In A Kiss across the Ocean Richard T. Rodríguez examines the relationship between British post-punk musicians and their Latinx audiences in the United States since the 1980s. Melding memoir with cultural criticism, Rodríguez spotlights a host of influential bands and performers including Siouxsie and the Banshees, Adam Ant, Bauhaus, Soft Cell, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Pet Shop Boys. He recounts these bands’ importance for him and other Latinx kids and discusses their frequent identification with these bands’ glamorous performance of difference. Whether it was Siouxsie Sioux drawing inspiration from Latinx contemporaries and cultural practices or how Soft Cell singer Marc Almond’s lyrics were attuned to the vibrancy of queer Latinidad, Rodríguez shows how Latinx culture helped shape British post-punk. He traces the fandom networks that link these groups across space and time to illuminate how popular music establishes and facilitates intimate relations across the Atlantic. In so doing, he demonstrates how the music and styles that have come to define the 1980s hold significant sway over younger generations equally enthused by their matchlessly pleasurable and political reverberations.

An empire that stretches from coast to coast is not enough for the son of Chandragupta. All he desires: to conquer the untamable oceans beyond. 338 CE. A young ruler defeats the Naga kings of the north before claiming Kanchi in a powerful attack none had anticipated. It is his latest conquest that brings him closer to the ocean he seeks to control - and to Angai: a young woman unlike any he has ever known. Sharp-witted, with an even sharper tongue, she has the conqueror's ear ... and his heart. With her by his side, he prepares to do what even his father could not have dreamed of. To ensure the world would never forget the name Samudragupta. The final book in the enthralling Gupta Empire trilogy, The Ocean's Own tells the story of a king who dared to take his sword to the seas.

Melding memoir with cultural criticism, Richard T. Rodríguez examines the relationship between British post-punk musicians like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Adam Ant, and Pet Shop Boys and their Latinx audiences in the United States since the 1980s.

Love is the most sublime mystery in human life. Throughout the ages, it has been celebrated by poets and playwrights, analyzed by scientists and philosophers, and sought after by people in all walks of life. It can knock us on our butts, stop us in our tracks, sweep us off our feet, lift us to the stars, and push us over the edge. This book, When Sea Kisses Shore, explores the power of love to touch and transform us, which sometimes occurs in a single tidal wave, a tsunami that slams onto the shore, tearing down our habitat and sweeping most everything we once held precious into the sea. But more often it is the culmination of wave after wave mostly spilling gently on the shore mixed with surges and plunges and inshore waves that drain the beach as a backwash, wearing down our rough edges, smoothing our rocky surfaces, and shaping our shore in ways we cannot predict. This may be the most powerful transformation love works over us: restoring us to the mystery of life and reminding us of our place in the family of things.? If you have ever felt yourself brimming with desire for someone, for some place, or for some thing; or if you have ever dared give your heart to another or to life, this collection of love poems is for you. If you have ever known loss and loneliness, felt defeated by the heartbreak of desire, and longed to be made whole again, this book is for you. If you have ever been at a loss for words to share your love, this book will give voice to what lives in your heart!

Surprise Your Date With a Scene-stealing Kiss!

A brilliant, touching coming-of-age story, and a Newbery Honor Book. Martha Boyle and Olive Barstow could have been friends, but they weren't. Weeks after a tragic accident, all that is left are eerie connections between the two girls, former classmates who both kept the same secret without knowing it. Now, even while on vacation at the ocean, Martha can't stop thinking about Olive. Things only get more complicated when Martha begins to like Jimmy Manning, a neighbor boy she used to despise. What is going on? Can life for Martha be the same ever again? Multiple award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Kevin Henkes brings his insightful, gentle, real-world insight to middle grade novels, including: Billy Miller Makes a Wish Bird Lake Moon The Birthday Room Junonia Olive's Ocean Protecting Marie Sun & Spoon Sweeping Up the Heart Two Under Par Words of Stone The Year of Billy Miller The Zebra Wall

Kisses from Nick Flynn, Rebecca Makkai, Pico Iyer, Ilyse Kusnetz, Andre Dubus III, Christian Kiefer, Camille T. Dungy, Major Jackson, Bich Minh Nguyen, Terrance Hayes, Ada Limón, Honor Moore, Téa Obreht and Dan Sheehan, Kazim Ali, Beth Ann Fennelly, and others In this wide-ranging collection of essays, stories, graphic memoir, and cross-genre work, writers explore the deeply human act of kissing, and share their thoughts on a specific kiss—the unexpected and unforgettable, the sublime and the ambiguous, the devastating and the regenerative. Selections from beloved authors “tantalize with such grace that they linger sweetly in your mind for days” (New York Times Book Review), as they explore the messy and complicated intimacies that exist in our actual lives, as well as in the complicated landscape of the imagination. This is a book meant to be read from cover to cover, just as much as it’s meant to be dipped into—with each kiss pulling us closer to the moments in our lives that matter most.