Urban City

When I inherit a haunted bookstore in New Orleans, I go from demon hunter to my dream job. Unfortunately, there’s a dark side to my beautiful new life—the gorgeous demon who seems to think he owns the place. The attraction between us is insane, and we can’t keep our eyes off each other. But I don’t trust him one bit—especially not the way he uses his seductive charms to try to compel me to work for him.

A riveting, groundbreaking account of how the war on crime has torn apart inner-city communities. Forty years in, the tough-on-crime turn in American politics has spurred a prison boom of historic proportions that disproportionately affects Black communities. It has also torn at the lives of those on the outside. As arrest quotas and high-tech surveillance criminalize entire blocks, a climate of fear and suspicion pervades daily life, not only for young men entangled in the legal system but for their family members and working neighbors.

Long accused of racism and “white flight”, the ethnic Americans driven from their homes and neighborhoods—the author included—finally get the chance to tell their side of the story.

The individuals who live within this extraordinary first novel are: Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, estranged heirs to one of the city's largest fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by downtown's punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbor; and the detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do with a shooting in Central Park.

Found wandering the Witch Woods as a child, everything about Sophia is a mystery. With no memories and no family, she’s raised in secret by the professors of Nighthelm Academy...all of whom know far more about her than they’re letting on. But Sophia does know one thing: she’s a contritum, a magical being with a broken soul. Her very existence is illegal, and until she finds the other piece of her soul, her uncontrollable magic will only grow more deadly and untamed. Then she discovers three men who hold a mysterious sway over not just her soul, but also her heart.

Life is complicated. I mean, life has always been complicated, but there's a difference between monsters-are-trying-to-kill-you complications and monsters-are-in-love-with-you complications. I'm still not sure which is more dangerous. G'day. I'm Pet. Two-thirds of a pet, anyway: The vampire isn't claiming ownership these days, but he's definitely encroaching. On the list of other encroaching complications is the threat of heirling trials, a certain fae lord, and a mysterious librarian - not to mention the thing that's killing people on Hobart's waterfront....

Welcome to Bezim, where sword-slinging bravi race through the night and rich and idle alchemists make magic out of mixing and measuring the four planes of reality. Siyon Velo, Dockside brat turned petty alchemist, scrapes a living hopping between the planes to harvest ingredients for the city’s alchemists. But when Siyon accidentally commits an act of impossible magic, he’s catapulted into the limelight—which is a bad place to be when the planes start lurching out of alignment, threatening to send Bezim into the sea.

Southern Brooklyn, July 1996. Fire hydrants are open and spraying water on the sizzling blacktop. Punk kids have to make their own fun. Bobby Santovasco and his pal Zeke like to throw rocks at cars getting off the Belt Parkway. They think it's dumb and harmless until it's too late to think otherwise. Then there's Jack Cornacchia, a widower who lives with his high school age daughter Amelia and reads meters for Con Ed but also has a secret life as a vigilante, righting neighbourhood wrongs through acts of violence.

Welcome to Sunder City. The magic is gone, but the monsters remain. I'm Fetch Phillips, just like it says on the window. There are a few things you should know before you hire me: 1. Sobriety costs extra. 2. My services are confidential. 3. I don't work for humans. It's nothing personal - I'm human myself. But after what happened, to the magic, it's not the humans who need my help.

All places are not created equal. In this groundbreaking book, Richard Florida shows that where we live is increasingly a crucial factor in our lives, one that fundamentally affects our professional and personal prospects. As well as explaining why place matters now more than ever, Who's Your City? provides indispensable tools to help you choose the right place for you.

It's been a long time since Tobias spread his wings. The exiled dragon prince has worked hard to blend into the human world and practice his love for healing as a pediatric cardiologist. She awakens the dragon within. As a vampire-human hybrid, Sabrina is used to being different from the rest of her community. But all vampires need to feed. The night she chooses Tobias as her next meal, everything changes. He's far more than he seems, and if she doesn't protect his secret, it could cost him his life.

Oklahoma City was born from chaos. It was founded in a bizarre but momentous "Land Run" in 1889, when thousands of people lined up along the borders of Oklahoma Territory and rushed in at noon to stake their claims. Since then, it has been a city torn between the wild energy that drives its outsize ambitions and the forces of order that seek sustainable progress.

Urban universities play an outsized role in America’s cities. They bring diverse ideas and people together and they generate new innovations. But they also gentrify neighborhoods and exacerbate housing inequality in an effort to enrich their campuses and attract students. In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower takes listeners from Hartford to Chicago and from Phoenix to Manhattan, revealing the increasingly parasitic relationship between universities and our cities.

Our cities are changing. Around the world, more and more money is being invested in buildings and land. Real estate is now a $217 trillion-dollar industry, worth 36 times the value of all the gold ever mined. It forms 60 percent of global assets, and one of the most powerful people in the world - the president of the United States - made his name as a landlord and developer.

Over the past 10 years, urban planners, technology companies, and governments have promoted smart cities with a somewhat utopian vision of urban life made knowable and manageable through data collection and analysis. Emerging smart cities have become both crucibles and showrooms for the practical application of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and the integration of big data into everyday life. Are smart cities optimized, sustainable, digitally networked solutions to urban problems? Or are they neoliberal, corporate-controlled, undemocratic non-places?

The staff at Salem, Massachusetts's local station, WICH-TV, is looking forward to the wedding of their program director, Lee Barrett. But when Lee heads off on her Maine honeymoon, she'll be haunted by the ghosts of her own past. Lee and Detective Sergeant Pete Mondello are finally tying the knot - and Lee is tying up loose ends before the big day. After the celebration, complete with a cake made by the station magician, there should be time to relax—but the Maine island happens to be near the site of the crash that killed Lee's parents, a mystery she's never been able to solve.

Segregation by Design draws on more than 100 years of quantitative and qualitative data from thousands of American cities to explore how local governments generate race and class segregation. Starting in the early 20th century, cities have used their power of land use control to determine the location and availability of housing, amenities (such as parks), and negative land uses (such as garbage dumps). The result has been segregation - first within cities and more recently between them.

London. A city apart. Inimitable. Or so it once seemed. Spiralling from the outer limits of the Overground to the pinnacle of the Shard, Iain Sinclair encounters a metropolis stretched beyond recognition. The vestiges of secret tunnels, the ghosts of saints and lost poets lie buried by developments, the cycling revolution and Brexit. An electrifying final odyssey, The Last London is an unforgettable vision of the Big Smoke before it disappears into the air of memory.

In the fall of 1871, Chicagoans knew they were due for the “big one”—a massive, uncontrollable fire that would decimate the city. It had been bone-dry for months, and a recent string of blazes had nearly outstripped the fire department’s already scant resources. Then, on October 8, a minor fire broke out in the barn of Irishwoman Kate Leary. A series of unfortunate mishaps and misunderstandings along with insufficient preparation and a high south-westerly wind combined to set the stage for an unmitigated catastrophe.

Police inspector Cecilie Mars is a different kind of cop. She has a heavy cocaine habit, fantasizes about vigilante violence, and constantly falls in love with men she shouldn’t. Late one night, while tailing a suspect, Mars makes an ill-fated choice that has far-reaching consequences. Unluckily for her, her misstep has been observed and filmed. Now, an anonymous foe is threatening to reveal the truth unless she submits to his terrifying agenda.