Download or read book The Witch Demands a Retraction written by Melissa Balmain and published by . This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pinocchio Runs for Office, The Peeved Piper, Not So Snow White and so many more in this twisted collection of adult fairy tales! This hilarious collection of poems by Melissa Balmain puts a grown-up, contemporary spin on the stories and characters we all learned as children, from Little Red Riding Hood, to the Three Bears, the Pied Piper, and Cinderella; each delightfully depicted in full-color by Ron Barrett, (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) one of the best and award winning illustrators in the business. Early Praise for The Witch Demands a Retraction: "If you're looking for the perfect bedtime poetry to send your little ones peacefully to dreamland, keep moving. In The Witch Demands a Retraction, Melissa Balmain's poetic retakes of classic fairytales, 'happy endings' means something else, and Mama Bear finds a clue in her bed that Goldilocks was not after the porridge. Witty, cringey, and hilarious. For every parent who wants a break from sincerity, and for every bad aunt or uncle looking for the perfect gift - this is your book." - Tom Bodett, author and NPR personality "This is an extremely irresponsible book - imprudent, unconscionable, certain to emotionally scar impressionable children for life. I highly recommend it." - Gene Weingarten, syndicated humor columnist, The Washington Post "Like Leopold and Loeb, Balmain and Barrett are a pair that will go down in history-not that I'm implying anything. It's just that when the right pair gets together at the right time, great things happen. And if a cousin or two had to die for this book? Totally worth it." - Michael Gerber, Publisher, The American Bystander "Does anyone say, 'OH NO SHE DI-INT!' anymore? Because that will be your response to basically every poem in this treat of a book. Balmain turns every fairy tale on its head and shows us its panties, none the worse for wear. Just don't be drinking anything while you read, because these verses are a recipe for spit takes. Balmain has a warped mind and astonishing wit matched thoroughly by her warm heart. Come for the fart joke, stay for the sly and bawdy feminism."- Faith Salie, comedian, author, journalist, seen & heard on CBS, NPR & PBS

Download or read book Walking in on People Able Muse Book Award written by Melissa Balmain and published by Able Muse Press. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Melissa Balmain’s Walking in on People, the serious is lightened with a generous serving of wit and humor, and the lighthearted is enriched with abundant wisdom. She shows us how poetry can be fun yet grounded in everyday challenges and triumphs, with subjects ranging from the current and hip (Facebook posts, online dating, layoffs, retail therapy, cell-phone apps, trans fat), to the traditional and time-tested (marriage, child-rearing, love, death). Through it all, her craft is masterful, with a formal dexterity deployed with precision in a showcase of forms such as the villanelle, ballad, triolet, nonce, and the sonnet. It is little wonder then that Walking in on People is the winner of the 2013 Able Muse Book Award, as selected by the final judge, X.J. Kennedy. This is a collection that will not only entertain thoroughly, but also enlighten and reward the reader. PRAISE FOR WALKING IN ON PEOPLE: Walking in on People grabbed me with its very title, and it never let go. Poetry these days is rarely so entertaining, so beautifully crafted, so sharp of eye, yet so wise and warm of heart. Melissa Balmain keenly perceives faults in people and in our popular culture, with piercing wit but never bitterness. Don’t miss the wonderful “Lament,” on what it takes to write a best seller, or “The Marital Bed,” a love poem with naturalistic detail. She really commands her art. Indeed, I think any poet who rhymes lobsters and Jersey mobsters deserves to have an equestrian statue of herself erected in Bangor or Newark or both. — X.J. Kennedy (Judge, 2013 Able Muse Book Award) Melissa Balmain’s poems add to the rhythmic bounce of light verse a darker, more cutting humor. The result is an infectious, often hilarious blend of the sweet and the lethal, the charming and the acidic. — Billy Collins So many of the poems in Melissa Balmain’s triumphant debut lodge themselves in that Frostian zone where they are hard to get rid of. They recur in the mind in moments of hilarity and pathos, of exaltation and mortification, and they never let us go. — David Yezzi (from the foreword) Accessible and entertaining poetry doesn't often prevail over the grim personal memoir in poetry contests, but this time the judges were smart. They went for Melissa Balmain's stylish and always metrically perfect wit. You can relate to this poetry if you have ever: longed to save the restaurant lobsters from their fate, lost your lover to his electronic devices, faced the fact that babies are ugly and toddlers suppress your genius, or (of course) walked in on people in all the wrong places. With diverse forms, inventive rhymes, the right word always chosen and a sense of humor always in evidence—you really have no excuse not to buy this book. — Gail White

Download or read book Killer Verse written by Harold Schechter and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2011-09-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Killer Verse: Poems of Murder and Mayhem is a spine-tingling collection of terrifically creepy poems about the deadly art of murder. The villains and victims who populate these pages range from Cain and Abel and Bluebeard and his wives to Lizzie Borden, Jack the Ripper, and Mafia hit men. The literary forms they inhabit are just as varied, from the colorful melodramas of old Scottish ballads to the hard-boiled poetry of twentieth-century noir, from lighthearted comic riffs to profound poetic musings on murder. Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy, W. H. Auden, Stevie Smith, Mark Doty, Frank Bidart, Toi Derricotte, Lynn Emanuel, and Cornelius Eady are only a few of the many poets, old and new, whose work is captured in this heart-stopping—and criminally entertaining—collection.

Download or read book Before You Know Kindness written by Chris Bohjalian and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2005-08-09 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of The Flight Attendant, here is a novel that examines wildly divisive American issues like gun control and animal rights with Chris Bohjalian’s trademark emotional heft and spellbinding storytelling skill. For ten summers, the Seton family—all three generations—met at their country home in New England to spend a week together playing tennis, badminton, and golf, and savoring gin and tonics on the wraparound porch to celebrate the end of the season. In the eleventh summer, everything changed. A hunting rifle with a single cartridge left in the chamber wound up in exactly the wrong hands at exactly the wrong time, and led to a nightmarish accident that put to the test the values that unite the family—and the convictions that just may pull it apart. Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness!

Download or read book Irreversible Damage written by Abigail Shrier and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2021 BY THE TIMES AND THE SUNDAY TIMES "Irreversible Damage . . . has caused a storm. Abigail Shrier, a Wall Street Journal writer, does something simple yet devastating: she rigorously lays out the facts." —Janice Turner, The Times of London Until just a few years ago, gender dysphoria—severe discomfort in one’s biological sex—was vanishingly rare. It was typically found in less than .01 percent of the population, emerged in early childhood, and afflicted males almost exclusively. But today whole groups of female friends in colleges, high schools, and even middle schools across the country are coming out as “transgender.” These are girls who had never experienced any discomfort in their biological sex until they heard a coming-out story from a speaker at a school assembly or discovered the internet community of trans “influencers.” Unsuspecting parents are awakening to find their daughters in thrall to hip trans YouTube stars and “gender-affirming” educators and therapists who push life-changing interventions on young girls—including medically unnecessary double mastectomies and puberty blockers that can cause permanent infertility. Abigail Shrier, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, has dug deep into the trans epidemic, talking to the girls, their agonized parents, and the counselors and doctors who enable gender transitions, as well as to “detransitioners”—young women who bitterly regret what they have done to themselves. Coming out as transgender immediately boosts these girls’ social status, Shrier finds, but once they take the first steps of transition, it is not easy to walk back. She offers urgently needed advice about how parents can protect their daughters. A generation of girls is at risk. Abigail Shrier’s essential book will help you understand what the trans craze is and how you can inoculate your child against it—or how to retrieve her from this dangerous path.

Download or read book From the Campaign Trail or Thereabouts written by Michael Bleicher and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2019-09-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Campaign Trail or Thereabouts is the story of two insulated Upper West Side journalists, Harold Carlyle, a self-serving, incompetent reporter desperate to save both his career and marriage, and his wife, Pattie, an observant, sharp-tongued, and successful television critic. When Harold is assigned to cover the 2016 Presidential Election, he devises a scheme to save his marriage by taking Pattie with him across the country. From the Campaign Trail or Thereabouts dives into the contradictory, divided, and all-too-often unsettling state of the union. Like Huck Finn meets Game Change, the novel examines the politicians and popular figures who played starring roles in 2016 and holds up a mirror to the electorate that ultimately made Trumpism possible.

Download or read book Unbuttoned written by Sullivan Dana and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10-14 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nursing a baby - it's the most simple, natural thing in the world, right? Then why is it so fraught and freighted for so many women? In Unbuttoned, a collection of essays edited by Dana Sullivan and Maureen Connolly, 25 women share their thoughts and feelings about breastfeeding, all from the standpoint of personal experience. By turns enlightening, entertaining, moving, and thought provoking, their stories are sure to get readers talking. The essays are as varied as women themselves. Best - selling author Julia Glass describes nursing her two sons after being treated for breast cancer. Rebecca Walker remembers breastfeeding her seriously ill baby in the neonatal intensive care unit. And humorist Suzanne Schlosberg milks the logistics of nursing twins for laughs, while columnist Patricia Berry defends her decision to bottle - feed her three daughters. Linda Murray, editor - in - chief ofBabyCenter.com, contributes a thoughtful foreword. The essays are organized in a way that echoes the chronology of the nursing experience itself. In Part One, Latching On, women share their stories about starting breastfeeding; by Part Four, Letting Go, they've moved on to the sometimes - wistful, sometimes - welcome process of weaning. In these pages are laughter and tears, love and longing, tenderness and temper tantrums - and above all, a multifaceted portrait of what it means to nurture a baby. Unbuttoned makes a wonderful gift for new or expectant mothers, not to mention their partners. It's also an intriguing selection for book groups or moms' groups, who will surely find much to discuss among the essays. Even women whose nursing days are well behind (or ahead) of them will find food for thought in this insightful collection.

Download or read book Barking At the Moon written by Tracy Beckerman and published by Greenleaf Book Group. This book was released on 2021-06-29 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you housebreak a dog in a hurricane? When Riley comes into her family’s life, award-winning humor columnist Tracy Beckerman realizes she got a lot more than she bargained for. From tracking wet cement through the house to shredding the family’s underwear, Riley is a one-dog wrecking ball. Yet this lovable retriever also brings joy, laughter, and a renewed sense of wonder into the household. At times hilarious and heartwarming, Barking at the Moon speaks to life’s growing pains, and to mothering children both human and furry. With Beckerman’s trademark wit and heart, she reminds us that no matter what stage of life we’re in, we can learn a lot from the dogs who teach us how to stop and enjoy the ride.

Download or read book Dragon s Bait written by Vivian Vande Velde and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2003-04-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fantasy adventure, a teenage girl accused of witchcraft and sentenced to death by dragon finds an unexpected friend—and maybe something more. Fifteen-year-old Alys is not a witch. But that doesn’t matter—the villagers think she is and have staked her out on a hillside as a sacrifice to the local dragon. It’s late, it’s cold, and it’s raining, and Alys can think of only one thing—revenge. But first she’s got to escape, and even if she does, how can one girl possibly take on an entire town alone? Then the dragon arrives—a dragon that could quite possibly be the perfect ally…. An ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age “Wicked wit and charm . . . as well as a gutsy heroine and a sexy dragon.” —Booklist “Alys herself is a worthy heroine, with a capricious gift for irony. A thoughtful mainstream fantasy.” —Publishers Weekly “[A] dark, bittersweet romance.” —Kirkus Reviews

Download or read book Spare Parts written by Paul Craddock and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Compelling' Christopher Hart, The Sunday Times 'A fascinating book' Daily Mail _______________________________________________________________ We think of transplant surgery as one of the medical wonders of the modern world -- but it's a lot older than you think. As ancient as the pyramids, its history is even more surprising. In Spare Parts, cultural historian Paul Craddock takes us on a fascinating journey and unearths incredible untold stories, from Indian surgeons regrafting lost noses in the sixth century BC, to the seventeenth century architect who helped pioneer blood transfusions, to the French seamstress whose needlework paved the way for kidney transplants in the early 1900s. Expertly weaving together philosophy, science and cultural history, Spare Parts explores how transplant surgery has constantly tested the boundaries between human, animal and machine. It shows us that the history -- and future -- of transplant surgery is tied up with questions not only about who we are, but also what we are, and what we might become. _______________________________________________________________ 'By turns delightful and disturbing . . . A thoroughly engrossing read that I couldn't put down' LINDSEY FITZHARRIS, author of The Facemaker and The Butchering Art 'Spare Parts is a fascinating read filled with adventure, delight and surprise' RAHUL JANDIAL, surgeon and author of Life on a Knife's Edge 'This is a joyful romp through a fascinating slice of medical history' WENDY MOORE, author of The Knife Man

Download or read book The Secret of Our Success written by Joseph Henrich and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How our collective intelligence has helped us to evolve and prosper Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals? This book shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains—on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations. Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuroscientific findings, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich demonstrates how our collective brains have propelled our species' genetic evolution and shaped our biology. Our early capacities for learning from others produced many cultural innovations, such as fire, cooking, water containers, plant knowledge, and projectile weapons, which in turn drove the expansion of our brains and altered our physiology, anatomy, and psychology in crucial ways. Later on, some collective brains generated and recombined powerful concepts, such as the lever, wheel, screw, and writing, while also creating the institutions that continue to alter our motivations and perceptions. Henrich shows how our genetics and biology are inextricably interwoven with cultural evolution, and how culture-gene interactions launched our species on an extraordinary evolutionary trajectory. Tracking clues from our ancient past to the present, The Secret of Our Success explores how the evolution of both our cultural and social natures produce a collective intelligence that explains both our species' immense success and the origins of human uniqueness.

Download or read book American Heart written by Laura Moriarty and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful and thought-provoking YA debut from New York Times bestselling author Laura Moriarty. Imagine a United States in which registries and detainment camps for Muslim-Americans are a reality. Fifteen-year-old Sarah-Mary Williams of Hannibal, Missouri, lives in this world, and though she has strong opinions on almost everything, she isn’t concerned with the internments because she doesn’t know any Muslims. She assumes that everything she reads and sees in the news is true, and that these plans are better for everyone’s safety. But when she happens upon Sadaf, a Muslim fugitive determined to reach freedom in Canada, Sarah-Mary at first believes she must turn her in. But Sadaf challenges Sarah-Mary’s perceptions of right and wrong, and instead Sarah-Mary decides, with growing conviction, to do all she can to help Sadaf escape. The two set off on a desperate journey, hitchhiking through the heart of an America that is at times courageous and kind, but always full of tension and danger for anyone deemed suspicious.

Download or read book The Wonders of the Invisible World written by Cotton Mather and published by . This book was released on 1862 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Magic Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds written by Daniel Ogden and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a culture where the supernatural possessed an immediacy now strange to us, magic was of great importance both in the literary mythic tradition and in ritual practice. In this book, Daniel Ogden presents 300 texts in new translations, along with brief but explicit commentaries. Authors include the well known (Sophocles, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Pliny) and the less familiar, and extend across the whole of Graeco-Roman antiquity.

Download or read book The Black Witch written by Laurie Forest and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling series! “Maximum suspense, unusual magic—a whole new, thrilling approach to fantasy!” —Tamora Pierce, #1 New York Times bestselling author Powerful magic. A deadly legacy. A world at the edge of war. Prepare to be spellbound by fantasy series, The Black Witch Chronicles. Elloren Gardner is the spitting image of her grandmother, who drove back the enemy forces in the last Realm War. But while her people believe she will follow in her grandmother's footsteps and become the next Black Witch of prophecy, Elloren is devoid of power in a society that prizes magical ability above all else. When she is granted the opportunity to pursue her dream of becoming an apothecary, Elloren joins her brothers at Verpax University. But she soon realizes that the university may be the most treacherous place of all for the granddaughter of the Black Witch. As evil looms and the pressure to live up to her heritage builds, Elloren's best hope of survival may be among a secret band of rebels…if only she can find the courage to trust those she’s been taught to fear. Critics are raving about Laurie Forest’s incredible debut, The Black Witch: “Forest uses a richly imagined magical world to offer an uncompromising condemnation of prejudice and injustice.” —Booklist, starred review “A noteworthy debut.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Briskly paced, tightly plotted.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review Books in The Black Witch Chronicles: The Black Witch The Iron Flower The Shadow Wand The Demon Tide The Dryad Storm Wandfasted (ebook novella)* Light Mage (ebook novella)* * Also available in print in The Rebel Mages anthology

Download or read book The Argonauts written by Maggie Nelson and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and family Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. It binds an account of Nelson's relationship with her partner and a journey to and through a pregnancy to a rigorous exploration of sexuality, gender, and "family." An insistence on radical individual freedom and the value of caretaking becomes the rallying cry for this thoughtful, unabashed, uncompromising book.

Download or read book Investigating Spoken English written by Štefan Beňuš and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-04-17 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining coverage of the key concepts and tools within phonetics and phonology with a systematic introduction to Praat, this textbook provides a lively and engaging 'way in' to the discipline. The author first covers the fundamentals of the articulatory and acoustic aspects of speech and introduces Praat as the main tool for examining and visualising speech. Next, the unit of analysis is gradually expanded (from syllables to words to turns and dialogues) and excerpts of real dialogues exemplify the core concepts for discovering how speech works. The final part of the book brings all the concepts and notions together with commentaries to the transcription of several short excerpts of dialogues. This book will be essential reading for students on undergraduate courses in phonetics and phonology.