The perfect Christmas gift for the incurably curious* 'Funny and fascinating . . . it's really rather brilliant.' ZOE BALL'Made me chortle.' DERMOT O'LEARY'Fantastic . . . I loved it.' STEVE WRIGHT'The best trivia book of the season.' THE SPECTATOR 'Mind-blowing.' DAILY MAIL 'Genuinely interesting.' POPULAR SCIENCE Which lottery numbers should I pick?Is it true that we are made entirely of stardust?Can dogs tell the time?Why do songs get stuck in my head?If Rome wasn't built in a day, how long did it take?How do you wash a raspberry?What is the most expensive thing on Earth?Where is last Wednesday?These are just a few of the questions put to the QI Elves by the listeners of BBC Radio 2's The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show. In their brand new book, you'll learn their fascinating and frequently hilarious answers.From spiders to stinging nettles, bees to boy bands and twins to thermal undies, you'll wonder why these questions hadn't occurred to you before - but you'll never forget the answers and will want to share them with all your friends.Includes an introduction by Zoe Ball.PRAISE FOR THE QI ELVES' PREVIOUS BOOK FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK . . .'QI have outdone themselves!.' ALAN DAVIES'A cracker of a book.' SUE PERKINS'Genuinely useful and endlessly fascinating.' THE SPECTATOR 'Hilarious.' DAILY MAIL For more from the team behind QI's hit TV show check out the QI FACTS series of books, @qikipedia and listen to their weekly podcast at nosuchthingasafish.com or visit qi.com

    Meredith can keep the manuscript to herself, or publish it under her own name. Her decision results in a bestseller, but the novel contains a coded secret; one that will put her on trial for murder and in hiding from "the blood stalker," proving too late that making a deal with the devil comes at a heavy price.

    

    While burnout may seem like the default setting for the modern era, in Can’t Even, BuzzFeed culture writer and former academic Anne Helen Petersen argues that burnout is a definitional condition for the millennial generation, born out of distrust in the institutions that have failed us, the unrealistic expectations of the modern workplace, and a sharp uptick in anxiety and hopelessness exacerbated by the constant pressure to “perform” our lives online. The genesis for the book is Petersen’s viral BuzzFeed article on the topic, which has amassed over eight million reads since its publication in January 2019.Can’t Even goes beyond the original article, as Petersen examines how millennials have arrived at this point of burnout (think: unchecked capitalism and changing labor laws) and examines the phenomenon through a variety of lenses—including how burnout affects the way we work, parent, and socialize—describing its resonance in alarming familiarity. Utilizing a combination of sociohistorical framework, original interviews, and detailed analysis, Can’t Even offers a galvanizing, intimate, and ultimately redemptive look at the lives of this much-maligned generation, and will be required reading for both millennials and the parents and employers trying to understand them.

    The result is a refreshingly unique perspective on Austen and her work and a beautifully nuanced exploration of gender, creativity, and domesticity."--Amanda Foreman, bestselling author of Georgianna, Duchess of DevonshireTake a trip back to Jane Austen's world and the many places she lived as historian Lucy Worsley visits Austen's childhood home, her schools, her holiday accommodations, the houses--both grand and small--of the relations upon whom she was dependent, and the home she shared with her mother and sister towards the end of her life. In places like Steventon Parsonage, Godmersham Park, Chawton House and a small rented house in Winchester, Worsley discovers a Jane Austen very different from the one who famously lived a 'life without incident'. Worsley examines the rooms, spaces and possessions which mattered to her, and the varying ways in which homes are used in her novels as both places of pleasure and as prisons. She shows readers a passionate Jane Austen who fought for her freedom, a woman who had at least five marriage prospects, but--in the end--a woman who refused to settle for anything less than Mr. Darcy. Illustrated with two sections of color plates, Lucy Worsley's Jane Austen at Home is a richly entertaining and illuminating new book about one of the world’s favorite novelists and one of the subjects she returned to over and over in her unforgettable novels: home.

    Going beyond previous traditional biographies which have traced Austen's daily life from Steventon to Bath to Chawton to Winchester, Byrne's portrait-organized thematically and drawn from the most up-to-date scholarship and unexplored sources-explores the lives of Austen's extended family, friends, and acquaintances. Through their absorbing stories we view Austen on a much wider stage and discover unexpected aspects of her life and character. Byrne transports us to different worlds-the East Indies and revolutionary Paris-and different events-from a high society scandal to a petty case of shoplifting, She follows Austen on her extensive travels, setting her in contexts both global and English, urban and rural, political and historical, social and domestic-wider perspectives of vital and still under-estimated importance to her creative life.Literary scholarship has revealed that letters and tokens in Austen's novel's often signal key turning points in the unfolding narrative. This groundbreaking biography explores Jane's own story following the same principle. As Byrne reveals, small things in the writer's world-a scrap of paper, a simple gold chain, an ivory miniature, a bathing machine-hold significance in her emotional and artistic development. The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things introduces us to a woman deeply immersed in the world around her, yet far ahead of her time in her independence and ambition; to an author who was an astute commentator on human nature and the foibles of her own age. Rich and compelling, it is a fresh, insightful, and often surprising portrait of an artist and a vivid evocation of the complex world that shaped her.

     You’re about to begin a journey that will end in only one way—with you standing naked in an abandoned ravine watching as your old wardrobe slowly burns. Let this be your illustrated Iliad for dressing better. Don’t sleep. Read Fuck Yeah Menswear. Refer to it. Cite it in your dissertation. Owning this book sends a very clear message to your peers, coworkers, and loved ones: “I’m trill as fuck.”

    (Neil Gaiman)Drawn from Gaiman's trove of published speeches, poems and creative manifestos, 'ART MATTERS' is an embodiment of this remarkable multimedia artist's vision - an exploration of how reading, imagining, and creating can transform the world and our lives. 'ART MATTERS' brings together four of Gaiman's most beloved writings on creativity and artistry:❖1❖"CREDO", his remarkably concise and relevant manifesto on free expression, first delivered in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings❖2❖"MAKE GOOD ART", his famous 2012 commencement address delivered at the Philadelphia University of the Arts❖3❖"MAKING A CHAIR", a poem about the joys of creating something, even when the words won't come❖4❖"ON LIBRARIES", an impassioned argument for libraries that illuminates their importance to our future and celebrates how they foster readers and daydreamers.'ART MATTERS' is a stirring testament to the freedom of ideas that inspire us to make art in the face of adversity and dares us to choose to be bold.RUNNING TIME ⇰ 49mins.©2018 Neil Gaiman (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

    (No doubt seminars were organized by the Alexandria Librarians Association on the future of the scroll and what to do about the rising barbarian tide.) At no time in our memory, though, have these discussions and conversations been so profound and critical. Here one of today's leading thinkers and speakers about the future of libraries brings together 30 leaders from all types of libraries and from outside librarianship to describe their vision of what the library will be in 2020. Contributors including Stephen Abram, Susan Hildreth, Marie Radford, Clifford Lynch, and Library Journal's The Annoyed Librarian were asked to describe the "library of 2020," in whatever terms they wanted, either a specific library or situation or libraries in general. They were told: "be bold, be inspirational, be hopeful, be true, be provocative, be realistic, be depressing, be light-hearted, be thoughtful, be fun...be yourself, and for heaven's sake, don't be boring." Not that they could be. Broadly representative of important perspectives and aspects within the profession as well as featuring important voices beyond the professional realm, Library 2020 presents thought-provoking and illuminating visions from many points of view. It is both required reading for library leaders and trustees as well as an ideal supplemental text for LIS classes looking at the future of the profession.

    Piper's three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Shaina, answered and said, "A mean man carried Mommy away." Then the line went dead. In the tranquil region of southeast South Dakota, word of the young mother who was brazenly abducted from her home in broad daylight shocked residents. Piper was the second woman to vanish, following the startling incident of a young woman who narrowly escaped abduction by fighting for her life on a dark and secluded highway.An intensive search by an elite team of investigators uncovered a secret crime location, but the discovery of a nightshirt cut in half, a burnt candle, and a homemade bondage board revealed the chilling truth behind the missing women. With the help of a quick-witted and streetwise maximum security prison inmate, prosecutor Larry Long and his team were able to piece together the sinister facts of the diabolical crimes.Bestselling authors PHIL AND SANDY HAMMAN, along with former Attorney General LARRY LONG, dive into the grim and demented world of Robert Leroy Anderson, a sexual sadist, rapist, and murderer. Duct Tape Killer is also the story of perseverance and proof that love will not be extinguished by the ruinous evil that seeks to take root in our world.

    But on Miranda’s twelfth birthday, Billy has a mysterious falling-out with her mother and suddenly disappears from Miranda’s life. She doesn’t hear from him again until sixteen years later when she receives unexpected news: Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy—and one final scavenger hunt.

    Nevertheless their lives were so closely intertwined, their choices, dreams and tragedies so eerily similar, it seems impossible to consider one without the other.Both women became famous writers; fell in love with brilliant but impossible men; and were single mothers who had children out of wedlock; both lived in exile; fought for their position in society; and thought deeply about how we should live. And both women broke almost every rigid convention there was to break: Wollstonecraft chased pirates in Scandinavia. Shelley faced down bandits in Naples. Wollstonecraft sailed to Paris to witness the Revolution. Shelley eloped in a fishing boat with a married man. Wollstonecraft proclaimed that women’s liberty should matter to everyone.Not only did Wollstonecraft declare the rights of women, her work ignited Romanticism. She inspired Coleridge, Wordsworth and a whole new generation of writers, including her own daughter, who – with her young lover Percy Shelley – read Wollstonecraft’s work aloud by her graveside. At just nineteen years old and a new mother herself, Mary Shelley composed Frankenstein whilst travelling around Italy with Percy and roguish Lord Byron (who promptly fathered a child by Mary’s stepsister). It is a seminal novel, exploring the limitations of human nature and the power of invention at a time of great religious and scientific upheaval. Moreover, Mary Shelley would become the editor of her husband’s poetry after his early death – a feat of scholarship that did nothing less than establish his literary reputation.Romantic Outlaws brings together a pair of visionary women who should have shared a life, but who instead shared a powerful literary and feminist legacy. This is inventive, illuminating, involving biography at its best.

    The result is riveting, compelling, incontestable. Impossible to put down. This book provides all anyone needs to know about the reality of prostitution in moving, insightful prose that engages and disposes of every argument ever raised in its favor.” —Catharine A. MacKinnon, law professor, University of Michigan and Harvard UniversityBorn to mentally unstable parents, Rachel Moran left home at the age of fourteen. Being homeless, she became prostituted to survive. With intelligence and empathy, she describes the fears she and others had working on the streets and in the brothels. Moran also speaks to the psychological damage that accompanies prostitution and the estrangement from one’s body. At the age of twenty-two, Moran escaped prostitution. She has since become a writer and an abolitionist activist.

    Jay Withgott and new co-author Matt Laposata present the latest coverage of environmental science and introduce new FAQ sections to address common student misconceptions. Note: This is the standalone book if you want the book/access card order the ISBN below: 0321752546 / 9780321752543 Essential Environment: The Science behind the Stories Plus MasteringEnvironmentalScience with eText -- Access Card Package Package consists of: 0321752902 / 9780321752901 Essential Environment: The Science behind the Stories 0321754077 / 9780321754073 MasteringEnvironmentalScience with Pearson eText -- Valuepack Access Card -- Essential Environment: The Science behind the Stories (ME component) "

    In THE ART OF X-RAY READING, Clark invites you to don your X-ray reading glasses and join him on a guided tour through some of the most exquisite and masterful literary works of all time, from The Great Gatsby to Lolita to The Bluest Eye, and many more. Along the way, he shows you how to mine these masterpieces for invaluable writing strategies that you can add to your arsenal and apply in your own writing. Once you've experienced X-ray reading, your writing will never be the same again.