From award-winning Nordic author and illustrator Linda Bondestam comes a new kind of climate change story, narrated by an adorable axolotl who is--possibly--the last of its kind. In a forest of seaweed there was ME, a rare and beautiful little axolotl, going for my first-ever swim. So graceful, and yet so lonesome--out of 987 eggs, mine was the only one that hatched. Who knows, maybe I was the last axolotl in these waters? At the bottom of a lake in Mexico City, our axolotl narrator goes to underwater school, collects treasures tossed away by the big lugs on land, and has dance parties with tiger salamander friends. Life is good! But as the world gets hotter and hotter, the water gets murkier. Friends become harder to find, and the lonesome axolotl grows even lonelier. Until one day when, out of the blue, a colossal wave carries the axolotl into a surprising new future.... Bittersweet, droll, existential, and hopeful, My Life at the Bottom is a tale from the climate crisis unlike any other. Combining her irresistible visual wit with exquisite aquatic art and rare empathy, Linda Bondestam brings us a story of catastrophe that bursts with life.
A book that restores our faith in the central importance of literature and criticism to our civilization. In the twenty six pieces Dr. Dalrymple ranges over literature and ideas, from Shakespeare to Marx.
Nobody is immune to disappointment. Unfortunately, at some point all of us will face that horrific moment when the bottom completely drops out of out of our life, leaving us broken, devastated, and desperately searching for God’s grace. Pastor and theologian Robert Bugh has experienced unthinkable pain and disappointment firsthand, having lost both his wife and his best friend to cancer within a year and a half of each other. Though devastating, Bugh’s tragedy also brought him into a stronger, deeper relationship with God. When the Bottom Drops Out chronicles Rob’s journey from loss to restoration and shows readers how to find and hold tightly to Christ through even the most painful episodes of life. Bugh’s story is proof positive that while pain and disappointment are an unavoidable part of life, God is nonetheless faithful, holding us close at all times and in all circumstances.
I had found my rock bottom, and instead of pulling me out, the God of the universe met me there in the rubble. What is your response when your life turns upside down? When you lose your job? When you receive a difficult diagnosis? Do you blame God or beg Him for a way out of your suffering? In more than a decade of misdiagnoses and debilitating treatments, Stephanie Tait admits she did plenty of both before hearing the two words that had drastically altered her life: Lyme disease. Yet she has discovered it’s in her pain that Jesus is most present. Through personal stories and biblical examples, you will learn that suffering connects you to God as He meets you in your moment of pain strengthens your community when you allow others to comfort you in your sorrow gives you greater appreciation for life’s goodness as you gain an eternal perspective Even if the healing never comes, there is something sacred in the suffering. It’s from holy rubble that God makes all things new.
It’s been ages since the “incident” that estranged former best friends Adam and Thomas, and Adam has long since decided he’s better off, even if his own life hasn’t exactly turned out as planned. Ten years after the two friends spoke their last words, Adam is working as a tutor, sleeping with the mother of a student, and spending most of his nights looking up his ex-girlfriend on Facebook. But when he receives an email from Thomas’s mother begging for his help, he finds himself drawn back into his old friend’s world. Thomas hasn’t been doing well, and now he’s disappeared while traveling in India. As Adam embarks upon a magnificently strange and unlikely journey, Ben Dolnick unspools a tale of friendship, spiritual reckoning, and redemption.
An enthralling literary tour-de-force that pays tribute to Detroit's legendary neighborhood, a mecca for jazz, sports, and politics, Black Bottom Saints is a powerful blend of fact and imagination reminiscent of E.L. Doctorow's classic novel Ragtime and Marlon James' Man Booker Award-winning masterpiece, A Brief History of Seven Killings. From the Great Depression through the post-World War II years, Joseph “Ziggy” Johnson, has been the pulse of Detroit’s famous Black Bottom. A celebrated gossip columnist for the city’s African-American newspaper, the Michigan Chronicle, he is also the emcee of one of the hottest night clubs, where he’s rubbed elbows with the legendary black artists of the era, including Ethel Waters, Billy Eckstein, and Count Basie. Ziggy is also the founder and dean of the Ziggy Johnson School of Theater. But now the doyen of Black Bottom is ready to hang up his many dapper hats. As he lays dying in the black-owned-and-operated Kirkwood Hospital, Ziggy reflects on his life, the community that was the center of his world, and the remarkable people who helped shape it. Inspired by the Catholic Saints Day Books, Ziggy curates his own list of Black Bottom’s venerable "52 Saints." Among them are a vulnerable Dinah Washington, a defiant Joe Louis, and a raucous Bricktop. Randall balances the stories of these larger-than-life "Saints" with local heroes who became household names, enthralling men and women whose unstoppable ambition, love of style, and faith in community made this black Midwestern neighborhood the rival of New York City’s Harlem. Accompanying these “tributes” are thoughtfully paired cocktails—special drinks that capture the essence of each of Ziggy’s saints—libations as strong and satisfying as Alice Randall’s wholly original view of a place and time unlike any other.
From debut author London Shah, comes a thrilling futuristic Sci-Fi mystery perfect for fans of Illuminae and These Broken Stars.In the last days of the twenty-first century, sea creatures swim through the ruins of London. Trapped in the abyss, humankind wavers between hope and fear of what lurks in the depths around them, and hope that they might one day find a way back to the surface. When sixteen-year-old submersible racer Leyla McQueen is chosen to participate in the city's prestigious annual marathon, she sees an opportunity to save her father, who has been arrested on false charges. The Prime Minister promises the champion whatever their heart desires. But the race takes an unexpected turn, forcing Leyla to make an impossible choice. Now she must brave unfathomable waters and defy a corrupt government determined to keep its secrets, all the while dealing with a guarded, hotheaded companion she never asked for in the first place. If Leyla fails to discover the truths at the heart of her world, or falls prey to her own fears, she risks capture-or worse. And her father will be lost to her forever.
Farewell Fear is a collection of Theodore Dalrymple's finest essays written for New English Review between 2009 and 2012. His first such collection was Anything Goes (2011). Once encountered, Theodore Dalrymple has become for many of us a shared treasure-the cultured, often mordantly funny social commentator who was for many years a psychiatrist at a British prison. This collection of recent essays captures Dalrymple at his best, ruminating at one moment about why poisoners tend to be more interesting than other kinds of murderers and at another why Tony Blair's mind reminds him of an Escher drawing. No one else writes so engagingly and so candidly about the world as it is, not as the politically correct would have it be. -- Dr. Charles Murray author of Coming Apart and The Bell Curve