George F. Walker has been one of Canada's most prolific and popular playwrights since his career in theatre began in the early 1970s. Since that time, he has written more than twenty plays and has created screenplays for several award-winning Canadian television series, including Due South, The Newsroom, This Is Wonderland, and The Line, as well as for the film Niagara Motel (based on three plays from his Suburban Motel series). Part Kafka, part Lewis Carroll, Walker's distinctive, gritty, fast-paced comedies satirize the selfishness, greed, and aggression of contemporary urban culture. Awards and honours include appointment as a Member of the Order of Canada (2005); National Theatre School Gascon-Thomas Award (2002); two Governor General's Literary Awards for Drama (for Criminals in Love and Nothing Sacred); five Dora Mavor Moore Awards; and eight Chalmers Canadian Play Awards. Patrick McDonald is artistic director of Green Thumb Theatre, where he has directed more than seventy-five productions and overseen the commissioning and development of more than fifty new plays for children, teens, and young adults.
Abandoned by his wayward mom, Daniel is consigned to spend the summer with his widower granddad in a Rhode Island beach town, where the locals don’t look kindly on city kids. But his hapless vacation turns around when he meets Izzy: tough-acting, back-sassing, beguiling, and taken. This feisty romantic comedy follows a passing fling that could last a lifetime—as impossible and charmed as an Indian summer.
"ESSENTIAL READING FOR FANS OF JANE JACOBS, JOSEPH MITCHELL, PATTI SMITH, LUC SANTE AND CHEAP PIEROGI."--VANITY FAIR An unflinching chronicle of gentrification in the twenty-first century and a love letter to lost New York by the creator of the popular and incendiary blog Vanishing New York. For generations, New York City has been a mecca for artists, writers, and other hopefuls longing to be part of its rich cultural exchange and unique social fabric. But today, modern gentrification is transforming the city from an exceptional, iconoclastic metropolis into a suburbanized luxury zone with a price tag only the one percent can afford. A Jane Jacobs for the digital age, blogger and cultural commentator Jeremiah Moss has emerged as one of the most outspoken and celebrated critics of this dramatic shift. In Vanishing New York, he reports on the city’s development in the twenty-first century, a period of "hyper-gentrification" that has resulted in the shocking transformation of beloved neighborhoods and the loss of treasured unofficial landmarks. In prose that the Village Voice has called a "mixture of snark, sorrow, poeticism, and lyric wit," Moss leads us on a colorful guided tour of the most changed parts of town—from the Lower East Side and Chelsea to Harlem and Williamsburg—lovingly eulogizing iconic institutions as they’re replaced with soulless upscale boutiques, luxury condo towers, and suburban chains. Propelled by Moss’ hard-hitting, cantankerous style, Vanishing New York is a staggering examination of contemporary "urban renewal" and its repercussions—not only for New Yorkers, but for all of America and the world.
From the author of The Other Boy comes a poignant and heartfelt novel that explores what it means to be a family. Perfect for fans of Counting by 7s. Nevaeh, Vic, and Mara are veterans of the Los Angeles foster care system. For over a year they’ve been staying with Mrs. K in Echo Park. Vic spends most of his time living in a dream world, Mara barely speaks, and Nevaeh is forced to act as a back-up parent. Though their situation isn’t ideal, it’s still their best home yet. Then Child Protective Services places Quentin in the house, and everything is turned upside down. Nevaeh really can’t handle watching over anyone else, especially a boy on the autism spectrum. Meanwhile, Quentin is having trouble adjusting and attempts to run away. So when Vic realizes Quentin just wants to see his mom again, he plans an “epic quest” to reunite them. It could result in the foster siblings getting sent to different group homes. But isn’t family always worth the risk?
For fans of vintage YA, a humorous and in-depth history of beloved teen literature from the 1980s and 1990s, full of trivia and pop culture fun. Those pink covers. That flimsy paper. The nonstop series installments that hooked readers throughout their entire adolescence. These were not the serious-issue novels of the 1970s, nor the blockbuster YA trilogies that arrived in the 2000s. Nestled in between were the girl-centric teen books of the ’80s and ’90s—short, cheap, and utterly adored. In Paperback Crush, author Gabrielle Moss explores the history of this genre with affection and humor, highlighting the best-known series along with their many diverse knockoffs. From friendship clubs and school newspapers to pesky siblings and glamorous beauty queens, these stories feature girl protagonists in all their glory. Journey back to your younger days, a time of girl power nourished by sustained silent reading. Let Paperback Crush lead you on a visual tour of nostalgia-inducing book covers from the library stacks of the past.
First published as a trilogy in 1986, The Power Playscontain Gossip(1977), Filthy Rich(1979), and The Art of War(1983). Completely revised and updated for this new Talonbooks edition, these three plays showcase both the development and the culmination of Walker's engagement with the film noir style.
• A New York Times Summer Reading List selection • A Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book of 2015 • A Business Insider Best Summer Read • An Esquire Father’s Day Book selection • A New York Observer Best Music Book of 2015 • A memoir charting thirty years of the American independent rock underground by a musician who knows it intimately Jon Fine spent nearly thirty years performing and recording with bands that played various forms of aggressive and challenging underground rock music, and, as he writes in this memoir, at no point were any of those bands “ever threatened, even distantly, by actual fame.” Yet when members of his first band, Bitch Magnet, reunited after twenty-one years to tour Europe, Asia, and America, diehard longtime fans traveled from far and wide to attend those shows, despite creeping middle-age obligations of parenthood and 9-to-5 jobs, testament to the remarkable staying power of the indie culture that the bands predating the likes of Bitch Magnet--among them Black Flag, Mission of Burma, and Sonic Youth --willed into existence through sheer determination and a shared disdain for the mediocrity of contemporary popular music. In indie rock’s pre-Internet glory days of the 1980s, such defiant bands attracted fans only through samizdat networks that encompassed word of mouth, college radio, tiny record stores and ‘zines. Eschewing the superficiality of performers who gained fame through MTV, indie bands instead found glory in all-night recording sessions, shoestring van tours and endless appearances in grimy clubs. Some bands with a foot in this scene, like REM and Nirvana, eventually attained mainstream success. Many others, like Bitch Magnet, were beloved only by the most obsessed fans of this time. Like Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, Your Band Sucks is an insider’s look at a fascinating and ferociously loved subculture. In it, Fine tracks how the indie-rock underground emerged and evolved, how it grappled with the mainstream and vice versa, and how it led many bands to an odd rebirth in the 21 st Century in which they reunited, briefly and bittersweetly, after being broken up for decades. Like Patti Smith’s Just Kids, Your Band Sucks is a unique evocation of a particular aesthetic moment. With backstage access to many key characters in the scene—and plenty of wit and sharply-worded opinion—Fine delivers a memoir that affectionately yet critically portrays an important, heady moment in music history.
This pocket-sized parenting guide for moms and moms-to-be is perfect for a baby shower or Mother's Day gift. This little handbook is filled with all the secrets and strategies a smart mother needs to know. Featuring tips for mastering quick and easy meals, suggestions for baby-proofing like an expert, advice on stocking your medicine cabinet, tricks to making a long wait fun, and much, much more, such as: • How to Swaddle a Baby • Fifteen Birthday-Party Survival Tips • The Truth about Potty Training • The Miracle of White Noise • Comebacks for Unsolicited Parenting Advice
