From Gwendolyn Brooks, U.S. Poet Laureate and the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize, and Coretta Scott King Award-winning artist Jan Spivey Gilchrist comes We Are Shining. Marking the 100th birthday of Gwendolyn Brooks, this powerful picture book is a celebration of the diversity of our world. This life-affirming poem is now illustrated for the very first time, with stunning, vibrant images. A story of our shared humanity, Gwendolyn Brooks honors the beauty of our world and the many different people in it. Brooks speaks to all children of the world in this moving poem about acceptance, stressing that every child should have the opportunity for a shining future and offering hope for a better tomorrow.

An inspirational book that is “a smart, sweeping run through the history of Western philosophy. Important for the way it illuminates life today and for the controversial advice it offers on how to live” (The New York Times). “What constitutes human excellence?” and “What is the best way to live a life?” These are questions that human beings have been asking since the beginning of time. In their critically acclaimed book, All Things Shining, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly argue that our search for meaning was once fulfilled by our responsiveness to forces greater than ourselves, whether one God or many. These forces drew us in and imbued the ordinary moments of life with wonder and gratitude. Dreyfus and Kelly argue in this thought-provoking work that as we began to rely on the power of our own independent will we lost our skill for encountering the sacred. Through their original and transformative discussion of some of the greatest works of Western literature, from Homer’s Odyssey to Melville’s Moby Dick, Dreyfus and Kelly reveal how we have lost our passionate engagement with the things that gave our lives purpose, and show how, by reading our culture’s classics anew, we can once again be drawn into intense involvement with the wonder and beauty of the world. Well on its way to becoming a classic itself, this inspirational book will change the way we understand our culture, our history, our sacred practices, and ourselves.

From the very start, you set your sight high above the horizon ... So begins the wonderful and inspirational book, You Are A Shining Star. The perfect mix of uplifting words and wisdom is paired with an interior full of lovely watercolor jewel tones and stunning celestial illustrations. It's a wonderful guide & gift to help anyone in your life chart their course and shoot for the stars.

"In a series of letters to her cousin, twelve-year-old Arie Mae relates her life in a mountain valley of North Carolina in the 1920s." -- Verso.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Sparhawk’s legendary journey continues in Book Two of The Tamuli. Years past, the Child-Goddess Aphrael had hidden Bhelliom, the Stone of Power. It rested at the very bottom of the deepest ocean, that nevermore should its awesome power sing temptation to mortal men. Then a menace arose, a malign force wielding incomprehensible destruction across all the lands. To halt that force of evil, Sparhawk, knight and queen’s champion, set out to retrieve the sapphire rose from its briny sleep—even as his foes sought the gem for their own diabolical ends. Sparhawk and his loyal companions must find the Stone and safeguard it, both from those who sought to steal it and from the horrors those evildoers had already loosed upon the world. The most feared of all the monsters that terrorized Tamuli were the Shining Ones: dreaded, glowing beings whose mere touch could melt human flesh from bone. All too soon, Sparhawk and his companions found themselves stalked by those fell creatures out of myth. For the Shining Ones, too, had designs on Bhelliom—designs that would change the very shape of the world. . . .

Rebellious and fiercely lyrical, the poems of C.D. Wright incorporate elements of disjunction and odd juxtaposition in their exploration of unfolding context. "In my book," she writes, "poetry is a necessity of life. It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so." C.D. Wright was born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. She has received numerous awards for her work, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy and Institute for Arts and Letters, and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation. She teaches at Brown University in Rhode Island. "Expertly elliptical phrasings, and an uncounterfeitable, generous feel for real people, bodies and places, have lately made Wright one of America's oddest, best and most appealing poets. Her tenth book consists of a single long poem whose sentences, segments and prose-blocks weave loosely around and about, and grow out of, a road trip through the rural South. Clipped twangs, lyrical ‘goblets of magnolialight,’ and recurrent, mysterious, semi-allegorical figures like ‘the snakeman’ and ‘the boneman’ share space with place names, lexicographies, exhortations and wacky graffiti (‘God is Louise’).… cherish Wright's latest ‘once-and-for-all thing, opaque and revelatory, ceaselessly burning.’"—Publishers Weekly "For me, C.D. Wright's poetry is river gold. 'Love whatever flows.' Her language is on the page half pulled out of earth and rivers—still holding onto the truth of the elements. I love her voice and pitch and the long snaky arms of her language that is willing to hold everything—human and angry and beautiful."—Michael Ondaatje "C.D. Wright is entirely her own poet, a true original."—The Gettysburg Review

Earth, Wind & Fire has sold some ninety million records and won eight Grammy awards. But while its charismatic founder, Maurice White, and Philip Bailey, one of popular music’s greatest voices, are remarkable musical talents, their relentless work ethic exhausted and emotionally gutted the group. Now, Bailey shares the inside story of his professional and spiritual journey, from his origins to the band’s meteoric rise to stardom, and from its breakup to its triumphant reinvention. Shining Star will mesmerize the supergroup’s millions of fans and anyone who loves an inspiring story about what happens when real life exceeds your dreams.