That's the best case scenario for a woman on the streets of Juárez, Mexico. Kate del Castillo (La Reina del Sur) delivers a stunning one-woman performance that transports listeners from a New York stage to the treacherous streets of Juárez, Mexico, where thousands of women have been murdered in an ongoing epidemic of violence. Written by Isaac Gomez (Steppenwolf's La Ruta) and based on his intimate interviews, the way she spoke is a raw and riveting exploration of responsibility and follows one playwright's journey to give voice to a city of women silenced by violence, fear, and a world that has turned a deaf ear to their stories. This poignant and unforgettable play is directed by Obie and Lucille Lortel-winner Jo Bonney.

    When he died in the grandest house in New Orleans sixty-nine years later, he was among the richest, most powerful men in the world. In between, he worked as a fruit peddler, a banana hauler, a dockside hustler, and a plantation owner. He battled and conquered the United Fruit Company, becoming a symbol of the best and worst of the United States: proof that America is the land of opportunity, but also a classic example of the corporate pirate who treats foreign nations as the backdrop for his adventures. In Latin America, when people shouted “Yankee, go home!” it was men like Zemurray they had in mind.            Rich Cohen’s brilliant historical profile The Fish That Ate the Whale unveils Zemurray as a hidden kingmaker and capitalist revolutionary, driven by an indomitable will to succeed. Known as El Amigo, the Gringo, or simply Z, the Banana Man lived one of the great untold stories of the last hundred years. Starting with nothing but a cart of freckled bananas, he built a sprawling empire of banana cowboys, mercenary soldiers, Honduran peasants, CIA agents, and American statesmen. From hustling on the docks of New Orleans to overthrowing Central American governments, from feuding with Huey Long to working with the Dulles brothers, Zemurray emerges as an unforgettable figure, connected to the birth of modern American diplomacy, public relations, business, and war—a monumental life that reads like a parable of the American dream.

    Once there, they've stayed to hear about the young brave with the magic moccasins, who talks with animals and uses his supernatural gifts to bring peace and enlightenment to his people. This 1855 masterpiece combines romance and idealism in an idyllic natural setting.

    The stylishness and vibrant color of Disney films in the early 1940s through mid-1950s came primarily from artist Mary Blair. In her prime, she was an amazingly prolific American artist who enlivened and influenced the not-so-small worlds of film, print, theme parks, architectural decor, and advertising. At its core, her art represented joyful creativity and communicated pure pleasure to the viewer. Her exuberant fantasies brimmed with beauty, charm, and wit, melding a child's fresh eye with adult experience. Blair's personal flair comprised the imagery that flowed effortlessly and continually for more than a half a century from her brush. Emulated by many, she remains inimitable: a dazzling sorceress of design and color.

    The vast majority of Mexicans, who are native or of mixed native and Spanish blood, are politically powerless and slowly starving to death. Presiding over this corrupt system is Don Porfirio Díaz, the ruthless and inscrutable president of the Republic.             Against this backdrop, The City of Palaces opens in a Mexico City jail with the meeting of Miguel Sarmiento and Alicia Gavilán. Miguel is a principled young doctor, only recently returned from Europe but wracked by guilt for a crime he committed as a medical student ten years earlier. Alicia is the spinster daughter of an aristocratic family. Disfigured by smallpox, she has devoted herself to working with the city’s destitute. This unlikely pair—he a scientist and atheist and she a committed Christian—will marry. Through their eyes and the eyes of their young son, José, readers follow the collapse of the old order and its bloody aftermath.             The City of Palaces is a sweeping novel of interwoven lives: Miguel and Alicia; José, a boy as beautiful and lonely as a child in a fairy tale; the idealistic Francisco Madero, who overthrows Díaz but is nevertheless destroyed by the tyrant’s political system; and Miguel’s cousin Luis, shunned as a “sodomite.” A glittering mosaic of the colonial past and the wealth of the modern age, The City of Palaces is a story of faith and reason, cathedrals and hovels, barefoot street vendors and frock-coated businessmen, grand opera and silent film, presidents and peasants, the living and the dead. Winner, International Latino Book Award for Latino Fiction, Latino Literacy Now Second place, International Latino Book Award for Historical Fiction, Latino Literacy Now Finalist, Gay Fiction, Lambda Literary Awards Honorable Mention in Drama, Latino Books into Movies Award, International Latino Book Awards Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians Outstanding Book, selected by the Public Library Reviewers

    The World Songs are what inspire all newborns to come out into the world, and John must find them for her. But how?

    It decreed when she would ascend Mayan pyramids and become the first woman to rule in her own right. In misty tropical jungles 1500 years ago, at the height of Mayan civilization, a royal girl with visionary powers was destined to become the ruler of Palenque. Last of her lineage, her accession would fulfill her father’s ambitions. Powerful forces were allied against them to overthrow the dynasty. Her father trained her intensely in Mayan calendars, history and politics and cultivated support among nobles, while his cousins plotted with enemy cities to attack Palenque (Lakam Ha).Yohl Ik’nal (Heart of North Wind) put aside her personal desires and the comfortable world of palace women to meet challenges as royal heir. Love for her father steeled her will and sharpened her skills. Overcoming fear, she performed Mayan sacrifice as required of rulers. Her visionary powers enabled her to identify political opponents and predict enemy attack. The first Queen of Lakam Ha, she built temples to honor her father and her Gods. She protected her city and brought prosperity to her people. But she foresaw a time of darkness and devastation coming, predicted through Mayan calendars. Could she trust her vision to reveal the will of the Triad Gods? Would her choices cause ruin or bring her city to greatness?The story of this remarkable woman lay buried for centuries under crumbling Mayan ruins. She was one of the most powerful women in the Americas, but few have heard of her. Her accession carved a new glyph in Mayan history, preserving her dynasty and propelling it to heights of power and creativity. She was the grandmother of K’inich Janaab Pakal, the most famous Mayan ruler. In 1952 his royal tomb was excavated, the richest Mayan burial found and the equivalent of Egypt’s King Tut.In the midst of betrayal and revenge, through court intrigues and regional power struggles, she confronted personal crises and found a love relationship that sustained her. Enter the world of the ancient Mayans in this extensively researched historical novel that brings Yohl Ik’nal and her people vibrantly to life.

     Believe the unbelievable and dream the impossible because Hannah, the little girl with big dreams, is coming your way. Come and see for yourself her bold acts of bravery, her courageous conviction as she proves to the world that the Brooklyn Bridge is safe to cross. But she can't do it alone. P. T. Barnum and his parade of twenty-one elephants provide a spectacular show that will save the day! Impossible, you say? Then you'll have to look inside. You won't want to miss this, the greatest show on earth.

    But Stephen's two expeditions to Mexico and Central America in 1839 and 1841 yielded the first solid information on the culture of the Maya Indians. In this work, and in his other masterpiece Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, he tells the story of his travels to some 50 ruined Mayan cities.In this book, he describes the excitement of exploring the magnificent ruined cities of Copan and Palenque, and his briefer excursions to Quirigua, Patinamit, Utatlan, Gueguetenango, Ocosingo, and Uxmal. For all these cities, his details are so accurate that more recent explorers used the book as a Baedeker to locate ruins forgotten by even the Indians.In addition to being a great book on archaeological discovery, Stephen's work is also a great travel book. Telling of journeying by mule back on narrow paths over unimaginable deep ravines, through sloughs of mud and jungles of heavy vegetation, describing dangers of robbery, revolution, fever, mosquitoes and more exotic insects, Stephen's narrative remains penetrating and alive. His account of his attempt to buy Copan for $50 is told with the adroitness of a Mark Twain, and his descriptions of Indian life — primitive villages a few miles from the ruins, burials, treatment of the sick, customs, amusements, etc. — never lose their interest.Frederick Catherwood's illustrations virtually double the appeal of the book. Highly exact, remarkably realistic drawings show overall views, ground plans of the cities, elevations of palaces and temples, free-standing sculpture, carved hieroglyphics, stucco bas-reliefs, small clay figures, and interior details.

    Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood—both already celebrated for their adventures in Egypt, the Holy Land, Greece, and Rome—sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would upend the West’s understanding of human history.In the tradition of Lost City of Z and In the Kingdom of Ice, former San Francisco Chronicle journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist William Carlsen reveals the remarkable story of the discovery of the ancient Maya. Enduring disease, war, and the torments of nature and terrain, Stephens and Catherwood meticulously uncovered and documented the remains of an astonishing civilization that had flourished in the Americas at the same time as classic Greece and Rome—and had been its rival in art, architecture, and power. Their masterful book about the experience, written by Stephens and illustrated by Catherwood, became a sensation, hailed by Edgar Allan Poe as “perhaps the most interesting book of travel ever published” and recognized today as the birth of American archaeology. Most important, Stephens and Catherwood were the first to grasp the significance of the Maya remains, understanding that their antiquity and sophistication overturned the West’s assumptions about the development of civilization.By the time of the flowering of classical Greece (400 b.c.), the Maya were already constructing pyramids and temples around central plazas. Within a few hundred years the structures took on a monumental scale that required millions of man-hours of labor, and technical and organizational expertise. Over the next millennium, dozens of city-states evolved, each governed by powerful lords, some with populations larger than any city in Europe at the time, and connected by road-like causeways of crushed stone. The Maya developed a cohesive, unified cosmology, an array of common gods, a creation story, and a shared artistic and architectural vision. They created stucco and stone monuments and bas reliefs, sculpting figures and hieroglyphs with refined artistic skill. At their peak, an estimated ten million people occupied the Maya’s heartland on the Yucatan Peninsula, a region where only half a million now live. And yet by the time the Spanish reached the “New World,” the Maya had all but disappeared; they would remain a mystery for the next three hundred years.Today, the tables are turned: the Maya are justly famous, if sometimes misunderstood, while Stephens and Catherwood have been nearly forgotten. Based on Carlsen’s rigorous research and his own 1,500-mile journey throughout the Yucatan and Central America, Jungle of Stone is equally a thrilling adventure narrative and a revelatory work of history that corrects our understanding of Stephens, Catherwood, and the Maya themselves.

    But when Ernesto ends up on the wrong side of the region's brutal gangs he is forced to flee the country, and Raul, because he looks just like his brother, follows close behind--away from one danger and toward the great American unknown.In this urgent chronicle of contemporary immigration, journalist Lauren Markham follows the seventeen-year-old Flores twins as they make their harrowing journey across the Rio Grande and the Texas desert, into the hands of immigration authorities, and from there to their estranged older brother's custody in Oakland, CA. Soon these unaccompanied minors are navigating a new school in a new language, working to pay down their mounting coyote debt, and facing their day in immigration court, while also encountering the triumphs and pitfalls of life as American teenagers-girls, grades, Facebook-with only each other for support. With intimate access and breathtaking range, Markham offers a coming of age tale that is also a nuanced portrait of Central America's child exodus, an investigation of U.S. immigration policy, and an unforgettable testament to the migrant experience.

    Fleeing from an America he sees as mired in materialism and conformity, he hopes to rediscover a purer life. But his utopian experiment takes a dark turn when his obsessions lead the family toward unimaginable danger.

    If it weren’t for gym class, things would be perfect. All those jumping jacks and deep knee bends make Sister hot, sweaty, and sore. But when a slight twist of fate gives her the chance to sit on the sidelines, will Sister stretch the truth instead of her arms?

    

    Settlers are heading west on the Oregon Trail as they seek better lives. Will you: Go west with your family as part of a wagon train? Serve as a trail guide for a group of settlers? Try to cope with the changes in your way of life as a western American Indian? Everything in this book happened to real people. And YOU CHOOSE what you do next. The choices you make could lead you to opportunity, to wealth, to poverty, or even to death.