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One Last Story and That's It


Etgar Keret - 2005
    

Flight Path: A Search for Roots beneath the World's Busiest Airport


Hannah Palmer - 2017
    Having uprooted herself from a promising career in publishing in her adopted Brooklyn, Palmer embarks on a quest to determine the fate of her lost homes—and of a community that has been erased by unchecked Southern progress. Palmer's journey takes her from the ruins of kudzu-covered, airport-owned ghost towns to carefully preserved cemeteries wedged between the runways; into awkward confrontations with airport planners, developers, and even her own parents. Along the way, Palmer becomes an amateur detective, an urban historian, and a mother. Lyrically chronicling the overlooked devastation and beauty along the airport’s fringe communities in the tradition of John Jeremiah Sullivan and Leslie Jamison, Palmer unearths the startling narratives about race, power, and place that continue to shape American cities. Part memoir, part urban history, Flight Path: A Search for My Roots beneath the World's Busiest Airport is a riveting account of one young mother's attempt at making a home where there’s little home left.

Shang-a-lang: Life as an International Pop Idol


Les McKeown - 2003
    It is a remarkable story of extremes, and a no-holds barred account of Rollermania.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories


Raymond Carver - 1977
    Two of the stories—later revised for What We Talk About When We Talk About Love—are particularly notable in that between the first and the final versions, we see clearly the astounding process of Carver’s literary development.

Loudmouth: Tales (and Fantasies) of Sports, Sex, and Salvation from Behind the Microphone


Craig Carton - 2013
    The station manager who hired him was the first to recognize his considerable on-air talent, and helped start what has become a legendary radio career. Often compared to Howard Stern, Carton has hosted a series of highly rated shows, and in 2007 he joined WFAN, where he and Boomer Esiason host an eponymous show every morning for four hours out of a studio in New York City.In this debut book, Carton invites the reader to join him as he recounts tales from his suburban youth, defends his long-held love affair with the New York Jets, reminisces about the shenanigans of some of the highest paid and most celebrated athletes playing today, and reflects on his work as one of radio’s craftiest, most hilarious personalities ever to get behind the microphone.

Blackened White


Brian W. Foster - 2012
    Foster makes his entrance into the literary world with "Blackened White", a first person account of life, love, faith, and pain. In this collection of poems, essays, and short stories, Foster offers a series of brutally honest, often humorous, and profoundly ironic writings chronicling a journey into his own human condition. Using his unique style of prose and storytelling, we observe a young man wrestling with his faith in the midst of relationships, addictions, sexuality and the unending, relentless desire to be whole. Author and Grammy award winning singer Kevin Max says Blackened White "Prods the flesh with electrodes of hyper emotion, dangerous subtlety and purposefully mannered archaism". Likening it to an "Open House flier", Foster invites the reader along the journey with him through this thought-provoking collection, which is sure to leave an indelible mark on the soul.

People I Want to Punch in the Throat: Volume 3


Jen Mann - 2015
    This is a collection of original essays that can not be found anywhere else. Each volume is different and you never know what you'll find. They are an assortment of Jen's childhood memories, stories about her family, and rants about everything that make her punchy all told with her usual snarky take. Volume Three of this series includes 3 NEVER BEFORE SEEN essays: HEY DICK, WOULD YOU SEND YOUR MOM THAT PICTURE? LAURA INGALLS WILDER NEVER HAD A SIGNATURE LIPSMACKER FLAVOR MISSED MOM CONNECTION

This Water Goes North


Dennis Weidemann - 2008
    With leaky tents, little experience, and no TV cameras or big-time sponsors, the lads set out in 1979 to paddle 1,400 miles north to Hudson Bay. Why? Why not! Driven by a youthful sense of adventure, they took the chance of a lifetime just to see what lay around the next turn. Sit in their canoe as they glide through smooth waters and survive rushing rivers. Experience with them the desolation of true wilderness and go on humorous escapades with local characters. With graceful storytelling, Dennis Weidemann weaves this richly diverse tale of near disasters, splendid sunsets, bootleggers, Mounties, polar bears, and the indomitable spirit of youth. Share the dream that still lives, and that will surely inspire others.

Writer, M.D.: The Best Contemporary Fiction and Nonfiction by Doctors


Leah Kaminsky - 2010
    Writer, M.D. celebrates this rich tradition with a collection of fiction and nonfiction by today’s most beloved physician-writers, including,• Abraham Verghese, on the lost art of the physical exam• Pauline Chen, on the bond between a med student and her first cadaver• Atul Gawande, on the ethical dilemmas of a young surgical intern• Danielle Ofri, on the devastation of losing a patient• Ethan Canin, on love, poetry, and growing oldThese essays and stories illuminate the inner lives of men and women who deal with trauma, illness, mortality, and grief on a daily basis. Read together, they provide a candid, moving, one-of-a-kind glimpse behind the doctor’s mask.

Speaking With the Angel


Nick HornbyRobert Harris - 2000
    Some money from each copy of Speaking with the Angel sold will benefit autism education charities around the world, including The Treehouse School in London, where Nick’s son Danny is a student, and the New York Child Learning Institute here in the States. This project is truly a labor of love for Hornby and the other writers involved, many of whom are Nick’s friends.These original first-person narratives come from the most exciting voices in fiction. Melissa Bank gives readers a glimpse into the mind of a modern New Yorker whose still-new relationship is a constant source of surprise in “The Wonder Spot.” In Zadie Smith’s “I’m the Only One,” a young man recalls his strained relationship with his diva-esque sister. Dave Egger’s “After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned,” is told from the viewpoint of an unfortunate pit bull. Helen Fielding offers up a new twist on I’ve fallen and I can’t get up in “Luckybitch.” And in Nick Hornby’s “NippleJesus,” a bruiser finds out that guarding modern art is far more hazardous than controlling the velvet ropes at a nightclub. Speaking with the Angel also includes stories from Roddy Doyle, Irvine Welsh, Colin Firth, John O’Farrell, Robert Harris, Patrick Marber, and Giles Smith.Twelve completely new stories, written by twelve undeniably imaginative voices. Speaking with the Angel is at turns clever, outrageous, witty, edgy, tender, and wicked. This is what they meant by original.

Blithe Tomato


Mike Madison - 2006
    Biography. Across America, people are escaping fluorescent-lit grocery store aisles to rediscover the fresh, seasonal offerings of the farmers' market. A new and thriving culture has sprung up as thousands gather each weekend to pinch, poke, smell, and probe the produce-and at times each other. Who knew that buying peaches and eggplants could be such fun? Mike Madison, who raises organic flowers, melons, olives, and apricots, has been setting up at these markets for over twenty years. With keen observations and sly wit, Madison presents a series of essays and vignettes that introduce us to the characters who make our food, the economy that produces it, and the spirit that has placed farmers' markets among the fastest growing movements in the country.

No City for Slow Men: Hong Kong's quirks and quandaries laid bare


Jason Y. Ng - 2013
    Ng has a knack for making the familiar both fascinating and achingly funny. Three years after his bestselling début HONG KONG State of Mind, the razor-sharp observer returns with a sequel that is bigger and every bit as poignant.No City for Slow Men is a collection of 36 essays that examine some of the pressing social, cultural and existential issues facing Hong Kong. It takes us on a tour de force from the gravity-defying property market to the plunging depths of old age poverty, from the storied streets of Sheung Wan to the beckoning island of Cheung Chau, from the culture-shocked Western expat to the misunderstood Mainland Chinese and the disenfranchised foreign domestic worker. The result is a treatise on Hong Kong life that is thought-provoking, touching and immensely entertaining.Together with HONG KONG State of Mind (2010) and Umbrellas in Bloom (2016), (2010), No City For Slow Men forms Ng’s "Hong Kong Trilogy" that traces the city’s sociopolitical developments since its return to Chinese rule.

Dakota Christmas


Joseph Bottum - 2011
    By turns sweet and comic, sentimental and serious, Joseph Bottum's "Dakota Christmas" is an instant Christmas classic. In this beautifully written account of the mad joys and wild emotions of Christmas for children, Bottum captures the universal spirit of the season even while he recounts his memories with a sharp particularity that brings them alive for readers."Her hair was the same thin shade of gray as the weather-beaten pickets of the fence around her frozen garden," he writes of one chance Christmas encounter. "She had a way with horses, and she was alone on Christmas Eve. There is little in my life I regret as much as that I would not stay for just one cookie, just one cup of tea.""Joseph Bottum is one of America’s most gifted writers, with a perfect ear and a matchless style," the essayist Andrew Ferguson notes of "Dakota Christmas." And "to watch him deck the halls with his customary humor and generosity of spirit is glad tidings indeed--guaranteed to make your Yuletide bright.""Families have always loved brief Christmas classics that could be read aloud by the fire," adds Michael Novak. "Joseph Bottum's 'Dakota Christmas' is such a classic."

Better Late Than Never: From Barrow Boy to Ballroom


Len Goodman - 2009
    Len Goodman tells all about his new-found fame, his experiences on Strictly Come Dancing, and also on the no.1 US show Dancing with the Stars and his encounters with the likes of Heather Mills-McCartney and John Sergeant. But the real story is in his East End roots. And Len's early life couldn't be more East End. The son of a Bethnal Green costermonger he spent his formative years running the fruit and veg barrow and being bathed at night in the same water Nan used to cook the beetroot. There are echoes of Billy Elliot too. Though Len was a welder in the London Docks, he dreamt of being a professional footballer, and came close to making the grade had he not broken his foot on Hackney Marshes. The doctor recommended ballroom dancing as a light aid to his recovery. And Len, it turned out, was a natural. At first his family and work mates mocked, but soon he had made the final of a national competition and the welders descended en masse to the Albert Hall to cheer him on. With his dance partner, and then wife Cheryl, Len won the British Championships in his late twenties and ballroom dancing became his life. Funny and heart-warming, Len Goodman's autobiography has all the honest East End charm of Tommy Steele, Mike Read or Roberta Taylor.

236 Pounds of Class Vice President: A Memoir of Teenage Insecurity, Obesity, and Virginity


Jason Mulgrew - 2012
    Complete with awkward, “what was he thinking?” photos—unmitigated proof of Mulgrew’s ungainly adolescence—236 Pounds of Class Vice President is an no-holds-barred yet tender look at the years some of us would rather forget.