From salsa dancing in a rum-induced haze and struggling to exercise in Colombia (“the guerillas were using the track again today”), to crossing international borders unconventionally and dodging bombs in Lebanon (“the good news was that they were ‘small bombs’”), Wendy somehow manages to find herself in the midst of hysterical, adventurous, and often illegal situations. Case in point—every time she heads to Costa Rica, she is forced to visit another prison. Although a jail may not be everyone’s idea of a place to ?nd a date, Wendy soon falls in love with a man, a country, and its people and risks everything she has to clear his name. Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals is a bumpy and hilarious ride in which Wendy discovers that a successful vacation—much like that elusive thing, happiness—can be found in some of the most unlikely places imaginable. From the Trade Paperback edition.

From salsa dancing in a rum-induced haze and struggling to exercise in Colombia (“the guerillas were using the track again today”), to crossing international borders unconventionally and dodging bombs in Lebanon (“the good news was that they were ‘small bombs’”), Wendy somehow manages to find herself in the midst of hysterical, adventurous, and often illegal situations. Case in point—every time she heads to Costa Rica, she is forced to visit another prison. Although a jail may not be everyone’s idea of a place to ?nd a date, Wendy soon falls in love with a man, a country, and its people and risks everything she has to clear his name. Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals is a bumpy and hilarious ride in which Wendy discovers that a successful vacation—much like that elusive thing, happiness—can be found in some of the most unlikely places imaginable.

Lois Pryce was working at the BBC in London, firmly set on the career track. But unbeknownst to her coworkers, Lois was leading a parallel life as well, that of a biker babe with an overwhelming case of wanderlust, one that couldn't be satisfied by a weekend holiday. Her days in a cubicle were numbered, and it wasn't long before she was back on her bike and looking for adventure. Armed only with the Spanish words for "caution" and "cheese," Lois set off to conquer America---both Americas, actually. Starting in Alaska and working her way down the Pacific Coast, she rode through snow, desert, and everything in between to reach the southernmost tip of Argentina. Lois tackled every type of fellow biker imaginable and endured everything the continents could throw at her with quick thinking and a vibrant sense of humor. Whether bribing her way through Central American borders, spending the night in a Mexican brothel, or crashing her bike in Patagonia, Lois's bright, funny travelogue will charm anyone who longs for adventure and a stretch of the open road.

Pryce spent her weekdays working at the BBC stuck in a career rut, but she also led a parallel life as a biker with overwhelming wanderlust. Follow her hilarious adventures as she travels by motorcycle from Alaska to the southernmost tip of Argentina.

Named one of Vulture’s Top 10 Best Books of 2020! Leftist firebrand Fredrik deBoer exposes the lie at the heart of our educational system and demands top-to-bottom reform. Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Proposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: Academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved. In The Cult of Smart, educator and outspoken leftist Fredrik deBoer exposes this omission as the central flaw of our entire society, which has created and perpetuated an unjust class structure based on intellectual ability. Since cognitive talent varies from person to person, our education system can never create equal opportunity for all. Instead, it teaches our children that hierarchy and competition are natural, and that human value should be based on intelligence. These ideas are counter to everything that the left believes, but until they acknowledge the existence of individual cognitive differences, progressives remain complicit in keeping the status quo in place. This passionate, voice-driven manifesto demands that we embrace a new goal for education: equality of outcomes. We must create a world that has a place for everyone, not just the academically talented. But we’ll never achieve this dream until the Cult of Smart is destroyed.

This is the first collection of creative writing-related interviews originally posted on Mourning Goats, a website founded by the mysterious Mr Goat. Over a year of mostly anonymous work, the Goat managed to interview some of the most exciting English-language authors around. Edited by Phil Jourdan and the Goat himself, and featuring expanded interviews not available online, Chewing the Page offers a series of weird and hilarious glimpses at the world of writing. Includes interviews with Stephen Graham Jones, Craig Clevenger, Paul Tremblay, Donald Ray Pollock, Stephen Elliott, Chad Kultgen, Chelsea Cain, Rick Moody, Christopher Moore and Nick Hornby, and others. ,

Kun takes a witty look at an Atlanta tailor whose modest goals are thwarted by his ex-wife, a childhood prank gone awry and a talentless live-in girlfriend who dreams of being a country singer.