Ambitious 22-year-old Lexie Waters is intent on taking the advertising world by storm. When she’s offered the soon to be open position she’s been vying for at a swanky advertising agency, there’s only one last summer separating her from dreams of corporate success. Still bitter from catching her boyfriend cheating, she heads out for a night of fun to see her favorite band, Devil’s Garden, but fun turns into utter embarrassment when she insults the enticingly confident lead singer, Van Sinclair. Van is intrigued by Lexie’s ability to resist his charm and secretly obtains her cell number. Shocked but eager to get to know this captivating rocker, Lexie accepts Van’s invitation to see his next show, which requires an overnight stay. The overwhelming feelings that follow take them both by surprise, and with two months left before starting her sought after new position, Lexie joins the tour. As she’s catapulted into the world of groupies and wild parties, she questions Van’s commitment to her. So what happens at summer’s end when time runs out?

    They are all amazing characters who manage to carry a deep knowledge of their chosen species within a distinctly quirky shell. Other animals making an appearance include otters , house sparrows, robins , owls, bats, badgers, dolphins, toads, dragonflies, moths, foxes and adders.Hugh Warwick, animal enthusiast and hedgehog fanatic, writes a series of affectionate and quirky homages to the animals of the British Isles, composed of fieldwork and interviews with the people who love and conserve them.

    It is a remarkable story of extremes, and a no-holds barred account of Rollermania.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    A virus so vicious that it reduces the infected to a terrifying version of themselves that could lead to the end of our race as we know it. Elaina has been identified as the point of transmission and the reason for the chaos and havoc. She created the virus and let it out. Now, more than just the infected would like to see her head served up on a platter. When havoc unfolds in the city, law enforcement officer Alec is involved in an accidental shooting. Put on paid leave, he bitterly lays low during the madness until he’s called back to help control the alarming spread of the virus, while hoping to put an end to the person responsible for the virus and his near-shattered career. Elaina is trying to stay under the radar too, but she can’t hide forever. She has to help stop this and come up with a cure before it’s too late. When Alec and Elaina cross paths, they’ll have to decide what’s more important… revenge, redemption, or survival.

    (He died on July 31st, 2012 at the age of 86.) The triumphant arc of Vidal’s literary career wasn’t solely a mastery of language, though that never hurts. Handsome, poised, slim, charismatic, able to hold his own in verbal fisticuffs without losing his imperious cool, Vidal was the premiere star author of his generation, the one who elevated the role of talk-show guest to a command performance--a theatrical event. He brought the electronic crackle of the TV screen to his prose and the tactical precision of his prose to combat debate on TV. His near-violent altercations on camera with William F. Buckley, Jr. and Norman Mailer are the stuff of YouTube legend and the secret to The Gore Supremacy. A contributing writer to Vanity Fair, a partisan observer of pop culture, and the author of the New York-in-the-70s memoir Lucking Out (which comes out in paperback this fall), James Wolcott has been a closeup observer of Vidal on-camera and off for more years than seems respectable. This, his first Kindle Single, is his way of paying homage--and saying goodbye.

    Amy Gentry argues that these violent aesthetic responses to Amos's performance, both positive and negative, are organized around disgust-the disgust that women are taught to feel, not only for their own bodies, but for their taste in music. Released in 1996, Amos's third album, Boys for Pele, represents the height of Amos's willingness to explore the ugly qualities that make all of her music, even her more conventionally beautiful albums, so uncomfortably, and so wonderfully, strange. Using a blend of memoir, criticism, and aesthetic theory, Gentry argues that the aesthetics of disgust are useful for thinking in a broader way about women's experience of all art forms.

    This historical tale has been unread for three millennia and so shakes the rabbi's faith that he kills to keep the object and the tale it tells to himself. So begins a quest to find the real Mount Sinai and a treasure buried within the Mountain of God. The treasure hunt engages the skills of a charming, beautiful but conniving Los Angeles realtor; her lover, an LAPD detective; a young and adventurous Silicon Valley billionaire; and a Harvard Egyptologist. SEEKING SINAI tests the limits of more than one man’s faith and becomes entangled in Middle East turmoil and political intrigue. Uncovering Sinai’s treasures also a presents a conundrum. Finding them would be the greatest archeological discovery of all time; revealing them to the world could jeopardize the moral foundation of the world’s greatest religions. Author Barry Pollack weaves an adventure story that takes you from ancient Egypt to California to the modern Middle East and back again. It’s a journey that weaves Jewish philosophy with the politics of oil and water and the meaning and value of faith.

    Twenty-four-year-old Julia Nash has recently arrived in Manhattan, where she works as a publisher’s assistant. She dreams of becoming an editor with her own stable of bestselling authors—but it is hard to get promoted in the recession-clobbered book biz. Julia blows off steam by going dancing downtown with her best friend, Vicky. One night, a hot British guitarist invites them into his VIP section. Despite an entourage of models and groupies, Jack chooses Julia as his girl for the evening—and when Jack Kipling picks you, you go with it. The trouble is … he’s never met a girl like her before. And she resists being just one in a long line. Jack exposes her to new experiences, from exclusive nightclubs in SoHo to the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood; from mind-bending recording sessions to wild backstage parties. Yet Julia is afraid to fall for him. Past relationships have left her fragile; one more betrayal just might break her. As she fends off her grabby boss and tries to move up the corporate ladder, Julia’s torrid relationship with Jack takes her to heights she’s never known—and plunges her into depths she’s never imagined. With a fascinating inside look at publishing, this entertaining story of a bookish young woman’s adventures with a rock superstar is witty, moving, and toe-curlingly steamy.

    Seventeen years after their last album, they resurrected themselves with an intense, socially conscious record, We Got It from Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service, which arrived when fans needed it most, in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib digs into the group's history and draws from his own experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound resonated among fans like himself. The result is as ambitious and genre-bending as the rap group itself.Abdurraqib traces the Tribe's creative career, from their early days as part of the Afrocentric rap collective known as the Native Tongues, through their first three classic albums, to their eventual breakup and long hiatus. Their work is placed in the context of the broader rap landscape of the 1990s, one upended by sampling laws that forced a reinvention in production methods, the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that threatened to destroy the genre, and some record labels' shift from focusing on groups to individual MCs. Throughout the narrative Abdurraqib connects the music and cultural history to their street-level impact. Whether he's remembering The Source magazine cover announcing the Tribe's 1998 breakup or writing personal letters to the group after bandmate Phife Dawg's death, Abdurraqib seeks the deeper truths of A Tribe Called Quest; truths that--like the low end, the bass--are not simply heard in the head, but felt in the chest.

    In this book, for the first time, the parodies, original compositions, and polka medleys of the Weird Al universe finally receive their due respect. Lily Hirsch weaves together original interviews with the prince of parody himself, creating a fresh take on comedy and music's complicated romance. She reveals that Yankovic's jests have always had a deeper meaning, addressing such topics as bullying, celebrity, and racial and gender stereotypes.Weird Al is undeterred by those who say funny music is nothing but a low-brow pastime. And thank goodness. With his good-guy grace still intact, Yankovic remains unapologetically and unmistakably himself. Reveling in the mischief and wisdom of Yankovic's forty-year career, this book is an Al-expense-paid tour of a true comedic and musical genius.

    A dirt-poor Smoky Mountain childhood paved the way for the buxom blonde butterfly’s metamorphosis from singer-songwriter to international music superstar. The undisputed “Queen of Country Music,” Dolly has sold more than 100 million records worldwide and has conquered just about every facet of the entertainment industry: music, film, television, publishing, theatre, and even theme parks. It’s been more than fifty years since Dolly Parton arrived in Nashville with just her guitar and a dream. Her story has been told many times and in many ways, but never like this.            Dolly on Dolly is a collection of interviews spanning five decades of her career and featuring material gathered from celebrated publications including Rolling Stone, Cosmopolitan, Playboy, and Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. Also included are interviews which have not been previously available in print. Dolly’s feisty and irresistible brand of humor, combined with her playful, pull-up-a-chair-and-stay-awhile delivery, makes for a fascinating and inviting experience in downhome philosophy and storytelling. Much like her patchwork “Coat of Many Colors,” this book harkens back to the legendary entertainer’s roots and traces her evolution, stitching it all together one piece at a time.

    Hoping to explore the “real ground of literature,” she reads her way through a somewhat randomly chosen shelf of fiction, from LEQ to LES.The shelf has everything Rose could wish for—a classic she has not read, a remarkable variety of authors, and a range of literary styles. The early nineteenth-century Russian classic A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov is spine by spine with The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Stories of French Canadian farmers sit beside those about aristocratic Austrians. California detective novels abut a picaresque novel from the seventeenth century. There are several novels by a wonderful, funny, contemporary novelist who has turned to raising dogs because of the tepid response to her work.In The Shelf, Rose investigates the books on her shelf with exuberance, candor, and wit while pondering the many questions her experiment raises and measuring her discoveries against her own inner shelf—those texts that accompany us through life. “Fairly sure that no one in the history of the world has read exactly this series of novels,” she sustains a sense of excitement as she creates a refreshingly original and generous portrait of the literary enterprise.

    Two registered sex offenders had come to live in the small town Greenberg had called home for thirty years, and his fellow citizens, terrified and enraged, had come out to pin the blame on him. In this riveting memoir about a modern-day witch hunt, Greenberg recounts with his trademark acerbic humor what it is like to be the target of an entire town's wrath. As he describes his Hawthornian moment, he vividly sketches the characters and landscapes that make up a classic New England village and reflects on sex, panic, betrayal, and the sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrible ties that bind communities together.Gary Greenberg is the author of four books, most recently The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry, which will be out in paperback this fall. His features and essays have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Harper's, where he is a contributing editor. He is the recipient of the Erik Erikson Institute Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media. A practicing psychotherapist, he lives with his family in Connecticut.Cover design by Kristen Radtke.

    He begins with an "imaginary conversation" with George Washington entitled "The Muzak Muse," in which he argues the values of actively listening to music by learning how to read notes, as opposed to simply hearing music in a concert hall. The book also features the reproduction of five television scripts from Bernstein on the influence of jazz, the timeless appeal of Mozart, musical romanticism, and the complexities of rhythmic innovation. Also included are Bernstein's analyses of symphonies by Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and Brahms, a rare reproduction of a 1957 lecture on the nature of composing, and a report on the musical scene written for New York Times after his sabbatical leave from directorship of the New York Philharmonic during the 1964-65 season.

    From the "a-ha" moment in junior high school that inspired his very first guitar, Taylor has been living the American dream, crafting quality products with his own hands and building a successful, sustainable business. In Guitar Lessons, he shares the values that he lives by and that have provided the foundation for the company's success. Be inspired by a story of guts and gumption, an unwavering commitment to quality, and the hard lessons that made Taylor Guitars the company it is today.