A renowned musician in his 85th year explores the nature of wisdom, how we learn to recognize it, and how we pass it forward.In this entrancing memoir, timeless questions about music and life are explored by a master musician in his 85th year. The stern father who built an empire of words; the solipsistic uncle whose hypnotic voice calmed millions: these are just early glimpses of Mathieu's memory. Soon he is crimped into an overhead baggage rack in Stan Kenton's t...

The Listening Book is about rediscovering the power of listening as an instrument of self-discovery and personal transformation. By exploring our capacity for listening to sounds and for making music, we can awaken and release our full creative powers. Mathieu offers suggestions and encouragement on many aspects of music-making, and provides playful exercises to help readers appreciate the connection between sound, music, and everyday life.

Everyone, according to W.A. Mathieu, is musical by nature—it goes right along with being human. And if you don't believe it, this book will convince you. In a series of interrelated short essays, Mathieu takes the reader on a journey through ordinary experiences to open our ears to the rich variety of music that surrounds us but that we are trained to ignore; such as the variety of pitches produced by different objects, like glassware, furniture, drums—anything you can tap; or sounds that ...

In Alta Donna, the weather is great, the sunsets are super, and the stars twinkle brightly. Perfect, right? No! It's super boring. Nothing real ever happens. Everybody says I spend too much time daydreaming in my own little world. At least my dreams are more interesting than Alta Donna. But what if Alta Donna is hiding a secret? The two new kids in town are up to something. No one could be as good a baseball player as Damiano, and no one could be as charming as Inés. The ...

Attorney Elizabeth Campbell turned her back on her silver spoon upbringing and finds emotional fulfillment in her work at a nonprofit legal clinic, much to the dismay of her parents.Her propensity for bending the law, as well as uttering a few choice phrases, makes her pairing with a Catholic priest to investigate the case of a simple man with an IQ of a child, who confessed to a brutal killing, a challenge. But solving a gruesome murder is not even her greatest trial—it’s her grow...

Music is, in one sense, merely a series of fleeting vibrations that arise and subside. How could it be that something so insubstantial fills us, and calms us, and makes us weep? Because, says W. A. Mathieu, music bridges mind and heart, self and other, and affirms our place in the world. Everyone uses the bridge of music, from casual listeners to devoted professionals. Mathieu's delightful and trenchant prose asks you to question what music is, how it works, and how to understand its value...

Healing Workplaces: The Psychology of Toxic Workplaces, Volume 1Understanding the psychology behind toxic workplaces is the first step toward creating healthier ones.Why do some workplaces become environments of fear, manipulation, conflict, and psychological distress? Why do some individuals undermine colleagues, misuse authority, or create organizational cultures that tolerate harmful behaviors?In Healing Workplaces: The Psych...

Adult childlikeness is familiar to everyone. However, childlikeness remains a little-studied and catchall concept whose more or less ameliorative or pejorative meaning can vary considerably depending on time and place, but also on disciplines. Like A Child Would Do: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Childlikeness in Past and Current Societies attempts to pierce this conceptual fog.Navigating between classical Chinese fiction, Shakespearean characters, the arts, consumer soc...

Attorney Elizabeth Campbell and Detective Grace Donovan find themselves once again on opposite sides of a case when Elizabeth represents a young man accused of murdering an elderly woman, a case in which Grace is the lead detective. Initially, even Elizabeth doubts his innocence, but as she begins to dig, she finds a much deeper, darker secret that leads to an abandoned antebellum plantation that was a former headquarters for the Knights of the Golden—secret society that was believed to ha...

"It's a little known fact, but ferrets secretly run the world." I thought my biology report started out great. But did the teacher let me finish? No! No one ever lets me finish. They think I just make up crazy stories from my crazy dreams. But I was right about the two new kids in town, Damiano and Inés. They're hiding a secret—a big one. But there's more to figure out. Why do two weird creatures keep attacking them? What's going on underneath the too-perfect town of Alta Donna?Ever...

Now a Netflix Original Film directed by Amy Poehler."Sweet, funny, and fierce. Read this and then join the fight."—Amy PoehlerAn unlikely teenager starts a feminist revolution at a small-town Texas high school in this novel from Jennifer Mathieu, author of Down Came the Rain and The Truth About Alice.Vivian Carter is fed up. Fed up with an administration at her high school that thinks the football ...

From Jennifer Mathieu, the author of The Truth About Alice comes a novel about the courage to believe and what it means to be truly devoted.Rachel Walker is devoted to God. She prays every day, attends Calvary Christian Church with her family, helps care for her five younger siblings, dresses modestly, and prepares herself to be a wife and mother who serves the Lord with joy. But Rachel is curious about the world her family has turned away from, and increas...