Even at four in the morning, the strip clubs and watering holes surrounding the Honolulu studio were still hopping. The recording engineer heard a car pull into the lot, and soon the biggest man he had ever seen walked in. When he stepped into the studio, the floated floor shifted beneath the engineer's feet. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole engulfed the engineer's hand in his and said, "Hi, bruddah." The product of that impromptu recording session, a delicate medley of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "What a Wonderful World," has driven sales of Facing Future to nearly two million copies. Each time the medley is licensed to appear in advertisements, in movies, even on American Idol, Mainlanders embrace it anew as a touch of the unfamiliar in their otherwise staid record collections. But in Hawai'i, a state struggling with the responsibility of its native heritage, Facing Future is much more. Gaining unprecedented access to Israel's family, friends, and colleagues, Dan Kois tells the remarkable story of Bruddah Iz and the album that changed his life-and his death.

The remarkable inside story of the best-selling Hawaiian album of all time

Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, born in 1959, the year Hawai'i became a state, rose to unrivaled celebrity on the strength of his one-in-a-million voice and a four-string 'ukulele. His phenomenal hit "Over the Rainbow" propelled his Facing Future album to Platinum status. His voice has been heard around the world in blockbuster films, television shows, and advertisements. IZ: Voice of the People is a portrait in words and over 200 photos of the man behind the music--his childhood, his early year with the Mā kaha Sons of Ni'ihau, his solo career, his personal struggles and successes. It is about fame, but it is also about triumph over adversity and loss; about standing up for the people of Hawai'i at a critical time in their history and inspiring them to demand justice and sovereignty; and about the music, people, and events that shaped Israel and his career.

Listen! For I sing of Owen Thorskard: valiant of heart, hopeless at algebra, last in a long line of legendary dragon slayers. Though he had few years and was not built for football, he stood between the town of Trondheim and creatures that threatened its survival. There have always been dragons. As far back as history is told, men and women have fought them, loyally defending their villages. Dragon slaying was a proud tradition. But dragons and humans have one thing in common: an insatiable appetite for fossil fuels. From the moment Henry Ford hired his first dragon slayer, no small town was safe. Dragon slayers flocked to cities, leaving more remote areas unprotected. Such was Trondheim's fate until Owen Thorskard arrived. At sixteen, with dragons advancing and his grades plummeting, Owen faced impossible odds—armed only with a sword, his legacy, and the classmate who agreed to be his bard. Listen! I am Siobhan McQuaid. I alone know the story of Owen, the story that changes everything. Listen!

The bestselling and critically acclaimed novel from Paul Murray, Skippy Dies, shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Book Awards, longlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Why does Skippy, a fourteen-year-old boy at Dublin's venerable Seabrook College, end up dead on the floor of the local doughnut shop? Could it have something to do with his friend Ruprecht Van Doren, an overweight genius who is determined to open a portal into a parallel universe using ten-dimensional string theory? Could it involve Carl, the teenage drug dealer and borderline psychotic who is Skippy's rival in love? Or could "the Automator"—the ruthless, smooth-talking headmaster intent on modernizing the school—have something to hide? Why Skippy dies and what happens next is the subject of this dazzling and uproarious novel, unraveling a mystery that links the boys of Seabrook College to their parents and teachers in ways nobody could have imagined. With a cast of characters that ranges from hip-hop-loving fourteen-year-old Eoin "MC Sexecutioner" Flynn to basketball playing midget Philip Kilfether, packed with questions and answers on everything from Ritalin, to M-theory, to bungee jumping, to the hidden meaning of the poetry of Robert Frost, Skippy Dies is a heartfelt, hilarious portrait of the pain, joy, and occasional beauty of adolescence, and a tragic depiction of a world always happy to sacrifice its weakest members. As the twenty-first century enters its teenage years, this is a breathtaking novel from a young writer who will come to define his generation.

From Jay Asher, the bestselling author of THIRTEEN REASONS WHY - now a Netflix TV show - and Carolyn Mackey, comes a story of friendship, destiny, and finding love. What if you could see how your life would unfold just be clicking a button? It’s 1996 and Facebook isn't even invented. Yet somehow, best friends Emma and Josh have discovered their profiles, fifteen years in the future … and they’re not sure they like what they see. The more Emma and Josh learn about their future lives, the more obsessed they become on changing the destiny that awaits them. But what if focusing on the future, means that you miss something that’s right in front of you? ?

From the author of Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, an examination of Hawaii, the place where Manifest Destiny got a sunburn. Many think of 1776 as the defining year of American history, when we became a nation devoted to the pursuit of happiness through self- government. In Unfamiliar Fishes, Sarah Vowell argues that 1898 might be a year just as defining, when, in an orgy of imperialism, the United States annexed Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and invaded first Cuba, then the Philippines, becoming an international superpower practically overnight. Among the developments in these outposts of 1898, Vowell considers the Americanization of Hawaii the most intriguing. From the arrival of New England missionaries in 1820, their goal to Christianize the local heathen, to the coup d'état of the missionaries' sons in 1893, which overthrew the Hawaiian queen, the events leading up to American annexation feature a cast of beguiling, and often appealing or tragic, characters: whalers who fired cannons at the Bible-thumpers denying them their God-given right to whores, an incestuous princess pulled between her new god and her brother-husband, sugar barons, lepers, con men, Theodore Roosevelt, and the last Hawaiian queen, a songwriter whose sentimental ode "Aloha 'Oe" serenaded the first Hawaiian president of the United States during his 2009 inaugural parade. With her trademark smart-alecky insights and reporting, Vowell lights out to discover the off, emblematic, and exceptional history of the fiftieth state, and in so doing finds America, warts and all.