Shine


Lauren Myracle - 2011
    Richly atmospheric, this daring mystery mines the secrets of a tightly knit Southern community and examines the strength of will it takes to go against everyone you know in the name of justice.Against a backdrop of poverty, clannishness, drugs, and intolerance, Myracle has crafted a harrowing coming-of-age tale couched in a deeply intelligent mystery. Smart, fearless, and compassionate, this is an unforgettable work from a beloved author.

The First Third


Will Kostakis - 2013
    She's given him her bucket list (cue embarrassment), and now, it's his job to glue their family back together.No pressure or anything.Fixing his family's not going to be easy and Billy's not ready for change. But as he soon discovers, the first third has to end some time. And then what?It's a Greek tragedy waiting to happen.

Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast


Bill Richardson - 1993
    Hector and Virgil think of their B&B as a refuge, a retreat, a haven, where folks may bring their own books or peruse the brothers' own substantial library. An antic blend of homespun and intellectual humor, Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast is a place readers will want to return to again and again.Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast, originally published by Douglas & McIntyre, won Canada's prestigious Stephen Lecock Award for Humour in 1994, and was published in hardcover by A Wyatt Book for St. Martin's Press in 1996. Its sequel, Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast Pillow Book, is a Canadian bestseller, and will be published in hardcover by A Wyatt Book in October 1997.

Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays


Durga Chew-Bose - 2017
    The result is a lyrical and piercingly insightful collection of essays, letters (to her grandmother, to the basketball star Michael Jordan, to Death), and her own brand of essay-meets-prose poetry about identity and culture. Inspired by Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Lydia Davis’s short prose, and Vivian Gornick’s exploration of interior life, Chew-Bose captures the inner restlessness that keeps her always on the brink of creative expression.Too Much and Not the Mood is a beautiful and surprising exploration of what it means to be a first-generation, creative young woman working today.

How to Fall in Love with Anyone: A Memoir in Essays


Mandy Len Catron - 2017
    In a series of candid, vulnerable, and wise essays that takes a closer look at what it means to love someone, be loved, and how we present our love to the world, Catron deconstructs her own personal canon of love stories. She delves all the way back to 1944, when her grandparents first met in a coal mining town in Appalachia, to her own dating life as a professor in Vancouver, drawing insights from her fascinating research into the universal psychology, biology, history, and literature of love. She uses biologists’ research into dopamine triggers to ask whether the need to love is an innate human drive. She uses literary theory to show why we prefer certain kinds of love stories. She urges us to question the unwritten scripts we follow in relationships and looks into where those scripts come from in the first place. And she tells the story of how she decided to test a psychology experiment that she’d read about—where the goal was to create intimacy between strangers using a list of thirty-six questions—and ended up in the surreal situation of having millions of people following her brand-new relationship. In How to Fall in Love with Anyone Catron flips the script on love and offers a deeply personal, and universal, investigation.

Channel of Peace: Stranded in Gander on 9/11


Kevin Tuerff - 2017
    After U.S. airspace closed following the terrorist attacks, Kevin, who had been experiencing doubts about organized religion, found himself in the small town of Gander, Newfoundland, with thousands of other refugees or “come from aways.”Channel of Peace is a beautiful account of how the people of Gander rallied with boundless acts of generosity and compassion for the “plane people,” renewing Kevin’s spirituality and inspiring him to organize an annual and growing “giving back” day. His story, along with others, has reached thousands of people when it was incorporated into the Broadway musical Come From Away.In Channel of Peace: Stranded in Gander on 9/11, you will find an unforgettable, uplifting tale of goodwill, the strength of the human spirit, and hope.

Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents


Allison Gilbert - 2006
    When author Allison Gilbert lost both parents at age 32, she could not find any books that spoke to her with the same level of compassion and reassurance that she found in the support group she belonged to, so she decided to write one of her own. The result is a sensitive and candid portrayal of loss that brings together experiences from famous and ordinary grief-stricken sons and daughters that explores the regrets, heartache and sometimes, relief, that accompanies pain and healing.Always Too Soon provides a range of intimate conversations with those — famous and not — who have lost both parents, providing readers with a source of comfort and inspiration as they learn to negotiate their new place in the world. Contributors include Hope Edelman, Geraldine Ferraro, Dennis Franz, Barbara Ehrenreich, Yogi Berra, Rosanne Cash, and Ice-T, as well as those who lost parents to the Oklahoma City bombing, the World Trade Center bombings, drunk driving, and more.

The Boy With the Thorn in His Side


Keith Fleming - 2000
    Here, on a locked adolescent psychiatric ward, Keith meets the bewitching Laura. The two teens begin a passionate love affair--only to be separated and placed in different hospitals.By turns lyrical, funny, and poignant, and always informed by touching candor, The Boy with the Thorn in His Side is full of fascinating characters and unexpected twists-at once an odyssey into the extremes of the American 1970s, a universal tale of star-crossed teenage love, and an account of a deeply sensitive young person's struggle to find his place in the world. It marks the debut of a poised and compelling writer.Keith Fleming had been a pretty ordinary Midwestern kid--Little League, Boy Scouts--but the year he turns twelve, his family is torn apart by divorce when he learns that his mother and his Uncle Ed are both gay. By the time Keith is fifteen he has become disfigured by severe acne and is so wild that his father and stepmother place him in a draconian adolescent mental institution. Here he meets Laura, a pretty Mexican girl with whom he begins a passionate love affair.Keith's mother finally demands his release after a series of hospitalizations and sends him off to live with his uncle, Edmund White, in New York. Keith is soon transformed by his young uncle: He is sent to a dermatologist, to Barneys "Boy's Town" for new clothes, and to prep school. He receives a broad cultural education from Uncle Ed at home--all this despite Ed's being poor as well as completely caught up in the beehive of social and sexual activity of 1970s gay Manhattan. In the tradition of This Boy's Life and Girl, Interrupted, The Boy with a Thorn in His Side is a beautifully rendered saga of a deeply sensitive and alienated teen struggling to find his place in the world-and at the same time a very modern tale of teenage love and a young person's touching and complicated bond with an unlikely hero.

Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight?: Confessions of a Gay Dad


Dan Bucatinsky - 2012
    delivery room, decked out in disposable scrubs from shower cap to booties, to welcome their adopted baby girl—launching their frantic yet memorable adventures into fatherhood. Two and a half years later, the same birth mother—a heroically generous, pack-a-day teen with a passion for Bridezilla marathons and Mountain Dew—delivered a son into the couple’s arms. In Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight? Bucatinsky moves deftly from sidesplitting stories about where kids put their fingers to the realization that his athletic son might just grow up to be straight and finally to a reflection on losing his own father just as he’s becoming one. Bucatinsky’s soul-baring and honest stories tap into that all-encompassing, and very human, hunger to be a parent—and the life-changing and often ridiculous road to getting there.

Dreaming of Elsewhere: Observations on Home


Esi Edugyan - 2014
    It is almost entirely true." Thus begins Esi Edugyan's 2013 Henry Kreisel Memorial Lecture. With the finesse of a writer who is in complete control of the worlds she creates, Esi Edugyan guides readers through her experience of home and belonging. She moves effortlessly from cities in Canada and Germany to the bustle of Accra, Ghana, as she finds her identity in the diaspora. Readers interested in travel, literature, and the post-colonial search for belonging will become her willing travel companions on this journey.

Some Assembly Required: The Not-So-Secret Life of a Transgender Teen


Arin Andrews - 2014
    We've all felt uncomfortable in our own skin at some point, and we've all been told that it's just a part of growing up. But for Arin Andrews, it wasn't a phase that would pass. He had been born in the body of a girl and there seemed to be no relief in sight. In this revolutionary memoir, Arin details the journey that led him to make the life-transforming decision to undergo gender reassignment as a high school junior. In his captivatingly witty, honest voice, Arin reveals the challenges he faced as a girl, the humiliation and anger he felt after getting kicked out of his private school, and all the changes, both mental and physical, he experienced once his transition began. Arin also writes about the thrill of meeting and dating a young transgender woman named Katie Hill and the heartache that followed after they broke up. Some Assembly Required is a true coming-of-age story about knocking down obstacles and embracing family, friendship, and first love. But more than that, it is a reminder that self-acceptance does not come ready-made with a manual and spare parts. Rather, some assembly is always required.

Hello?


Liza M. Wiemer - 2015
    One HELLO can save a life.Tricia: A girl struggling to find her way after her beloved grandma's death.Emerson: A guy who lives his life to fulfill promises, real and hypothetical.Angie: A girl with secrets she can only express through poetry.Brenda: An actress and screenplay writer afraid to confront her past.Brian: A potter who sets aside his life for Tricia, to the detriment of both.Linked and transformed by one phone call, Hello? weaves together these five Wisconsin teens' stories into a compelling narrative of friendship and family, loss and love, heartbreak and healing, serendipity, and ultimately hope.Told from all five viewpoints: narration (Tricia), narration (Emerson), free verse poetry (Angie), screenplay format (Brenda), narration and drawings (Brian).

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl


John Colapinto - 2000
    The case would become one of the most famous in modern medicine—and a total failure. As Nature Made Him tells the extraordinary story of David Reimer, who, when finally informed of his medical history, made the decision to live as a male. A macabre tale of medical arrogance, it is first and foremost a human drama of one man's—and one family's—amazing survival in the face of terrible odds.

Mayor Rob Ford: Uncontrollable How I Tried to Help the World's Most Notorious Mayor


Mark Towhey - 2015
    Weeks later, he was accused of groping a campaign rival. In March, he was asked to leave a gala for being too intoxicated; in May fired as the coach of a high school football team. The events were part of a stream of Rob Ford “mishaps,” which include DUIs, accusations of domestic violence, and a trial where the Toronto City Council stripped him of his powers.Through it all, Ford’s former chief of staff, Mark Towhey, stood by his side. Towhey was part of Ford’s inner circle; he’d joined Ford’s mayoral campaign in 2010 and quickly became one of his closest advisors. He responded to media questions regarding Ford’s drug and alcohol additions, his anger management problems, and, of course, the video of Ford smoking crack. In May 2013, Mark Towhey had a confidential conversation with Ford. It was shortly after the video was made public and also followed rumors of Ford's involvement in the murder of Anthony Smith, who stands beside Ford in the video. Thus far, the public only knows two words from that conversation; Towhey told Ford to “get help.” They also know what happened next, Towhey was fired. In Uncontrollable: My Life with Mayor Rob Ford, Towhey gives an insider account of working with Ford, covering for him, managing a man who people see as a joke, who trips over himself in videos; who throws candy at children instead of handing it to them; who rants and raves, and gets belligerent in meetings and at private events.This is a must-read for Canadians voting in the mayoral election, as well as fans of Ford—and his antics—all over the world. It’s an unparalleled tell-all and perhaps what’s most amazing is that Towhey bears no ill will toward the mayor. This is not the account of a man eager to get revenge. It’s simply an up-close look at the mayor—and what goes on behind the scenes.

Dear Rachel Maddow


Adrienne Kisner - 2018
    Brynn tells Rachel about breaking up with her first serious girlfriend, about her brother Nick's death, about her passive mother and even worse stepfather, about how she's stuck in remedial courses at school and is considering dropping out.Then Brynn is confronted with a moral dilemma. One student representative will be allowed to have a voice among the administration in the selection of a new school superintendent. Brynn's archnemesis, Adam, and ex-girlfriend, Sarah, believe only Honors students are worthy of the selection committee seat. Brynn feels all students deserve a voice. When she runs for the position, the knives are out. So she begins to ask herself: What Would Rachel Maddow Do?