“WhateverTom Piazza writes is touched with magic." —Douglas Brinkley Acclaimed author Tom Piazza follows hisprize-winning novel City of Refuge and the post-Katrinaclassic Why New Orleans Matters with a dynamic collection ofessays and journalism about American music and American character, in DevilSent the Rain. “TomPiazza’s writing is filled with energy, and with tender, insightful words forthe brilliant and irascible, from Jimmy Martin to Norman Mailer. Time and timeagain, Piazza identifies the unlikely, precious connections between recentevents, art, letters, and music; through his words, these byways of popularculture provide an unexpected measure of the times.” —Elvis Costello
In this urban fantasy, rock and roll musicians with supernatural powers gets trapped in an alternate universe—inside one of their band member’s minds. A trap set for the band goes from bad to worse as organist and resident sorcerer Adrian badly bungles his escape spell. Trapped inside Adrian’s shadow, the band struggles to orient themselves and escape not only from their pursuing enemies, but from the darker manifestations of Adrian’s soul. And once they do get out from inside their own wizard’s tortured mind, they'll still have to deal with the fallen angels that trapped them in the first place.
Edgar Nominee and Bestselling author Lisa Turner’s hard-boiled Detective Billy Able returns in this dark southern mystery about the murder of a dazzling Memphis socialite—and the scandals revealed in the wake of her death. The heart can be an assassin. Homicide Detective Billy Able knows that from experience. Fresh from solving Memphis’s most sensational murder case, Billy and his ambitious new partner, Frankie Malone, are called to a bizarre crime scene on the outskirts of town. A high-society attorney has been murdered while dressed in a wedding gown. Billy is shocked to discover he has a very personal connection to the victim. When the attorney’s death exposes illegal practices at her family’s prestigious law firm, the scandal is enough to rock the southern city’s social world. In a tale about the remnants of Old South aristocracy and entitlement twisted by greed and vengeance, Billy must confront the secrets of his own past to have any chance at solving the murder of the girl he once knew. But as he seeks the truth, he’s drawn closer to an embittered killer bent on revenge—and eliminating the threat Billy poses.
Sunbathing in the Rain is undoubtedly the best book I have ever read about one person's experience of depression.' - Dorothy Rowe, author of Breaking the Bonds 'This upbeat, very readable and engaging view of depression as a temporary retrenchment, a breathing space in which to adjust better to life, makes encouraging reading.' - Spectator 'Gwyneth Lewis writes with clarity, beauty and metaphorical precision. She conveys the darkness, the silence, the selfishness, the mental clutter of depression brilliantly.' - Simon Hattenstone, Guardian 'Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis shares her personal story of wrestling with clinical depression and describes what she learned along the way about coping with the disease. The text is aimed primarily at those who are currently depressed and are struggling to recover. The emphasis throughout is on the healing power of self-acceptance and truth-telling. This is a reprint of a book first published in London by Flamingo in 2002.' - www.booknews.com This might well be the Age of Depression. More people than ever now experience the disease directly or see a friend or relative succumb to it. Among their number is Gwyneth Lewis. And she set about writing this book simply because she wished something like it had existed for her when she was in the middle of her depression. Depression is assassination. The depressive is both victim and detective - charged with tracking down the perpetrator of his or her own murder. By drawing on her own experience of struggling with the affliction, by highlighting ways of coping, ways of truth-telling, and ways of thriving, in a straightforward, robust fashion full of casual wisdom and easy wit, Gwyneth re-embarks on a journey that nearly killed her first time round and returns with this, perhaps the first truly undogmatic, undemanding, downright useful book about depression.
When Jacob left home for a new life, he pretty much forgot all about Maryfield, North Carolina. But Maryfield never forgot him. Or forgave him. After a failed business venture in Boston, Jacob Logan comes back to the small Southern town of his childhood and takes up residence in the isolated house he grew up in. Here, the air is still. The nights are black. And his parents are buried close by. It should feel like home—but something is terribly wrong. Jacob loses all his belongings in a highway accident. His car is stolen from his driveway, yet he never hears a sound. The townspeople seem guarded and suspicious. And Carl, the property caretaker with so many secrets, is unnervingly accommodating. Then there are the fireflies that light the night skies . . . and die as they come near Jacob’s home. If it weren’t for the creaking sounds after dark, or the feeling that he is being watched, Jacob would feel so alone. He shouldn’t worry. He’s not. And whatever’s with him isn’t going to let him leave home ever again.
A New York Times Best Seller 2019 National Book Award Longlist, Nonfiction 2019 Kirkus Book Prize Finalist, Nonfiction A February IndieNext Pick Named A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 by Buzzfeed, Nylon, The A. V. Club, CBC Books, and The Rumpus, and a Winter's Most Anticipated Book by Vanity Fair and The Week Starred Reviews: Kirkus and Booklist "Warm, immediate and intensely personal."—New York Times How does one pay homage to A Tribe Called Quest? The seminal rap group brought jazz into the genre, resurrecting timeless rhythms to create masterpieces such as The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders. Seventeen years after their last album, they resurrected themselves with an intense, socially conscious record, We Got It from Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service, which arrived when fans needed it most, in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib digs into the group’s history and draws from his own experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound resonated among fans like himself. The result is as ambitious and genre-bending as the rap group itself. Abdurraqib traces the Tribe's creative career, from their early days as part of the Afrocentric rap collective known as the Native Tongues, through their first three classic albums, to their eventual breakup and long hiatus. Their work is placed in the context of the broader rap landscape of the 1990s, one upended by sampling laws that forced a reinvention in production methods, the East Coast–West Coast rivalry that threatened to destroy the genre, and some record labels’ shift from focusing on groups to individual MCs. Throughout the narrative Abdurraqib connects the music and cultural history to their street-level impact. Whether he’s remembering The Source magazine cover announcing the Tribe’s 1998 breakup or writing personal letters to the group after bandmate Phife Dawg’s death, Abdurraqib seeks the deeper truths of A Tribe Called Quest; truths that—like the low end, the bass—are not simply heard in the head, but felt in the chest.
"Novelistic, perfectly plotted and quite possibly the best pop-star autobiography yet written." - The Wall Street Journal Jimmy Webb’s words have been sung to his music by a rich and deep roster of pop artists, including Glen Campbell, Art Garfunkel, Frank Sinatra, Donna Summer and Linda Ronstadt. He’s the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards for music, lyrics, and orchestration, and his chart-topping career has, so far, lasted fifty years, most recently with a Kanye West rap hit and a new classical nocturne. Now, in his first memoir, Webb delivers a snapshot of his life from 1955 to 1970, from simple and sere Oklahoma to fast and fantastical Los Angeles, from the crucible of his family to the top of his longed-for profession. Webb was a preacher’s son whose father climbed off a tractor to receive his epiphany, and Jimmy, barely out of his teen age years, sank down into the driver’s seat of a Cobra to speed to Las Vegas to meet with Elvis. Classics such as “Up, Up and Away”, “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”, “Wichita Lineman”, “Galveston”, “The Worst that Could Happen”, “All I Know”, and “MacArthur Park” were all recorded by some of the most important voices in pop before Webb’s twenty-fifth birthday: he thought it was easy. The sixties were a supernova, and Webb was at their center, whipsawed from the proverbial humble beginnings into a moneyed and manic international world of beautiful women, drugs, cars and planes. That stew almost took him down—but Webb survived, his passion for music and work among his lifelines. The Cake and The Rain is a surprising and unusual book: Webb’s talent as a writer and storyteller is here on every page. His book is rich with a sense of time and place, and with the voices of characters, vanished and living, famous and not, but all intimately involved with him in his youth, when life seemed nothing more than a party and Webb the eternal guest of honor.
The only hope for a planets delivery from the fearsome Azteca lies in a mythical artifact said to be hidden somewhere in the frozen north. Tobias S. Buckell is a dazzling new voice, and "Crystal Rain" is an explosive debut.--Hugo Award winner Robert J. Sawyer ("Hominids").
Tom Piazza's award-winning portrait of a city in crisis, with a new preface from the author, ten years after. Ten years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the disaster that followed, promises were made, forgotten, and renewed. What would become of New Orleans in the years ahead? How would this city and its people recover—and what meaning would its story have, for America and the world? In Why New Orleans Matters, first published only months after the disaster, award-winning author and longtime New Orleans resident Tom Piazza illuminates the storied culture and still-evolving future of this great and vital American metropolis. Piazza evokes the sensuous textures of the city that gave us jazz music, Creole cooking, and a unique style of living; he examines the city's undercurrents of corruption and racism, and explains how its people endure and transcend them. And, perhaps most important, he bears witness to the city's spirit: its grace and beauty, resilience and soul. In the preface to this new edition, Piazza considers how far the city has come in the decade since Katrina, as well as the challenges it still faces—and reminds us that people in threatened communities across America have much to learn from New Orleans' disaster and astonishing recovery.
In the heat of late summer, two New Orleans families—one black and one white—confront a storm that will change the course of their lives. SJ Williams, a carpenter and widower, lives and works in the Lower Ninth Ward, the community where he was born and raised. His sister, Lucy, is a soulful mess, and SJ has been trying to keep her son, Wesley, out of trouble. Across town, Craig Donaldson, a Midwestern transplant and the editor of the city's alternative paper, faces deepening cracks in his own family. New Orleans' music and culture have been Craig's passion, but his wife, Alice, has never felt comfortable in the city. The arrival of their two children has inflamed their arguments about the wisdom of raising a family there. When the news comes of a gathering hurricane—named Katrina—the two families make their own very different plans to weather the storm. The Donaldsons join the long evacuation convoy north, across Lake Pontchartrain and out of the city. SJ boards up his windows and brings Lucy to his house, where they wait it out together, while Wesley stays with a friend in another part of town. But the long night of wind and rain is only the beginning—and when the levees give way and the flood waters come, the fate of each family changes forever. The Williamses are scattered—first to the Convention Center and the sweltering Superdome, and then far beyond city and state lines, where they struggle to reconnect with one another. The Donaldsons, stranded and anxious themselves, find shelter first in Mississippi, then in Chicago, as Craig faces an impossible choice between the city he loves and the family he had hoped to raise there. Ranging from the lush neighborhoods of New Orleans to Texas, Missouri, Chicago, and beyond, City of Refuge is a modern masterpiece—a panoramic novel of family and community, trial and resilience, told with passion, wisdom, and a deep understanding of American life in our time.
