Coming from a poor, single-parent family, seventh-grader Trevor must rely on his intelligence, artistic ability, quick wit, and soccer prowess to win friends at his new Washington, D.C. school, but popular and rich Xander seems determined to cause him trouble.

“Suppose there is something going on in the universe which is to ordinary, everyday reality as our unconcious is to our daily lives? Softly, but unmistakably guiding it. Most of the time, we are unaware of it. Yet, every now and then, on account of some ‘fluke,’ we are startled by the results of its presence. We realize we have been part of something with neither consciousness nor consent. It is so sweet—and then it is gone. You say, ‘But I don’t believe in God.’ And I ask, ‘What makes you think it matters to God?"’ —from Lawrence Kushner, whose previous books have opened up new spiritual possibilities, now tells us stories in a new literary form. Through his everyday encounters with family, friends, colleagues and strangers, Kushner takes us deeply into our lives, finding flashes of spiritual insight in the process. Such otherwise ordinary moments as fighting with his children, shopping for bargain basement clothes, or just watching a movie are revealed to be touchstones for the sacred. This is a book where literature meets spirituality, where the sacred meets the ordinary, and, above all, where people of all faiths, all backgrounds can meet one another and themselves. Kushner ties together the stories of our lives into a roadmap showing how everything “ordinary” is supercharged with meaning—if we can just see it.

"The Invisible Line" shines light on one of the most important, but too often hidden, aspects of American history and culture. Sharfstein's narrative of three families negotiating America's punishing racial terrain is a must read for all who are interested in the construction of race in the United States." --Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello In America, race is a riddle. The stories we tell about our past have calcified into the fiction that we are neatly divided into black or white. It is only with the widespread availability of DNA testing and the boom in genealogical research that the frequency with which individuals and entire families crossed the color line has become clear. In this sweeping history, Daniel J. Sharfstein unravels the stories of three families who represent the complexity of race in America and force us to rethink our basic assumptions about who we are. The Gibsons were wealthy landowners in the South Carolina backcountry who became white in the 1760s, ascending to the heights of the Southern elite and ultimately to the U.S. Senate. The Spencers were hardscrabble farmers in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, joining an isolated Appalachian community in the 1840s and for the better part of a century hovering on the line between white and black. The Walls were fixtures of the rising black middle class in post-Civil War Washington, D.C., only to give up everything they had fought for to become white at the dawn of the twentieth century. Together, their interwoven and intersecting stories uncover a forgotten America in which the rules of race were something to be believed but not necessarily obeyed. Defining their identities first as people of color and later as whites, these families provide a lens for understanding how people thought about and experienced race and how these ideas and experiences evolved-how the very meaning of black and white changed-over time. Cutting through centuries of myth, amnesia, and poisonous racial politics, The Invisible Line will change the way we talk about race, racism, and civil rights.

A Simon & Schuster Book. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.

Zebunnessa Rahim was born in East Pakistan, to a Bihari father and a Sylheti mother. She grows up in a sheltered world, sneaking behind her parents' backs to meet her half-Scottish lover, gazing enviously at her friends dancing at parties in their tight outfits, enjoying summers eating mangoes at her politician grandfather's villa. Until 1971, when her life collapses and she becomes at once a victim of both sides, the West Pakistani soldiers and the East Bengali freedom fighters. Homes turn into refugee camps. Lovers are separated by the different languages they speak. A father gives up in despair while his son fights for independence. When victory comes at last after nine long months of fighting, it brings with it a host of unanticipated problems - of adjustment, of acceptance and, for young Zeb, a new national identity. Powerful and evocative, this first novel explores the atrocities that went hand-in-hand with the Liberation War of Bangladesh, the rebellion that created a country even as it tore its families apart.

THE INVISIBLE LINE: WHEN CRAFT BECOMES ART

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER USA TODAY BESTSELLER NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER THE WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER Recommended by Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, NPR, Slate, and Oprah Magazine #1 Library Reads Pick—October 2020 #1 Indie Next Pick—October 2020 BOOK OF THE YEAR (2020) FINALIST—Book of The Month Club A “Best Of” Book From: Oprah Mag * CNN * Amazon * Amazon Editors * NPR * Goodreads * Bustle * PopSugar * BuzzFeed * Barnes & Noble * Kirkus Reviews * Lambda Literary * Nerdette * The Nerd Daily * Polygon * Library Reads * io9 * Smart Bitches Trashy Books * LiteraryHub * Medium * BookBub * The Mary Sue * Chicago Tribune * NY Daily News * SyFy Wire * Powells.com * Bookish * Book Riot * Library Reads Voter Favorite * In the vein of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Life After Life, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is New York Times bestselling author V. E. Schwab’s genre-defying tour de force. A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget. France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name. Also by V. E. Schwab Shades of Magic A Darker Shade of Magic A Gathering of Shadows A Conjuring of Light Villains Vicious Vengeful At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.