Intermission is an uncommon and refreshing excavation of popular culture, memory, and relationship. It offers startling interpretations of the fashionable sitcoms and young-adult novels which were prevalent during the late 1970s while exploring the nuances of belonging, faith, and loss. With a tensile gesture we are moved from the icons of the 1960s-Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and the playful insertion of Jim Morrison's documented acronym of his own name, Mr. Mojo Risin'-to the cityscapes inherited by Generation X.

A HelloGiggles Best New Release A PopSugar Best Book of July A BookBub Editor's Pick A SheReads Best Book of Summer A GoodReads Buzzy New Release A Mind Body Green Best Book of July A PureWow Best Beach Read of Summer 2018 "An effortless page-turner, almost a movie treatment more than a novel...intelligent commercial fiction."--The Wall Street Journal After five years of marriage, Cass Coyne has lost some of her boundless confidence. Her husband sees their ups and downs as normal challenges in a healthy relationship, but Cass lies awake at night wondering what you do when you need a break from your marriage? It comes as a shock to Jonathan when Cass persuades him to try a marital "intermission": a six-month separation during which they'll decide if the comfortable life they've built together is still the one they both want. Six months apart from their beloved dog is a different story, so they agree to meet once a month for a custody exchange. Time apart on opposite coasts makes the Coynes realize their problems may lie deeper than sweaty gym socks left on the bed and an empty container of milk put back in the fridge. Can a marriage experiment go too far for two people who once thought they had it all figured out?

Jeeyoon Kim is a professional concert pianist who has performed in venues like Carnegie Hall, the Chamber Music Society in San Francisco, and the Stradivari Society in Chicago. As an accomplished performing artist and award-winning music educator, she credits her success to key disciplines, practices, and mindsets that she lives out every day. In Whenever You’re Ready, she gives readers a personal glimpse into her life, shares wisdom and insights she’s gained from her experiences, and shows people how to achieve their own personal and professional success. Structured like one of the concerts she performs, this self-help book starts with a prelude and contains five movements, each focused on a different theme, such as forming habits and boosting creativity. Each movement is followed by a quick intermission that takes readers through a mini master class to help them gain an appreciation of classical music. Before every performance, Jeeyoon prepares herself mentally, emotionally, and physically in the green room. She knows she’ll soon step onto the stage, where people have come to see what she has to offer the world. In the final moment when she’s backstage and about to meet her audience, she notes that someone, with their hand on the stage door, always waits for her cue. “Whenever you’re ready . . .” they tell her. She nods, they open the door, and it’s time for her to perform. This book is about helping readers prepare themselves mentally, emotionally, and physically for their own performances. Whether they are hoping to land a job, practicing for a speech, training for a marathon, or trying to accomplish a goal, Jeeyoon’s book will offer them advice, encouragement, and practical exercises they can use to help them perform at their best and achieve their dreams. With warmth, honesty, and compassion, Jeeyoon speaks to readers who are in their own green rooms and invites them to live the life they hope for.

For over 100 years, the animal races of the Four Kingdoms have lived side-by-side in an uneasy truce. But when conflict ignites in the north, old alliances threaten to send the world into chaos. Experience the beginnings of an epic all-ages fantasy in this first collected volume!

I Am Not Sidney Poitier is an irresistible comic novel from the master storyteller Percival Everett, and an irreverent take on race, class, and identity in America I was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk-taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in the world. I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales. I was Not Sidney Poitier. Not Sidney Poitier is an amiable young man in an absurd country. The sudden death of his mother orphans him at age eleven, leaving him with an unfortunate name, an uncanny resemblance to the famous actor, and, perhaps more fortunate, a staggering number of shares in the Turner Broadcasting Corporation. Percival Everett's hilarious new novel follows Not Sidney's tumultuous life, as the social hierarchy scrambles to balance his skin color with his fabulous wealth. Maturing under the less-than watchful eye of his adopted foster father, Ted Turner, Not gets arrested in rural Georgia for driving while black, sparks a dinnertable explosion at the home of his manipulative girlfriend, and sleuths a murder case in Smut Eye, Alabama, all while navigating the recurrent communication problem: "What's your name?" a kid would ask. "Not Sidney," I would say. "Okay, then what is it?"

A sweeping, illustrated history of Europe--a continent whose imperial ambitions, internal clashes, and existential threats are as vital today as they were during the conquests of Alexander the Great In just a few hundred years, a modest peninsula off the northwest corner of Asia has seen the rise and fall of several empires; served as the crucible for scientific dynamism, cultural innovation, and economic revolution; and witnessed cataclysms and bloodshed that have almost destroyed it several times over. This is Europe: a continent whose identity emerged not so much by virtue of geographic or ethnic continuity, but by a long and storied struggle for power. Studded with infamous figures--from Caesar to Charlemagne and Machiavelli to Marx--Simon Jenkins's history of Europe travels briskly from the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, and the Reformation through the French Revolution, the World Wars, and the fall of the USSR. What emerges in this thrilling and expansive telling is a continent as defined by its continually clashing cultural identities and violent crises as it is by its tireless drive for a society based on the consent of the governed -- which holds true right up to the present day.