"Of course I want a home," writes Mary Elizabeth Williams, "I'm American." Gimme Shelter is the first book to reveal how this primal desire, "encoded into our cultural DNA," drove our nation to extremes, from the heights of an unprecedented housing boom to the depths of an unparalleled crash. As a writer and parent in New York City, Williams is careful to ground her real-estate dreams in the reality of her middle-class bank account. Yet as a person who knows no other way to fall in love than at first sight, her relationship with the nation's most daunting housing market is a passionate one. Williams's house-hunting fantasy quickly morphs into a test of endurance, as her search for a place to live and a mortgage she can afford stretches into a three-year odyssey that takes her to the farthest reaches of the boroughs and the limits of her own patience. "Welcome to the tracks," she declares at the outset of yet another weekend tour of blindingly bad, wildly overpriced properties. "Let's go to the wrong side of them, shall we?" As her own quest unfolds, Williams simultaneously reports on the housing markets nationwide. Friends and family members grapple with real estate agents and lenders, neighborhood and quality-of-life issues, all the while voicing common concerns, as expressed by this Maryland working parent of three: "The market was so hot, there were no houses. We looked for years at places the owners wouldn't even clean, let alone fix up." How frustrating is the process? Williams likens it to hearing "the opening bars of a song you think is 'Super Freak.' And then it turns out to be 'U Can't Touch This.'" Told in an engaging blend of factfinding and memoir, Gimme Shelter charts the course of the real estate bubble as it floated ever upward, not with faceless numbers and documents but with the details of countless personal stories -- about the undeniable urge to put down roots and the lengths to which we'll go to find our way home.

The Chicken Squad is back for their fifth (mis)adventure in this “lip-bitingly funny” (School Library Journal) chapter book from the bestselling author of Click, Clack, Moo and The Trouble with Chickens. The Chicken Squad prides themselves on being ready for anything. Marshmallow life preservers? Check. Copious bags of jellybeans for a car ride? Check. Storm shelter? Storm shelter! They need a storm shelter in case there is ever a storm. So Sugar takes it upon himself to build one in the yard. But it turns out it’s not big enough for everyone. And the big dig has unearthed some mysterious surprises.

Architecture and perspective are the common denominators in the oeuvre of Hans Vandekerckhove. Gimme Shelter illustrates 90 of his paintings. Both at home and abroad, Hans Vandekerckhove has been a big name in the art world for quite some time. He has had (solo) expositions in the SMAK museum in Ghent, and the Mu.Zee museum in Ostend, as well as in Amsterdam, Madrid and Frankfurt. In 'Gimme Shelter', Hans has compiled all of his work, which originated from his passion for architecture, ranging from the archetypes from his youth, when he had a studio in his uncle's greenhouse, modern architecture by Mies van de Rohe, and the buildings by Peter Zumthor, to the need of a 'home', as a breeding ground for inspiration. Text in English and Dutch. AUTHOR: Eric Rinckhout is a culture journalist with Belgian newspaper De Morgen who usually writes about visual arts. He has written two books on Willem Elsschot, compiled his art columns 'Ontrafeld', has written articles about Jan Vanriet, Sam Dillemans and Eugeen Van Mieghem, amongst others. SELLING POINTS: * The most recent paintings by this renowned Belgian painter * With texts by author and De Morgen journalist Eric Rinckhout 140 colour illustrations

Now and then, there really is good government. Bonnie Stone spent 40 years in New York City-and social services-oriented not-for-profits. She doggedly and ingeniously tackled some of New York's most urgent issues, particularly chronic homelessness. Undaunted, Stone negotiated choppy waters, working with the expert, the difficult, the skeptical, the next-to-impossible, the determined, and the inspired. Gimme Shelter has a cast of characters as colorful and varied as the city itself. There are big stories of apparently insurmountable odds, surmounted-and smaller stories of people who with dedicated help were able to beat terrible odds. At a time when government is viewed as ineffective or even as a saboteur of people's best interests, Gimme Shelter reveals how the men and women who work for the City of New York can bring positive change to the lives of its citizens.