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Lot: Stories
One of Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of the Year" "Phenomenal" --Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
"Brilliant" --Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun
"A profound exploration of the true meaning of borders." --The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2019 in the New York Times by Dwight Garner
A New York Times Notable Book of 2019
In the city of Houston - a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America - the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He's working at his family's restaurant, weathering his brother's blows, resenting his older sister's absence. And discovering he likes boys. Around him, others live and thrive and die in Houston's myriad neighborhoods: a young woman whose affair detonates across an apartment complex, a ragtag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, hurricane survivors, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, a reluctant chupacabra. Bryan Washington's brilliant, viscerally drawn world vibrates with energy, wit, raw power, and the infinite longing of people searching for home. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot explores trust and love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms. -
The Art and Science of Foodpairing: 10,000 Flavour Matches That Will Transform the Way You Eat
10,000 flavor matches that will transform the way you eat.
What is foodpairing? It is not the familiar and mundane matching of wine and food or even food and food, but it is certainly all about creating the most delicious culinary results possible.
When humans taste a food, they are processing its taste 80 percent through the nose -- via the food's aromatic molecules -- and only 20 percent on the tongue. We can conclude then that knowing the aromatic molecular properties of a food is critical to pairing foods successfully for ultimate taste.
For a long time, we have been unknowingly pairing aromatic molecules out of instinct, cultural history, tradition, and plain guesswork. Many of those are routine and make sense but others are counterintuitive, like balsamic vinegar on strawberries. We like them because they are delicious. What we didn't know is that they work because they share aromatic molecules. With this new knowledge we have discovered unheard-of pairings like chocolate on cauliflower and kiwi with oyster. So how do we use this new science? We at home don't have the technology to isolate molecules or store the results in a database.
That's where The Art and Science of Foodpairing(R) comes in. From the scientists and chefs who discovered this new culinary science, and the company that created and maintains the enormous database, here is a fabulous reference to 10,000 food pairings for use in both professional and home kitchens. Foodpairing(R) has proven to be revolutionary: When the Foodpairing(R) database went live, the chef and restaurant community came on like a storm with 100,000 website hits on the first day. Now over 200,000 chefs and restaurants in 140 countries regularly access the database when designing their menus.
The Art and Science of Foodpairing(R) provides 10,000 flavor matches laid out in taste wheels and color keys. When cooks go to one ingredient, they will find 10 food pairings and a color wheel revealing the taste results. For example, boiled beets will taste less like the earth they grew in and more like cheese if they are paired with coffee, and cauliflower sprinkled with cocoa could turn the fussiest child into a veggie fiend.
Foodpairing(R) has the potential to transform our food choices with outcomes that include good health as well as the power to alleviate boredom. The same dinner, the same staples. We get bored, our children get bored. Foodpairing(R), even without adding anything new to the pantry, can alleviate that.
Beginning with an in-depth introduction and the story of Foodpairing(R), the book contains:
- Foodpairing(R) - What it is, how it works, methodology; the database; how to create a well-balanced recipe.
- The omnivore's dilemma - Including the conflict between playing safe and boredom, and the search for variety and novelty; learned food association; acquired tastes.
- Aroma - Including the importance of aroma to our flavor experience; how we change aromas by cooking; how ingredients create different or similar results; building your aroma library.
- Smell - Including how people smell and perceive aromas; why smell is essential to the eating experience.
- The Foodpairing(R) directory - 10 pairings per food, 10 per cooking method, 10,000 combinations in total.
The book also covers key food characteristics, aroma profiles, classic dishes, contemporary combinations, scientific explanations, special features and contributions from some of the world's greatest chefs for the top 150 ingredients, and much more.
The Art and Science of Foodpairing(R) is destined to become the essential reference to creating delicious, exciting and perfectly balanced meals.
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The Strange Bird: A Borne Story
The Strange Bird--from New York Times bestselling novelist Jeff VanderMeer--expands and weaves deeply into the world of his "thorough marvel"* of a novel, Borne.
The Strange Bird is a new kind of creature, built in a laboratory--she is part bird, part human, part many other things. But now the lab in which she was created is under siege and the scientists have turned on their animal creations. Flying through tunnels, dodging bullets, and changing her colors and patterning to avoid capture, the Strange Bird manages to escape. But she cannot just soar in peace above the earth. The sky itself is full of wildlife that rejects her as one of their own, and also full of technology--satellites and drones and other detritus of the human civilization below that has all but destroyed itself. And the farther she flies, the deeper she finds herself in the orbit of the Company, a collapsed biotech firm that has populated the world with experiments both failed and successful that have outlived the corporation itself: a pack of networked foxes, a giant predatory bear. But of the many creatures she encounters with whom she bears some kind of kinship, it is the humans--all of them now simply scrambling to survive--who are the most insidious, who still see her as simply something to possess, to capture, to trade, to exploit. Never to understand, never to welcome home. With The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer has done more than add another layer, a new chapter, to his celebrated novel Borne. He has created a whole new perspective on the world inhabited by Rachel and Wick, the Magician, Mord, and Borne--a view from above, of course, but also a view from deep inside the mind of a new kind of creature who will fight and suffer and live for the tenuous future of this world. Praise for Borne *"Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy was an ever-creeping map of the apocalypse; with Borne he continues his investigation into the malevolent grace of the world, and it's a thorough marvel." --Colson Whitehead "VanderMeer is that rare novelist who turns to nonhumans not to make them approximate us as much as possible but to make such approximation impossible. All of this is magnified a hundredfold in Borne . . . Here is the story about biotech that VanderMeer wants to tell, a vision of the nonhuman not as one fixed thing, one fixed destiny, but as either peaceful or catastrophic, by our side or out on a rampage as our behavior dictates--for these are our children, born of us and now to be borne in whatever shape or mess we have created. This coming-of-age story signals that eco-fiction has come of age as well: wilder, more reckless and more breathtaking than previously thought, a wager and a promise that what emerges from the twenty-first century will be as good as any from the twentieth, or the nineteenth." --Wai Chee Dimock, The New York Times Book Review -
We Set the Night on Fire: Igniting the Gay Revolution
Martha Shelley didn't start out in life wanting to become a gay activist, or an activist of any kind.
The daughter of Jewish refugees and undocumented immigrants in New York City, she grew up during the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s, was inspired by the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements that followed, and struggled with coming out as a lesbian at a time when being gay made her a criminal.
Shelley rose to become a public speaker for the New York chapter of the lesbian rights group the Daughters of Bilitis, organized the first gay march in response to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, and then cofounded the Gay Liberation Front. She coproduced the newspaper Come Out!, worked on the women's takeover of the RAT Subterranean News, and took a central role in the Lavender Menace action to confront homophobia in the women's movement.
Martha Shelley's story is a feminist and lesbian document that gives context and adds necessary humanity to the historical record. -
The Warden
A Most Anticipated Book of the Year for GoodReads and FanfiAddict
"Omigosh! I've just found an author to put on my list of I've got to read everything they ever wrote! The Warden is a gem of the first order. Aelis is my hero."--Glen Cook, author of The Black Company For fans who have always wanted their Twin Peaks to have some wizards, The Warden is a non-stop action adventure story from author Daniel M. Ford. There was a plan. She had the money, the connections, even the brains. It was simple: become one of the only female necromancers, earn as many degrees as possible, get a post in one of the grand cities, then prove she's capable of greatness. The funny thing about plans is that they are seldom under your control. Now Aelis de Lenti, a daughter of a noble house and recent graduate of the esteemed Magisters' Lyceum, finds herself in the far-removed village of Lone Pine. Mending fences, matching wits with goats, and serving people who want nothing to do with her. But, not all is well in Lone Pine, and as the villagers Aelis is reluctantly getting to know start to behave strangely, Aelis begins to suspect that there is far greater need for a Warden of her talents than she previously thought. Old magics are restless, and an insignificant village on the farthest border of the kingdom might hold secrets far beyond what anyone expected. Aelis might be the only person standing between one of the greatest evils ever known and the rest of the world. The Warden Series
A Recommended Reading List Pick for Locus and a Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Editors' Pick for Amazon
The Warden
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Tarot for the Hard Work: An Archetypal Journey to Confront Racism and Inspire Collective Healing
"An important and profoundly edifying book. . . . Perhaps the most important tarot text that will define this decade." -- Benebell Wen, author of Holistic Tarot Tarot for the Hard Work is a provocative exploration of the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana that re envisions these archetypes as beacons that illuminate the various ways racism takes root both in ourselves and in the world. Author Maria Minnis, with compassion and wisdom, shows us how these insights can be turned into self-awareness, self-love, and positive social action. "Tarot for the Hard Workis a tool for passionately demolishing structural oppression. It is a map that we can take with us on a voyage as we discover our personal, subliminal views on race and how we're impacted. Each card of the Major Arcana serves as a waypoint that challenges us to rethink our views on racial equity." --Rashunda Tramble, from the foreword Tarot has always been a powerful guide for introspection and inner work, so what better tool to use when we're ready to do the really hard work? Minnis provides actionable exercises in this tarot workbook, giving readers a unique, personal understanding of what systemic racism is--and what steps we can take to begin to dismantle it. This is a book for anyone who has been overwhelmed, outraged, or frustrated and asked, "But what can I do?" It is a book for anyone ready to look within and do the uncomfortable inner work necessary to demolish everyday racism. This book says tarot can be a tool for action, one that may offer great satisfaction as well as great difficulty, all while pushing you out of your comfort zone. "This book should be on everyone's bookshelf, not just tarot readers. EVERYONE. In Tarot for the Hard Work, author Maria Minnis helps awaken us to our truest, bravest, most compassionate selves. It's a luminous work of love. Minnis shines a torch illuminating our path toward justice." --Amanda Yates Garcia, author of Initiated and host of the Between the Worlds podcast In Tarot for the Hard Work you'll explore the Major Arcana to uncover how each card highlights both benevolent and shadow aspects of each archetype in relation to the different ways that racism shows up in our lives. With exercises and thought-provoking recommended reading and resources, you will be guided how to use those themes to dismantle internalized racism, racism in your relationships, and racism in your communities. Journal prompts are provided to help you create your own antiracism tool kit. As you move from the Fool to the World card, you'll discover that everything we do ripples beyond us and that there are practical ways to use tarot energy to change our actions and our world. "Minnis is the real deal. From transformative perspectives on tarot archetypes to clever action items for every kind of reader and activist, Tarot for the Hard Work doesn't apologize for being exactly what it is: a brilliant primer and essential guide for utilizing tarot's truth in personal and collective antiracism work." --Meg Jones Wall, author of Finding the FoolSold out -
Sold outCloser
Physically beautiful and strangely passive, George Miles becomes the object of his friends' passions and, one after another, they ransack him for love or anything else they can trust in the vacuum of middle America. What they find assaults the senses as it engages the mind, in a novel that explores the limits of experience.Sold out -
William Blake. Dante's 'Divine Comedy'. the Complete Drawings
Celebrated around the world as a literary monument, The Divine Comedy, completed in 1321 and written by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), is widely considered the greatest work ever composed in the Italian language. The epic poem describes Dante's journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, representing, on a deeper level, the soul's path towards salvation. In the last few years of his life, Romantic poet and artist William Blake (1757-1827) produced 102 illustrations for Dante's masterwork, from pencil sketches to finished watercolors. Like Dante's sweeping poem, Blake's drawings range from scenes of infernal suffering to celestial light, from horrifying human disfigurement to the perfection of physical form. While faithful to the text, Blake also brought his own perspective to some of Dante's central themes. Today, Blake's illustrations, left in various stages of completion at the time of his death, are dispersed among seven different institutions. This TASCHEN edition brings these works together again, alongside key excerpts from Dante's masterpiece. Two introductory essays consider Dante and Blake, as well as other major artists who have been inspired by The Divine Comedy, including Sandro Botticelli, Michelangelo, Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Doré, and Auguste Rodin. With an intimate reading of Blake's illustrations, and many close-ups to allow the most delicate of details to dazzle, this is a breathtaking encounter with two of the finest artistic talents in history, as well as with such universal themes as love, guilt, punishment, revenge, and redemption.
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All-American Ads of the 90s
From the Los Angeles riots to the Columbine High School massacre, Americans witnessed events and purchased items that reflected the best and worst of the decade. Bill Clinton's presidency was in jeopardy, the digital age had erupted, and Silicon Valley was affecting everyone on the planet. Meanwhile nudity and sex ruled the pages of magazines, selling everything from haute couture to fragrances and microwave ovens. Nirvana entertained Generation X while the "Greatest Generation" considered purchasing a Probe and something called a Hummer.
Super Soakers and the game consoles Game Boy and PlayStation were the new toys, as Super Mario World, Gran Turismo, and Sonic the Hedgehog were warping the minds of young people everywhere. Luxury brands were in demand: shoppers coveted a Gucci bag, a Louis Vuitton tote, a Hermes scarf, or a Prada frock. TWA and Continental Airlines still flew the airways and Volkswagen reimagined the Beetle. It was a decade that seemed safely benign, but was jammed with events and consumption on a grand scale, setting the stage for the 21st century.
Featuring six chapters that cover a range of advertising, from food and fashion to entertainment and cars, a Desert Storm's worth of advertising highlights makes All-American Ads of the '90s a must-have compendium for every Beanie Babies-collecting, Simpsons-watching, pog-hoarding, and Harry Potter-loving citizen of 1990s consumerism. -
And the Band Played on: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
Upon its first publication more than twenty years ago, And the Band Played on was quickly recognized as a masterpiece of investigative reporting.
An international bestseller, a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and made into a critically acclaimed movie, Shilts' expose revealed why AIDS was allowed to spread unchecked during the early 80's while the most trusted institutions ignored or denied the threat. One of the few true modern classics, it changed and framed how AIDS was discussed in the following years. Now republished in a special 20th Anniversary edition, And the Band Played On remains one of the essential books of our time. -
I Am a Filipino: And This Is How We Cook
2019 James Beard Award Finalist Named a Best Cookbook of the Year by The New Yorker, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times Book Review, Houston Chronicle, Food52, PopSugar, and more To eat--and cook--like a Filipino involves puckeringly sour adobos with meat so tender you can cut it with a fork, national favorites like kare kare (oxtail stew) and kinilaw (fresh seafood cured in vinegar), Chinese-influenced pansit (noodles), tamales by way of early Mexican immigrants, and Arab-inflected fare, with its layered spicy stews and flavors of burnt coconut. But it also entails beloved street snacks like ukoy (fritters) and empanadas and the array of sweets and treats called meryenda. Dishes reflect the influence and ingredients of the Spaniards and Americans, among others, who came to the islands, but Filipinos turned the food into their own unique and captivating cuisine. Filled with riotously bold and bright photographs, I Am a Filipino is like a classic kamayan dinner--one long festive table piled high with food. Just dig in! -
Black God's Drums
Rising science fiction and fantasy star P. Djèlí Clark brings an alternate New Orleans of orisha, airships, and adventure to life in his immersive debut novella The Black God's Drums.
Alex Award Winner!
In an alternate New Orleans caught in the tangle of the American Civil War, the wall-scaling girl named Creeper yearns to escape the streets for the air--in particular, by earning a spot on-board the airship Midnight Robber. Creeper plans to earn Captain Ann-Marie's trust with information she discovers about a Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God's Drums. But Creeper also has a secret herself: Oya, the African orisha of the wind and storms, speaks inside her head, and may have her own ulterior motivations. Soon, Creeper, Oya, and the crew of the Midnight Robber are pulled into a perilous mission aimed to stop the Black God's Drums from being unleashed and wiping out the entirety of New Orleans. "A sinewy mosaic of Haitian sky pirates, wily street urchins, and orisha magic. Beguiling and bombastic!"--New York Times bestselling author Scott Westerfeld -
In the Roses of Pieria
Award-winning author Anna Burke delivers the shivers in this daring queer dark fantasy romance teeming with sensuous vampires, dark academia, plant horrors, and terrifying fungal fae.
When Clara Eden is offered a job as an archivist working for eccentric estate owner Agatha Montague, she thinks her prayers have been answered. Soon, she finds herself sucked into her research world, captivated by a romantic correspondence thousands of years old. But as her feelings for her employer's assistant, Fiadh, deepen, so does her suspicion that something about Agatha Montague isn't right. Unfortunately for Clara, it is far too late to run by the time her suspicions are confirmed.
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Star Crossed, Volume 1
This is a story about a king and his knight...
Polaris is king of the stars; with his celestial paint brush he breathes life into constellations, which protect his kingdom. Yildun is his loyal knight, ever at his side, but always in shadow as his station dictates him to remain unseen. Together, they will face a battle for the throne from Polaris' brother -- as well as their own conflicting feelings. A love story written in the stars!
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Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land
"I am a child of the American West, a landscape so rich and wide that my culture trembles with terror before its power." So begins Taylor Brorby's Boys and Oil, a haunting, bracingly honest memoir about growing up gay amidst the harshness of rural North Dakota, "a place where there is no safety in a ravaged landscape of mining and fracking."
In visceral prose, Brorby recounts his upbringing in the coalfields; his adolescent infatuation with books; and how he felt intrinsically different from other boys. Now an environmentalist, Brorby uses the destruction of large swathes of the West as a metaphor for the terror he experienced as a youth. From an assault outside a bar in an oil boom town to a furtive romance, and from his awakening as an activist to his arrest at the Dakota Access Pipeline, Boys and Oil provides a startling portrait of an America that persists despite well-intentioned legal protections.
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How Y'All Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived
New York Times and USA Today Bestseller
Viral sensation and Emmy Award-winner Leslie Jordan regales fans with entertaining stories about the odd, funny, and unforgettable events in his life in this unmissable essay collection that echoes his droll, irreverent voice.
When actor Leslie Jordan learned he had "gone viral," he had no idea what that meant or how much his life was about to change. On Instagram, his uproarious videos have entertained millions and have made him a global celebrity. Now, he brings his bon vivance to the page with this collection of intimate and sassy essays.
Bursting with color and life, dripping with his puckish Southern charm, How Y'all Doing? is Leslie doing what Leslie does best: telling stories that make us laugh and lift our spirits even in the darkest days. Whether he's writing about his brush with a group of ruffians in a West Hollywood Starbucks, or an unexpected phone call from legendary Hollywood start Debbie Reynolds, Leslie infuses each story with his fresh and saucy humor and pure heart.
How Y'all Doing? is an authentic, warm, and joyful portrait of an American Sweetheart-- a Southern Baptist celebutante, first-rate raconteur, and keen observer of the odd side of life whose quirky wit rivals the likes of Amy Sedaris, Jenny Lawson, David Rakoff, and Sarah Vowell.
