Libraries Unbound: 2019 Authors

No-No Boy, John Okada's only published novel, centers on a Japanese American who refuses to fight for the country that incarcerated him and his people in World War II and, upon release from federal prison after the war, is cast out by his divided community. In 1957, the novel faced a similar rejection until it was rediscovered and reissued in 1976 to become a celebrated classic of American literature. As a result of Okada's untimely death at age forty-seven, the author's life and other works have remained obscure. This compelling collection offers the first full-length examination of Okada's development as an artist, placing recently discovered writing by Okada alongside essays that reassess his lasting legacy. Meticulously researched biographical details, insight from friends and relatives, and a trove of intimate photographs illuminate Okada's early life in Seattle, military service, and careers as a public librarian and a technical writer in the aerospace industry. This volume is an essential companion to No-No Boy.

Poetry. Anastacia Rene's FORGET IT draws the reader into the churning seas of dissolution -- marriage, family, identity, livelihood -- in language unknotted from the constraints of punctuation, syntax, sense-- "eaten into seedless cherries"--and plunged into the fabular scape/scope of dreams, myth, fairytales, faith, race. Phantom births, ghosts, half-grown children, sex, betrayal, violence, anger, female body, the bloody aftermaths of dissolution sprawling, placental and umbilical, in the urgent, haunted language of dreaming and memory. City and speaker dissolve into one another, boundaries vanquished. What remains after dissolution? Talking to herself. From whence do (k)new form(s) arise? A "revelatory hymn", matrix upon which self and sense are (re-) configured as her own, Anastacia Rene#65533;'s FORGET IT dances on the grave of the lost--fiery tempest, a phoenix of language and presence. When we wake up, nothing is forgotten. "This book feels like an entirely new invention. I don't even want to call it a book. I want to call it a thick-paint impressionist new word-reality, a documentation of whatever blush invented the first word. '...you picture yourself as a child seeing the color green for the first time.' Anastacia Rene#65533; does just that, reinvents her reader as this child. This book is, to me, the color green for the first time. About this book, I feel something like what I imagine onlookers must have felt when they first witnessed the Wright brothers thrust air under wing to leave the ground."--Tara Hardy

Today, no one really thinks of Britain as a land of camps. Camps seem to happen 'elsewhere', from Greece, to Palestine, to the global South. Yet over the course of the twentieth century, dozens of British refugee camps housed hundreds of thousands of Belgians, Jews, Basques, Poles, Hungarians, Anglo-Egyptians, Ugandan Asians, and Vietnamese. Refugee camps in Britain were never only for refugees. Refugees shared a space with Britons who had been displaced by warand poverty, as well as thousands of civil servants and a fractious mix of volunteers. Unsettled: Refugee Camps and the Making of Multicultural Britain explores how these camps have shaped today'smulticultural Britain. They generated unique intimacies and frictions, illuminating the closeness of individuals that have traditionally been kept separate -- 'citizens' and 'migrants', but also refugee populations from diverse countries and conflicts. As the world's refugee crisis once again brings to Europe the challenges of mass encampment, Unsettled offers warnings from a liberal democracy's recent past. Through lively anecdotes from interviews with formercamp residents and workers, Unsettled conveys the vivid, everyday history of refugee camps, which witnessed births and deaths, love affairs and violent conflicts, strikes and protests, comedy and tragedy. Theirstory -- like that of today's refugee crisis -- is one of complicated intentions that played out in unpredictable ways. The aim of this book is not to redeem camps -- nor, indeed, to condemn them. It is to refuse to ignore them. Unsettled speaks to all who are interested in the plight of the encamped, and the global uses of encampment in our present world.

"Bascomb has unearthed a remarkable piece of hidden history, and told it perfectly. The story brims with adventure, suspense, daring, and heroism." --David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon Neal Bascomb, New York Times best-selling author, delivers the spellbinding story of the downed Allied airmen who masterminded the remarkably courageous--and ingenious--breakout from Germany's most devilish POW camp   In the winter trenches and flak-filled skies of World War I, soldiers and pilots alike might avoid death, only to find themselves imprisoned in Germany's archipelago of POW camps, often in abominable conditions. The most infamous was Holzminden, a land-locked Alcatraz of sorts that housed the most troublesome, escape-prone prisoners. Its commandant was a boorish, hate-filled tyrant named Karl Niemeyer who swore that none should ever leave.   Desperate to break out of "Hellminden" and return to the fight, a group of Allied prisoners led by ace pilot (and former Army sapper) David Gray hatch an elaborate escape plan. Their plot demands a risky feat of engineering as well as a bevy of disguises, forged documents, fake walls, and steely resolve. Once beyond the watch towers and round-the-clock patrols, Gray and almost a dozen of his half-starved fellow prisoners must then make a heroic 150 mile dash through enemy-occupied territory towards free Holland.   Drawing on never-before-seen memoirs and letters, Neal Bascomb brings this narrative to cinematic life, amid the twilight of the British Empire and the darkest, most savage hours of the fight against Germany. At turns tragic, funny, inspirational, and nail-biting suspenseful, this is the little-known story of the biggest POW breakout of the Great War.  

Why did the so-called "Cannibal Isles" of the Western Pacific fascinate Europeans for so long? Spanning three centuries--from Captain James Cook's death on a Hawaiian beach in 1779 to the end of World War II in 1945--this book considers the category of "the savage" in the context of British Empire in the Western Pacific, reassessing the conduct of Islanders and the English-speaking strangers who encountered them. Sensationalized depictions of Melanesian "savages" as cannibals and headhunters created a unifying sense of Britishness during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These exotic people inhabited the edges of empire--and precisely because they did, Britons who never had and never would leave the home islands could imagine their nation's imperial reach. George Behlmer argues that Britain's early visitors to the Pacific--mainly cartographers and missionaries--wielded the notion of savagery to justify their own interests. But savage talk was not simply a way to objectify and marginalize native populations: it would later serve also to emphasize the fragility of indigenous cultures. Behlmer by turns considers cannibalism, headhunting, missionary activity, the labor trade, and Westerners' preoccupation with the perceived "primitiveness" of indigenous cultures, arguing that British representations of savagery were not merely straightforward expressions of colonial power, but also belied home-grown fears of social disorder.

The book as object, as content, as idea, as interface. What is the book in a digital age? Is it a physical object containing pages encased in covers? Is it a portable device that gives us access to entire libraries? The codex, the book as bound paper sheets, emerged around 150 CE. It was preceded by clay tablets and papyrus scrolls. Are those books? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Amaranth Borsuk considers the history of the book, the future of the book, and the idea of the book. Tracing the interrelationship of form and content in the book's development, she bridges book history, book arts, and electronic literature to expand our definition of an object we thought we knew intimately. Contrary to the many reports of its death (which has been blamed at various times on newspapers, television, and e-readers), the book is alive. Despite nostalgic paeans to the codex and its printed pages, Borsuk reminds us, the term "book" commonly refers to both medium and content. And the medium has proved to be malleable. Rather than pinning our notion of the book to a single form, Borsuk argues, we should remember its long history of transformation. Considering the book as object, content, idea, and interface, she shows that the physical form of the book has always been the site of experimentation and play. Rather than creating a false dichotomy between print and digital media, we should appreciate their continuities.

Winner of the 2017 Virginia Marie Folkins Award, Association of King County Historical Organizations (AKCHO)Winner of the 2017 Hal K. Rothman Book Prize, Western History Association Seattle would not exist without animals. Animals have played a vital role in shaping the city from its founding amid existing indigenous towns in the mid-nineteenth century to the livestock-friendly town of the late nineteenth century to the pet-friendly, livestock-averse modern city. When newcomers first arrived in the 1850s, they hastened to assemble the familiar cohort of cattle, horses, pigs, chickens, and other animals that defined European agriculture. This, in turn, contributed to the dispossession of the Native residents of the area. However, just as these animals were used to create a Euro-American city, the elimination of these same animals from Seattle was key to the creation of the new middle-class neighborhoods of the twentieth century. As dogs and cats came to symbolize home and family, Seattleites' relationship with livestock became distant and exploitative, demonstrating the deep social contradictions that characterize the modern American metropolis. Throughout Seattle's history, people have sorted animals into categories and into places as a way of asserting power over animals, other people, and property. In The City Is More Than Human, Frederick Brown explores the dynamic, troubled relationship humans have with animals. In so doing he challenges us to acknowledge the role of animals of all sorts in the making and remaking of cities.

The nursery rhyme was wrong.Words can hurt you. Ambitious, twenty-something FBI Special Agent Jade Harrington cuts her vacation short to investigate the murder of a conservative radio personality only to discover that he may be the victim of a serial killer. Whitney Fairchild, the elegant and charismatic Democratic senator from Missouri, campaigns in a cutthroat race for president of the United States. Cole Brennan, the most popular conservative talk-show host in the nation, battles nightly to save his country and help the incumbent Republican president maintain his "inner conservative" to win re-election.The lives of Jade, Whitney, Cole, and the killer--who has an agenda of his own--are on a collision course. That course will not just impact them each in ways they could never have foreseen, but also the future of the United States of America. Amidst a backdrop of contemporary power politics driven by the influence of talk radio and social media, DON'T SPEAK thrills even as it explores many of the complex issues facing Americans today.

Eighty years ago, nearly 3,000 Americans embarked for Europe to join the democratically elected Spanish Republic in its effort to repel a military coup led by Francisco Franco. Franco had the support of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. The Republic received aid from the Soviet Union and from the International Brigades, including what came to be called the Lincoln Brigade of American recruits. Nearly one-third of the Americans who went to Spain were Jews.

In the early ’90s, Professor Joe Butwin interviewed dozens of these Jewish veterans, collecting their stories and inviting them to reflect on the connection between their Judaism and their decision to serve in the war.

Forced to remain silent after being kidnapped by pirates, Christopher must find a way to save an innocent merchant ship's captain and his daughter from the evil grasp of Captain Redblade. Proving that friendship and family are worth fighting for no matter the costs. "Delightful adventurous and sometimes heart pumping tale I could not put down " Mel Barnes Novels, News & Notes "Everyone loves a good adventure tale, especially one about pirates, and "Arrgh" definitely fits the bill. Working in an elementary school library, it is a treat to find a book that will interest both girls and boys at all grade levels. "Arrgh"is one of those books...a fun read...you won't be disappointed." Michele Bruce Fidalgo Elementary School Library

Coming of age can be an adventure. No one knows this better than William James Tillit, an abandoned child from east Texas raised by his loving aunt and uncle, devout evangelical siblings who are determined to do their best by their young nephew. Will has his own conversations with God, but his god sounds nothing like that of his guardians. Will's deity is insightful, but he's also sarcastic, and down right grouchy. Needless to say, Will keeps these conversations to himself. The day arrives for Will to leave home and make his own way in the world. His ticket out? A job at the Bible-inspired Galilee Theme Park in west Texas, run by none other than Reverend Shister. But Will's passage to Galilee is far from a simple A to Z trip. Sidelined by a tornado, a beautiful young woman, and a group of religious doomsday preppers bent on surviving-or ushering in-Armageddon, Will comes to realize that perhaps faith-like life-is not about the destination; it's about the journey. The Freedom of Will is an absurdly comic coming of age tale about falling in and out of faith and how we come to be who we are through the influence of those around us. Whether kindly aunts and uncles, a possibly atheistic hamster, lesbian nuns committed to social justice, likeable convicted felons, or a gourmet chef who claims to get his recipes from outer space, there's something to learn from everyone, if only we have the grace to accept the people life throws our way, and the will to listen....

Princess Academy meets Megan Whalen Turner in this stunning novel about a girl who won't let anything tame her spirit--not the government that conquered her people, and definitely not reform school! Malley has led the constables on a merry chase across her once-peaceful country. With her parents in prison for their part in a failed resistance movement, the government wants to send her to a national school--but they'll have to capture her first. And capture her they do. Malley is carted off be reformed as a proper subject of the conquering empire, reeducated, and made suitable for domestic service. That's the government's plan, anyway. But Malley will not go down without a fight. She's determined to rally her fellow students to form a rebellion of their own. The government can lock these girls up in reform school. Whether it can break them is another matter entirely...

Literary Nonfiction. Art. Poetry. Italian Studies. Haunted by three thousand years of artists who made pilgrimage to the Eternal City, collaborators Elizabeth Cooperman and Thomas Walton gather impressions from the ruinous streets in and around Rome. The result is a literary mosaic that aligns itself with the ecstatic baroque of Bernini, the concentrated vision of Caravaggio, and the sublime uncertainty of Keats, as it resists the forces of "another dark age." Dazzling with image and anecdote, with comedy and cobblestones, with headless statues and the bright robes of street performers, with shadow and cicada and shock of light, THE LAST MOSAIC is an aesthetic call to arms to "listen," a battle cry to "be impressed," and a plea to "get lost."

When a some-time lover and full-time friend dies in a climbing accident, Litsa Dremousis is left to deal with the aftermath: the loss of a soul-mate, the apartment filled with little ambushes in the form of objects from the relationship, and the difficult task of understanding what it was that made this person she loved repeatedly risk his life. And she’s also left to wonder how to feel.

Altitude Sickness by Seattle writer Litsa Dremousis is an important addition to the conversation about the social responsibilities and emotional consequences of climbing-related tragedies and a funny, furious, and heartbreaking personal story.

Seattle Metropolitan Magazine named "Altitude Sickness" one of the all-time "20 Books Every Seattleite Must Read", alongside books by Jack Kerouac, Tom Robbins, and John Krakauer:
"The existence of this gutsy little book is owed to a tragedy—a climbing accident that took the life of Litsa Dremousis’s onetime lover and friend. Coming in at 10,600 words, this emotionally fraught memoir punches well above its weight, revealing a writer willing to confront brutal, uncomfortable truths. Available from Instant Future, an imprint of Future Tense Press helmed by Matthew Simmons (himself a renowned regular of Seattle’s lit scene), this e-book also suggests a new way forward for Seattle publishing. We need more inventively produced works like this just as we need more works by talents like Dremousis."

Named a "Must-Read" by Town & Country * Elite Daily * InStyle "The love child of Gossip Girl and Crazy Rich Asians, plus the social climbing of a Gatsby party." --Refinery29 In the tradition of The Emperor's Children and The House of Mirth, the forgotten granddaughter of one of New York's wealthiest men is reunited with her family just as she comes of age--and once she's had a glimpse of their glittering world, she refuses to let it go without a fight. When Laila Lawrence becomes an orphan at twenty-three, the sudden loss unexpectedly introduces her to three glamorous cousins from New York who show up unannounced at her mother's funeral. The three siblings are scions of the wealthy family from which Laila's father had been estranged long before his own untimely demise ten years before. Two years later, Laila has left behind her quiet life in Grosse Point, Michigan to move to New York City, landing her smack in the middle of her cousins' decadent world. As the truth about why Laila's parents became estranged from the family patriarch becomes clear, Laila grows ever more resolved to claim what's rightfully hers. Caught between longing for the love of her family and her relentless pursuit of the lifestyle she feels she was unfairly denied, Laila finds herself reawakening a long dead family scandal--not to mention setting off several new ones--as she becomes further enmeshed in the lives and love affairs of her cousins. But will Laila ever, truly, belong in their world? Sly and sexy, She Regrets Nothing is a sharply observed and utterly seductive tale about family, fortune, and fate--and the dark side of wealth.

Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice From My Bipolar Life is the eagerly awaited sequel/ companion book to Forney's 2012 best-selling graphic memoir, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me. Whereas Marbles was a memoir about her bipolar disorder, Rock Steady turns the focus outward, offering a self-help survival guide of tips, tricks and tools by someone who has been through it all and come through stronger for it.

McNeil Island in Washington state was the home of the last prison island in the United States, accessible only by air or sea. It was also home to about fifty families, including Colleen Frake's. Her parents - like nearly everyone else on the island - both worked in the prison, where her father was the prison's captain and her mother worked in security. In this engaging graphic memoir, a Xeric and Ignatz Award-winning comics artist, Colleen Frakes, tells the story of a typical girl growing up in atypical circumstances.

Did the civil rights movement impact the development of the American state? Despite extensive accounts of civil rights mobilization and narratives of state building, there has been surprisingly little research that explicitly examines the importance and consequence that civil rights activism has had for the process of state building in American political and constitutional development. Through a sweeping archival analysis of the NAACP's battle against lynching and mob violence from 1909 to 1923, this book examines how the NAACP raised public awareness, won over American presidents, and secured the support of Congress. In the NAACP's most far-reaching victory, the Supreme Court ruled that the constitutional rights of black defendants were violated by a white mob in the landmark criminal procedure decision Moore v. Dempsey. This book demonstrates the importance of citizen agency in the making of new constitutional law in a period unexplored by previous scholarship.

Desperate for laborers to keep the trains moving during World War II, the U.S. and Mexican governments created a now mostly forgotten bracero railroad program that sent a hundred thousand Mexican workers across the border to build and maintain railroad lines throughout the United States, particularly the West. Although both governments promised the workers adequate living arrangements and fair working conditions, most bracero railroaders lived in squalor, worked dangerous jobs, and were subject to harsh racial discrimination. Making matters worse, the governments held a percentage of the workers' earnings in a savings and retirement program that supposedly would await the men on their return to Mexico. However, rampant corruption within both the railroad companies and the Mexican banks meant that most workers were unable to collect what was rightfully theirs. Historian Erasmo Gamboa recounts the difficult conditions, systemic racism, and decades-long quest for justice these men faced. The result is a pathbreaking examination that deepens our understanding of Mexican American, immigration, and labor histories in the twentieth-century U.S. West.

Between 1900 and the 1970s, twenty million southerners migrated north and west. Weaving together for the first time the histories of these black and white migrants, James Gregory traces their paths and experiences in a comprehensive new study that demonstrates how this regional diaspora reshaped America by "southernizing" communities and transforming important cultural and political institutions. Challenging the image of the migrants as helpless and poor, Gregory shows how both black and white southerners used their new surroundings to become agents of change. Combining personal stories with cultural, political, and demographic analysis, he argues that the migrants helped create both the modern civil rights movement and modern conservatism. They spurred changes in American religion, notably modern evangelical Protestantism, and in popular culture, including the development of blues, jazz, and country music. In a sweeping account that pioneers new understandings of the impact of mass migrations, Gregory recasts the history of twentieth-century America. He demonstrates that the southern diaspora was crucial to transformations in the relationship between American regions, in the politics of race and class, and in the roles of religion, the media, and culture.

In this groundbreaking exploration of in-flight cinema, Stephen Groening traces the history of this transnational cinematic practice. At once a history of exhibition and an inquiry into changing forms of media and spectatorship, this interdisciplinary book opens up new directions in the history of cinema, visuality, travel and cultural geography.

It's all about loss. Don't kid yourself. Even a simple game of catch is hinged on the moment the ball leaves the glove, the moment it returns. Don't even try to think this story or any other story is about something else. In Catch, Release, Adrianne Harun's second story collection, loss is the driver. But it's less the usual somber shadow-figure of grieving than an erratically interesting cousin, unmoored, even exhilarated, by the sudden flight into emptiness, the freedom of being neither here nor there. In this suspended state, anything might happen--and it does. Harun's most realistic stories are suffused with mystery, while her more fantastic tales reveal startling truths within the commonplace. In diverse settings that include, among other places, a British Columbian island, a haunted Midwestern farmhouse, a London townhome, and a dementia care facility overpopulated with dangerously idle guardian angels, characters reconfigure whole worlds as they navigate states defined by absence. In "The Farmhouse Wife," a young couple, struggling financially, takes up residence in a near-abandoned farmhouse, only to be joined by an inconvenient roommate, a woman whose own bereft state proves perilously seductive. A kleptomaniac father gets caught in one of his petty thefts in "Pearl Diving," propelling his two sons out of one life into another, perhaps more appropriate, one. In "Madame Ida," a family of little girls steadily invades a woman's life as she puzzles out the mysteries of a missing sheriff-turned-cult-leader and the absence of her own son. And in the title story, two teenagers face off against the hurtful lies of an ancient con woman who is mining a widow's grief for her own ends. Adrianne Harun has been described as an exacting and attentive stylist whose stories are rendered in vivid language. The Los Angeles Review of Books wrote of her work: "Harun finds beauty in pitch black; she makes poetry out of brutality and grace out of terror. She is an alchemist, turning the worst aspects of life into gold." With Catch, Release, Harun upends the world once more.

Learn to observe, sketch, and paint nature from an award-winning outdoor artist and art teacher - Explains how to "see" color depending on time of day, season, atmosphere, and more - More than 170 illustrations, featuring iconic national parks - Improve your nature painting skills or learn a fun new hobby you can do outdoorsColors of the West explores wild places through the lens of watercolor "en plein air" painting, a French term meaning literally "in the open air." Steeped in the natural world, award-winning artist Molly Hashimoto has sketched in the outdoors and worked as a plein air artist and teacher for more than 20 years. In that time she has filled more than 40 sketchbooks with landscapes, vignettes, studies of flora and fauna, and natural history notes-all created while visiting some of the West's most stunning landscapes.This new book is organized by color, a unique approach to teaching both intermediate and budding artists how to really see color in the outdoor spaces around them, and then apply it to journals, other art projects, or simply beautiful memories. The average person can see 17,000 colors (!), so Molly explains the concept of palette, that is the range of colors that unites elements of geography, geology, and the different kinds of light created by atmosphere, season, and latitude. Molly's own hand-drawn sketches and paintings of familiar Western landscapes help convey these colors, along with sidebars and insets on individual species (trees, birds, mammals, and other flora and fauna) and historical notes related to the park or site she has sketched. Tips and techniques for outdoor journaling and painting are included throughout.From the green hues found on Cascade Head on the Oregon Coast and in Yellowstone's quaking aspens, to the reds that highlight the rocks in Arches National Park and the Redwoods of California, readers and artists of all levels will learn a new appreciation for the colors of the West-and how the details of natural beauty can be revealed when we stop, observe, and pay attention to the outdoor world.

A shipwreck might end a dream of circumnavigating the globe. Not for the Wilcoxes.In 1973, the Wilcox family sets off to sail around the world aboard the 40-foot sailboat, Vela. Thirteen months later, they are shipwrecked on a coral reef, with surf tearing a huge hole in the side of their boat.After years invested in saving money, preparing the boat, and learning to navigate by the stars, parents Chuck and Dawn refuse to give up. Fourteen-year-old Garth is determined to continue, while eleven-year-old Linda never wanted to go in the first place. Can they overcome the emotional, physical and financial challenges to transform from castaways into circumnavigators?To triumph, these pioneers must rebuild their boat on a remote Pacific island. Damage sustained on the reef and a lack of resources haunt them the rest of the way around the world as they face daunting obstacles, including wild weather, pirates, gun boats, mines and thieves plus pesky bureaucrats and cockroaches as stubborn as this family. Without a working engine and no way to communicate with the outside world, they struggle to reach home before their broken rig comes crashing down and they run out of food on a trial that tests them to their limits.

In a village in India, a forsaken man is about to kill himself in quiet despair. A million miles away, Katya Misra is celebrating a perfect evening in her fine, academic life in Seattle . . . until she is informed that her teenaged son Kabir has run away to India in search of a father he has never met. Contemptuous of her homeland and determined to bring Kabir back where he belongs, Katya must follow her son into the home of a suicidal farmer, in a village where, every eight hours, a man kills himself. Here, as Kabir's father inspires his son with his selfless social work, Katya finds an ally in the farmer's wife Gayatribai, who saves Kabir's life by damaging her own, and in return asks for Katya's help in keeping her husband alive in the suicide epidemic that has gripped this treacherously changing nation.
Whipped up in a world of violent protest rallies, mass weddings, inglorious suicides, and a love that demands to be rekindled, Katya must learn whose life can be saved and whose she should just let go.

A masterful story collection--thirteen years in the making--from National Book Award winner Charles Johnson, showcasing the incredible range and resonant voice of this American treasure. This new collection of stories from National Book Award winner Charles Johnson offers an eclectic, engaging range of narratives, tied together by Buddhist themes and displaying all the grace, heart, and insight for which he has long been known. In "The Weave," Ieesha and her boyfriend carry out a heist at the salon from which she has just been fired--coming away with thousands of dollars of merchandise in the form of hair extensions. "Night Hawks," the titular story, draws on Johnson's friendship with the late playwright August Wilson to construct a narrative about two writers who meet at night to talk. In "Kamadhatu," a lonely Japanese abbot has his quiet world upended by a visit from a black American Buddhist whose presence pushes him toward the awakening he has long found elusive. "Occupying Arthur Whitfield," about a cab driver who decides to rob the home of a wealthy passenger, reminds readers to be grateful for what they have. And "The Night Belongs to Phoenix Jones" combines the real-life story of a "superhero" in the city of Seattle with an invented narrative about an aging English professor who decides to join him. Spanning genres from science fiction to realism, these stories convey messages of tolerance, hope, and gratitude. With precise, elegant, and moving language, Johnson creates memorable characters and real, human struggles that have the power to enlighten and change us as we read.

"I love Ms. Kallos's work so much." --Anne Lamott, best-selling author ofGrace (Eventually) "For me, it would be plenty if a novel was deeply felt, utterly absorbing, and full of wit. But in Language Arts, Stephanie Kallos goes further, throwing in a doozy of a twist that had me going back to page one to understand how she pulled off such dazzling sleight of hand. An all-around delight." --Maria Semple, author ofWhere'd You Go, Bernadette?   Charles Marlow teaches his high school English students that language will expand their worlds. But linguistic precision cannot help him connect with his autistic son, his ex-wife, or his college-bound daughter, who has just flown the nest. He's at the end of a road he's traveled on autopilot for years when a series of events forces him to think back on the lifetime of decisions and indecisions that have brought him to this point. With the help of an ambitious art student, anItalian-speaking nun, and the memory of a boy in a white suit who inscribed his childhood with both solace and sorrow, Charles may finally be able to rewrite the script of his life.   From the best-selling author ofBroken for You,Language Arts is an affecting tale of love, loss, and language--its powers and its perils.   "[A] beautifully written, harrowing novel . . . Her vivid descriptions create a cast of memorable characters. She also delivers a huge shocker of a plot twist, one that may send you back to the beginning of the book as you wonder how this development could be possible." --Seattle Times

Only Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon stand between two warring moguls and global havoc in this thrilling suspense novel in Clive Cussler's #1 New York Times bestselling series. Nearly two thousand years ago, an Eastern emperor charged a small group with safeguarding secrets powerful enough to change the history of mankind. They went down in legend as the Nine Unknown Men--and now two rival factions of their descendants are fighting a mighty battle. Both sides think they are saving the world, but their tactics could very well bring about the end of humankind. Soon, Juan Cabrillo and his team of expert operatives aboard the Oregon find themselves trapped between two power-hungry adversaries, both of whom are willing to use shocking means to accomplish their goals. Cabrillo and the team must divide and conquer as they fight dual threats, which include a supercomputer at sea and satellites that can wipe out technology across the globe--including the high-tech weapons on board the Oregon. The crew must rely on their unique skills to stop the tyrants in their tracks and save the earth from a dynasty of terror.

From cedar totem poles to high-tech video installations, downtown Seattle sparkles with hundreds of artworks adorning plazas, lobbies, parks, and waterfront piers and paths. This impressive collection, comprising works by artists with regional or international reputations (and often both), has expanded rapidly as Seattle?s urban core has grown. The explosive development of South Lake Union in recent years has brought major works by Jaume Plensa, Julie Speidel, Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo, Buster Simpson, Jenny Heishman, and more. The Seattle Art Museum?s ten-year-old Olympic Sculpture Park provides a breathtaking setting for Richard Serra?s monumental Wake and Beverly Pepper?s ever-changing Perre?s Ventaglio III, and links the downtown waterfront to Myrtle Edwards Park, which features Michael Heizer?s once-maligned and now beloved Adjacent, Against, Upon. To tell the lively stories of those who commissioned and created these artworks, James Rupp interviewed and corresponded with more than ninety artists, also drawing from newspaper reviews, books, catalogs, and artist statements. Photographs by Miguel Edwards, all new to this book, showcase the pieces? street-level presentation and help the reader understand the larger impact of each work in its neighborhood context. This comprehensive guide offers detailed information about the individual works of art, organized by downtown neighborhood, and featuring: More than 350 artworksOver 300 color photographs9 detailed area maps for self-guided toursUnique descriptions of each artworkBiographies of all the artists Perfect for art and architecture lovers, as well as visitors and newcomers to the city, Art in Seattle?s Public Spaces showcases the wealth of urban art to be freely enjoyed by all.

Literary Nonfiction. A lyric exploration of addiction. "McClure and Schmeltzer have concocted a compelling, lilting whisper of a work that defies genre. The blending of their words reminds me of a hushed table in the corner of a small caf#65533; toward closing hours, where a candle trembles between the confessions of two shadows, leaning into one other. At times, it's impossible to discern between the two voices, so tied are they in their reverence and reckoning, their lies and longing, their desire for the burn of drink mixed with the shared fear of it in their blood. The lyricism of A SINGLE THROAT OPENS will make every listener thirsty, parched on the last page for more. This book is a yearning."--Jill Talbot

"I feel like I can't tell one story about a giant mustard penis because it's not about a mustard penis only, but about all of these incidents together, in context, and through time." So begins the title story in Renee Simms's debut short story collection, Meet Behind Mars--a revealing look at how geography, memory, ancestry, and desire influence our personal relationships. In many of her stories, Simms exposes her own interest in issues concerning time and space. For example, in "Rebel Airplanes," an L.A. engineer works by day on city sewers and by night on R-C planes that she yearns to launch into the cosmos. The character-driven stories in Meet Behind Mars offer beautiful insight into the emotional lives of caretakers, auto workers, dancers, and pawn shop employees. In "High Country," a frustrated would-be novelist considers ditching her family in the middle of the desert. In "Dive," an adoptee returns to her adoptive home, still haunted by histories she does not know. Simms writes from the voice of women and girls who struggle under structural oppression and draws from the storytelling tradition best represented by writers like Edward P. Jones, whose characters have experiences that are specific to black Americans living in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. One instance of this is in "The Art of Heroine Worship," in which black families integrate into a white suburb of Detroit in the 1970s. The stories in this collection span forty years and two continents and range in structure from epistolary to traditionally structured realism, with touches of absurdity, humor, and magic. Meet Behind Mars will appeal to readers interested in contemporary literary fiction.

An all-new guide to the most popular long-distance bike tour in the United States! - Replaces Mountaineers Books' earlier title, Bicycling the Pacific Coast, 4th Edition - Covers the entire 2,000-mile route from Canada to Mexico, including alternate and side-route options - Information on lodging, camping, loading the bike, safe cycling, road conditions, weather, and moreThe Pacific Coast route is the most popular bike touring route in the U.S., according to Mountaineers Books' non-profit partner, the Adventure Cycling Association. And for 33 years, our very own Bicycling the Pacific Coast was the most popular guidebook to this venerable route-until now! Cycling the Pacific Coast continues the trusted legacy with an all-new, completely re-ridden, and fully comprehensive guidebook from Bill Thorness, featuring the most current, up-to-date beta on this amazing route.Cycling the Pacific Coast is organized in five sections-Washington, Oregon, Northern California, Central California, and Southern California-and is useful to riders who plan to do the trip as one epic ride, or break it up to peddle sections at a time. Features include: - Suggested itineraries for the entire ride, or for one- and two-week trips - Logistics for getting to/from ride sections - Airport and train-station connections in all major cities (Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego) - Alternate routes to take on Vancouver Island (Canada), Washington's Olympic Peninsula, and Norther California's "Lost Coast" - Interesting and fun side trip destinations in 5 cities, on 2 islands, and in 2 wine country regionsNew bike tourers will find equipment information, packing advice, and safety tips, among other helpful trip suggestions. And all riders will find the guidance to experience the trip of a lifetime.

This well-researched volume explores how the Black freedom struggle and the anti-Vietnam War movement dovetailed with faculty and student activism in the South to undermine the traditional role of higher education and bring about social change. It offers a deep understanding of the vital importance of independent institutions during times of national crisis.

Global conservation efforts are celebrated for saving Guatemala's Maya Forest. This book reveals that the process of protecting lands has been one of racialized dispossession for the Indigenous peoples who live there. Through careful ethnography and archival research, Megan Ybarra shows how conservation efforts have turned Q'eqchi' Mayas into immigrants on their own land, and how this is part of a larger national effort to make Indigenous peoples into neoliberal citizens. Even as Q'eqchi's participate in conservation, Green Wars amplifies their call for material decolonization by recognizing the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the land itself.