Popular Literature

The title is Search Party, the idea being that we’re all out here looking for something, and my poems are my way of finding myself. A young black poet blending spoken word and rap; an inner city upbringing with a Cambridge education; a social consciousness with a satirical wit and infectious rhythm--George the Poet is the voice of a new generation. Search Party is a thought-provoking and deeply autobiographical collection.

When co-workers Mira and Jake miss their flight home from Paris to New York, they’ll spend the next 24 hours unwittingly stuck together in the city of love.

Speed: the most demonized - and misunderstood - drug in the land. Deprived of the ingrained romantic mysticism of the opiate or the cosmopolitan chic of cocaine or the mundane tolerance of marijuana, there is no sympathy for this devil. Yet speed - crystal meth, amphetamines, Dexedrine, Benzedrine, Adderall; crank, spizz, chickenscratch, oblivious marching powder, the go-fast - is the most American of drugs: twice the productivity at half the cost, and equal opportunity for all.

Did Cinderella live happily ever after? One might think so until you look more closely at the hidden messages in beloved fairy tales. In Cinderella Didn't Live Happily Ever After, fairy tales are analyzed in terms of the underlying messages about marriage, agency, power, suffering, and good versus evil, with a focus on how male and female characters differ in each of these areas. The analysis is a data-driven approach that provides clear evidence for the hidden messages in these beloved tales. The end conclusion is not whether fairy tales are good or bad but rather what messages they ...

The Believer magazine presents a compendium of advice from producers, writers, and actors of The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live, Parks and Recreation, Late Show with David Letterman, The Hangover, and The Colbert Report, along with other musicians, cartoonists, New Yorker writers, and those similarly unqualified to offer guidance.

Sixty-five short stories by the master storyteller, Saki.

We all know how Darth Vader shared his big secret with Luke Skywalker, but what if he had delivered the news in a handwritten note instead? And what if someone found that letter, as well as all of the drafts that landed in the Dark Lord’s trash can? In the riotously funny collection Dear Luke, We Need to Talk. Darth, John Moe finally reveals these lost notes alongside all the imagined letters, e-mails, text messages, and other correspondences your favorite pop culture icons never meant for you to see.

From growing up in Detroit, where he marched as a 10-year-old with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to attending the inauguration of President Barack Obama, where he narrowly avoided the Purple Tunnel of Doom but still saw nothing, David Alan Grier examines how he - and America - have changed for the better and the funnier.

Sixth formers Kerry and Annie are nerdy, horny, hilarious, and exceptionally uncool. They’re never invited to parties, picked for sports teams or included in jokes, yet together they form a unit so great that they don’t need anyone else. But, when they’re approached by the popular Heather and invited to one of the coolest parties in town to help her find out who’s been trolling her from an account claiming to be her dead dad, their investigations take a turn. Heather’s best friend is found murdered. Suffocated with a mooncup.

A fictional account of a future woman president's tenure, this funny satire imagines a president who stops war, gets rid of the IRS, and then gets down to work on handling illiteracy, illegal drug abuse, and other social ills. She has an attitude, and she's determined. Maybe you'll find some ideas that could be put into use today.

Award-winning writer Bill Schelly relates how comics and fandom saved his life in this engrossing story that begins in the burgeoning comic fandom movement of the 1960s and follows the twists and turns of a career that spanned 50 years. Schelly recounts his struggle to come out at a time when homosexuality was considered a mental illness, how the egalitarian nature of fandom offered a safe haven for those who were different, and how his need for creative expression eventually overcame all obstacles.

Beth Lisick started out as a homecoming princess with a Crisco-aided tan and a bad perm. And then everything changed. Plunging headlong into America's deepest subcultures, while keeping both feet firmly planted in her parents' Leave It to Beaver values, Lisick makes her adult home on the fringe of mainstream culture and finds it rich with paradox and humor. Fans of David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell will relish Lisick's scathingly funny, smart, very real take on the effluvia of daily living.

Explore the fascinating link between gender stereotypes in fairy tales and real-world life with Only Prince Charming Gets to Break the Rules: Gender and Rule Violation in Fairy Tales and Life. This thought-provoking book carefully analyzes 200 folktales and fairy tales from around the world, uncovering a universal disparity in how male and female characters are punished for breaking the rules. Through a blend of thorough research and literary investigation, the book sheds light on how these stereotypes affect our families, politics, and education. A powerful feminist critique of social ...

Just as his music career was taking off, Juan Vidal received life-changing news: He’d soon be a father. Throughout his life, neglectful men were the rule - his own dad struggled with drug addiction and infidelity - a cycle that, inevitably, wrought Vidal with insecurity. At age 26, with only a bare grip on life, what lessons could he possibly offer a kid? Determined to alter the course for his child, Vidal did what he’d always done when confronted with life’s challenges. He turned to the counterculture.

Dustin Kiskaddon draws on his own apprenticeship with Matt, the owner of Oakland's Premium Tattoo, and takes us behind the scenes into the complex world of professional tattooers. We join people who must routinely manage a messy and carnal type of work. Blood and Lightning brings us through the tattoo shop, where the smell of sterilizing agents, the hum of machines, and the sound of music spill out onto the back patio.

Senior spring at Alexandria Prep was supposed to be for sleeping through class and partying with friends. But for Anna Soler, it's going to be a lonely road. She's just been dumped by her gorgeous basketball star boyfriend - with no explanation. Anna's closest friends, the real ones she abandoned while dating him, are ignoring her. The endearing boy she's always had a complicated friendship with is almost too sympathetic. But suddenly Anna isn't the only one whose life has been upended.

Cam likes me. He’s asked me on a date. It’s kind of unbelievable. He could have any girl he wants, yet his eyes landed on me. Can this be real? Do I go for it?

In the summer of 2012, Steve Jenkins was contacted by an old friend about adopting a micropiglet. Though he knew his partner, Derek, wouldn't be enthusiastic, he agreed to take the adorable little pig anyway, thinking he could care for her himself. Little did he know, that decision would change his and Derek's lives forever. It turned out there was nothing "micro" about Esther, and Steve and Derek had actually signed on to raise a full-size commercial pig. Within three years tiny Esther grew to a whopping 600 pounds.

Childhood rivals Alana and Xavier meet again after six years apart. As the two begin to spend more time together, Alaina realizes that Xavier is no longer the same boy she used to know. As she tries to help him fight his inner demons and reckon with his tragic past, the two slowly begin falling in love.

In 1950, publisher Fawcett Books founded its Gold Medal imprint, inaugurating the reign of lesbian pulp fiction. These were the books that small-town lesbians and prurient men bought by the millions - cheap, easy to find in drugstores, and immediately recognizable by their lurid covers: often a hard-looking brunette standing over a scantily clad blonde, or a man gazing in tormented lust at a lovely, unobtainable lesbian. For women leading straight lives, here was confirmation that they were not alone.