A rollicking YA western adventure full of robbery and romance

"A truly comprehensive, scientifically rigorous and utterly fascinating account of when, how, and why we dream. Put simply, When Brains Dream is the essential guide to dreaming." —Matthew Walker, author of Why We Sleep Questions on the origins and meaning of dreams are as old as humankind, and as confounding and exciting today as when nineteenth-century scientists first attempted to unravel them. Why do we dream? Do dreams hold psychological meaning or are they merely the reflection of random brain activity? What purpose do dreams serve? When Brains Dream addresses these core questions about dreams while illuminating the most up-to-date science in the field. Written by two world-renowned sleep and dream researchers, it debunks common myths that we only dream in REM sleep, for example—while acknowledging the mysteries that persist around both the science and experience of dreaming. Antonio Zadra and Robert Stickgold bring together state-of-the-art neuroscientific ideas and findings to propose a new and innovative model of dream function called NEXTUP—Network Exploration to Understand Possibilities. By detailing this model’s workings, they help readers understand key features of several types of dreams, from prophetic dreams to nightmares and lucid dreams. When Brains Dream reveals recent discoveries about the sleeping brain and the many ways in which dreams are psychologically, and neurologically, meaningful experiences; explores a host of dream-related disorders; and explains how dreams can facilitate creativity and be a source of personal insight. Making an eloquent and engaging case for why the human brain needs to dream, When Brains Dream offers compelling answers to age-old questions about the mysteries of sleep.

Elfish and four others squat in a crumbling three-story house in the run-down Brixton section of London. Years of such housing complement her hand-to-mouth lifestyle of hangovers, metal music, and failed ambitions; but when ex-boyfriend and ex-band mate Mo forms a new band with the old group's name, Queen Mab, Elfish feels compelled to reclaim the name for her own, as yet nonexistent, band to play her own music. Struggling for visibility and success in the local club scene, she turns to stage diving that is, forcing herself through onlookers, achieving the stage while the musicians are still performing, and drunkenly leaping into the audience, thereby entering the transcendental state of the dedicated stage diver. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, and the life that results, in which chronic depression and bad outcomes are assumed, may leave few unmoved. Fair warning, though: filth, bodily fluids, and vomit mix freely with sex and substance abuse in Millar's 1994 opus, here receiving U.S. publication these many years later.

A rollicking YA western adventure full of robbery and romance

A black teenage lesbian finds herself stranded in a dangerous and unfamiliar place: an all-white Christian youth backpacking camp.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence. “A magical, metaphysical realm ... Captivating, enchanting, delightful.” —The New York Times Einstein’s Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, about time, relativity and physics. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over. In another, there is a place where time stands still, visited by lovers and parents clinging to their children. In another, time is a nightingale, sometimes trapped by a bell jar. Now translated into thirty languages, Einstein’s Dreams has inspired playwrights, dancers, musicians, and painters all over the world. In poetic vignettes, it explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence.