Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde/Have mercy on my soul, Lord God, As I would do/ If I were God/ And ye were Martin Elginbroddeis is one of the most famous of all epitaphs and comes from Edinburgh. This book contains many others, some pompous, some sad, some downright funny and some ambiguous such as this gravestone in Liverpool which declares Here lyeth Sarah Young who went to sleep with Christ 6th January 1741 or that of her namesake the Mormon leader and polygamist, Brigham Young, whose gravestone reads Brigham Young. Born on this spot 1801. A man of much courage and equipment.
Louie Anderson, celebrated comedian and author of the bestselling Dear Dad, returns with an inspiring, insightfully funny exploration of his relationship with his mother and of his physical and psychological battle to overcome his addiction to food. Satellite TV tour.
“This searing account of a little boy wrenched from family and innocence” during the Armenian genocide “is a literary gem” (Financial Times). When World War I began, Karnig Panian was only five years old, living among his fellow Armenians in the Anatolian village of Gurin. Four years later, American aid workers found him at an orphanage in Antoura, Lebanon. He was among nearly a thousand Armenian and four hundred Kurdish children who had been abandoned by the Turkish administrators, left to survive at the orphanage without adult care. This memoir offers the extraordinary story of what he endured in those years—as his people were deported from their Armenian community, as his family died in a refugee camp in the deserts of Syria, as he survived hunger and mistreatment in the orphanage. The Antoura orphanage was another project of the Armenian genocide: Its administrators, some benign and some cruel, sought to transform the children into Turks by changing their Armenian names, forcing them to speak Turkish, and erasing their history. Panian’s memoir is a full-throated story of loss, resistance, and survival, but told without bitterness or sentimentality. His story shows us how even young children recognize injustice and can organize against it, how they can form a sense of identity that they will fight to maintain. He paints a painfully rich and detailed picture of the lives and agency of Armenian orphans during the darkest days of World War I. Ultimately, Karnig Panian survived the Armenian genocide and the deprivations that followed. Goodbye, Antoura assures us of how humanity, once denied, can be again reclaimed.
“Gorgeous, heartbreaking, and ultimately life-affirming.” —Nicola Yoon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything. Perfect for fans of Turtles All the Way Down,Thirteen Reasons Why, and Zentner's own The Serpent King, one of the most highly acclaimed YA novels of 2016, Goodbye Days asks what you would do if you could spend one last day with someone you lost. Where are you guys? Text me back. That's the last message Carver Briggs will ever send his three best friends, Mars, Eli, and Blake. He never thought that it would lead to their death. Now Carver can’t stop blaming himself for the accident and even worse, a powerful judge is pressuring the district attorney to open up a criminal investigation. Luckily, Carver has some unexpected allies: Eli’s girlfriend, the only person to stand by him at school; Dr. Mendez, his new therapist; and Blake’s grandmother, who asks Carver to spend a “goodbye day” together to share their memories and say a proper farewell. Soon the other families are asking for their own goodbye day with Carver—but he’s unsure of their motives. Will they all be able to make peace with their losses, or will these goodbye days bring Carver one step closer to a complete breakdown or—even worse—prison? "Jeff Zentner, you perfectly fill the John-Green-sized hole in our heart." —Justine Magazine “Evocative, heartbreaking, and beautifully written." —Buzzfeed "Masterful." —TeenVogue.com “Hold on to your heart: this book will wreck you, fix you, and most definitely change you.” —Becky Albertalli, Morris Award-winning author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
Celebrated transsexual trailblazer Kate Bornstein has, with more humor and spunk than any other, ushered us into a world of limitless possibility through a daring re-envisionment of the gender system as we know it. Here, Bornstein bravely and wittily shares personal and unorthodox methods of survival in an often cruel world. A one-of-a-kind guide to staying alive outside the box, Hello, Cruel World is a much-needed unconventional approach to life for those who want to stay on the edge, but alive. Hello, Cruel World features a catalog of 101 alternatives to suicide that range from the playful (moisturize!), to the irreverent (shatter some family values), to the highly controversial. Designed to encourage readers to give themselves permission to unleash their hearts' harmless desires, the book has only one directive: "Don't be mean." It is this guiding principle that brings its reader on a self-validating journey, which forges wholly new paths toward a resounding decision to choose life. Tenderly intimate and unapologetically edgy, Kate Bornstein is the radical role model, the affectionate best friend, and the guiding mentor all in one.
Winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for First Fiction "A quietly brilliant disquisition . . . told in prose that is so startling in its spare beauty that I found myself thinking about Khong's turns of phrase for days after I finished reading."—Doree Shafrir, The New York Times Book Review Her life at a crossroads, a young woman goes home again in this funny and inescapably moving debut from a wonderfully original new literary voice. Freshly disengaged from her fiancé and feeling that life has not turned out quite the way she planned, thirty-year-old Ruth quits her job, leaves town and arrives at her parents’ home to find that situation more complicated than she'd realized. Her father, a prominent history professor, is losing his memory and is only erratically lucid. Ruth’s mother, meanwhile, is lucidly erratic. But as Ruth's father’s condition intensifies, the comedy in her situation takes hold, gently transforming her all her grief. Told in captivating glimpses and drawn from a deep well of insight, humor, and unexpected tenderness, Goodbye, Vitamin pilots through the loss, love, and absurdity of finding one’s footing in this life.
The death of a child is a tragedy. When the cause is suicide, the tragedy is compounded. It’s not easy to read about, or talk about, and yet it is so crucial that young adults who feel the world closing in know that ending their lives is not the answer. There are people who can help. There are people who care. A thirteen year old should be enjoying life, planning her future, anticipating the joys to come. Instead, and sadly for all who knew her, Hailee Joy Lamberth, chose a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Hailee was an A student, bubbling with enthusiasm and love for life. She danced, wrote poems, and attended classes for gifted students. She loved playing with her little brother, Jacob. They’d play hide and seek and she’d always hide in the same place so that Jacob would find her. But her favorite interaction with Jacob was when they rode the Ferris wheel together and got stuck at the top. Jacob was afraid, but Hailee reassured him. “We’re practically in heaven,” she tells him. “Well if we die,” Jacob says, “At least we’ll be together.” When she was twelve years old, the bullying began. First it was a boy in math class who seemed to have a crush on her. When she rebuffed him, he started sending her mean notes, calling her names, and spreading rumors about her. Then it was a girl in P.E. who would crash into her when no one was looking. Hailee tried to avoid the bullies. She decided to drop out of the math class. She made excuses to her parents in order to escape, and her parents believed her. They didn’t know that her life was becoming unbearable. By the end of the school year, Hailee had begun to cut herself. It was her way of coping with the constant degradation. She overachieved in school in order to keep her parents from asking too many questions. A kid who is bullied often becomes an expert liar. In seventh grade, the bullying increased, growing like a cancer. Hailee kept up appearances to protect her parents and brother, but inside she was suffering. Two days after her thirteenth birthday, she succumbed to the pain. Hailee’s parents have decided to not allow her death to be in vain. By working with Zuiker Press to tell Hailee’s story as if she were able to tell it herself, they hope reach out to other young people in crisis, and show them that they do have options -- and to prevent them from bringing the excruciating pain of suicide to their families. Their hope is that by sharing Hailee’s story, they may prevent another young person from making a fatal choice. Goodbye: A Story of Suicide is the eighth in a series of graphic novels written by young adults for their peers.
In this “witty, perceptive novel”, a young woman moves to Tokyo and encounters the world of university enrollment and impending adulthood (Elle). Banana Yoshimoto’s novels of young life in Japan have made her an international sensation. Goodbye Tsugumi is an offbeat story of a deep and complicated friendship between two female cousins that ranks among her best work. Maria is the only daughter of an unmarried woman. She has grown up at the seaside alongside her cousin Tsugumi, a lifelong invalid, charismatic, spoiled, and occasionally cruel. Now Maria’s father is finally able to bring Maria and her mother to Tokyo, ushering Maria into a world of university, impending adulthood, and a “normal” family. When Tsugumi invites Maria to spend a last summer by the sea, a restful idyll becomes a time of dramatic growth as Tsugumi finds love and Maria learns the true meaning of home and family. She also has to confront both Tsugumi’s inner strength and the real possibility of losing her. Goodbye Tsugumi is a beguiling, resonant novel from one of the world’s finest young writers.
From “Grand Hotel” to “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?,” Joan Crawford played some of the finest parts Hollywood had to offer, establishing a reputation as the most spectacular diva on the silver screen. Even when the cameras quit rolling, her life never stopped being over-the-top. In My Way of Life, a cult classic since it was first published in the early 1970’s, Crawford shares her secrets. Part memoir, part self-help book, part guide to being fabulous, My Way of Life advises the reader on everything from throwing a small dinner party for eighteen to getting the most out of a marriage. Featuring tips on fashion, makeup, etiquette and everything in between, it is an irresistible look at a bygone era, when movie stars were pure class, and Crawford was at the top of the heap.
A hilarious, action-packed look at the apocalypse that combines a touching tale of friendship, a thrilling war story, and an all out kung-fu infused mission to save the world. “A flat-out ferociously good novel.... Reads like a surrealist smashup of Pynchon and Pratchett, Vonnegut and Heller.” —Austin Chronicle Gonzo Lubitch and his best friend have been inseparable since birth. They grew up together, they studied kung-fu together, they rebelled in college together, and they fought in the Go Away War together. Now, with the world in shambles and dark, nightmarish clouds billowing over the wastelands, they have been tapped for an incredibly perilous mission. But they quickly realize that this assignment is more complex than it seems, and before it is over they will have encountered everything from mimes, ninjas, and pirates to one ultra-sinister mastermind, whose only goal is world domination.
