'Intimate, ruthless, tender: this book is like medicine for the soul.' —Nina George, author of The Little Paris Bookshop A beautifully poignant and poetic debut about love, loss, friendship, and ultimately, starting over. Twenty-something Holly has moved to Brighton to escape her grief. But now that she's here, sitting on a bench, listening to the rolling waves, how is she supposed to fill the void her boyfriend left when he died? She had thought she wanted to be on her own. But after a chance encounter with retired, part-time baker and book-club host, Frank, she is soon adopted by a new circle of friends, and the tides begin to shift. Beautifully written, Let Me Be Like Water is a moving and powerful debut about loneliness, friendship, the extraordinariness hiding in everyday life.

A New York Times–bestselling, in-depth exploration of the most pivotal moments in rap music from 1979 to 2014. Here’s what The Rap Year Book does: It takes readers from 1979, widely regarded as the moment rap became recognized as part of the cultural and musical landscape, and comes right up to the present, with Shea Serrano hilariously discussing, debating, and deconstructing the most important rap song year by year. Serrano also examines the most important moments that surround the history and culture of rap music—from artists’ backgrounds to issues of race, the rise of hip-hop, and the struggles among its major players—both personal and professional. Covering East Coast and West Coast, famous rapper feuds, chart toppers, and show stoppers, The Rap Year Book is an in-depth look at the most influential genre of music to come out of the last generation. Picked by Billboard as One of the 100 Greatest Music Books of All-Time Pitchfork Book Club’s first selection

"Here you'll find the favorites, old and new. Don't wait for the Kentucky Derby to enjoy a Classic Mint Julep, or for Mardi Gras in New Orleans to quaff a Hurricane. Shake up a batch of Blueberry Martinis for an elegant cocktail party with a twist, or serve a sparkling bowl of Champagne Punch at your next celebration. And since, after all, tomorrow is another day, go ahead and enjoy another Scarlett O'Hara. Have some nice Devilish Eggs, or one of the other appetizer recipes you'll find here, to go with it"--Page 2 of cover.

27 short stories. 27 narrators. 1 terrifying puzzle. There’s something disquieting about a town with too many twins, a killer pie, and a man with two different color eyes. When Cain, a devilish stranger with a candle wax smile, moves into a rural southern town people are brutally murdered with alarming rapidity. It’s up to a band of curious high schoolers, a decrepit hermit, and a grieving mortician to solve the riddle and keep the town from being destroyed. That is if they can survive cannibalistic dentists, body-snatching demons, and oftentimes worst of all, each other. {Smile} is a horror novel made up of 27 short stories narrated by 27 unique voices. Each story is told in alphabetical order by title, but when combined they interweave to tell an intense and twisted tale about one man/demon/thing’s quest to become human through manipulation and murder.

Weary from the journalistic treadmill of "going from one assignment to the next, like an itinerant fieldworker moving to his harvests" and healing from a divorce, Douglas Bauer decided it was time to return to his hometown. Back in Prairie City, he helped on his father's farm, scooped grains at the Co-op, and tended bar at the Cardinal. The resultant memoir is a classic picture of an adult experiencing one's childhood roots as a grown-up and testing whether one can ever truly go home again. Bauer grew up "awkward with soil and with machines" in a small town east of Des Moines, As a teenager, he left the farm for college life twenty miles away and, after graduation, took a job with Better Homes and Gardens in Des Moines, writing in the junk-mail fictional persona of "Barbara Joyce,"asking millions of people to subscribe. After a few years he moved to Chicago to work as an editor and writer for Playboy and eventually as a freelance journalist. In the summer of 1975, he returned home to attend his grandmother's funeral and by autumn he moved back to Prairie City, where he stayed for the next three seasons. Bauer's book is neither a wistful nostalgia about returning to a simpler time and place nor a patronizing look at those who never leave the town in which they were born. What emerges is an unsentimental yet loving account of life in the Midwest. Not just a portrait of Prairie City, Iowa, but of everyone's small town, everywhere.