As she follows the case of Meena—a Hindu woman attacked by members of her own village and her own family for marrying a Muslim man—Smita comes face to face with a society where tradition carries more weight than one’s own heart, and a story that threatens to unearth the painful secrets of Smita’s own past. While Meena’s fate hangs in the balance, Smita tries in every way she can to right the scales. She also finds herself increasingly drawn to Mohan, an Indian man she meets while on assignment. But the dual love stories of Honor are as different as the cultures of Meena and Smita themselves: Smita realizes she has the freedom to enter into a casual affair, knowing she can decide later how much it means to her.In this tender and evocative novel about love, hope, familial devotion, betrayal, and sacrifice, Thrity Umrigar shows us two courageous women trying to navigate how to be true to their homelands and themselves at the same time.

    But with the Japanese army approaching, Meilin and her four year old son, Renshu, are forced to flee their home. Relying on little but their wits and a beautifully illustrated hand scroll, filled with ancient fables that offer solace and wisdom, they must travel through a ravaged country, seeking refuge.Years later, Renshu has settled in America as Henry Dao. Though his daughter is desperate to understand her heritage, he refuses to talk about his childhood. How can he keep his family safe in this new land when the weight of his history threatens to drag them down? Yet how can Lily learn who she is if she can never know her family’s story?Spanning continents and generations, Peach Blossom Spring is a bold and moving look at the history of modern China, told through the story of one family. It’s about the power of our past, the hope for a better future, and the haunting question: What would it mean to finally be home?

    

    When she leaves for Moscow to audition for drama school, she defies her mother and grandparents and abandons her first love, Andrei.Before she leaves, Sasha discovers the hidden war journal of her uncle Kolya, an artist still missing in action years after the war has ended. His pages expose the official lies and the forbidden truth of Stalin’s brutality. Kolya’s revelations and his tragic love story guide Sasha through drama school and cement her determination to live a thousand lives onstage. After graduation, she begins acting in Leningrad, where Andrei, now a Communist Party apparatchik, becomes a censor of her work. As a past secret comes to light, Sasha’s ambitions converge with Andrei’s duties, and Sasha must decide if her dreams are truly worth the necessary sacrifice and if, as her grandmother likes to say, all will indeed be well.

    Their owners call them captives. They are taught their captors’ tongues and their beliefs but they have a language and rituals all their own. In a world that would be allegorical if it weren’t saturated in harsh truths, Cato and William meet at Placid Hall, a plantation in an unspecified part of the American South. Subject to the whims of their tyrannical and eccentric captor, Cannonball Greene, they never know what harm may befall them: inhumane physical toil in the plantation’s quarry by day, a beating by night, or the sale of a loved one at any moment. It’s that cruel practice—the wanton destruction of love, the belief that Black people aren’t even capable of loving—that hurts the most. It hurts the reserved and stubborn William, who finds himself falling for Margaret, a small but mighty woman with self-possession beyond her years. And it hurts Cato, whose first love, Iris, was sold off with no forewarning. He now finds solace in his hearty band of friends, including William, who is like a brother; Margaret; Little Zander; and Milton, a gifted artist. There is also Pandora, with thick braids and long limbs, whose beauty calls to him. Their relationships begin to fray when a visiting minister with a mysterious past starts to fill their heads with ideas about independence. He tells them that with freedom comes the right to choose the small things—when to dine, when to begin and end work—as well as the big things, such as whom and how to love. Do they follow the preacher and pursue the unknown? Confined in a landscape marked by deceit and uncertainty, who can they trust? In an elegant work of monumental imagination that will reorient how we think of the legacy of America’s shameful past, Jabari Asim presents a beautiful, powerful, and elegiac novel that examines intimacy and longing in the quarters while asking a vital question: What would happen if an enslaved person risked everything for love?

    . . until now. Her Mom’s plan is just to stay for a couple weeks, until her grandfather gets better. But plans change, and as Maizy spends more time in Last Chance (where she and her family are the only Asian-Americans) and at The Golden Palace—the restaurant that’s been in her family for generations—she makes some discoveries. For instance: • You can tell a LOT about someone by the way they order food. • And people can surprise you. Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in disappointing ways. • And the Golden Palace has Secrets.But the more Maizy discovers, the more questions she has. Like, why are her mom and her grandmother always fighting? Who are the people in the photographs on the office wall? And when she discovers that a beloved family treasure has gone missing—and someone has left a racist note—Maizy decides it’s time find the answers.

    We see hair as inky black and smooth as a peaceful night sky. We see skin brushed with gold.This joyful and lyrical picture book from New York Times-bestselling author Eva Chen is a moving ode to the immigrant experience, as well as a manifesto of self-love for Asian American children.

    They're wrong when they tell you the Second Amendment protects the right to own a private arsenal. They're wrong when they say the death penalty isn't cruel or unusual punishment. They're wrong when they tell you we have no legal remedies for the scourge of police violence against people of color.In fact, Mystal argues, Republicans are wrong about the law almost all of the time, and now, instead of talking about this on cable news, Mystal explains why in his first book.Allow Me to Retort is an easily digestible argument primer, offered so that people can tell the Republicans in their own lives why they are wrong. Mystal brings his trademark humor, snark, and legal expertise to topics as crucial to our politics as gerrymandering and voter suppression, and explains why legal concepts such as the right to privacy and substantive due process are constantly under attack from the very worst judges conservatives can pack onto the courts.You don't need to be a legal scholar to grasp how stop-and-frisk is an unconstitutional policy of racial discrimination. You just need to read Mystal's book to understand that the Fourteenth Amendment once made the white supremacist policies adopted by the modern Republican Party illegal—and it can do so again if we let it.

    Will she ever dance again?River wants so badly to dance at powwow day as she does every year. In this uplifting and contemporary picture book perfect for beginning readers, follow River's journey from feeling isolated after an illness to learning the healing power of community.Additional information explains the history and functions of powwows, which are commonplace across the United States and Canada and are open to both Native Americans and non-Native visitors. Author Traci Sorell is a member of the Cherokee Nation, and illustrator Madelyn Goodnight is a member of the Chickasaw Nation.

    In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama aboard a ship called Clotilda. Their journey includes the savage Middle Passage and being hidden in the swamplands along the Alabama River before being secretly parceled out to various plantations, where they made desperate attempts to maintain both their culture and also fit into the place of captivity to which they'd been delivered. At the end of the Civil War, the survivors created a community for themselves they called African Town, which still exists to this day. Told in 14 distinct voices, including that of the ship that brought them to the American shores and the founder of African Town, this powerfully affecting historical novel-in-verse recreates a pivotal moment in US and world history, the impacts of which we still feel today.

    It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn't know who it was. By the end, exposing someone's address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn't know who it was. The '90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we're still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job. Beyond epiphenomena like Cop Killer and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. On a '90s Thursday night, more people watched any random episode of Seinfeld than the finale of Game of Thrones. But nobody thought that was important; if you missed it, you simply missed it. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it. In The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman makes a home in all of it: the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the politics, the changes regarding race and class and sexuality, the yin/yang of Oprah and Alan Greenspan. In perhaps no other book ever written would a sentence like, "The video for 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' was not more consequential than the reunification of Germany" make complete sense. Chuck Klosterman has written a multi-dimensional masterpiece, a work of synthesis so smart and delightful that future historians might well refer to this entire period as Klostermanian.

    and China “In this highly entertaining but deeply disturbing book, Erich Schwartzel demonstrates the extent of our cultural thrall to China. His depiction of the craven characters, American and Chinese, who have enabled this situation represents a significant feat of investigative journalism. His narrative is about not merely the movie business, but the new world order.” —Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday DemonFrom trade to technology to military might, competition between the United States and China dominates the foreign policy landscape. But this battle for global influence is also playing out in a strange and unexpected arena: the movies. The film industry, Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel explains, is the latest battleground in the tense and complex rivalry between these two world powers. In recent decades, as China has grown into a giant of the international economy, it has become a crucial source of revenue for the American film industry. Hollywood studios are now bending over backward to make movies that will appeal to China’s citizens—and gain approval from severe Communist Party censors. At the same time, and with America’s unwitting help, China has built its own film industry into an essential arm of its plan to export its national agenda to the rest of the world. The competition between these two movie businesses is a Cold War for this century, a clash that determines whether democratic or authoritarian values will be broadcast most powerfully around the world. Red Carpet is packed with memorable characters who have—knowingly or otherwise—played key roles in this tangled industry web: not only A-list stars like Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, and Richard Gere but also eccentric Chinese billionaires, zany expatriate filmmakers, and starlets who disappear from public life without explanation or trace. Schwartzel combines original reporting, political history, and show-biz intrigue in an exhilarating tour of global entertainment, from propaganda film sets in Beijing to the boardrooms of Hollywood studios to the living rooms in Kenya where families decide whether to watch an American or Chinese movie. Alarming, occasionally absurd, and wildly entertaining, Red Carpet will not only alter the way we watch movies but also offer essential new perspective on the power struggle of this century.

    Until one morning, when he rescues a young Afghan man, Amin, from certain execution.Now, with a gang of people smugglers on his tail and the lives of Amin's family on the line, Gabe is drawn into a ruthless game of cat and mouse. His main opponent is Chase Fowler, a kangaroo hunter with bush skills as wily and sharp as his own.As the old dogger and roo-shooter go head to head, Gabe will need all his cunning to come out of this alive…'Wild Dogs is a just-one-more-chapter thriller that kept me up long after lights out.' -Jack Heath

    IT'S THE 4TH OF DECEMBER 1591.On this, the last night of her life, in a prison cell several floors below Edinburgh's High Street, convicted witch Geillis Duncan receives a mysterious visitor - Iris, who says she comes from a future where women are still persecuted for who they are and what they believe.As the hours pass and dawn approaches, Geillis recounts the circumstances of her arrest, brutal torture, confession and trial, while Iris offers support, solace - and the tantalising prospect of escape.Hex is a visceral depiction of what happens when a society is consumed by fear and superstition, exploring how the terrible force of a king's violent crusade against ordinary women can still be felt, right up to the present day.

    Spanning more than 35 years of work, the first comprehensive collection of essays, criticism, and articles by the legendary author of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston, showcasing the evolution of her distinctive style as an archivist and author.“One of the greatest writers of our time.”—Toni MorrisonOne of the most acclaimed artists of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston was a gifted novelist, playwright, and essayist. Drawn from three decades of her work, this anthology showcases her development as a writer, from her early pieces expounding on the beauty and precision of African American art to some of her final published works, covering the sensational trial of Ruby McCollum, a wealthy Black woman convicted in 1952 for killing a white doctor. Among the selections are Hurston’s well-known works such as “How It Feels to be Colored Me” and “My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience.” The essays in this essential collection are grouped thematically and cover a panoply of topics, including politics, race and gender, and folkloric study from the height of the Harlem Renaissance to the early years of the Civil Rights movement. Demonstrating the breadth of this revered and influential writer’s work, You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays is an invaluable chronicle of a writer’s development and a window into her world and time.

    Compiled from over a decade of investigative reporting coupled with a vast reference of philosophical research, American Muckraker is the definitive guide of truth-telling in the video age.ON POWER They do have tremendous power. But in part it is because we give it to them. We are nothing, but we are not alone. Awe cannot live in fear. The moment you stop caring about what the media establishment thinks of you, is the moment you become truly free. ON INSIDERS The USPS whistleblower, a Marine Corp combat veteran said, “I would rather be back in Afghanistan, getting shot at by Afghans, honest to God,” than be interrogated by federal agent Russell Strasser—who coerced him by saying, “I am trying to twist you a little bit because your mind will kick in…. I am not scaring you, but I am scaring you.” ON PRIVACY The right to record is closely tied to the right to speak or even to take contemporaneous notes about what one sees and hears. As 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt quipped, “People committing malfeasance don’t have any right to privacy…. What are we saying—that Upton Sinclair shouldn’t have smuggled his pencil in?” ON MEANS & ENDS Whereas the novelist Ernest Hemingway said, “What is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after,” Thomas B. Morgan of the 1960s New Journalism contends, “Morally defensible journalism is rarely what you feel good about afterward; it is only that which makes you feel better than you would otherwise.” ON LITIGATION “Polling does not decide the truth nor speak to evidence…. The New York Times have not met their burden to prove that Veritas is deceptive…claiming protections from an upstart competitor armed with a cell phone and a website. There is a substantial basis in law to proceed, to permit Project Veritas, to conduct discovery into The New York Times.” —Project Veritas v. New York Times Company; New York Supreme Court, March 18, 2021

    With captivating warmth, she pulls us in to how it felt to live in Ireland’s changing culture of the ‘80s, and how it often made a woman’s decisions for her.“I can’t bear to keep walking. But you can’t keep a secret in this town unless you leave with it.”Kept apart by their love for one man, two sisters embark on their own paths towards survival, love, and understanding, until they finally meet again in the worst of circumstances. And the reality might break them all.My Heart Went Walking is a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that sweeps from the small Irish town of Donegal to the “big smoke” of Dublin City; a book that celebrates the pull of family and the chance of redemption. It is a novel for everyone who feels connected to the Irish approach to life—that of grit and laughter—and also for everyone who loves an overriding message of hope and restoration in all things.

    Growing up with an auditory processing disorder and a speech impediment, Amanda had to work hard, but ultimately she took great strength from her experiences.After hearing her teacher read aloud to the class, she knew that she wanted to become a poet, and nothing would stand in her way. At the age of 19, she became America's first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate. And, after performing her inspiring poem 'The Hill We Climb' at the Presidential Inauguration in January 2021, she became an icon across the world.​This inspiring book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the incredible young poet and activist’s life so far.Little People, BIG DREAMS is a bestselling series of books and educational games that explore the lives of outstanding people, from designers and artists to scientists and activists. All of them achieved incredible things, yet each began life as a child with a dream.This empowering series offers inspiring messages to children of all ages, in a range of formats. The board books are told in simple sentences, perfect for reading aloud to babies and toddlers. The hardback versions present expanded stories for beginning readers. Boxed gift sets allow you to collect a selection of the books by theme. Paper dolls, learning cards, matching games and other fun learning tools provide even more ways to make the lives of these role models accessible to children.Inspire the next generation of outstanding people who will change the world with Little People, BIG DREAMS!

    Join actress and activist Erika Alexander in a neo-noir, true crime drama as she searches for Tamika Huston, a 24-year-old Black woman from Spartanburg, SC who went missing in 2004. Her case became a rallying cry for other missing Black women in America and led to a growing demand to expose a system that ignores missing girls and women of color. Kevin Hart and Charlamagne Tha God’s SBH productions present their debut Audible Original Finding Tamika. In it, host Erika Alexander summons a new generation to help raise the dead, expose a hidden past, and give a dark warning for our future. In Finding Tamika, what we’ll actually discover is the awful truth that a Black girl does not have to go missing for us not to see her. No matter the cost, though, we must look for Tamika, because until she is found, we are all lost. Please Note: This content is for mature audiences only. It contains adult language and themes. Discretion is advised.

     As in Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the queer, the poor, the displaced, the footloose and rogue spirits. They are those who inhabit transient spaces, who make their paths and move invisibly, who embrace apparitions, old vengeances and alternative realities. Eloghosa Osunde's brave, fiercely inventive novel traces a wild array of characters for whom life itself is a form of resistance: a driver for a debauched politician with the power to command life and death; a legendary fashion designer who gives birth to a grown daughter; a lesbian couple whose tender relationship sheds unexpected light on their experience with underground sex work; a wife and mother who attends a secret spiritual gathering that shifts her world. As their lives intertwine—in bustling markets and underground clubs, churches and hotel rooms—vagabonds are seized and challenged by spirits who command the city's dark energy. Whether running from danger, meeting with secret lovers, finding their identities, or vanquishing their shadowselves, Osunde's characters confront and support one another, before converging for the once-in-a-lifetime gathering that gives the book its unexpectedly joyous conclusion. Blending unvarnished realism with myth and fantasy, Vagabonds! is a vital work of imagination that takes us deep inside the hearts, minds, and bodies of a people in duress—and in triumph.

    just as the Watts Riots erupt, in this stirring new novel by Coretta Scott King Honor winner Brenda Woods.When Eden's cousin Winter comes for a visit, it turns out he's not just there to sightsee. He wants to figure out what happened to his dad, who disappeared ten years earlier from the Watts area of L.A. So the cousins set out to investigate together, and what they discover brings them joy--and heartache. It also opens up a whole new understanding of their world, just as the area they've got their sights on explodes in a clash between the police and the Black residents. For six days Watts is like a war zone, and Eden and Winter become heroes in their own part of the drama. Eden hopes to be a composer someday, and the only way she can describe that summer is a song with an unexpected ending, full of changes in tempo and mood--totally unforgettable.

    And, when the monster follows her, she is forced to defend her home to the last …Set in Malaysia’s eastern-most state of Sabah, this delightful spooky story is told in the style of hantu stories — ghost tales — told to young children by grandparents to entertain them before bedtime, and to keep them safe from the dangers of the swamps and jungles.Illustrations:Through 35 dynamic, full-colour illustrations, the tranquil rural coastal landscape is transformed as the storm approaches and the drama unfolds, drawing the reader deeper into the mystery. What is this monster, where did it come from?The beauty of the shapes and colours of north Borneo’s native vegetation and animals, along with the exquisite styles of Kadazan-Dusun textures and patterns, are artfully captured in a wonderland of storytelling that merges cultures for children and adults interested in distant times and places. The fine attention to detail gives readers hours of enjoyment in a wild and rollicking adventure that will keep young readers at the edge of the knees they’re sitting on, and gazing long into the mysteries of the art.

    Filled with relatable pedagogy on the history of abolition, a reimagining of what reparations look like for Black lives and real-life anecdotes from Cullors. An Abolitionist's Handbook offers a bold, innovative, and humanistic approach to how to be a modern-day abolitionist. Cullors asks us to lead with love, fierce compassion, and precision.In An Abolitionist's Handbook readers will learn how to:- have courageous conversations- move away from reaction and towards response- take care of oneself while fighting for others- turn inter-community conflict into a transformative action- expand one’s imagination, think creatively, and find the courage to experiment- make justice joyful- practice active forgiveness- make space for difficult feelings and honor mental health- practice non-harm and cultivate compassion- organize local and national governments to work towards abolition- move away from cancel cultureAn Abolitionist's Handbook is for those who are looking to reimagine a world where communities are treated with dignity, care and respect. It gives us permission to move away from cancel culture and into visioning change and healing.

    She’s able to live out a beautiful story because God has crowned her with glory—and Azira wants you to do the same!Young readers will be inspired by this empowering, uplifting reminder to always be and love who God created them to be.

    Even the rules for working there are fun!But when a routine cleanup presents a mysterious, hand-drawn map, her vacation gets even more exciting than a banana split with hot fudge sauce. And that’s saying a lot!A short story.

    In preparation for handing the territory over to China in 1997, Deng Xiaoping promised that it would remain highly autonomous for fifty years. An international treaty established a Special Administrative Region (SAR) with a far freer political system than that of Communist China—one with its own currency and government administration, a common-law legal system, and freedoms of press, speech, and religion.But as the halfway mark of the SAR’s lifespan approaches in 2022, it is clear that China has not kept its word. Universal suffrage and free elections have not been instituted, harassment and brutality have become normalized, and activists are being jailed en masse. To make matters worse, a national security law that further crimps Hong Kong’s freedoms has recently been decreed in Beijing. This tragic backslide has dire worldwide implications—as China continues to expand its global influence, Hong Kong serves as a chilling preview of how dissenters could be treated in regions that fall under the emerging superpower’s control.Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World tells the complete story of how a city once famed for protests so peaceful that toddlers joined grandparents in millions-strong rallies became a place where police have fired more than 10,000 rounds of tear gas, rubber bullets and even live ammunition at their neighbors, while pro-government hooligans attack demonstrators in the streets. A Hong Kong resident from 1992 to 2021, author Mark L. Clifford has witnessed this transformation firsthand. As a celebrated publisher and journalist, he has unrivaled access to the full range of the city’s society, from student protestors and political prisoners to aristocrats and senior government officials. A powerful and dramatic mix of history and on-the-ground reporting, this book is the definitive account of one of the most important geopolitical standoffs of our time.

    But when she doesn't get her favorite color, Gauri gets mad. Will she find a way to overcome her anger and join in the festivities?

    Disappointed, he’s surprised to discover Mirai’s subtle pursuit of a life and career in Tokyo, a city he dislikes. Harmony is further disrupted when Emmitt’s search for a more meaningful life in Japan leads him to quit an unsatisfying job at a local university. In the fallout, he finds himself helping his mother-in-law translate Kanazawa’s most famous author, Izumi Kyoka, into English.While continually resisting Mirai’s efforts to move to Tokyo, Emmitt becomes drawn into the mysterious death thirty years prior of a mutual friend of Mirai’s parents. It is only when he and his father-in-law climb the mountain where the man died that he learns the somber truth, and in turn discovers what the future holds for him and his wife.Packed with subtle literary allusion and closely observed nuance, with an intimacy of emotion inexorably tied both to the cityscape and Japan’s mountainous terrain, Kanazawa reflects the mood of Japanese fiction in a fresh, modern incarnation.

    Reported sightings claim that their skin is blood red; their fangs razor sharp. The worms are supposedly poisonous and electrifying . . . or are they? In this funny story, we meet the Mongolian Death Worm family: Beverly, Trevor, Neville and Kevin. In spite of their deadly reputation, they’re determined to make nice and win over the other animals. Their overtures of friendship are . . . not reciprocated. But when disaster strikes, it’s the Mongolian Death Worm family to the rescue! With additional information about the legend, this book is perfect for storytime and discussions of legends and science. Perfect for fans of Ben Clanton, Sandra Fay's The Very True Legend of the Mongolian Death Worms will leave readers of all ages laughing and heartwarmed!

    But when Miuko is cursed and begins to transform into a demon with a deadly touch, she embarks on a quest to reverse the curse and return to her normal life. Aided by a thieving magpie spirit and continuously thwarted by a demon prince, Miuko must outfox tricksters, escape demon hunters, and negotiate with feral gods if she wants to make it home again. But with her transformation comes power and freedom she never even dreamed of, and she’ll have to decide if saving her soul is worth trying to cram herself back into an ordinary life that no longer fits her… and perhaps never did.

    Though she will be "gifted" various names, her birth name is known to her alone. Over the course of 100-plus years, she survives capture, enslavement by several property owners, the Atlantic crossing when she is only eleven years of age, and a brief stint as a pirate's ward, acting as both a spy and a translator.Maryam learns midwifery from a Caribbean-born wise woman, whose "craft" combines curated techniques and medicines from African, Indigenous, and European women. Those midwifery skills allow her to sometimes transcend the racial and class barriers of her enslavement, as she walks the razor's edge trying to balance the lives and health of her own people with the cruel economic mandates of the slave holders, who view infants born in bondage not as flesh-and-blood children but as investment property.Throughout her triumphant and tumultuous life Maryam gains and loses her homeland, her family, her culture, her husband, her lovers, and her children. Yet as the decades pass, this tenacious woman never loses her sense of self.Inspired by a 112-year-old woman the author discovered in an 1870 U.S. Federal census report for Ohio, loosely based on the author's real-life female ancestors, spanning more than a hundred years, from the mid-eighteen-century to the end of America's Civil War, and spanning across the globe, from what is now southern Nigeria to the islands of the Caribbean to North America and the land bordering the Ohio River, Things Past Telling is a breathtaking story of a past that lives on in all of us, and a life that encompasses the best--and worst--of our humanity.

    And she won’t let anything stop her, even a fearsome warlord who wants her captive–or dead.A genius mechanic–and a rare descendant of the once-magical Itan–Laramie drifts from dusty town to dusty town in search of the family that was taken from her.But her rambling desert journey becomes a game of survival when Laramie crosses a ruthless warlord’s territory. Taken prisoner by one of the warlord’s biker gangs, she befriends a quiet, dangerous man named Gered. After surviving hellish circumstances Gered is tired of fighting for a better life.Laramie will always fight. And she’ll stop at nothing to win their freedom.Enjoy this pulse-pounding motorcycle adventure in a post-apocalyptic western setting with found family and being brave in brutal circumstances.

    Buried by sand. Decimated by plague. Plunged off a cliff. This is the forgotten history of Britain's lost cities, ghost towns, and vanished villages. From a Neolithic settlement submerged in sand to an abandoned Black Death hamlet, a Norfolk village requisitioned and zombified by the military to a medieval city swept off a shingle island, these are Britain's shadowlands. Rising star historian Matthew Green excavates these lost settlements in unusually vivid detail, telling the extraordinary tales of their demise. We experience life before, during, and after oblivion, meeting the humans who lived and died in these unique places, and explore the lingering, beautiful remains. At a time when our settlements are threatened by pandemics and global warming, its story of human fragility could not be more powerful. Whether evoking the Atlantis myth or Romantic ruins, an ancient Roman metropolis or the modern coastline, Shadowlands peers through the cracks of history at Britain's secret landscape, transforming our understanding of history by giving a truer sense of the progress of time and presaging our future.

    But twelve-year-old Mara is not entirely human. She is the granddaughter of Stribog, the god of winter winds and she’s determined to bring her beloved father back from the dead. Though powerless, Mara and her best friend Torniv, the bear-shifter, set out on an epic journey to defy the gods and rescue her father.On their epic journey they will bargain with forest lords, free goddesses from enchantments, sail the stormy seas in a ship made of gold and dodge the cooking pot of the villainous Baba Latingorka. Little do the intrepid duo know of the terrible forces they have set in motion, for the world is full of darkness and Mara will have to rely on her wits to survive.

    He shows that the mass detention of over one million Uyghurs in “reeducation camps” is part of processes of resource extraction in Uyghur lands that have led to what he calls terror capitalism—a configuration of ethnoracialization, surveillance, and mass detention that in this case promotes settler colonialism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the regional capital Ürümchi, Byler shows how media infrastructures, the state’s enforcement of “Chinese” cultural values, and the influx of Han Chinese settlers contribute to Uyghur dispossession and their expulsion from the city. He particularly attends to the experiences of young Uyghur men—who are the primary target of state violence—and how they develop masculinities and homosocial friendships to protect themselves against gendered, ethnoracial, and economic violence. By tracing the political and economic stakes of Uyghur colonization, Byler demonstrates that state-directed capitalist dispossession is coconstructed with a colonial relation of domination.

    Most of the short fiction has been reprinted from professional magazines or anthologies, such as Oceans of the Mind, Unstuck, Diamonds in the Sky, Future Science Fiction Digest, and others. The almanac also contains about a hundred pages of full-color paintings and black-and-white drawings by over a dozen Bulgarian artists.ФантАstika is a dream come true—both for Atanas P. Slavov and the members of Terra Fantasia Association of Bulgarian SF & F Writers and Artists, who have dedicated half a century to the promotion of speculative fiction in Bulgaria and around the world, and for Kalin M. Nenov and the Human Library Foundation, who have translated human-evolving fiction into English for the past fifteen years. In an age when we need ever more bridges across the world and to the future, ФантАstika comes to offer you some. Will you walk them?ContentsNote: The current selection was last updated on 13 July 2020Terra Fantasia Association of Bulgarian SF & F Writers and Artists / 7Human Library Foundation / 12ФантАstika Almanac: origins and visions / 14Introductory notes / 16Alternative reading orders / 18Science Fiction / 22Artist: Dimitar Yankov / 22“Love in the Time of Con Crud” by Elena Pavlova / 33“How I Saved the World, Or, The Best Job” by Valentin D. Ivanov / 40“Beating the Air” by Velko Miloev / 48Artist: Vasil Ivanov / 54The Celestial Way by Drake Vato (excerpts) / 64“Deflation” by Valentin D. Ivanov / 89“Virgil and the Water” by Svetoslav Nikolov / 93“Mindster” by Valentin D. Ivanov / 113Artist: Atanas P. Slavov / 123“The Empty Room” by Aleksandar Karapanchev / 149“The Most Terrible Beast” by Khristo Poshtakov / 156Artist: Kalin Nikolov (Illustrations) / 161“Father” by Ivaylo G. Ivanov / 177Artist: Stefan Lefterov / 185Fantasy & Magic Realism / 197To Wake a Dragon Girl by Nikolay Tellalov (excerpt) / 199Artist: Kate Danailova / 216“The Assassination” by Johan Vladimir / 222Artist: Plamen Semkov / 253I, Sinner Ivan by Nikolay Svetlev (excerpt) / 262“Three Tales of a Very Windy Town” by Lyubomir P. Nikolov / 268The Coin by Lights amidst Shadows (excerpt) / 273Artist: Peter Stanimirov / 295“Words Unspoken, Beasts Unnamed” by Krasimira Stoeva / 307Mina, the Spells and the White Vial by Vesela Flamburari (excerpt) / 327Orpheus Descends into Hell by Georgi Malinov (excerpt) / 333Artist: Dimo Milanov / 346“The Dragon and the Orange Juice” by Genoveva Detelinova / 356Avant-garde Speculative Fiction / 373“Impossibly Blue” by Zdravka Evtimova / 374“Asked the Soldier, ‘Who Called Me?’” by Yancho Cholakov / 378“A Small Step” by Mari Paskalev / 391“Journey to Akkad” by Val Todorov / 397Artist: Kalin Nikolov (Graphic Arts) / 415“Dragonflies and Planets” by Aleksandar Karapanchev / 421“That Thing Gone with the Birds” by Val Todorov / 423“The Film-thin Bound” by Kalin M. Nenov / 432Chirpy Firewood by Maria Velcheva (excerpts) / 434“Wrong” by Zdravka Evtimova / 459“In the Beginning Was the Subway” by Lyubomir P. Nikolov / 465Artist: Georgi Markov / 479Fandom / 485Ivan Yefremov SF & Futurology Club / 485Chronicles of Ivan Yefremov SF Club / 486Artist: Emil Valev / 498Futurum / 502“The Keresztury TVirs” by Ivan Popov / 503Acknowledgments / 510You can ask for a preview version of the almanac from the link in the URL field below.