HE'S GOING BACK TO THE PLACE HE NEVER PLANNED TO SEE AGAIN:HIS HOMETOWNChef and Restaurateur Jake Ruiz left Newport, Washington, and never looked back. After his parents had practically disowned him for being gay, the town was nothing but bad memories for Jake. But, years later, a family emergency brings him back to his hometown. Grappling with the death of his husband and suddenly finding himself a single father to his five-year-old, Jake ...

Be popular and good-looking—it's the key to a happy life. Luckily, with a bit of know-how and money, you, too, can have it all. At least, that's what teen pop culture was selling in surround sound at the turn of the millennium. From movies like Clueless to TV's Dawson's Creek to the music videos on MTV's Total Request Live and the catalogs of Abercrombie & Fitch, a consumer-minded ethos drove pop culture storytelling as millennials came of age in the late 1990s a...

Offering both a framework and a set of practices that are grounded in different nonviolence traditions, Heart at the Center asks listeners to consider what a pedagogy of nonviolence looks like, sounds like, and feels like in the classroom.Written with warmth, expertise, and humility, Mike Tinoco invites us into his classroom, drawing on stories from his own life and powerful examples from civil rights movement leaders to explore questions such as:● How do we create...

It's the early 2010s, and seventeen-year-old Yesenia Rivera hates everything about herself: her brown skin and wide nose, her curly hair and hand-me-down clothing, and her inability to fit in with either the Mexican girls or the white girls at her school. So when her mother's new job requires them to uproot their lives and move to the Pacific Northwest, Yesenia devises a plan to remake herself completely. Cloaked in skin lightening cream, blue contact lenses, dyed-blonde hair, and a "white...

On July 3, 1972, twenty-four hippies from Clearwater, Florida, set up tents and settled in for the night at Briar Bottom, a public US Forest Service campground in western North Carolina. The impromptu campout was a pit stop for the group on their way to a Rolling Stones concert in Charlotte. Early that evening, they drank beer, smoked marijuana, and listened to rock music as they anticipated the good times that lay ahead. Near midnight, the county sheriff showed up with six deputies, alleg...

For twenty-four-year-old Oliver Popp, autism is just another fact of life. As long as Oliver sticks to a comfortable itinerary planned in advance, he gets by just fine as a staff writer for Offbeat Traveler magazine. But a curveball drops into Oliver's budding career when his first feature assignment takes him to Washington, DC, to chronicle the latest tourism trends.His freelance project photographer is Ricky Warner, a gregarious and impulsively adorable shot of adrenalin...

"A tour-de-force that touches on how football is always mixed up with politics in every corner of the globe" —Mehreen Khan, the Times and cohost of the Humans & Heroes football podcast"Brings us closer to the overlooked aspects of football, the social and political ones, which truly imbue clubs with soul" —Carles Viñas, author of St. Pauli: Another Football is PossibleThink you know everything about football?Which ...

If there is an enemy in the War on Drugs, it is people of color. That is the lesson of forty years of cultural production in the United States. Popular culture, from Scarface and Miami Vice to Narcos and Better Call Saul, has continually positioned Latinos as an alien people who threaten the US body politic with drugs. Jason Ruiz explores the creation and endurance of this trope, its effects on Latin Americans and Latinx people, and its role in the cultu...

The conquest of Mexico is over, and Juan de Toñanes is one of so many soldiers without glory who roam like beggars for the land they helped subdue. When he receives one last mission, to hunt down a renegade Indian who's called the Father and who preaches a dangerous heresy, he understands that this may be his last chance to carve himself the future he's always dreamed of. But as he goes deep into the unexplored lands of the north following the Father's trace, he will discover the footprint...

Foreword by Dave EggersSmart, whimsical, and often scathing, the fiction of Kurt Vonnegut influenced a generation of American writers—including Dave Eggers, author of this volume’s Foreword. In these previously unpublished gems, Vonnegut’s originality infuses a unique landscape of factories, trailers, and bars—and characters who pit their dreams and fears against a cruel and sometimes comically indifferent world.Here are stories of men and machines, art and artifice, and ho...

'Dark, compelling, and wickedly smart ... deliciously twisted thriller' Lisa Jewell, author of None of This is True'By turns gory, shocking, macabre and often very funny, you won't be able to put it down' Alex Michaelides, author of The Silent PatientAs Dante and his friends leave their small town for the rush of the big city, they can only think of the endless possibilities. But Rio de Janeiro is not the ...

The internationally acclaimed #1 bestselling thriller, now in English. This program features multicast narration.“This rollercoaster of a novel is highly imaginative and totally unique. I devoured it — no pun intended! — in one sitting. By turns gory, shocking, macabre and often very funny, you won’t be able to put it down. Just be grateful you’re not on the menu…” —Alex Mi...