“One of the best collections I’ve ever read. Every single story is a standout.”—Roxane Gay WINNER OF THE CHAUTAUQUA PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE STORY PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • Refinery29 • BookRiot “Fuses science, myth, and imagination into a dark and gorgeous series of questions about our current predicaments.”­—Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See A dystopian tale about genetically modified septuplets who are struck by a mysterious illness; a love story about a man bewitched by a mermaid; a stirring imagining of the lives of Nigerian schoolgirls in the aftermath of a Boko Haram kidnapping. The stories in All the Names They Used for God break down genre barriers—from science fiction to American Gothic to magical realism to horror—and are united by each character’s brutal struggle with fate. Like many of us, the characters in this collection are in pursuit of the sublime. Along the way, they must navigate the borderland between salvation and destruction. NAMED A MUST-READ BOOK BY Harper’s Bazaar • Entertainment Weekly • AM New York • Reading Women AND A TOP READ BY Elle • Fast Company • The Christian Science Monitor • Bustle • Shondaland • Popsugar • Refinery29 • Bookish • Newsday • The Millions • Asian American Writers’ Workshop • HelloGiggles “Strange and wonderful . . . delightfully unexpected.”—The New York Times Book Review “Completing one [story] is like having lived an entire life, and then being born, breathless, into another.”—Carmen Maria Machado “Captivating.”—NPR “Gripping.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “[A] remarkable debut . . . Sachdeva is seemingly fearless and her talent limitless.”—AM New York “This phenomenal debut short-story collection is filled with stories that bring the otherworldly to life and examine the strangeness of humanity.”—Bustle “So rich they read like dreams . . . They are enormous stories, not in length but in ambition, each an entirely new, unsparing world. Beautiful, draining—and entirely unforgettable.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Who am I? It’s a question a lot of children seem to ask themselves, at which point being “them” simply isn’t enough. They want to be someone better. Many kids want to change their names. This is what happened to Wilma Lee Wu. One day, Wilma decides she no longer likes her name, and she sets off for the Change Your Name Store to find a new one. Once at the store, the possibilities seem endless. Mrs. Zeena McFooz, the store-owner, says that Wilma can try out any new name she wants with one catch: she must “go for a ride” to discover what it means to be that name. Will being Babette Bijou from France be better than Wilma Lee Wu? What about Dominga Delfino from Belize? Featuring an exciting story of discovery from author and humor blogger Leanne Shirtliffe (of IronicMom.com), and fun, simple illustrations by Tina Kügler, The Change Your Name Store takes children on a journey to find their true identity and to celebrate who they are—name and all. Children ages 3 to 6 will be able to relate to Wilma's search for who she really is. The book promotes diversity, which is an important topic to kids to understand at an early age, and will be a good addition to preschool classrooms and urban homes in particular. Zeena McFooz is gentle and matter-of-fact, and the tone of the book is one of exploration and celebration of our individuality. The illustrations are sure to captivate kids' attention while helping to bring this important message to life. Sky Pony Press, with our Good Books, Racehorse and Arcade imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of books for young readers—picture books for small children, chapter books, books for middle grade readers, and novels for young adults. Our list includes bestsellers for children who love to play Minecraft; stories told with LEGO bricks; books that teach lessons about tolerance, patience, and the environment, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

For use in schools and libraries only. A young boy who has trouble reading helps Santa with his yearly rounds and receives a special Christmas present.

Eva Traube Abrams, a semiretired librarian in Florida, is at the returns desk one morning when her eyes lock on to a photograph in a newspaper nearby. She freezes; it's an image of a book she hasn't seen in sixty-five years--a book she recognizes as the Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article describes the looting of libraries across Europe by the Nazis during World War II--an experience Eva remembers all too well. As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in the Book of Last Names will become even more vital when the Resistance cell they work with is betrayed and Rémy disappears. As the Germans close in, Eva records a last, vital message in the book. Decades later, does she have the strength to seek out its answer--and help reunite those lost during the war?

From acclaimed author Dinaw Mengestu, a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award, The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 award, and a 2012 MacArthur Foundation genius grant, comes an unforgettable love story about a searing affair between an American woman and an African man in 1970s America and an unflinching novel about the fragmentation of lives that straddle countries and histories. All Our Names is the story of two young men who come of age during an African revolution, drawn from the safe confines of the university campus into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart—one into the deepest peril, as the movement gathers inexorable force, and the other into the safety of exile in the American Midwest. There, pretending to be an exchange student, he falls in love with a social worker and settles into small-town life. Yet this idyll is inescapably darkened by the secrets of his past: the acts he committed and the work he left unfinished. Most of all, he is haunted by the beloved friend he left behind, the charismatic leader who first guided him to revolution and then sacrificed everything to ensure his freedom. Elegiac, blazing with insights about the physical and emotional geographies that circumscribe our lives, All Our Names is a marvel of vision and tonal command. Writing within the grand tradition of Naipul, Greene, and Achebe, Mengestu gives us a political novel that is also a transfixing portrait of love and grace, of self-determination and the names we are given and the names we earn. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

One day Nivi asks her mom how she got her names, and the answer leads her to an understanding of traditional Inuit naming practices.

From Bug Tussle, Alabama, to Donnybrook, New York, this pop-culture history offers a highly entertaining survey of America's most unusual place-names and their often-humorous origins. The author traveled the country, recording the best stories and legends he encountered. The only nationwide survey of its kind, it's a great browsing book with a state-by-state format for easy reference