A dark secret hides in the swirling dust and exultant revelry of Burning Man. Asha Amarasuriya is bored and struggling to get by as a martial arts instructor in Oakland. When an enigmatic seductress offers her a golden ticket, Asha decides to take a leap of faith and head to Burning Man. But there is more than meets the eye at the infamous desert pilgrimage and Asha gets sucked into a quest to unravel a sinister mystery at the heart of Black Rock City. Will Asha and her friends survive to expose the shadowy conspiracy? By the time the Man burns, their lives will have changed forever.

On a blistering summer day, a bank robbery goes wrong, resulting in the deaths of all the hostages except Treva Williams. Pittsburgh psychologist and trauma expert Daniel Rinaldi is called in by the police to treat Treva. Soon an unforeseen series of events plunges the investigating officers, Sergeant Harry Polk, Detective Eleanor Lowrey, and Rinaldi into a vortex of mistaken identity, kidnapping, and surprising revelations about District Attorney Leland Sinclair's gubernatorial campaign. Is Sinclair somehow involved in the bank case? Rinaldi's attention is diverted by the suicide of a young patient and his growing attraction to Eleanor, as the recently-divorced Harry Polk spirals into an alcohol-driven, self-destructive free-fall. Then sudden death threats against Sinclair fuel a new frenzy of accusations and political maneuvering, and Rinaldi begins to make connections. Soon, what he knows - or thinks he knows - will pull him toward a shocking and possibly lethal confrontation.

Lenny Duncan's memoir about growing up Black and queer in the United States. He recounts his experiences hitchhiking across the country, spending time in solitary confinement, battling addiction, and discovering a deep faith.

INSIDE THE WORLD OF MIXED MARTIAL ARTS - AND MURDER... Angel Dare went into Witness Protection to escape her past -- not as a porn star, but as a killer who took down the sex slavery ring that destroyed her life. But sometimes the past just won't stay buried. When a former co-staris gunned down, it's up to Angel to get his son, a hotheaded MMA fighter, safely through the unforgiving Arizona desert, shady Mexican bordertowns, and the seductive neon mirage of Las Vegas...

Video games have captivated us for over 50 years, giving us entire worlds to explore, new ways to connect with friends, thought-provoking stories, or just a fun way to pass the time. Creating games is a dream for many, but making great games is challenging. The Game Designer's Playbook is about meeting that challenge. More specifically, it's a book about game interaction design; in other words, shaping what players can do and how they do it to make a game satisfying and memorable. Our time with a game is built on interaction, from basic things like pushing buttons on a controller, to making complicated strategic decisions and engaging with the narrative. If you've ever felt the adrenaline rush from beating a perfectly tuned boss fight or been delighted by the fanfare of picking up that last collectible, you've experienced good interaction design firsthand. The Game Designer's Playbook is about learning what makes for great (or terrible!) interaction design in games, exploring things like controls, feedback, story, and tutorial design by analyzing existing games. It also looks at how newer and still-developing tech like VR and streaming are changing the ways we play, and how you can bring great interaction design to your own games.

Valyntina Grenier's FEVER DREAM / FEVER DREAM marks a poetic "double debut" with a tête-bêche chapbook, two titles bound upside-down with two front covers, which can be read from either side. With subtle humor, word play, and linguistic inventions, Grenier has written a surprising tour de force...

Seven years ago, Sebastian Munro changed his life immensely by transitioning and starting a graduate degree at the University of Ottawa. Now that his degree—and his cash flow—has run its course, however, he finds himself on a Greyhound bus back to his suburban town outside of Toronto in early 2006. Though his high school friends are well aware of his transition, many have yet to see Sebastian face-to-face. Instead of dreading the reunion, Sebastian looks forward to it—until his parents announce their divorce, his former best friend won’t speak to him, and he realizes he has become a stranger in a place that was once so familiar. Rather than returning to Ottawa, he is forced to stay in Durham Region when he witnesses a crime at the local restaurant run by a family friend. Until the trial finishes, and until an academic job comes through, Sebastian must learn to stay exactly where he is—whether he now wants to or not. When he reaches out to his former best friend’s older brother, Garrison, their budding relationship shapes and changes everything Sebastian thought he knew about his previous life, secret identities, and the power of home. Now that Sebastian has found a way to survive in his hometown as the person he always knew himself to be, he realizes he faces a decision especially as an academic job opportunity emerges. Does he continue with his new fantasy life in his hometown, thereby leaving his former academic and trans community aside—or does he go back to the life that made him who he is now and leave his family and friends one more time?