Memoirs of a Happy Warrior is an autobiographical account of professional mixed martial arts fighter Roxanne Modafferi. The book takes place over the course of two years when Roxanne decided to move from the United States to Japan for her junior year of college. After settling in with her host family and figuring out how become more Japanese, Roxanne immediately continued her martial arts training. From there, she embarked on her professional MMA career and never looked back. Roxanne toppl...

In the tales that make up The Elephant Vanishes, the imaginative genius that has made Haruki Murakami an international superstar is on full display.In these stories, a man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald’s in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard. By ...

South of the Border, West of the Sun is the beguiling story of a past rekindled, and one of Haruki Murakami’s most touching novels.Hajime has arrived at middle age with a loving family and an enviable career, yet he feels incomplete. When a childhood friend, now a beautiful woman, shows up with a secret from which she is unable to escape, the fault lines of doubt in Hajime’s quotidian existence begin to give way. Rich, mysterious, and quietly dazzling, in ...

Prepare yourself for a journey through the world of Patton Oswalt, one of the most creative, insightful, and hysterical voices on the entertainment scene today. Widely known for his roles in the films Big Fan and Ratatouille, as well as the television hit The King of Queens, Patton Oswalt—a staple of Comedy Central—has been amusing audiences for decades. Now, with Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, he offers a fascinating look into his most unu...

The bestselling, wonderfully unconventional, “warmly conspiratorial…seriously good” (The New York Times) memoir-in-letters from the Tony, Emmy, and Golden Globe Award–winning actress that has received fabulous and wide praise. “There is no one else quite like Mary-Louise Parker…Funny, heartbreaking and profound” (ELLE).An extraordinary literary memoir, Dear Mr. You renders the singular arc of a woman’s life through letters Mary-Louise Par...

Get to know all the fantastic minifigures who populate the LEGO world, including the LEGO Movie characters in the LEGO Minifigures Character Encyclopedia: LEGO Movie Edition.Go on the ultimate LEGO adventure and meet every single LEGO Minifigure character, from the Punk Rocker and Lawn Gnome to the DJ and Pirate Captain, plus the exciting new characters from The LEGO Movie, scheduled for release in February 2014.Inside you'll find character biograp...

The ultimate guide to creating chibis!They populate manga with chunky bodies, oversized heads, and huge expressive eyes. They're schoolgirls and schoolboys, magical girls and mad scientists, fairies and fighter princesses, cyborgs and sci-fi secret agents, bikers and bad samurais, robots and rebel leaders. They've even got chubby pets and zany monster sidekicks! They're chibis!Excruciatingly cute, highly stylized, and beloved in all manga genres (fantasy, m...

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE DOWNRIGHT WEIRD.The Ikebukuro district in Tokyo is full of interesting people. A boy longing for the extraordinary. A hotheaded punk. An airheaded pseudo-stalker. An information broker who works for kicks. An underground doctor who specializes in truly desperate patients. A high school student infatuated with a monster. And a headless rider on a pitch-black motorcycle. Their story may not be a heartwarming one, but as it turns out, even weirdos like these sometim...

Comedian, blogger and essayist Samantha Irby is not going to be a better person this year than she was last. Nope. With a small group of woo-woo others, Irby sets seventy micro-resolutions, and then—with the rest of us—she fails at almost every single one of them.A Vintage Shorts Original. An ebook short.Thoughtful, witty, poignant—the failed intentions in New Year Same Trash will make you laugh and cry. Because you know y...

From the New York Times bestselling author Catherynne Valente comes a ferocious riff on the women in superhero comics.The Refrigerator Monologues is a collection of linked stories from the points of view of the wives and girlfriends of superheroes, female heroes, and anyone who’s ever been “refrigerated”: comic book women who are killed, raped, brainwashed, driven mad, disabled, or had their powers taken so that a male superhero’s storyline will p...

In the tradition of Holy Cow and Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, a fascinating travel memoir of finding yourself in the India of rickshaws and rainy seasons.Jenny was miserable, and it was all India's fault...until she realized it wasn't.When Jenny's husband gets transferred to India for work, she looks forward to a new life filled with glamorous expat friends and exciting adventures. What she doesn't expect is endless bouts of food po...

The Lesson presents a self-absorbed wedding DJ as the newest addition to Jessica Westhead’s trademark cast of offbeat protagonists. This posturing narrator is showing a new recruit the ropes, but what begins as a monologue full of blue-collar bravado grows more menacing over the course of the night. He becomes fixated on a female wedding guest—you know the type, spiky hair and feathers on her dress. As he dwells on the woman he feels is using dance-floor requests ...