Life's good at the top.Until you're not.The son of the God of War has it all, and the smooth-talking, jet-setting master knows it. The once chubby cherub now has adoring fans, a shiny red limousine, and a mansion nearly, almost, not quite big enough to hold his enormous and ever-growing ego.But everything changes for the sloppy, ill-aiming love god when a meddling stranger challenges him for his crown. Not even the advice of his war-mongering father, Mars, and embarrassingly underdressed mother, Venus, can save Cupid from the skids. Facing enraged immortals, epic battles against hell's most vile creatures, and the dread of becoming mortal himself, Cupid teams up with an unlikely band of misfit fallen angels in the hopes of saving himself, the Olympic kingdom, and humans the world over. But can such an inept team of losers finally win when it counts?Funny, rude, and planted smack in modern times, God Awful Loser is a new chapter on the ancient gods' bad -- and hugely entertaining -- choices. May we never follow in their footsteps.

Winner of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators SPARK Award!Cupid's star is soaring. The once-banished god of love has more street cred than ever, thanks to twice saving the kingdom. He's been declared heir to Olympus and aims to wed the girl of his dreams.But enemies of the gods taste blood in the air, and a swarm of saboteurs come slithering in.When three snake-haired sisters long assumed dead lay siege to the heavens, they threaten all that Cupid holds dear. Add a goddess fighting to hide the truth, and ancient elementals bent on revenge, and there might not be any world left to save.Cupid, though, has a secret of his own, one even he doesn't know. Will he discover it in time? Can the heir apparent and his fragmented forces crush this new danger under heel? Or is the venom coursing too deep? Only a charmer like Cupid can unwind these deadly coils.GOD AWFUL REBEL smokes out the ways of old in the third and final bite of the God Awful series.

Cupid's back and at the top of his game.The always adored - and now restored - God of Love has a new look, a new attitude, and even a steady girlfriend. With his humiliating dethronement and harrowing banishment behind him, Cupid wants nothing more than to settle in to a comfortable immortality.But someone has dreamed up a different plan.With a sea god setting the oceans against him, a drama-loving hanger-on refusing to go away, and the king of the gods ordering Cupid to steal the most powerful relic ever made by the most cunning god ever angered, Cupid and his leading lady, Tamara, must join a new cast and crew to face their most challenging mission yet. The stage is set for an epic performance, but just who is writing this script? And will Cupid and his troupe figure it out before they lose their minds - and quite possibly their lives?God Awful Thief brings new hilarity and an ever-expanding cast of fickle gods to Cupid's misadventures, potential tragedies, and everlasting comedies. God Awful Thief is the second act in the God Awful Series of Books.

"At a sports-crazy NJ high school where all kids must play on a team, a group of rebels start[s] a soccer team designed to undermine the jock-culture of the school"--

Private investigator David Spandau, an ex-stuntman familiar with the ins and outs of Hollywood—a smart, tough, and wickedly funny observer of la vie L.A.—finds his patience almost sapped when he’s hired to protect actor Bobby Dye from a blackmailing scheme gone wrong. Dye—young, brash, and on the verge of becoming a major star—has been set up by gangster Richie Stella, a nightclub owner and drug dealer with dreams of becoming a Hollywood producer. And he has a movie perfect for Dye. Problem is, it’s the worst script anyone’s ever read. But Richie is not easy to say no to, and when he retaliates, the game becomes deadly for more than a few of its players. Charged with the elements of all great L.A. noir—crackling dialogue, fast-paced plot, and seedy, jaded characters—Loser’s Town is a deftly written thriller and a gruesomely hilarious depiction of what goes on beneath those white letters on the mountainside

In this magisterial work, leading cultural critic Mary Eberstadt delivers a powerful new theory about the decline of religion in the Western world. The conventional wisdom is that the West first experienced religious decline, followed by the decline of the family. Eberstadt turns this standard account on its head. Marshalling an impressive array of research, from fascinating historical data on family decline in pre-Revolutionary France to contemporary popular culture both in the United States and Europe, Eberstadt shows that the reverse has also been true: the undermining of the family has further undermined Christianity itself. Drawing on sociology, history, demography, theology, literature, and many other sources, Eberstadt shows that family decline and religious decline have gone hand in hand in the Western world in a way that has not been understood before—that they are, as she puts it in a striking new image summarizing the book’s thesis, “the double helix of society, each dependent on the strength of the other for successful reproduction.” In sobering final chapters, Eberstadt then lays out the enormous ramifications of the mutual demise of family and faith in the West. While it is fashionable in some circles to applaud the decline both of religion and the nuclear family, there are, as Eberstadt reveals, enormous social, economic, civic, and other costs attendant on both declines. Her conclusion considers this tantalizing question: whether the economic and demographic crisis now roiling Europe and spreading to America will have the inadvertent result of reviving the family as the most viable alternative to the failed welfare state—fallout that could also lay the groundwork for a religious revival as well. How the West Really Lost God is both a startlingly original account of how secularization happens and a sweeping brief about why everyone should care. A book written for agnostics as well as believers, atheists as well as “none of the above,” it will permanently change the way every reader understands the two institutions that have hitherto undergirded Western civilization as we know it—family and faith—and the real nature of the relationship between those two pillars of history.

From a New York Times bestselling author, a young boy is haunted by a voice in his head in this "epic horror" novel, perfect for fans of Stephen King (Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will). Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her seven year-old son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night. At first, the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. Days later, he emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. He returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a treehouse in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again. Twenty years ago, Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower made readers everywhere feel infinite. Now, Chbosky has returned with an epic work of literary horror, years in the making, whose grand scale and rich emotion redefine the genre. Read it with the lights on. One of The Year's Best Books (People, EW, Lithub, Vox, Washington Post, and more)