Eighteen-year-old River Lang struggles after the death of his best friend and reluctantly joins a research study for struggling teens where he confronts his complex relationship with Dylan's ex, develops feelings for a charismatic jock, and uncovers unsettling truths about the study.

Summer, 1998. Mei Misaki, age fifteen, has gone with her family to their seaside vacation home. There she meets the ghost of Teruya Sakaki, her classmate from Yomiyama North Middle School Class 3-3 who, like Mei, witnessed the mysterious events that had transpired at the school. There begins an adventure of memory and mystery as they search for the ghost's body and his memories alike.

“A beautifully written and well-researched cultural criticism as well as an honest memoir” (Los Angeles Review of Books) from the author of the popular New York Times essay, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” explores the romantic myths we create and explains how they limit our ability to achieve and sustain intimacy. What really makes love last? Does love ever work the way we say it does in movies and books and Facebook posts? Or does obsessing over those love stories hurt our real-life relationships? When her parents divorced after a twenty-eight year marriage and her own ten-year relationship ended, those were the questions that Mandy Len Catron wanted to answer. In a series of candid, vulnerable, and wise essays that takes a closer look at what it means to love someone, be loved, and how we present our love to the world, “Catron melds science and emotion beautifully into a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation” (Bookpage). She delves back to 1944, when her grandparents met in a coal mining town in Appalachia, to her own dating life as a professor in Vancouver. She uses biologists’ research into dopamine triggers to ask whether the need to love is an innate human drive. She uses literary theory to show why we prefer certain kinds of love stories. She urges us to question the unwritten scripts we follow in relationships and looks into where those scripts come from. And she tells the story of how she decided to test an experiment that she’d read about—where the goal was to create intimacy between strangers using a list of thirty-six questions—and ended up in the surreal situation of having millions of people following her brand-new relationship. “Perfect fodder for the romantic and the cynic in all of us” (Booklist), How to Fall in Love with Anyone flips the script on love. “Clear-eyed and full of heart, it is mandatory reading for anyone coping with—or curious about—the challenges of contemporary courtship” (The Toronto Star).

Forget the 10,000 hour rule— what if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less? Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of prac­ticing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct com­plex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By complet­ing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the meth­ods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard key­board, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the sim­ple techniques he teaches: Define your target performance level: Fig­ure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better. Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcompo­nents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first. Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice. Create fast feedback loops: Getting accu­rate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve. Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chain­saws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.

The author sought to expand on the otherwise national emergency censorship order that developed during the time of events. As the second Earth diplomatic exchange transpired, in Saint Charles County, Missouri, US of A, an extension of plans to further destroy the United States of America began to unfold. Possibly the fifth time in the last fifty years by this adversary militancy-guerilla faction that would add another 1,300 Americans killed in the United States, an additional 325-plus US servicemen and servicewomen killed, and nearly another 1,000 injured. The extent that the US censorship order expanded national defense coverage would assist in various national security issues and further limit assassination attempts on local, state, national, and international elected officials and greatly reduce the numbers of fatalities and casualties associated. US President Bush Junior would suddenly skim the surface of these threats during the advance deployments during 9/11 responses. The Earth-English translation for the termed planet Nair (pronounced Nay-yeer, Nae-year, or Nai-Yer) would appear appropriate. A tentative human population of roughly 5.5-5.7 billion with similar civilization and culture philosophical parameters conducive with human-population standard. Almost identical human race(s) traces, traditions, and practices yet distinctly different. Readers who seek additional information should be cautioned, the standings of US censorship are still in effect, orderly and standing. Most elected officials may be restricted to "No comment" due to the extent of issues, facts, and circumstances applicable. Upcoming anticipated additional hearings and trials at the US Congress may present other information as time permits, or such procedural vote continuances become reestablished under emergency powers orders of the US Congress and subsequent sessions. Other "official" information may have been damaged or destroyed during the 9/11 attack events. Some items were stationed at the US Pentagon or were en route to the US capital just after first-contact events. AP (associated press) did a lot of pool drawing to have one international-national-recognized anchor (not affected by pre-/poststrike and labor negotiations at the time) to follow up and air-document events until other events developed at initial time of airing and subsequent US censorship order from established US military and US Government allowances at pre-/poststrike on networks where otherwise normal programming permitted by FCC guidelines or many stations viewing only "emergency alert" advisory caption. A second-class international-national-recognized anchor would do a follow-up with hospital permissions (e.g., first suffered a reported critical condition gunshot injury from drive-by militant guerillas at onsets of airing) though "spliced" and edited until US censorship order prevented additional media coverage at time.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

This book challenges the belief that female virginity can be reliably and unambiguously defined, tested and verified. Kelly analyses a variety of medieval Western European texts - including medical treatises and their Classical antecedents - and historical and legal documents. The main focus is the representation of both male and female virgins in saints' legends and romances. The author also makes a comparative study of examples from contemporary fiction, television and film in which testing virginity is a theme. Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity in the Middle Ages presents a compelling and provocative study of the parodox of bodily and spiritual integrity as both presence and absence.