Ray Caster is a regular guy who drew the short stick on life. He works in a miserable office doing a miserable job. He gets no respect from his co-workers. For that matter, he gets no respect from his friends. Caster's existence is one pathetic downward spiral of TiVo and fast food until the day his life is turned upside-down by a goddess from an auto parts store. With its snappy, conversational writing style, Caster's Blog captures the comedy and tragedy of geek life from a first-hand perspective. To learn more about Caster's Blog, or to download the entire book as a free PDF, visit CastersBlog.com.
A quirky geek love story... in blog form! Ray Caster is too awkward to talk to people in the real world. Instead, he pours his heart and soul into a blog about movies, office drama, and Star Trek reruns. So when he meets Shadoe Moon Beaupre-literate, beautiful, and basically the coolest, most perfect girl he can possibly imagine-he has no idea how to get her attention. Caster needs a crash course in romance, so he turns to his online followers for advice on how to overcome his crippling social anxiety and win the heart of his dream girl before she beams out of his life forever. The blog posts in Caster's Blog: A Geek Love Story were written online in real time over the course of one year. None of Caster's followers knew he was a fictional character until the publication of the first-edition of this book. Come for the story, stay for the social experiment!
After an accidental nuclear war, Vivian Gray joins a comically inept goup of fellow twentysomething survivors. She and her new friends embark on a cross-country road trip seeking sanctuary from the menagerie of deadly atomic mutants unleased by the contaminated atmosphere.
Can a foul-mouthed metalhead save Santa from a rampaging demon? He doesn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell. When Krampus threatens Santa's life, the jolly old elf needs a magical bodyguard with focus, integrity, and ruthless efficiency. What he gets is a slacker sorceress, her ghostly Chinese railroad-worker girlfriend, and a dead medieval prince. In other words, Christmas is doomed. Packed with magic gone awry, fast-paced antics, and occasional bouts of gratuitous violence, Alexis vs. the Merry Menace is an action-adventure Christmas comedy that remembers the true reason for the season. Presents. The reason is presents.
National Book Award Finalist • Here is the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities—with the help of amphetamines, arsenic, and radioisotopes. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious—and dangerous—asset. As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.
Tally Jo and Tempest Trimble are mirror twins, so alike they were almost born the same person. Inseparable, but more than that. Connected. That is, until this summer. The twins are traveling with Pa Charlie’s carnival just like always, but there’s a new distance between them. Tempest is so caught up in her own ideas, she doesn’t seem to have space left in her life for Tally. And, more than that, Tally’s started to notice there’s something between them. Something real, growing with the phases of the moon, pushing them apart. Sparking, sputtering, wild. Dangerous. With the full moon approaching, Tally knows it’s up to her to find out what’s going on—and to beat it. If she can’t, she might just lose her sister. Forever. For fans of Savvy and A Snicker of Magic, this is a spellbinding story of friendship and family—a poignant ode to both what’s worth holding on to and what we have to let go.
For every athlete or sports fanatic who knows she's just as good as the guys. This is for fans of The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen, Grace, Gold, and Glory by Gabrielle Douglass and Breakaway: Beyond the Goal by Alex Morgan. The summer before Caleb and Tessa enter high school, friendship has blossomed into a relationship . . . and their playful sports days are coming to an end. Caleb is getting ready to try out for the football team, and Tessa is training for cross-country. But all their structured plans derail in the final flag game when they lose. Tessa doesn’t want to end her career as a loser. She really enjoys playing, and if she’s being honest, she likes it even more than running cross-country. So what if she decided to play football instead? What would happen between her and Caleb? Or between her two best friends, who are counting on her to try out for cross-country with them? And will her parents be upset that she’s decided to take her hobby to the next level? This summer Caleb and Tessa figure out just what it means to be a boyfriend, girlfriend, teammate, best friend, and someone worth cheering for. “A great next choice for readers who have enjoyed Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen and Miranda Kenneally’s Catching Jordan.”—SLJ “Fast-paced football action, realistic family drama, and sweet romance…[will have] readers looking for girl-powered sports stories…find[ing] plenty to like.”—Booklist “Tessa's ferocious competitiveness is appealing.”—Kirkus Reviews “[The Football Girl] serve[s] to illuminate the appropriately complicated emotions both of a young romance and of pursuing a dream. Heldring writes with insight and restraint.”—The Horn Book
CMJ New Music Monthly, the first consumer magazine to include a bound-in CD sampler, is the leading publication for the emerging music enthusiast. NMM is a monthly magazine with interviews, reviews, and special features. Each magazine comes with a CD of 15-24 songs by well-established bands, unsigned bands and everything in between. It is published by CMJ Network, Inc.
Daniel Woodrell's modern classic is an unforgettable tale of desperation and courage that inspired the award-winning film starring Jennifer Lawrence. Ree Dolly's father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date. With two young brothers depending on her, 16-year-old Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive. Living in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks, Ree learns quickly that asking questions of the rough Dolly clan can be a fatal mistake. But, as an unsettling revelation lurks, Ree discovers unforeseen depths in herself and in a family network that protects its own at any cost. "The lineage from Faulkner to Woodrell runs as deep and true as an Ozark stream in this book...his most profound and haunting yet." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review
