Don’t miss Tessa and Dastien in the exciting finale of the USA Today Alpha Girls series. Tessa—part witch, part werewolf, raised human and now the unofficial leader of a newly minted supernatural alliance—gets a distressing call from her brother, Axel, in the middle of the night. Tessa and her mate, Dastien, race to save Axel, but Tessa's learned that nothing is ever easy in the supernatural world. She has seconds to make a choice, but there’s only one thing Tessa can do to save the two most important men in her life—sacrifice herself. The last thing Dastien hears from Tessa was her plea—help Axel. But then their bond goes silent. He can’t hear her. He can’t feel her. And there’s no sign of the attackers who took her. Dastien does everything he can to save Axel before calling his friends in a panic but when Dastien’s finally reunited with her, there’s no sign of recognition in her eyes. No magic in her touch. No wolf beneath the surface. Everything that made Tessa who she was...has been erased. “I love this series. I just think that it keeps getting better and better.” — A Reader Lives A Thousand Lives “I have enjoyed every minute of this book and will read what ever Aileen Erin wants to write at this point.” - Smada’s Book Smack hr It’s time to binge the complete Alpha Girls series! Book 1: Becoming Alpha Book 2: Avoiding Alpha Book 3: Alpha Divided Book 4: Bruja Book 5: Alpha Unleashed Book 6: Shattered Pack Book 7: Being Alpha Book 8: Lunar Court Book 9: Alpha Erased hr Don’t miss Off Planet, the biggest and boldest adventure yet from the mind of Aileen Erin. It's perfect for fans of Claudia Gray's Defy the Stars and Maura Milan's Ignite the Stars!

Denis Johnson's New York Times bestseller, The Laughing Monsters, is a high-suspense tale of kaleidoscoping loyalties in the post-9/11 world that shows one of our great novelists at the top of his game. Roland Nair calls himself Scandinavian but travels on a U.S. passport. After ten years' absence, he returns to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to reunite with his friend Michael Adriko. They once made a lot of money here during the country's civil war, and, curious to see whether good luck will strike twice in the same place, Nair has allowed himself to be drawn back to a region he considers hopeless. Adriko is an African who styles himself a soldier of fortune and who claims to have served, at various times, the Ghanaian army, the Kuwaiti Emiri Guard, and the American Green Berets. He's probably broke now, but he remains, at thirty-six, as stirred by his own doubtful schemes as he was a decade ago. Although Nair believes some kind of money-making plan lies at the back of it all, Adriko's stated reason for inviting his friend to Freetown is for Nair to meet Adriko's fiancée, a grad student from Colorado named Davidia. Together the three set out to visit Adriko's clan in the Uganda-Congo borderland—but each of these travelers is keeping secrets from the others. Their journey through a land abandoned by the future leads Nair, Adriko, and Davidia to meet themselves not in a new light, but rather in a new darkness.

DIPLOMATIC TREATMENT Achieving his clinic’s independence leaves Glenn suddenly swamped with work. He’s treating a Gigas for heatstroke, caring for a sunburnt mermaid, and performing health examinations on the final candidates for Lindworm ambassador to the human realm! And if that wasn’t enough, when Illy and Plum—the candidates in question—start feuding over something petty, Glenn finds himself tasked with patching up their relationship as well as their wounds.

"The Sally sisters, raised in a rural Jehovah's Witness community in Arkansas, spent their teens and twenties moving between cities and towns in the South and Midwest, working difficult and poorly-paid jobs and falling in and out of relationships. Caught in an eternal sibling rivalry -- where Lori, younger by a year, protected bold, outgoing, reckless Sam -- the two women eventually married a pair of brothers and settled down in Elkhart, Indiana, just around the corner from each other. And it was there that their lives totally and violently diverged. Today, Sam is in federal custody, where she will remain for the next six years after pleading guilty to Financing Terrorism. In July of 2018, she and her children were plucked from a Kurdish refugee camp in Syria, where she landed after spending two years in Raqqa, shielding her children from airstrikes as her husband fought for ISIS. Sam's oldest son appeared in several Islamic State propaganda videos, and she participated in ISIS's practice of enslaving Yazidi women and children. Sam says her husband coerced her to move to Raqqa, but Lori-who quit her job and worked tirelessly to get Sam out of Syria-isn't so sure. American Girls combines an in-depth examination of Sam and Lori's lives with on-the-ground reporting from Syria and Iraq, providing readers with a rare glimpse into the world of American women who join ISIS. Interweaving deeply reported narrative drama with expert analysis, the book explores how the structures of subjugation and abuse experienced at home by women in the U.S. like Sam and Lori are the same structures that enable the rise of patriarchal societies like ISIS. Fascinating, resonant, and moving, American Girls is an unforgettable journey -- from small-town Arkansas to Raqqa, from domestic abuse to a militant terrorist organization -- all through the story of two close, complicated sisters"--

The super-cute monster girl manga on which the hit anime was based! Ages 13+ A MELANCHOLY FALL Summer vacation draws to a close, and the Fall season brings with it new worries for the demi girls—even for the energetic vampire Hikari. Surrounded by friends who are chasing their dreams and feeling out of place in a world of humans, Hikari becomes uncharacteristically gloomy…and nearly ends up hurting the person she cares for most. Himari thinks back on how her twin sister turned from shy and reserved to the sunniest vampire you’d ever meet, all due to a promise they made to each other long ago. Meanwhile, Takahashi-sensei grapples with what it means to be a teacher—after all his support for the demis, where will he be when it’s time for them to stand up on their own?

Popular music is not simply a series of musicians, moments, genres or recordings. Audiences matter; and the most ardent audience members are the fans. To be a fan is to feel a connection with music. The study of fandom has begun to emerge as a vital strand of academic research, one that offers a fresh perspective on the nature of music culture. Dedicated to Music investigates fan identities and practices in different contexts and in relation to different bands and artists. Through a series of empirical case studies the book reflects a diverse array of objects and perspectives associated with this vibrant new field of study. Contributors examine how fans negotiate their identities and actively pursue their particular interests, touching on a range of issues including cultural capital, generational memory, gender, fan fiction and the use of new media. This book was originally published as two special issues of Popular Music and Society.