A CLEAN, HISTORICAL ROMANCE SET IN THE ROARING 1920s! The year is 1927. Davis Bakery has the best breads in Queens, New York City, and Blue Davis is proud to serve her customers. Helping her grandparents run the shop, Blue crosses paths with an old high school friend George Greyson, a musician, returned from a long absence in the neighborhood. The problem? Blue’s bookish nature and naiveté with the gentlemen blind what’s right in front of her. Gorgeous George invites her to an upscale speakeasy for dancing, sweet jazz, and drinks. Surprising even herself, Blue accepts but insists on bringing her best friend and socialite, Myra Post. A skiff and lie to Blue’s grandparents, along with local gossip about that night, lands her black and blue, and shipped off to upstate New York to stay with another family member. Will George seek out the love he most desires after Blue is sent away? Or will he let the music die along with her departure?

The club is run-down and dimly lit. Onstage, a black singer croons and weeps of heartbreak, fighting back the tears. Wisps of smoke curl through the beam of a single spotlight illuminating the performer. For any music lover, that image captures the essence of an authentic experience of the blues. In Blue Chicago, David Grazian takes us inside the world of contemporary urban blues clubs to uncover how such images are manufactured and sold to music fans and audiences. Drawing on countless nights in dozens of blues clubs throughout Chicago, Grazian shows how this quest for authenticity has transformed the very shape of the blues experience. He explores the ways in which professional and amateur musicians, club owners, and city boosters define authenticity and dish it out to tourists and bar regulars. He also tracks the changing relations between race and the blues over the past several decades, including the increased frustrations of black musicians forced to slog through the same set of overplayed blues standards for mainly white audiences night after night. In the end, Grazian finds that authenticity lies in the eye of the beholder: a nocturnal fantasy to some, an essential way of life to others, and a frustrating burden to the rest. From B.L.U.E.S. and the Checkerboard Lounge to the Chicago Blues Festival itself, Grazian's gritty and often sobering tour in Blue Chicago shows us not what the blues is all about, but why we care so much about that question.

Chicago blues musicians parlayed a genius for innovation and emotional honesty into a music revered around the world. As the blues evolves, it continues to provide a soundtrack to, and a dynamic commentary on, the African American experience: the legacy of slavery; historic promises and betrayals; opportunity and disenfranchisement; the ongoing struggle for freedom. Through it all, the blues remains steeped in survivorship and triumph, a music that dares to stare down life in all its injustice and iniquity and still laugh--and dance--in its face. David Whiteis delves into how the current and upcoming Chicago blues generations carry on this legacy. Drawing on in-person interviews, Whiteis places the artists within the ongoing social and cultural reality their work reflects and helps create. Beginning with James Cotton, Eddie Shaw, and other bequeathers, he moves through an all-star council of elders like Otis Rush and Buddy Guy and on to inheritors and today's heirs apparent like Ronnie Baker Brooks, Shemekia Copeland, and Nellie "Tiger" Travis. Insightful and wide-ranging, Blues Legacy reveals a constantly adapting art form that, whatever the challenges, maintains its links to a rich musical past.

This collection assembles the best interviews from Steve Cushing's long-running radio program Blues Before Sunrise, the nationally syndicated, award-winning program focusing on vintage blues and R&B. As both an observer and performer, Cushing has been involved with the blues scene in Chicago for decades. His candid, colorful interviews with prominent blues players, producers, and deejays reveal the behind-the-scenes world of the formative years of recorded blues. Many of these oral histories detail the careers of lesser-known but greatly influential blues performers and promoters. The book focuses in particular on pre–World War II blues singers, performers active in 1950s Chicago, and nonperformers who contributed to the early blues world. Interviewees include Alberta Hunter, one of the earliest African American singers to transition from Chicago's Bronzeville nightlife to the international spotlight, and Ralph Bass, one of the greatest R&B producers of his era. Blues expert, writer, record producer, and cofounder of Living Blues Magazine Jim O'Neal provides the book's foreword.

"Baby Blues us one of the truest and funniest accounts of raising a baby every to grace the comics page." --Lynn Johnston, creator of For Better or For Worse Now that Wanda and Darryl are pregnant again, the doting parents will be getting the baby clothes out of the attic, preparing Zoe to be a big sister, and just trying to cope with it all! In this installment from Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott, the MacPhersons deliver humor at its family-oriented best. Juggling the demands of job, home, and a baby on the way, the fatigued Wanda and Darryl have the added challenge of Zoe as she becomes a mobile toddler. She walks, she talks, and she's obsessed with the Whistling Monkey Cowboy Band! Like the millions of new parents who have embraced this engaging strip, the MacPhersons have found parenthood both fulfilling and frustrating. Exhausted parents everywhere are enthralled with this on-the-go couple who manage their careers and child-rearing. Mothers love Baby Blues because they know all too well how Wanda's days have changed, from career woman to Mom, especially as she prepares to add another bundle of joy to the MacPhersons' already busy household. Dads nod in recognition as Darryl tries to help out and hold down a demanding job. Everyone cherishes little Zoe for making adorable even the most exasperating childhood antics. Artist Kirkman and writer Scott obviously know about parenting. You can see it in every installment of the clever, true-to-life strip they create, from accidentally losing Zoe at the mall, to listening in on baby monitors with crossed signals.

Get ready for bed with this padded storybook featuring the characters from Nickelodeon's Blue's Clues & You! Blue is having a sleepover party, but what does she want to do before bed? Cuddle up with this padded book and play a special game of Blue's Clues with Josh from Nickelodeon's Blue's Clues and You to find out! Boys and girls ages 0 to 3 will love snuggling up with this adorable bedtime book. Nickelodeon's Blue's Clues & You combines engaging interactive and educational elements with an adorable puppy and her fun friend Josh, perfect for hours of preschool fun!