Synopsis: What compels people to cross mountains and seas to another country, another continent, and another culture to find their true selves? What are the journeys we take to find home and belonging? In JUNE IS THE FIRST FALL, Don, a gay Chinese man, returns home to Hawaii to rediscover missing memories of himself and his family that he moved away from. His week-long stay opens wounds with his father and sister that never healed, aggravating Don's struggle to find love and belonging in his life. Cast Size: 3 Males, 2 Females

A “persuasive . . . heartfelt and vividly written” call to counter systemic racism and build national solidarity in America (Publishers Weekly). The American Promise enshrined in our Constitution states that all men and women are inherently equal. And yet racism continues to corrode our society. If we cannot overcome it, Theodore Johnson argues, the promise that made America unique on Earth will have died. In When the Stars Begin to Fall, Johnson presents a compelling blueprint for the kind of national solidarity necessary to mitigate racism. Weaving together history, personal memories, and his family’s multi-generational experiences with racism, Johnson posits that solutions can be found in the exceptional citizenship long practiced in Black America. Understanding that racism is a structural crime of the state, he argues that overcoming it requires us to recognize that a color-conscious society—not a color-blind one—is the true fulfillment of the American Promise. Fueled by Johnson’s ultimate faith in the American project, grounded in his family’s longstanding optimism and his own military service, When the Stars Begin to Fall is an urgent call to undertake the process of overcoming what has long seemed intractable.

From the author of Still Beating comes another standalone forbidden romance turning something broken into something beautiful. Want to know what happens to a man who barely claws his way out of a tragedy, only to fall right into the arms of the one girl in the world he isn't allowed to love? Another tragedy, that's what. When Brant was six years old, his father made a choice that altered the course of his entire life. Because of what he did, the only girl Brant ever loved became the only girl he couldn't have. Though in a lot of ways, he did have her... He had her first steps, her first words, her first smile. He had her milestones, her heartbreaks, her dreams. He had her heart so woven in with his, he didn't know where she ended, and he began. Only, as the years pressed on, lines became blurred—and the blurrier the line, the easier it is to cross. They say tragedy comes in threes. For Brant, that was true. The first one changed him, the second one broke him, and the third one healed him. But at the center of all that tragedy, there is a love story. And at the center of that love story, there is June.

New York Times bestselling creators James and Kimberly Dean show us all the wonderful things about autumn. A great book to share with the family at Thanksgiving or anytime! Pete the Cat isn't sure about the changing of the seasons from summer to autumn. But when he discovers corn mazes, hay rides, and apple picking, Pete realizes there's so much to enjoy and be thankful for about autumn.

New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Seveneves, Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon returns with a wildly inventive and entertaining science fiction thriller—Paradise Lost by way of Philip K. Dick—that unfolds in the near future, in parallel worlds. In his youth, Richard “Dodge” Forthrast founded Corporation 9592, a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. Now in his middle years, Dodge appreciates his comfortable, unencumbered life, managing his myriad business interests, and spending time with his beloved niece Zula and her young daughter, Sophia. One beautiful autumn day, while he undergoes a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong. Dodge is pronounced brain dead and put on life support, leaving his stunned family and close friends with difficult decisions. Long ago, when a much younger Dodge drew up his will, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company now owned by enigmatic tech entrepreneur Elmo Shepherd. Legally bound to follow the directive despite their misgivings, Dodge’s family has his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud, until it can eventually be revived. In the coming years, technology allows Dodge’s brain to be turned back on. It is an achievement that is nothing less than the disruption of death itself. An eternal afterlife—the Bitworld—is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls. But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem . . . Fall, or Dodge in Hell is pure, unadulterated fun: a grand drama of analog and digital, man and machine, angels and demons, gods and followers, the finite and the eternal. In this exhilarating epic, Neal Stephenson raises profound existential questions and touches on the revolutionary breakthroughs that are transforming our future. Combining the technological, philosophical, and spiritual in one grand myth, he delivers a mind-blowing speculative literary saga for the modern age.

Start a mini farm on a quarter acre or less and provide 85 percent of the food for a family of four and earn an income."