This book argues that issues of sexual diversity are inextricably interwoven into the basic concerns of pre-service teacher education. How do we make our students aware of assumptions regarding masculinity, femininity, and sexuality that arise from what is presented, represented, or omitted from curricula and classroom practice? What do we say about homophobia and heterosexism as we anticipate the administrative hierarchies, school cultures, parent and community politics they will encounte...

THIS JUST IN:The Promise by Annie Reed AND Cold Hands, Warm Heart by Joslyn Chase have BOTH been chosen for inclusion in the 2022 Year's Best Mystery Stories!AND The Missing by Leah R Cutter was listed on the honor roll in the 2022 Year's Best Mystery Stories.It might be that one case that never closed, that always haunted you.Or perhaps one that someone dumped in your lap, because new evidence has brought it back to life.A...

From the award-winning author of Little Pretty Things comes this gripping, unforgettable tale of a mother's desperate search for a lost boy.Anna Winger can know people better than they know themselves with only a glance-at their handwriting. Hired out by companies wanting to land trustworthy employees and by the lovelorn hoping to find happiness, Anna likes to keep the real-life mess of other people at arms length and on paper. But when she is called to use her expertise ...

With his characteristic raw and minimalist style, Charles Bukowski takes us on a walk through his side of town in Hot Water Music. He gives us little vignettes of depravity and lasciviousness, bite sized pieces of what is both beautiful and grotesque.The stories in Hot Water Music dash around the worst parts of town – a motel room stinking of sick, a decrepit apartment housing a perpetually arguing couple, a bar tended by a skeleton – and depict t...

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Christmas Cheer will warm readers’ hearts and spread the wonder of the holiday season with its tales of love and joy. A fantastic holiday gift for the young and young at heart.Everyone loves Christmas and the holiday season. We reunite scattered family members, watch the wonder in a child’s eyes, and feel the joy of giving gifts. The rituals of the holiday season give a rhythm to the years and create a foundation for our lives, a...

There is a big old sledding hill not more than two or three good snowballs’ worth of distance from our home, just behind Hank Macabee’s house. That hill was waiting for me and my brand new toboggan. It’s one of those sneak-up kind of hills with a long slow ride down that picks up speed as it goes with a bump-hump at the end that you never see coming.I didn’t see what was coming next, either.The Christmas tree crashed through Hank Macabee’s bay window. The tree stand clatter...

Newbery medalist Jerry Spinelli has penned his early autobiography with all the warmth, humor, and drama of his best-selling fiction. And don't miss the author's highly anticipated new novel, Dead Wednesday!"A master of those embarrassing, gloppy, painful, and suddenly wonderful things that happen on the razor's edge between childhood and full-fledged adolescence" --The Washington PostFrom first memories through high school, including firs...

In Lake Wobegon lives a good Lutheran lady who wishes for her ashes placed inside a bowling ball and dropped into the lake. Meanwhile, a wedding between a veterinary aromatherapist and her boyfriend Brent is set to take place aboard a pontoon boat. A delegation of renegade Lutheran pastors from Denmark has come to town, and there's Raoul of the cigars and tinted shades, come to visit his elderly lover. All is in readiness for the wedding - the French champagne, the flying Elvis, the giant ...

'Has all the hallmarks of a great writer: sympathy, wit, and an amazing ear for dialogue' - Harper's Bazaar_______________The Finest Wife is a single short story in the Family Snapshots series, taken from Elizabeth Gilbert's stunning collection of short stories, Pilgrims.Each story in this series offers a poignant glimpse of family life – the ties we cling to; the ties we try to se...

A Chicago journalist finds himself in a small Texas town on Christmas eve. Lonely and alone, he encounters old faces and new facts…a hand carved manger, a father's guilt, a young girl's faith. The trip into the past holds his key to the future, and a scarlet cross shows him the way home.This Christmas treasure, formerly titled The Christmas Cross now repackaged and redesigned, is quickly becoming a Christmas classic.The book takes place in three different settings ...

From the American heartland to the edge of Hell, David Morrell (bestselling author of such classics as First Blood and The Brotherhood of the Rose) has consistently redefined the modern thriller. Now he turns to a darker side of suspense in a powerful collection of tales, many of them award winners. Prefaced by revealing autobiographical introductions, they delve into the weird, uncanny terrors that lurk just beneath the comforting surfaces of daily life.Fear of l...

"My father comes into focus for me on a Liars' Club afternoon. He sits at a wobbly card table weighed down by a bottle. Even now the scene seems so real to me that I can't but write it in the present tense."Mary Karr grew up in a swampy East Texas refinery town in a volatile and defiantly loving family. In this funny, devastating, haunting memoir and with a raw and often painful honesty, she looks back at life with a painter mother, seven times married, whose outlaw spirit...