Everyone knows the feeling: you're trapped in an endless meeting or held hostage on the phone by a droning client. Or maybe the minutes are just ticking by very slowly. What can you do? Doodle, of course! Susan McBride--who put some fun in kids' schooldays with The Don't Get Caught Doodle Notebook and The I'm So Bored Doodle Notebook--now comes to the aid of adults who need a break from the daily grind. Though this humorous interactive book looks like an everyday planner--complete with charts and graphs to confuse anyone who sneaks a peek--it's really a little bit of subversive escapism. That's because inside are dozens of creative ways to doodle, including warm-ups to unleash your inner artist. Vent pent-up aggressions with voodoodling. Illustrate what your co-workers--from the lunch stealer to the obnoxiously perky intern--look like through your keen eyes. Explore the "Lame Excuses Hall of Fame." There's even a little "doodling analysis" provided--so you can find out what your art really means.

A high school student and member of a Mexican American family struggles with his sexual identity and finally learns that he will not have to stand alone any more.

Finalist, 2015 Midwest Book Award Chicago Book Review Best Book of 2015 Set in the frozen wasteland of Midwestern academia, The Lost Journals of Sylvia Plath introduces Wilson A. Lavender, father of three, instructor of women's studies, and self-proclaimed genius who is beginning to think he knows nothing about women. He spends much of his time in his office not working on his dissertation, a creative piece titled "The Lost Journals of Sylvia Plath." A sober alcoholic, he also spends much of his time not drinking, until he hooks up with his office mate, Alice Cherry, an undercover stripper who introduces him to "the buffer"—the chemical solution to his woes. Wilson's wife, Katie, is an anxious hippie, genuine earth mother, and recent PhD with no plans other than to read People magazine, eat chocolate, and seduce her young neighbor—a community college student who has built a bar in his garage. Intelligent and funny, Katie is haunted by a violent childhood. Her husband's "tortured genius" both exhausts and amuses her. The Lavenders' stagnant world is roiled when Katie's pregnant sister, January, moves in. Obsessed with her lost love, '80s rocker Stevie Flame, January is on a quest to reconnect with her glittery, big-haired past. A free spirit to the point of using other people's toothbrushes without asking, she drives Wilson crazy. Exploring the landscape of family life, troubled relationships, dreams of the future, and nightmares of the past, Knutsen has conjured a literary gem filled with humor and sorrow, Aqua Net and Scooby-Doo, diapers and benzodiazepines—all the detritus and horror and beauty of modern life.

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a writer's notebook unlocks memories of a love formed and lost in 1960s Paris. In the aftermath of Algeria's war of independence, Paris was a city rife with suspicion and barely suppressed violence. Amid this tension, Jean, a young writer adrift, met and fell for Dannie, an enigmatic woman fleeing a troubled past. A half century later, with his old black notebook as a guide, he retraces this fateful period in his life, recounting how, through Dannie, he became mixed up with a group of unsavory characters connected by a shadowy crime. Soon Jean, too, was a person of interest to the detective pursuing their case—a detective who would prove instrumental in revealing Dannie's darkest secret. The Black Notebook bears all the hallmarks of this Nobel Prize–winning literary master's unsettling and intensely atmospheric style, rendered in English by acclaimed translator Mark Polizzotti (Suspended Sentences). Once again, Modiano invites us into his unique world, a Paris infused with melancholy, uncertain danger, and the fading echoes of lost love “A literary…Simenon. An atmospheric, smoky, sepia-toned whodunit, though more for fans of Camus than Chandler.”—Kirkus Reviews “Modiano’s folklore is set out from the beginning…and sheer magic follows once more.”—Vogue “The prose—elliptical, muted, eloquent—falls on the reader like an enchantment…No one is currently writing such beautiful tales of loss, melancholy, and remembrance.”—Independent “Both carefully wrought and superbly fluid, sustained by pure poetry.”—Le Monde

An anthology of a different sort, this volume presents a representative sample of contemporary American poems in 2023, with a road map of their origins. Bringing a diversity of styles and sensibilities, 62 poets from across the United States--some well known, some up-and-coming--illuminate their craft. Each poet contributes one poem, accompanied by an essay discussing their creative process and how the verse came to fruition.