In rich ethnographic detail, Robin Nagle chronicles the life of a poor Brazilian community in its relationship to the Catholic church and to the larger politics of Brazil. Centered in Recife, on the northeast coast, Nagle's work investigates how liberation theology attracted followers, and demonstrates why the movement never took hold as predicted.

Around 2005 something surprising happened in young adult literature: YA books became obsessed with presenting characters who wanted to have sex but couldn’t—at least not without losing something vital to their identity. Since the publication of Twilight, the YA market has been flooded with books that feature naive virgins finding true love. While some YA novels do present nuanced depictions of sex and of healthy sexual relationships, the fiction most popular with young adult readers presents adolescent girls as virginal sex objects waiting to be fulfilled by their love interests. In Virginity in Young Adult Literature after Twilight, Christine Seifert looks at an alarming trend in YA novels. Labeling this phenomenon “abstinence porn,” Seifert argues that these novels that fetishize virginity are harmful to readers. Like pornography, such works reduce female characters to objects whose sexual acts are the sole expression of their identities. Chapters in this book examine paranormal, dystopian, and contemporary romance, paying particular attention to recurring virginity themes or tropes. The book also provides an antidote by showing how some sex-positive teen novels provide more empowering messages to readers. Organized by genre, the books were selected for this study based on their popularity with teens. Exploring how messages about virginity are sustained and repeated from text to text, this book also calls out key reader reactions to demonstrate how they are responding to these messages. Featuring a list of discussion questions, Virginity in Young Adult Literature after Twilight will be a valuable resource for teachers, librarians, parents, and mature young adult readers.

Two Dead Women. Will Kimo's Niece be Next? The latest Honolulu homicides in the long-running Mahu Investigations series are perplexing, even to a seasoned detective like Kimo Kanapa’aka. The two female victims, a young art college student and a seasoned HR executive, seem to have nothing in common. Yet as Kimo and his partner Ray Donne delve deeper into the investigation, they sense a connection between the two. Navigating the murky waters of teen dating, fashion influencers, an experimental power company, and a group of frustrated young men, Kimo is determined to find the truth. But when his own family is threatened, the stakes become personal, and Kimo is forced to race against time to bring the killer to justice.

A hilarious exploration of male-female communication and other momentous topics Men don’t tell women things for various reasons. 1. The things in question may not be true.2. It is better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a pig than to open it and oink.3. There is a certain pleasure in holding certain considerations close to the chest.4. When there is a topic that might complicate a situation in which a woman is pleased for a man to hold her close to his chest, a man does not want to mess with it.5. It is hard to be manly while making pained moaning sounds.6. Men, whether or not they have the Right Stuff, have never quite gotten a secure grip on the concept of the Wrong Thing. The more Roy Blount Jr. thought about what men don’t tell women, the more he began to realize that nearly all of his writing involved things people don’t tell people. Things the sick don’t tell the well, things southerners don’t tell northerners, things authors don’t tell readers, things all too few of us tell anyone at all. But especially the things men don’t tell women. This riotous collection of classic Blount humor is chock full of those gender trade secrets—and plenty of yodeling too.

Laugh-out-loud observations from “America’s foremost humorist” (Chicago Tribune). What Men Don’t Tell Women: Well, that’s just for starters. Roy Blount Jr. realized that nearly all of his writing involved things people don’t tell people: what Southerners don’t tell Northerners, what the sick don’t want to hear from the well, what no one would ever tell their mother, and what authors rarely admit to their readers. That all changes in this “honest . . . funny” collection of confessional essays about sex, friendship, marriage, male bonding, female patience, and Elvis (The Boston Globe). One Fell Soup: A deliciously funny stew of reviews, diatribes, investigations, meditations, assorted grumblings, and verse about the absurdities of American life, death, fears, and ambition. Included in these fifty-nine easy pieces: the truth (as Blount sees it) about nudism, cricket-fighting, bowling, macaroni and cheese, black holes and black socks, nuclear holocausts, the CIA, domesticated fowl, pork bellies, God, and more. The whole shebang from “one of the most clever (see sly, witty, cunning, nimble) wordsmiths cavorting in the English language” (Carl Hiaasen). Camels Are Easy, Comedy’s Hard: Flesh-eating piranha! Synchronized swimming! Rubber chickens! Edith Wharton! Crossword puzzles! All and then some in this giddy compendium of essays, celebrity profiles, silly games, and side trips. Parts sports journalism, literary criticism, travel writing, and aborted novel, tossed with a few poems and a neo-Biblical one-act play, this is an uproarious—and sometimes heartening—anthology of adventures from “one writer who never fails to please” (The Village Voice).

Gregorian chant, the Catholic Church's very own music, is proper to the Roman liturgy, but during the course of its long history it has experienced periods of ascendancy and decline. A century ago, Pope Pius X called for a restoration of the sacred melodies, and the result was the Vatican Edition. This book presents for the first time in English the fully documented history of the Gregorian chant restoration. The original French edition was published by the Abbey of Solesmes in 1969.This book describes in careful, vivid detail the strenuous efforts of personalities like Dom Joseph Pothier, Dom Andre Mocquereau, Fr. Angelo de Santi, and Peter Wagner to carry out the wishes of the pope. The attentive reader will not fail to note that many of the questions so fervidly debated long ago are still current and topical today. Robert A. Skeris' introduction to this edition illuminates the current discussion with documentation, including the Preface to the Vatican Gradual and the Last Will and Testament written by Dom Eugene Cardine.