Two Kinds of Color is story of a mother’s love and sacrifice for her four racially divided children. Two of them are black, two are white. Their mother, Freddie Walker, has not only movie star beauty, sensuality, and sexuality, she has the kind of intelligence which white-collar Wall Street can only dream of. Sidetracked from realizing her dream of gaining a fortune playing with stocks and bonds, she moves to the notorious South Side of Chicago, where she and her children are raised and abused by a brutal and vain gambler, pimp, Jimmy Tate. When the unthinkable happens the only one she can turn to is her best friend, a black woman, Ruby Johnson. Will her children, turned adults, hate their mother and Ruby, or realize there is no greater love than that of two mothers?

A beautiful and sensuous woman, Freddie Walker, has fallen into the hands of a vain and greedy businessman, Jimmy Tate. His notorious reputation and illegal business practices allow him to take and make all the money he can. To Jimmy's astonishment Freddie has fallen in love with another man and is ready to change her life. On a stormy night she has decided to take her children and leave Jimmy for good. When Jimmy finds out he goes berserk and attempts to kill her. But her best friend, Ruby Johnson, a woman of deep faith who has a special relationship with God, arrives just in time. Inside Freddie's dark bedroom a struggle ensues and Jimmy is killed. The children are sent to foster homes and separated from one another. Freddie and Ruby are sent to prison. But did Ruby really kill Jimmy? What sacrifices did Freddie make for the sake of her children? What secrets did she keep from them? What is their legacy? As adults, will they have the courage to meet each other to find out? "Two kinds of color" is the story of a mother's love and sacrifice for her divided children--a story of the real meaning of having a true best friend. It is the story of surrender; of having faith and belief in God. It is the story of the breaking and then the making of a family.

Unlike many other art books only give recipes for mixing colors or describe step-by-step painting techniques, *Color and Light* answers the questions that realist painters continually ask, such as: "What happens with sky colors at sunset?", "How do colors change with distance?", and "What makes a form look three-dimensional?" Author James Gurney draws on his experience as a plain-air painter and science illustrator to share a wealth of information about the realist painter's most fundamental tools: color and light. He bridges the gap between abstract theory and practical knowledge for traditional and digital artists of all levels of experience.

A poet and author recounts her nine-year struggle with a rare autoimmune disease in this spare and unsparing memoir of illness and recovery. At twenty-one, just as she was starting to comprehend the puzzles of adulthood, Sarah Manguso was faced with another: a wildly unpredictable disease that appeared suddenly and tore through her twenties, paralyzing her for weeks at a time, programming her first to expect nothing from life and then, furiously, to expect everything. In this captivating story, Manguso recalls her struggle: arduous blood cleansings, collapsed veins, multiple chest catheters, the deaths of friends and strangers, addiction, depression, and, worst of all for a writer, the trite metaphors that accompany prolonged illness. A book of tremendous grace and self-awareness, The Two Kinds of Decay transcends the very notion of what an illness story can and should be. Praise for The Two Kinds of Decay A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Best Book of the Year, San Francisco Chronicle and Time Out Chicago “Moving . . . a fiercely truthful memoir.” —The Boston Globe “Hers is not a day-by-day description of this grueling time, but an impressionistic text filled with bright, poetic flashes. . . . Many sick people learn to live in the moment, but the power of Manguso’s writing makes that truism revelatory.” —The Washington Post Book World “Sarah Manguso has miraculously elevated the act of memory. She has found honesty, fear, longing and beauty in every moment of her young life, giving this book an intensity found nowhere else. You put it down panting with wonder and grief, but never with pity. A breakthrough in the memoir, and in writing.” —Andrew Sean Greer