Reflections on the enigma and secret of “literature.”

Presents a novel of hope, love, and redemption.

We first met Avery in two of the stories featured in Dana Johnson's award–winning collection Break Any Woman Down. As a young girl, she and her family escape the violent streets of Los Angeles to a more gentrified existence in suburban West Covina. This average life, filled with school, trips to 7–Eleven to gawk at Tiger Beat magazine, and family outings to Dodger Stadium, is soon interrupted by a past she cannot escape, personified in the guise of her violent cousin Keith. When Keith moves in with her family, he triggers a series of events that will follow Avery throughout her life: to her studies at USC, to her burgeoning career as a painter and artist, and into her relationship with a wealthy Italian who sequesters her in his glass–walled house in the Hollywood Hills. The past will intrude upon Avery's first gallery show, proving her mother's adage: Every goodbye aint gone. The dual–narrative of Elsewhere, California illustrates the complicated history of African Americans across the rolling basin of Los Angeles.

A unique collection of previously unseen images spanning Steve McCurry's extraordinary career. Steve McCurry is known for creating some of the most iconic images of recent times and in this new collection, he shares previously unseen photographs from his incredibly rich archive. In Search of Elsewheretakes us across the globe and offers new perspectives on many of the locations that the photographer has already made famous - from India, Myanmar and Cuba, to Kashmir and the white-washed temples of the Himalayas. Each image is reproduced at large format and in remarkable detail and this new compilation reveals the incredible depth of his work. "I compare photography to food, air, and sleep... this creative energy, this impulse, is what gives us purpose, pleasure, joy, happiness and love."Steve McCurry Also available: Steve McCurry: A Life in Pictures

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University --

After something crucial goes missing from the strange old house on Linden Street, 11-year-old Olive and her friends must decide how to get it backNput their faith in a strange and dangerous magic, their odd new neighbors, or someone more uncertain and terrifying than both.