This story begins when I was much older, worlds away from those early years, and I had a daughter of my own. Im Miranda, and Im living a life Ive prepared myself. But that life never came. My parents worried about me. So did my teachers. Though the safe path was always right in front of me, I kept veering off it into something which did not seem unknown or perilous until it was too late to prevent the damage. My aunts and uncles referred to me as a free spirit and exchanged glances, which suggested in an adult way that they were a little worried about how I was going to turn out. Despite my mothers many attempts at reeducation, I never quite got over that impulse toward wandering and adventure that got me into so much troublenot until the events which form the basis of this story, anyway.

Raise the drawbridge for a story-within-a-story melding classic fairy-tale trappings with contemporary, tongue-in-cheek wit, abundantly illustrated in black-and-white—a perfect family read. Noble children Thomas and Emily have always known their mother to be sensible, the lady of the castle—if anything, a bit boring. But then they discover Meg, a cranky scribe who lives in the castle basement, leading a quirky group of artists in producing party invitations and other missives for the nobles above. Meg claims that she was a friend of their mother’s back when the two were kids—even before the dragon lived in the castle. Wait—a dragon? Not sure they can believe Meg’s tales, the kids return again and again to hear the evolving, fantastical story of their mother’s escapades (while putting their fussiest penmanship to work) and get caught up in a quest to reunite the onetime friends. Kidnapping, fighting, a ferocious dragon, loyal elves, and true love . . . coupled with squabbling siblings, archery practice gone amiss, and ill-fated dives into the moat . . . This multilayered story blends adventure and humor, medieval tropes and modern sensibility, in a satisfying read for the whole family.

“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices. The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

This book analyses the relation between different discourses and actors through an ethnographic approach, showing not only how fishermen in Slovenia respond to international political economy, how they struggle to survive but also how they generate small changes. Fishing in the northeastern part of the Adriatic Sea makes for a substantial economy anchored in many stories. Regional conflicts, wars, the demise of empires and the rise of nation states with ensuing maritime border issues, socialist heritage, transnational and transformational processes in Europe, and the growth of capitalist relations between production and consumption in coastal areas, have all contributed to the specific discourses that have affected this relatively under-researched area. How this complex, layered and ambiguous quarrelling is constituted at different levels and how this situation is lived and experienced by the local fishermen working along the present Slovene coast effectively forms the core of this book.

“How should we live in this house of God? We know that the way a building is shaped also helps in determining the way those within it live and relate. We are indeed formed by what we form. Qualities such as integrity, hospitality, humanity and beauty in a place will enable its dwellers to live lives in which such qualities are evident. The way we understand who we are and how we live will be reflected in our places and vice versa. Our places become bearers of meaning and memory.” —From Chapter 1In Living in the House of God, Margaret Malone draws on her study of and research on the Rule of Saint Benedict to show the ways in which this ancient rule can illuminate modern life. The broad gamut of topics this book examines—from Benedictine life as sacrament to Augustine’s influence on Benedict to obedience and the art of listening, among others—is itself a witness to the generous flexibility of the Rule, as Benedict proposes a way of life that truly corresponds to the deepest needs of the whole of human nature.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic about a young girl growing up in Chicago • Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. “Cisneros draws on her rich [Latino] heritage...and seduces with precise, spare prose, creat[ing] unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one.” —The New York Times Book Review The House on Mango Street is one of the most cherished novels of the last fifty years. Readers from all walks of life have fallen for the voice of Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. “In English my name means hope,” she says. “In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting." Told in a series of vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous—Cisneros’s masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time. Like Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street or Toni Morrison’s Sula, it makes a world through people and their voices, and it does so in language that is poetic and direct. This gorgeous coming-of-age novel is a celebration of the power of telling one’s story and of being proud of where you're from.