High school senior Nate Whitby is not gay. Well, not really.Okay, so he's only attracted to guys. And he's had sex with several. But he knows it's just a phase.He always figured that, along the road to becoming an adult, he'd mutate into someone who preferred Keira Knightley to Chris Hemsworth. It would just happen, like puberty. But as adulthood approaches and his transformation has yet to begin, he panics.Taking desperate measures to change his sexual orientation,...

Finalist for Best Jazz Book of the Year Award from the Jazz Journalists AssociationThe things that I have, I’ll give to you. This is my legacy with you, Albert. This is my last hoo-rah. So begins the autobiography of Jonathan David Samuel Jones—or as the world better knows him, Papa Jo Jones. Playing with Count Basie and his orchestra when they exploded out of Kansas City in 1936 and took the world by storm, Jones went on to inspire generations of jazz dru...

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is the second-most assigned American novel since 1945 and is one of the most enduring. It is studied by many thousands of high school and college students every year and has been since the 1950s. His landmark essays, with their blend of personal history and cultural theory, have been extraordinarily influential. Ralph Ellison in Context includes authoritative chapters summing up longstanding conversations, while offering groundbreaking essays on a variety of t...

The first book-length study of the writings, work, and life of Renaissance man and Alabama native Albert MurrayThis collection consists of essays written by prominent African American literature, jazz, and Albert Murray scholars, reminiscences from Murray protégés and associates, and interviews with Murray himself. It illustrates Murray’s place as a central figure in African American arts and letters and as an American cul...

In this classic work of American music writing, renowned critic Albert Murray argues beautifully and authoritatively that “the blues as such are synonymous with low spirits. Not only is its express purpose to make people feel good, which is to say in high spirits, but in the process of doing so it is actually expected to generate a disposition that is both elegantly playful and heroic in its nonchalance.”In Stomping the Blues Murray explores its history, influences, develo...

The year 2016 will mark the centennial of the birth of Albert Murray (1916–2013), who in thirteen books was by turns a lyrical novelist, a keen and iconoclastic social critic, and a formidable interpreter of jazz and blues. Not only did his prizewinning study Stomping the Blues (1976) influence musicians far and wide, it was also a foundational text for Jazz at Lincoln Center, which he cofounded with Wynton Marsalis and others in 1987. Murray Talks Music brings together, ...

High school senior Nate Whitby is not gay. Well, not really.Okay, so he’s only attracted to guys. And he’s had sex with several. But he knows it’s just a phase.He always figured that, along the road to becoming an adult, he’d mutate into someone who preferred Keira Knightley to Chris Hemsworth. It would just happen, like puberty. But as adulthood approaches and his transformation has yet to begin, he panics.Taking desperate measures to change his sexual orientation,...

Middie Daniels calls it the leaving season: the time of year when everyone graduates high school, packs up their brand-new suitcases, and leaves home for the first time.This year Middie’s boyfriend, Nate, is the one leaving, heading to Central America for a year of volunteering after graduation. And once he returns, it’ll be time for Middie to leave, too. With him. But when tragedy strikes, Middie’s whole world is set spinning in this unforgettable story of grief and loss. No one s...

Published in 1982, But Some of Us Are Brave was the first-ever Black women's studies reader and a foundational text of contemporary feminism.Featuring writing from eminent scholars, activists, teachers, and writers, such as the Combahee River Collective and Alice Walker, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Bravechallenges the absence of Black feminist thought in women’s studies, confronts racism, and investigates th...

In "Different Dispatches", David Humphries brings together in a new way a diverse group of well-known American writers of the inter-war period including: Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemmingway, Zora Neale Hurston, James Agee and Robert Penn Warren. He demonstrates how these writers engage journalism in creating innovative texts that address mass culture as well as underlying cultural conditions. The book will be of interest to readers approaching these well-known authors for th...

The New Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner offers contemporary readers a sample of innovative approaches to interpreting and appreciating William Faulkner, who continues to inspire passionate readership worldwide. The essays here address a variety of topics in Faulkner's fiction, such as its reflection of the concurrent emergence of cinema, social inequality and rights movements, modern ways of imagining sexual identity and behavior, the South's history as a plantation economy and soc...

Navy SEAL Miles Dumbrowski is on his way back to war. He isn’t supposed to fall in love.Piper Harrington left San Diego behind, looking for adventure in Europe. The no-strings, easy-breezy kind of adventure.Now her heart is headed to the Middle East with a man she won’t see for months. But Miles seems intent on proving he's worth the wait for that second date.