In Shiny Objects, a cross between In Praise of Slowness and The Tipping Point, consumer behavior expert Professor James A. Roberts takes us on a tour of America's obsession with consumerism—pointing out its symptoms, diagnosing specific problems, and offering a series of groundbreaking solutions. Roberts gives practical advice for how to correct the materialistic trends in our lives which lock us into a cycle of financial hardship and stress. Shiny Objects, a new The Paradox of Choice for the modern reader, is more than a critique of capitalism—it's also an exploration into how we can live happier, fuller, more productive lives today.
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION "In this extraordinary novel, Castleberry brilliantly hopscotches from person to person, from era to era, while somehow making all this fancy footwork look effortless and essential." - Jenny Offill, author of Department of Speculation and Weather A luminous debut novel in the tradition of DeLillo and Egan, chronicling the eerily intersecting lives of a series of American dreamers whose unforeseen links reveal the divided heart of a haunted nation—and the battered grace that might lead to its salvation June 26, 1947. Headlines across America report the sighting of nine pulsating lights flying over the Cascade Mountains at speeds surpassing any aircraft. In Chicago, inspired by the news, Oliver Danville, a failed actor now reduced to a mediocre pool hustler, hitchhikes west in a fever-dream quest for a possible sign from above that might illuminate his true calling. A chance encounter with Saul Penrod, an Idaho farmer, and his family sets in motion the birth of “the Seekers”—a collective of outcasts, interlopers, and idealists devoted to creating a society where divisions of race, ethnicity, and sexuality are a thing of the past. When Claudette Donen, a waitress on the lam from her suffocating family, encounters the group, she is compulsively drawn to Oliver’s sister Eileen, but before she is able to join the enigmatic community, it has vanished. Reunited across the country, the Seekers attempt to settle in the suburbs of Long Island. One night, their purpose suddenly revealed, a stranger emerges, and a horrific crime ensues. In the decades that follow, the perpetrators, survivors, and their children will be forced to face the consequences of what happened—a reckoning that will involve Charlie Ranagan, a traveling salesman; Max Felt, a dissolute late-1960s rock star; Alice Linwood, an increasingly paranoid radio host; Stanley West, a struggling African American poet; Marly Feldberg, a Greenwich Village painter; and Debbie Vasquez, a Connecticut teenager trapped by an avalanche of midnight legacies. Each will prove to be a piece of a puzzle that, when assembled, reveals a shocking truth about the clash between the optimism of those who seek inspiration from spacious skies, and the venom of others who relish the underworld—not only via conspiratorial maneuverings, but the literal unearthing of the dead. The result is one of the most exciting, and unforgettable, debut novels in recent memory, and the launch of a major career in American letters.
A successful professional painter and art instructor for years, Benedict was dissatisfied that she could paint petal-perfect flowers and expensive portraits of wealthy clients, but could not capture the light on the garden at dusk or the tender hands and faces of her own children. Seven years ago she walked into a poetry workshop and found "the window I needed for my imagination." She never painted another painting, and has never stopped writing. She got her BA in English and her MFA in writing at Goddard College, taught workshops, won scholarships, and recieved grants and awards for her fiction. her stories have appeared in INTRO and fiction international, and the title story in this award-winning collection was published as an Atlantic Monthly First.
The second the test-the-sexy-scenes offer landed in my lap, I said yes.After all, I've been damn curious about a few things I've read in romance novels. Do buttons truly go flying across the floor when you rip off a guy's shirt? Is staircase nookie hella hot or does it leave you with a big old bruise mark on your back? And don't even get me started on all that panty shredding, and whether it even works.Time to find out as I embark on Project Sexy Scenes Research, at the request of my hotshot book editor bestie.All I need is a willing scene partner. Enter Tristan, my best guy friend. The witty, tell-it-like-it-is, bearded hottie volunteers for the experiment.He's also the guy who gave me the most devastating, toe-curling kiss of my life ten years ago. But nothing has happened since then.And nothing will come between my panties and our friendship now since we have a plan to keep it PG.But once the buttons start flying, all bets are off..
Shiny objects attract and fascinate us. While they used to derive their power from their rarity, today, shininess is pervasive: its attraction is a foundation of consumer culture and it has attendant effects on our architecture, our conceptions of the body, and our production of spectacle. In Shiny Things, Leonard Diepeveen and Timothy van Laar examine the meanings and functions of shininess in visual art and material culture. Exploring the works of a diverse range of artists--including Anish Kapoor, Olafur Eliasson, Jeff Koons, Carolee Schneemann, Audrey Flack, Fra Angelico, and Gerard ter Borch--the authors open the discourse to topics as disparate as automobiles, Richard Nixon, and Liberace. With accessible writing and a careful application of contemporary theory, this is scholarship that challenges stale thought and will appeal to any progressive thinker looking for new ways to present ideas.
'This series has brilliantly established itself and this latest is another masterpiece from Barbara Nadel' CRIMESQUADA friend from the past asks for private investigator Lee Arnold's help in tracing his son: Fayyad al'Barri was last thought to be in Syria having embraced radical Islam. But a cryptic message has prompted his family to believe Fayyad has had a change of heart and is searching for a way back home. With fellow investigator Mumtaz Hakim's help, they might be able to establish contact.From the bright lights of the Western world, to shady boxing clubs and murky online jihadist recruitment, and while violence erupts close to home, Mumtaz and Lee are on an unknown path into the mind of a terrorist, journeying closer to danger than they ever imagined.
Master the Shiny web framework—and take your R skills to a whole new level. By letting you move beyond static reports, Shiny helps you create fully interactive web apps for data analyses. Users will be able to jump between datasets, explore different subsets or facets of the data, run models with parameter values of their choosing, customize visualizations, and much more. Hadley Wickham from RStudio shows data scientists, data analysts, statisticians, and scientific researchers with no knowledge of HTML, CSS, or JavaScript how to create rich web apps from R. This in-depth guide provides a learning path that you can follow with confidence, as you go from a Shiny beginner to an expert developer who can write large, complex apps that are maintainable and performant. Get started: Discover how the major pieces of a Shiny app fit together Put Shiny in action: Explore Shiny functionality with a focus on code samples, example apps, and useful techniques Master reactivity: Go deep into the theory and practice of reactive programming and examine reactive graph components Apply best practices: Examine useful techniques for making your Shiny apps work well in production
In this beautifully constructed middle-grade novel, told half in prose and half in verse, Lauren prides herself on being a good sister, and Sierra is used to taking care of her mom. When Lauren’s parents send her brother to a therapeutic boarding school for teens on the autism spectrum and Sierra moves to a foster home in Lauren’s wealthy neighborhood, both girls are lost until they find a deep bond with each other. But when Lauren recruits Sierra to help with a Robin Hood scheme to raise money for autistic kids who don’t have her family’s resources, Sierra has a lot to lose if the plan goes wrong. Lauren must learn that having good intentions isn’t all that matters when you battle injustice, and Sierra needs to realize that sometimes, the person you need to take care of is yourself.
Now a Netflix TV show! Featuring a diverse cast of characters, plenty of gossip, lies, and scandal, Shiny Broken Pieces continues with the soapy drama readers loved in Tiny Pretty Things. June, Bette, and Gigi are competing one final time for a spot at the prestigious American Ballet Company. With the stakes higher than ever, these girls have everything to lose…and no one is playing nice. June is starting to finally see herself as a prima ballerina. But being the best could mean sacrificing the love of her life. Legacy dancer Bette is determined to clear her name after she was suspended and accused of hurting her rival, Gigi. And Gigi is not going to let Bette—or the other dancers who bullied her—go unpunished. It all comes down to this last dance. Who will make the cut? And who will lose her dream forever?
