"Mia Tang has a lot of secrets. Number 1: She lives in a motel, not a big house. Every day, while her immigrant parents clean the rooms, ten-year-old Mia manages the front desk of the Calivista Motel and tends to its guests. Number 2: Her parents hide immigrants. And if the mean motel owner, Mr. Yao, finds out they've been letting them stay in the empty rooms for free, the Tangs will be doomed. Number 3: She wants to be a writer. But how can she when...

"In Land of Tears, historian Robert Harms reconstructs the chaotic process by which the heart of Africa was utterly transformed in the nineteenth century and the rainforest of the Congo River basin became one of the most brutally exploited places on earth. Ranging from remote African villages to European diplomatic meetings to Connecticut piano-key factories, Harms reveals how equatorial Africa became fully, fatefully, and tragically enmeshed within...

Iris Cooper has been singing ever since she can remember, hitting the high notes like no one else. When she is twelve, her father convinces the owner of a bar in Lake City, Texas, to let her perform, and she stuns the audience. In the ensuing years, never staying anywhere for long, father and daughter move from one dusty town to the next, her passion for music growing every time she takes the mike in another roadhouse. But it is not an easy life for...

"After botching a suicide attempt, salaryman Hanio Yamada decides to put his life up for sale in the classifieds section of a Tokyo newspaper. But what begins as mere nihilism takes a turn for the unexpected as interested parties come calling with increasingly bizarre requests. What follows is a madcap comedy of errors, involving a jealous husband, a drug-addled heiress, poisoned carrots--even a vampire. For someone who just wants to die, Hanio can't...

Searching for her buried friend after the mines collapse, twelve-year-old Pakistani mica miner Nura finds herself at the Sijj Palace, a luxury hotel for the dangerous and deceitful jinn, where she must discover the truth beneath the glitter or be trapped forever.

"For fifteen years, Mr. Sitwell has worked as the groundskeeper for the Barclays, a well-to-do white family. He is part of the household's all-black staff, along with "Miss Mamie, " the talented cook, and new maid Jennie Williams. But the Barclays' fortunes have fallen, and their money is almost gone. When a business associate proposes selling Miss Mamie's delicious rib sauce under the brand name "The Rib King" -- using a caricature of a wildly grinning...

Follows the relationship between a teenage ski prodigy and her predatory instructor. In a breakthrough role, Noée Abita plays 15-year-old Lyz, a high school student in the French Alps who has been accepted to an elite ski club known for producing some of the country's top professional athletes. Taking a chance on his new recruit, ex-champion turned coach Fred decides to mold Lyz into his shining star despite her lack of experience. Under his influence,...

"After fourteen years in the making, renowned and beloved graphic novelist Sammy Harkham finally delivers his epic story of artistic ambition, the heartbreak that it can bring, and what it means to be human Set in and around 1971 in Los Angeles, Blood of the Virgin follows an immigrant film editor named Seymour who is desperate to make his own movies. But without money or clout, he has no choice but to spend his days slumming it for the worst and...

Mystery. Manipulation. Murder. Cults are associated with all of these. But what really goes on inside them? More specifically, what goes on inside the minds of cult leaders and the people who join them? Based on the hit podcast Cults, this is essential reading for any true crime fan. Cults prey on the very attributes that make us human: our desire to belong; to find a deeper meaning in life; to live everyday with divine purpose. Their existence creates...

"The inside story of how Big Pharma's relentless pursuit of ever-higher profits corrupts medical knowledge, misleading doctors, misdirecting American health care, and harming our health"--Book jacket flap.