trail.

In the 1970s and thru the mid-1980s, the Chicago Outfit was the dominant organized crime family in Las Vegas, with business interests in several casinos. During those years the Outfit and its colleagues in Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Cleveland were using Sin City as a cash cow. Commonly referred to as the “skim,” unreported revenue from Outfit-controlled casinos was making its way out of Vegas by the bag full and ending up in the coffers of the crime bosses in those four locations.

In this partially autobiographical work, best-selling author Lewis Thomas offers insights on subjects as wide-ranging as gender differences, how it feels to be a patient, human vs. computer intelligence, the future of cancer research, and the longevity of the planet—interspersing all with charming anecdotes about his family, his colleagues and himself.

The advent of the Prophet Muhammad SAW changed the face of the history of mankind in a manner that this world has never seen before. Since the first man and Prophet Adam (Pbuh) was sent down to Earth, Allah SWT sent many prophets and messengers to guide mankind to the truth and to the straight path. Soon after the deaths of these prophets, their followers deviated from the teachings and corrupted the religion of Allah.

This is the incredible true story of a brave military unit in Vietnam that risked everything to rescue an outnumbered troop under heavy fire-and the 39-year odyssey to recognize their bravery.