Urban Art

In this heartfelt memoir by the Masterpiece Theatre host, Pulitzer Prize winner, and groundbreaking New York Times columnist, Russell Baker traces his youth in the mountains of rural Virginia. When Baker was only five, his father died. His mother, strong-willed and matriarchal, never looked back. After all, she had three children to raise. These were Depression years, and Mrs. Baker moved her fledgling family to Baltimore. Baker's mother was determined her children would succeed, and we know her regimen worked for Russell.

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 Outdated zoning codes have maintained racial segregation, prioritized cars over people, and enabled great ecological harm.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.

Finding out that she was a witch was strange enough, but now Nicole must face the realization that she has the rare power to kill with just a touch. No one can know her secret - not even Blake, who she's had undeniable chemistry with since first moving to town. Now Nicole, Blake, and the three others with elemental powers must journey abroad to stop a series of monsters that they previously believed to be dead from rising once again and destroying the mortal world. Will they all survive the quest?

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.

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.

Published during a literary era marked by the ascendance of Black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Alex Haley, this thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown’s childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s.

Le Corbusier famously said, "A house is a machine for living in." We now confront the litany of environmental challenges associated with the legacy of the architectural machine: a changing climate, massive species die-off, diminished air and water quality, and resource scarcities. Brook Muller offers an alternative: water-centric urban design that fosters sustainability, equity, and architectural creativity.

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!

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.

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 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.

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.

Salsa is one of the most popular types of music listened to and danced to in the United States. Until now, the single comprehensive history of the music - and the industry that grew up around it, including musicians, performances, styles, movements, and production - was available only in Spanish.

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.

My name is Kaidance Monroe, and sometimes when I touch people, I see how they die. After I saw my little brother's death but failed to stop it, my parents abandoned me to a juvenile detention facility. I don't let people touch me anymore. Not my fingertips, not my skin, not my heart. Just before I turned 18, I got a visit from a cute guy, who tricked me into giving up my secrets. He said I was special, but he wasn't the only one searching for me. I barely escaped with my life. Now I'm learning how to control my abilities - abilities so powerful, even the gods are jealous.

Tupac Amaru Shakur (1971–1996) was an American rap artist, actor, and social activist. More than seventy-five million of his albums have sold worldwide, making him one of the bestselling music artists in the world. Rolling Stone magazine named him the 86th Greatest Artist of All Time.

Shakur also gained notoriety for his conflicts with the law and time spent in prison.

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.