Download or read book At the Edge of the Haight written by Katherine Seligman and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 10th Winner of the 2019 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, Awarded by Barbara Kingsolver “What a read this is, right from its startling opening scene. But even more than plot, it’s the richly layered details that drive home a lightning bolt of empathy. To read At the Edge of the Haight is to live inside the everyday terror and longings of a world that most of us manage not to see, even if we walk past it on sidewalks every day. At a time when more Americans than ever find themselves at the edge of homelessness, this book couldn’t be more timely.” —Barbara Kingsolver, author of Unsheltered and The Poisonwood Bible Maddy Donaldo, homeless at twenty, lives with her dog and makeshift family in the hidden spaces of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. She thinks she knows how to survive and whom to trust until she accidentally witnesses the murder of a young man. Her world is upended as she has to face not only the killer but also the police and then the victim’s parents, who desperately want Maddy to tell them about the life their son led after he left home. And in a desire to save her since they could not save their own son, they are determined to have Maddy reunite with her own lost family. But what makes a family? Is it the people who raised you if they don’t have the skills to look after you? Is it the foster parents whose generosity only lasts until things become more difficult? Or is it the family that Maddy has met in the park, young people who also have nowhere else to go? Told with sensitivity and tenderness and set against the backdrop of a radically changing city, At the Edge of the Haight is narrated by a young girl just beginning to understand herself. The result is a powerful debut that, much like previous Bellwether winners The Leavers, by Lisa Ko, or Heidi Durrow’s The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, grapples with one of the most urgent issues of our day.

Download or read book The Secret Files of Fairday Morrow written by Jessica Haight and published by Yearling. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fans of classic detective stories, The Mysterious Benedict Society, and the Secret Series will devour this illustrated middle-grade adventure that follows three curious sleuths as they investigate a mysterious, old house with some hidden secrets. Eleven-year-old Fairday Morrow is less than thrilled that her family is moving thousands of miles from civilization to the quiet country town of Ashpot, Connecticut, where she’s absolutely certain she’ll die of boredom. As if leaving New York City and her best friend, Lizzy, the only other member of the elite Detective Mystery Squad (DMS), weren’t bad enough, Fairday is stuck living in the infamous Begonia House, a creepy old Victorian with dark passageways, a gigantic dead willow tree, and a mysterious past. Before she can even unpack, strange music coming from behind a padlocked door leads Fairday up a spiral staircase and into a secret room, where an ancient mirror, a brass key, and a strange picture of a red-haired lady are the first in a series of clues that takes the members of the Detective Mystery Squad on an amazing adventure. "The novel builds to an exciting climax that takes magic in stride and suggests that further mysteries await the DMS trio."-Publishers Weekly "This paranormal mystery will be of interest to young readers looking for something spooky but not violent or scary."-Booklist

Download or read book Killer Looks written by Zara Stone and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Killer Looks is the definitive story about the long-forgotten practice of providing free nose jobs, face-lifts, breast implants, and other physical alterations to prisoners, the idea being that by remodeling the face you remake the man. From the 1920s up to the mid-1990s, half a million prison inmates across America, Canada, and the U.K willingly went under the knife, their tab picked up by the government. In the beginning, this was a haphazard affair -- applied inconsistently and unfairly to inmates, but entering the 1960s, a movement to scientifically quantify the long-term effect of such programs took hold. And, strange as it may sound, the criminologists were right: recidivism rates plummeted. In 1967, a three-year cosmetic surgery program set on Rikers Island saw recidivism rates drop 36% for surgically altered offenders. The program, funded by a $240,000 grant from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, was led by Dr. Michael Lewin, who ran a similar program at Sing-Sing prison in 1953. Killer Looks draws on the intersectionality of socioeconomic success, racial bias, the prison industry complex and the fallacy of attractiveness to get to the heart of how appearance and societal approval creates self-worth, and uncovers deeper truths of beauty bias, inherited racism, effective recidivism programs, and inequality.

Download or read book Everywhere You Don t Belong written by Gabriel Bump and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2020 Winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence “A comically dark coming-of-age story about growing up on the South Side of Chicago, but it’s also social commentary at its finest, woven seamlessly into the work . . . Bump’s meditation on belonging and not belonging, where or with whom, how love is a way home no matter where you are, is handled so beautifully that you don’t know he’s hypnotized you until he’s done.” —Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review In this alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude isn’t dangerous or brilliant—he’s an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home. Claude just wants a place where he can fit. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights–era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change; yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America. Percolating with fierceness and originality, attuned to the ironies inherent in our twenty-first-century landscape, Everywhere You Don’t Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.

Download or read book How to Build a Heart written by Maria Padian and published by Algonquin Young Readers. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Family isn't something you're born into — it's something you build. One young woman’s journey to find her place in the world as the carefully separated strands of her life — family, money, school, and love — begin to overlap and tangle. All sixteen-year-old Izzy Crawford wants is to feel like she really belongs somewhere. Her father, a marine, died in Iraq six years ago, and Izzy’s moved to a new town nearly every year since, far from the help of her extended family in North Carolina and Puerto Rico. When Izzy’s hardworking mom moves their small family to Virginia, all her dreams start clicking into place. She likes her new school—even if Izzy is careful to keep her scholarship-student status hidden from her well-to-do classmates and her new athletic and popular boyfriend. And best of all: Izzy’s family has been selected by Habitat for Humanity to build and move into a brand-new house. Izzy is this close to the community and permanence she’s been searching for, until all the secret pieces of her life begin to collide. How to Build a Heart is the story of Izzy’s journey to find her place in the world and her discovery that the choices we make and the people we love ultimately define us and bring us home.

Download or read book Eight Miles High written by Richie Unterberger and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2003 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eight Miles High documents the evolution of the folk-rock movement from mid-1966 through the end of the decade. This much-anticipated sequel to Turn! Turn! Turn!(00330946) - the acclaimed history of folk-rock's early years - portrays the mutation of the genre into psychedelia via California bands like the Byrds and Jefferson Airplane; the maturation of folk-rock composers in the singer-songwriter movement; the re-emergence of Bob Dylan and the creation of country-rock; the rise of folk-rock's first supergroup, CSN&Y; the origination of British folk-rock; and the growing importance of major festivals from Newport to Woodstock. Based on firsthand interviews with such folk-rock visionaries as: Jorma Kaukonen, Roger McGuinn, Donovan, Judy Collins, Jim Messina, Dan Hicks and dozens of others.

Download or read book Here and Now and Then written by Mike Chen and published by MIRA. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Brotherhood A Goodreads Choice Awards 2019 Semifinalist One of BookBub’s Best Science Fiction Books of 2019 One of Book Riot’s Best Books of 2019 So Far One of The Nerd Daily’s Best Debut Novels of 2019 Featured in The Millions “A Year in Reading” One of Entropy’s Best Fiction Books of 2019 He’ll go anywhere and any when to save his daughter Kin Stewart is an everyday family man: working in IT, trying to keep the spark in his marriage, struggling to connect with his teenage daughter. But his current life is a far cry from his previous career…as a time-traveling secret agent from over a century in the future. Stranded in suburban San Francisco since the 1990s after a botched mission, Kin has kept his past hidden from everyone around him, until one afternoon, his “rescue” team arrives—eighteen years too late. Their mission: return Kin to 2142, where he’s been gone only weeks, not years, and where another family is waiting for him. A family he can’t remember. Torn between two lives, Kin’s desperate efforts to stay connected to both will threaten to destroy the agency and even history itself. With his daughter’s very existence at risk, he will have to take one final trip to save her—even if it means breaking all the rules of time travel in the process. “Heartfelt and thrilling… Chen’s concept is unique, and [his characters’] agony is deeply moving. Quick pacing, complex characters, and a fascinating premise.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Download or read book Mudbound written by Hillary Jordan and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1946, Laura McAllan tries to adjust after moving with her husband and two children to an isolated cotton farm in the Mississipi Delta.

Download or read book San Francisco Noir written by Peter Maravelis and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brand new stories by: Domenic Stansberry, Barry Gifford, Eddie Muller, Robert Mailer Anderson, Michelle Tea, Peter Plate, Kate Braverman, David Corbett, Alejandro Murguia, Sin Soracco, Alvin Lu, Jon Longhi, Will Christopher Baer, Jim Nesbit, and David Henry Sterry. San Francisco Noir lashes out with hard-biting, all-original tales exploring the shadowy nether regions of scenic "Baghdad by the Bay." Virtuosos of the genre meet up with the best of S.F.'s literary fiction community to chart a unique psycho-geography for a dark landscape. From inner city boroughs to the outlands, each contributor offers an original story based in a distinct neighborhood. At times brutal, darkly humorous, and revelatory--the stories speak of a hidden San Francisco, a town where the fog is but a prelude to darker realities lingering beneath. "The protagonists of noir fiction have their own agendas, but for readers much of the pleasure is unraveling the mystery and deciphering the clues that constitute a city, and if there is a love story in noir writing it's the passion of writers, readers, and protagonists for the gritty geographical details. As the bodies drop in the strong stories here, steep, fog-wrapped, fratricidal San Francisco comes alive: here are old neighborhoods, bars, bookstores, the famous and then forgotten landlord arson at 16th and Valencia, buried streams, streetcars, parks, a lost city and the new city haunting almost every page of this gorgeous anthology of San Francisco noir." -Rebecca Solnit "I was wondering about the city's shadowside that the guides didn't show. These top writers are of the 'As bad as it gets' brand, and then worse. If you like puke, fear & loathing caused by stray bullets, happenstance getting the hero who is an anti-hero really, a male corpse rotting in the bathtub while the woman poops in the garden, the Reverend Christmas shot in the ear by the PO-lice, then this is your good read for a murky, maybe even gritty, weekend." -Janwillem van de Wetering "San Francisco has long been a city of back alleys and black figures; this is its romantic map." -Michael Ray, Editor, Zoetrope All-Story

Download or read book Call it What You Want written by Keith Morris and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2010-03-23 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of short stories chronicling the lives of flawed men who are caught in between adolescence and adulthood.

Download or read book The Kitchen Front written by Jennifer Ryan and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir comes an unforgettable novel of a BBC-sponsored wartime cooking competition and the four women who enter for a chance to better their lives. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY GOOD HOUSEKEEPING • “This story had me so hooked, I literally couldn’t put it down.”—NPR Two years into World War II, Britain is feeling her losses: The Nazis have won battles, the Blitz has destroyed cities, and U-boats have cut off the supply of food. In an effort to help housewives with food rationing, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front is holding a cooking contest—and the grand prize is a job as the program’s first-ever female co-host. For four very different women, winning the competition would present a crucial chance to change their lives. For a young widow, it’s a chance to pay off her husband’s debts and keep a roof over her children’s heads. For a kitchen maid, it’s a chance to leave servitude and find freedom. For a lady of the manor, it’s a chance to escape her wealthy husband’s increasingly hostile behavior. And for a trained chef, it’s a chance to challenge the men at the top of her profession. These four women are giving the competition their all—even if that sometimes means bending the rules. But with so much at stake, will the contest that aims to bring the community together only serve to break it apart?

Download or read book Half Broken Things written by Morag Joss and published by Delta. This book was released on 2006-07-25 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping tale of psychological suspense perfect for the readership of Minette Walters and Ruth Rendell, Half Broken Things is a novel that peers into the lives of three dangerously lost people…and the ominous haven they find when they find each other. Jean is a house sitter at the end of a dreary career. Steph is nine months pregnant and on the run. And Michael is a thief. Through a mixture of deceit, good luck, and misfortune, these three damaged loners have come together at a secluded country home called Walden Manor. Now all three have found what they needed most: a new beginning, a little kindness, a little love. Living off the manor’s riches, tending its grounds and gardens, they leave the outside world far behind and build a happiness so long denied them. That is, until the first unexpected visitor arrives...igniting a chain reaction that is at once spellbinding and disastrous. A stunning, thought-provoking crime novel of chilling moral complexity, Half Broken Things is a gripping, haunting exploration of love and our need for it, of the damage done when we go long without it, and the deeds we might be driven to in its name.

Download or read book The Summer of Love written by and published by John Libbey Eurotext. This book was released on 1995 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 30th anniversary edition tells, through photos and words exactly what the psychedelic world of the Haight-Ashbury was like.

Download or read book Modern Minimal written by Alissa Haight Carlton and published by C&T Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bring sleek, modern aesthetics to your quilts with 20 “stylish yet deceivingly simple quilt patterns” in this “must-have book” (Modern Patchwork). A co-founder of The Modern Quilt Guild, Alissa Haight Carlton has been at the forefront of this exciting movement in quilting. In Modern Minimal, she shares twenty original patterns that use negative space and bold colors to make gorgeously elegant—and surprisingly simple—quilts. Along with these projects, Alissa explains quilting techniques such as straight, strip, and even improvisational piecing. These beginner-friendly designs are perfect for solid fabrics accented with your favorite prints.

Download or read book Vanishing in the Haight written by Max Tomlinson and published by Oceanview Publishing. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: USA Today best-selling author An ex-con traces a victim's clues to set a cold case ablaze Between fending off a lecherous parole officer and trying to get by in 1978 San Francisco, private investigator Colleen Hayes struggles to put her life back together so she can reconnect with her runaway teenage daughter. Then her life changes dramatically. She accepts a case from wealthy, retired industrialist Edward Copeland. The old man is desperate to solve the brutal murder of his daughter, a murder that took place in Golden Gate Park eleven years earlier—during the Summer of Love. The case has since gone cold, her murderer never found. Now, in his final days, Copeland hires Colleen to find his daughter's killer in hopes he might die in peace. Colleen understands what it means to take a life—she spent a decade in prison for killing her ex. Battling her own demons, she immerses herself in San Francisco's underbelly, where police corruption is rampant. Her investigation turns deadly as she pries for information, yet there is little to go on. However, a song on the radio makes her wonder—did the murdered girl leave any clues that others may have missed? Perfect for fans of Elmore Leonard and Gillian Flynn

Download or read book Out There written by Kate Folk and published by Random House. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thrilling new voice in fiction injects the absurd into the everyday to present a startling vision of modern life, “[as] if Kafka and Camus and Bradbury were penning episodes of Black Mirror” (Chang-Rae Lee, author of My Year Abroad). “Stories so sharp and ingenious you may cut yourself on them while reading.”—Kelly Link, author of Get In Trouble With a focus on the weird and eerie forces that lurk beneath the surface of ordinary experience, Kate Folk’s debut collection is perfectly pitched to the madness of our current moment. A medical ward for a mysterious bone-melting disorder is the setting of a perilous love triangle. A curtain of void obliterates the globe at a steady pace, forcing Earth’s remaining inhabitants to decide with whom they want to spend eternity. A man fleeing personal scandal enters a codependent relationship with a house that requires a particularly demanding level of care. And in the title story, originally published in The New Yorker, a woman in San Francisco uses dating apps to find a partner despite the threat posed by “blots,” preternaturally handsome artificial men dispatched by Russian hackers to steal data. Meanwhile, in a poignant companion piece, a woman and a blot forge a genuine, albeit doomed, connection. Prescient and wildly imaginative, Out There depicts an uncanny landscape that holds a mirror to our subconscious fears and desires. Each story beats with its own fierce heart, and together they herald an exciting new arrival in the tradition of speculative literary fiction.

Download or read book The Girls written by Emma Cline and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE INSTANT BESTSELLER • An indelible portrait of girls, the women they become, and that moment in life when everything can go horribly wrong ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, The Guardian, Entertainment Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle, Financial Times, Esquire, Newsweek, Vogue, Glamour, People, The Huffington Post, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Time Out, BookPage, Publishers Weekly, Slate Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader. Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie, it is exotic, thrilling, charged—a place where she feels desperate to be accepted. As she spends more time away from her mother and the rhythms of her daily life, and as her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realize she is coming closer and closer to unthinkable violence. Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award • Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize • The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • Emma Cline—One of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists Praise for The Girls “Spellbinding . . . a seductive and arresting coming-of-age story.”—The New York Times Book Review “Extraordinary . . . Debut novels like this are rare, indeed.”—The Washington Post “Hypnotic.”—The Wall Street Journal “Gorgeous.”—Los Angeles Times “Savage.”—The Guardian “Astonishing.”—The Boston Globe “Superbly written.”—James Wood, The New Yorker “Intensely consuming.”—Richard Ford “A spectacular achievement.”—Lucy Atkins, The Times “Thrilling.”—Jennifer Egan “Compelling and startling.”—The Economist