Urban City

Exploring the power of naming to shape experience and our sense of place, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro traces the ways in which native Lenape, Dutch settlers, British invaders, and successive waves of immigrants have left their marks on New York City’s map. He excavates the roots of many names, from Brooklyn to Harlem, that have gained iconic meaning worldwide. He interviews the last living speakers of Lenape, visits the harbor’s forgotten islands, lingers on street corners named for ballplayers and saints, and meets linguists who study the estimated 800 languages now spoken in New York.

For 1600 years, Nick Medea has guarded the gate between our world and Feirie, preventing the Wyld - the darkest Feirie of all - from coming into Chicago to find human prey. But since he defeated Oberon, more and more Wyld have been slipping through. Nick and his Feirie companion, the shapeshifter, Fetch, have been busy hunting them down. Nick keeps coming across the Dacian Draco, the sign of his ancient enemy Galerius, including a tattoo worn by a human thug. Unfortunately, every trail ends as if years old.

Since he became the guardian of the Gate between our world and Feirie 1600 years ago, Nick Medea, once Saint George, has battled to keep the darkest Feirie - the Wyld - from invading the mortal plane. With the dragon an unwilling part of him, Nick maintains balance between realms, often at great cost to him and those nearest to him. Nick and his ragtag confederates - including the shape-shifter Fetch and Nick's reincarnated love, Claryce - have battled the Wyld, but mortals as sinister as the darkest Feirie.

For more than 1600 years, Nick Medea has followed and guarded the Gate that keeps the mortal realm and that of Feirie separate, seeking in vain absolution for the fatal errors he made when he slew the dragon. All that while, he has tried and failed to keep the woman he loves from dying over and over. Yet in the 50 years since the night the dragon breathed over the city of Chicago, the Gate has not only remained fixed, but open to the trespasses of the Wyld, the darkest of the Feiriefolk.

Italy is for lovers - unless those lovers are on opposite sides of a 900-year-old family feud. Mastering the intricacies of winemaking isn't the only challenge Amber is facing on her and Irix's trip to Northern Italy. Two prominent families with secrets of their own are on the edge of war, and a young romance might be the spark that ignites their hostilities into flame.

Mika was a girl who liked to have fun. Young and beautiful, her life was all about drinking, partying, hitting the club, and kicking it with whatever brother could take her to the next level physically. But it all changed in an instant when she found herself at the wrong place, at the wrong time – and with the wrong man. Having seen something she shouldn’t have, Mika goes on the run. But constantly looking over your shoulder takes its toll, and Mika soon finds herself beaten down by a life of perpetual vigilance

Adam Smith has a tent, blankets, a water bottle, friends, and a school voucher. What more could he need? He’s doing great overall, but winter is coming fast, the gangs know his face, and he is failing cooking class! Choices have to be made. Stay and fight, or run? But if he stays, how will he survive? And if he runs, will she come with him?

Just before my wedding on the planet called Kifirin, I decided I wasn't going to marry someone I'd never met. Kordevik Weth was a stranger to me, and I wasn't willing to accept him. That's why I asked Aunt Bree for help. She had one condition: I had to live on Earth and take a job with Rome Enterprises in San Francisco.

Kal Hakala is the Bureau of Supernatural Investigation’s best agent, but even he needs a break after his last case, which brought him a hair’s breadth from death and killed the fiancée of his best friend, a Mescalero Apache agent named Canton Asate. Kal’s temporary desk-job is nothing less than leadership of the entire BSI. Now it is on his head to assemble teams of agents to fight the latest Supernatural incursions and man up if they fail.

Lily Harper narrowly survived her first mission as a Soul Retriever in the first level of the Underground City. After that harrowing trip, she wants nothing more than some downtime, but as with most things involving the afterlife, nothing ever quite works out the way Lily wants it to. Her newest mission will see her traveling to the sewer aqueduct of the Underground City and later, the prison. But, luckily for Lily, she’s got the hunky yet antisocial bladesmith Tallis Black by her side. And quite possibly unluckily for her, she’s also got her guardian angel, Bill, who’s up to his old, foul-mouthed antics.

Still, in the City is a collection of stories about the practice of urban Buddhism - when a New York City subway becomes a mobile temple, when Los Angeles traffic becomes a vehicle for awakening, when a Fifth Avenue sidewalk offers a spiritual path through craving, generosity, and sorrow. Practicing in the city comes with its own set of challenges and opportunities, and this book is attuned to both.

What does it mean to be truly human? When an orphaned kit fox named Tom is transformed by a witch’s spell into a 12-year-old boy, he’s given a deadline of summer’s end to become fully human. Befriended by fellow orphan Nora, he spends the summer enjoying normal human activities, always fearing that he won’t discover how to become fully human in time, and unaware that soon he and Nora will be fighting for their lives....

Fortunetellers. Demotivational speakers. Disillusioned shapeshifters. You never know quite who—or what—you'll run into in Psychic City, but that's what makes life interesting for a PsyOps agent.

"Warum hast du mich hergeholt?" "Weil wir einen Helden brauchen, der uns rettet. Weil ich einen Helden brauche..." Ich bin Andrew. Mitte zwanzig, Computernerd und mit meiner Nickelbrille und dem hageren Body bestimmt kein Supermodel. Auch kein Superheld, aber für diesen Zweck habe ich ja meine virtuellen Spiel-Charaktere. Mein Leben war ein ruhiger, gemütlicher Trott – bis zu dem Tag, als ich in ein verrücktes Paralleluniversum geriet. Ich rate euch eins: Lauft nie einem weißen Hasen hinterher.

My name is Levi and I swear I didn’t kill her. Sure, I was the only person found at the scene of the crime, and maybe her blood was literally on my hands, but I can explain all that. I’m a journalist writing for Kansas City’s magical community. So when I suspected that a woman had been cursed, it’s only natural that I went to learn more. I couldn’t have known she’d be dead before I arrived. Seriously, I write headlines about bridge trolls and solstice events, not murder. The Wizard’s Council thinks I did it, and I’m going to have a hard time convincing them otherwise.

This exploration begins by tracing the concentration of IT in Greater Silicon Valley and the resulting growth in start-ups, jobs, and wealth. This is followed by a look at the new working class of color and the millions earning poverty wages. The middle chapters survey the urban scene, including the housing bubble and the newly exploded metropolis, and the final chapters take on the political questions raised by the environmental impact of the boom, the fantastical ideology of TechWorld, and the tech-led transformation of the region.

Police Officer Nate Hammond led a well-ordered life in Coldwater Bay until a chance meeting with a girl from his past drags him into an extraordinary adventure. Libby Parish never intended to visit her hometown again. Is the strange obsession to return related to a mysterious comic book? Or someone she left behind? Sucked into an alternate comic book universe, Nate and Libby find themselves in Second Chance City, home of half-hearted superheroes and a villain with a grudge. Can they find a way home or will their second chance at happily ever after end in death?

All Sophia Fontanelle wanted was to be left alone. On the run from New Orleans and its vampire council, she heads to Los Angeles to start a new life. But when the Caballero, the ancient peacekeeper rumored to be the great Zorro himself, is murdered, Sophia finds herself caught up in a fight to clear her name. Threatened by a 1950s-era gangster turned vamp by the Caballero himself, can she survive in Vamp City?

Last Subway is the fascinating and dramatic story behind New York City's struggle to build a new subway line under Second Avenue and improve transit services all across the city. With his extraordinary access to powerful players and internal documents, Philip Mark Plotch reveals why the city's subway system, once the best in the world, is now too often unreliable, overcrowded, and uncomfortable. Last Subway offers valuable lessons in how governments can overcome political gridlock and enormous obstacles to build grand projects.

December 2008. A heavy snowstorm is blowing through Manhattan and the economy is on the brink of collapse, but none of that matters to a handful of guests at a posh holiday party. Five years after their college graduation, the fiercely devoted friends at the heart of this richly absorbing novel remain as inseparable as ever.