Urban Art

Space has captivated mankind since the beginning of time. Fifty years ago, Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the moon, and since then our knowledge of astronomy has continued to expand. With so many mysteries yet to be solved, science journalist Abigail Beall takes readers on an astonishing journey though the landscape of space.

In the heart of America, a metropolis is quietly destroying itself. Detroit, once the richest city in the nation, is now its poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age - mass production, automobiles, and blue-collar jobs - Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, foreclosure, and dropouts. With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark and the righteous indignation that only a native son can possess, journalist Charlie LeDuff sets out to uncover what has brought low this once-vibrant city, his city.

Legal scholar and architect Sara C. Bronin examines how zoning became such a prevailing force and reveals its impact. Outdated zoning codes have maintained racial segregation, prioritized cars over people, and enabled great ecological harm. But, as Bronin argues, once we recognize the power of zoning, we can harness it to create the communities we desire, and deserve. Drawing on her own experience leading the overhaul of Hartford's zoning code and exploring the efforts of activists and city planners across the country, Bronin shows how new codes are reshaping our cities.

During the real estate crash of the late 2000s, Christopher Brown purchased an empty lot in an industrial section of Austin, Texas. The property—a brownfield site bisected with an abandoned petroleum pipeline and littered with concrete debris and landfill trash—was an unlikely site for a home. Along with his son, Brown had explored similar empty lots around Austin, so-called “ruined” spaces once used for agriculture and industry awaiting their redevelopment as Austin became a 21st century boom town.

It's the end of the 19th century. San Francisco's cobblestone streets are haunted, but Chinatown has an unlikely protector in a young Daoist priestess named Li-lin. Using only her martial arts training, spiritual magic, a sword made from peachwood, and the walking, talking spirit of a human eye, Li-lin stands alone to defend her immigrant community from supernatural threats. But when the body of a young girl is brought to the deadhouse Li-lin oversees for a local group of gangsters, she faces her most bewildering - and potentially dangerous - assignment yet.

The forests of the Bloody Sunsets Valley are full of dangers: monsters, Reapers, strangers, and especially his comrades...the ones standing next to him. Cat has become stronger, but will it be enough to survive? Will he open the Mask? Will he understand who can be trusted, and who will trust him? Are real feelings even possible in the place where hypocrisy and deception reign supreme? The crusade to the big cities of the World of Karik is coming!

Life for Cha Ming is a daily grind. A rat race where people don’t make any real decisions. When he asks the universe for something more, fate itself answers his prayer. A talisman brush older than time itself sends him to another world, where magic, fortune, and danger await. Now, the world is at his fingertips. He has a new life, a new body, and can wield the five elements. It’s too bad his new home is a place where might makes right, and immortal cultivators and demons fight at the drop of a hat. But where the divine brush goes, danger follows.

When Evan Trueblood blows into town looking for his wife, Molly, he’s convinced that she came to see her best friend, Jane. But it seems like the witch made it to New Orleans and then disappeared without a trace. Jane is ready to do whatever it takes to find her friend. Her desperate search leads her deep into a web of black magic and betrayal and into the dark history between vampires and witches. But the closer she draws to Molly, the closer she draws to a new enemy - one who is stranger and more powerful than any she has ever faced.

Cha Ming has returned from Jade Moon Planet stronger than ever. The Monkey King is back. Huxian's demon collection is up an ugly toad. They even took back an entire garden. But life is far from perfect. A war between angels and devils is in full swing, and it's a war Cha Ming can't avoid. To deal a pre-emptive blow, he journeys to the South. His mission? Infiltrate the Wang family. Gears have been turning for centuries, and war has broken out. Cha Ming and Feng Ming rush to shore up the North's meager defenses before devils from the South overrun them. No country can escape.

After a black witch pitched a hissy fit in Hollis Apothecary, Rue got stuck cleaning up his mess. That was the easy part. Repairing the damage he inflicted on Camber and Arden? That makes Rue wish she could bring him back to life just to kill him again. Slower this time. While Rue is setting her new life back to rights, Clay and Asa are off working a case, but it soon becomes clear that they'll need her help to catch the vicious creature preying on locals in a small Tennessee town.

When Earth intercepts a message from a long-extinct alien race, it seems like the solution humanity has been waiting for. The Undying's advanced technology has the potential to undo environmental damage and turn lives around, and their message leads to the planet Gaia, a treasure trove waiting to be explored. For Jules Addison and his fellow scholars, the discovery of an ancient alien culture offers unprecedented opportunity for study...as long as scavengers like Amelia Radcliffe don't loot everything first.

Mitzy Moon is bending over backward to be a good big sister. Spending a day at the pet invention convention seems harmless enough. But when puppy love turns into vanishing canines and a vengeful ghost, she’ll have to bend a few laws before more furry friends are spirited away. Ignoring the handsome sheriff’s warnings about evidence that cuts both ways, Mitzy’s desperation drives her to make daring decisions. Unfortunately, one crime leads to two and her carelessness puts Ghost-ma and her interfering feline in danger.

It's 1980s New York, and though the coke flows freely, money and glamour are the more powerful intoxicants. While fortunes are being made in SoHo galleries and on Wall Street, an underclass of transient drag queens and dandies, club kids and strippers, artists and actors, models and waitstaff wander the streets, providing the city's background color, cheap labor, and even cheaper entertainment.

For more than 40 years—whether writing for Richard Pryor and Saturday Night Live or performing stand-up to sold-out crowds around the country—Paul Mooney has been provocative, incisive...and absolutely hilarious. His comedy has always been indisputably real and raw, reflecting race issues in America, and this fascinating, fearless new memoir continues that unapologetically candid tradition.

The battle lines have been drawn. My fellow scions and I stand on one side and the power-hungry barons on the other. The scheme they've put in motion could shatter both our community and the non-magical world. Neither I nor the guys I love are willing to let that happen, but with the barons throwing both laws and parental bonds aside, we're short on options. The fate of our world could come down to a literal battle for our lives - one I'm not sure we have any hope of winning.

New York Times best-selling investigative journalist Ron Suskind based this book on his Pulitzer Prize winning articles about Cedric Jennings, a Black youth struggling to survive one of D.C.'s toughest school districts. A moving portrait of inner city life, A Hope in the Unseen offers a view of life through the eyes of someone trying desperately to make his way up from the bottom.

Baseball has always been a symbol as much as a sport. With a blend of individual confrontation and team play, a luxurious pace, and an immaculate urban parkland setting, it offers a sunny rendering of the American Dream, both the hard work that underpins it and the rewards it promises. Film, America's other national pastime, which magnifies and mythologizes all it touches, has long been the ideal medium to canonize this aspirational idea.

Seventeen year old Kris Young is on the run from a throng of superhuman golden-eyed freaks hell-bent on seeing her dead, and she doesn't know why. Good thing she has her guardian angel to protect her...sort of. Kris is aided by Nathan, the mysterious man that ends up being anything but angelic when he rescues her for the fourth time in fourteen years. Even if the handsome hero illusion is shattered by his harsh treatment of her, he knows how to fight this strange enemy and is determined to keep her safe at all costs.

While on a singles tour of Europe, Seattle's own Pia Thomason is looking for a man and trying not to think about her 40th birthday. Too bad her choice of suitors is less than appealing. But when she meets two mysterious strangers in Iceland, Pia becomes immersed in an undead love affair.

Seventeen-year-old Ashlyn Lanski is tired of her boring, single life. Swimming and spending time with Tatiana, her best friend, are her only sanctuary. The girls plan to leave their drab lakeside town far behind for college, and Ash hopes to finally ditch her longtime crush for Finley, Tatiana's twin brother. But when Tatiana and her family fail to return home after a family emergency, Ashlyn chooses to do something drastic to find them.