“Illuminating and infuriating . . . A staggering achievement.” (Publishers Weekly starred review)A powerful coming-of-age memoir of one girl’s struggle, adrift in warrior cultureAt eighteen, Bailey Williams bolted from her strict Mormon upbringing to a Marine recruiting office to enlist as a 2600—a military linguist. But the first language the Marine Corps taught her wasn’t Arabic, Farsi, or Dari. It was how Marines speak to, and a...

A Teacher's Passion... She's spent years teaching students English, changing their lives and igniting a love of learning. Her passion for her job is not only fueled by a love of teaching, but a desire to escape a lifetime of personal loneliness. A survivor of sexual assault, she's also mastered the art of "self-medicating" and looking for love in all the wrong places. All that changed the day Marley walked into her class. He was just as wounded as she. . . but there were just some lines a ...

A poignant, powerful debut that combines the deep emotion of The House on Mango Street with uniquely creative storytelling, painting a story of survival and healing.Unfolding in a series of vignettes, A Little Piece of Sky introduces an endearing new novelist and a truly unforgettable main character--Song Byrd, a young girl who keenly reports on the world around her. She is African American in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood and the unwanted produc...

For 18 years, I've handed out roses made from napkins to strangers.Not because life was perfect—but because it wasn't.This story didn't begin in a garden.It began in a jail cell.What started as a simple act in a broken place became something I never expected—a way to bring kindness into moments where people needed it most.Restaurants. Waiting rooms. Meetings. Airports.Thousands of roses.Thousands of moments.This is the...

Shy and awkward, ruthlessly ridiculed by other children and carelessly treated by adults, Claudia Fryar flees her hometown of Philadelphia after her father’s death. But years of shame and silent suffering as the love child of the respected—and married—Louis Harrison finally come to a raging boil when Harrison’s jealous widow cheats Claudia out of her inheritance.Twice-scorned, Claudia transforms herself into Peach Harrison: bold, beautiful…and sinister. Now a successful newscaster,...

From the gifted author of A Little Piece of Sky: The poignant tale of a young woman who must come to terms with her biracial identity.Shana Washington is the product of two very different worlds. Her white mother is a socialite with an Ivy League education; Shana’s black father has a weakness for whiskey and can’t stay faithful to any woman, but when his daughter is in peril, he always finds a way to rescue her. Hauntingly evoking the worlds represented by these three chara...

Quetzalcoatl "Quetz" Juarez (simply referred to as Quetz in the story) is a 17 year old teen living in modern day Mexico City. He is of American/Mexican/Nahua descent and is looking for his own past through his endless search of the Aztec Mixed Martial Art known as Yaomachtia. Quetz grows as a person throughout the story, as he makes mistakes, corrects them and then learns from each experience.Set in modern day Mexico City, Quetz embarks on his journey and searches for his dreams w...

Preretirement Ideas, Postretirement StrategiesSeventy-eight million baby boomers will retire soon. Some are prepared, but many will fail. You have to ask yourself, "Am I prepared?" and "What could go wrong?"Being prepared means having much more retirement income than you can imagine needing. With the rising costs of health care, everyday living expenses, and inflation, your cost of living could double over the course of several years.Do you have substantial savings,...

Southern Race relations are a disordered and mismanaged mess snared in prejudices, suppression, and failures in communication. Tangled Branches does not fit into the popular context of the causes or effects. While slavery existed within the author's family for thirty-four years, the black and white families remained together for 150 years. Tangled Branches is a week-long discussion between the author and the African-American grandson of his mother's maid. It is the story of a middle age wh...

In this book, Barbara Ellison and Thomas B. W. Bailey lay out and explore the mystifying and evanescent musical territory of 'sonic phantoms': auditory illusions within the musical material that convey a 'phantasmatic' presence. Structured around a large body of compositional work developed by Ellison over the past decade, sonic phantoms are revealed and illustrated as they arise through a diverse array of musical sources, materials, techniques, and compositional tools: voices (real and sy...

Battlefield Forensics for Persian Gulf States provides an illustrative reference of various weapons, toolmarks, headstamps, and other traits in order to identify the origins of a variety of guns, casings, and ammunition that can be found in the Middle East. Various conflicts in the region have led to innumerable weapons being used throughout the years. The lead author, Don Mikko, has investigated and examined firearms related items of evidence in countless crime scenes throughout the world...

Quetzalcoatl "Quetz" Juarez (simply referred to as Quetz in the story) is a 17 year old teen living in modern day Mexico City. He is of American/Mexican/Nahua descent and is looking for his own past through his endless search of the Aztec Mixed Martial Art known as Yaomachtia. Quetz grows as a person throughout the story, as he makes mistakes, corrects them and then learns from each experience.  Set in modern day Mexico City, Quetz embarks on his journey and searches for his ...