A classic crime drama/thriller/love story. The tale of a young night club bouncer who navigates his way through nightly interactions with waring New York mob factions, between Harlem and Brooklyn, in and around the hot NYC night club scene. He manages to handle this tense and violent world by leveraging his leadership skills and coordinating with seasoned NYPD Detectives and mobsters alike to survive his weekly struggles. His only peace comes on his evenings off when he frequents his favorite jazz clubs, in addition to the time spent with the ladies he dabbles in love and lust with.

Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2017 Washington Post Best Book of 2017 Amazon Editors' Top 100 Pick of the Year Amazon Best Humor and Entertainment Pick of the Year Booklist Top Ten Arts Book Queen of Bebop brilliantly chronicles the life of jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, one of the most influential and innovative musicians of the twentieth century and a pioneer of women’s and civil rights Sarah Vaughan, a pivotal figure in the formation of bebop, influenced a broad array of singers who followed in her wake, yet the breadth and depth of her impact—not just as an artist, but also as an African-American woman—remain overlooked. Drawing from a wealth of sources as well as on exclusive interviews with Vaughan’s friends and former colleagues, Queen of Bebop unravels the many myths and misunderstandings that have surrounded Vaughan while offering insights into this notoriously private woman, her creative process, and, ultimately, her genius. Hayes deftly traces the influence that Vaughan’s singing had on the perception and appreciation of vocalists—not to mention women—in jazz. She reveals how, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Vaughan helped desegregate American airwaves, opening doors for future African-American artists seeking mainstream success, while also setting the stage for the civil rights activism of the 1960s and 1970s. She follows Vaughan from her hometown of Newark, New Jersey, and her first performances at the Apollo, to the Waldorf Astoria and on to the world stage, breathing life into a thrilling time in American music nearly lost to us today. Equal parts biography, criticism, and good old-fashioned American success story, Queen of Bebop is the definitive biography of a hugely influential artist. This absorbing and sensitive treatment of a singular personality updates and corrects the historical record on Vaughan and elevates her status as a jazz great.

In this runaway #1 New York Times bestseller, former secret service officer Gary Byrne, who was posted directly outside President Clinton's oval office, reveals what he observed of Hillary Clinton's character and the culture inside the White House while protecting the First Family in CRISIS OF CHARACTER, the most anticipated book of the 2016 election.

Travertine Garcia is out of funds, out of options, and her air tax is due in the morning; you live on the moon, you pay for air. You can’t pay, you go looking for miracles, like the Bebop’s legendary open microphone, netcast by its equally legendary owner, Joseph Bannister. Bebop owner Joe “Glitch” Bannister is sleepwalking through his second life, tweaking the gang that wants payola and hacking for the Strike Force that put him back together after blowing him apart. Until Travertine decimates the Open Mike, flatlines on his stage, and wakes him up. She’s everything he didn’t know he needed, a deep-dive performer with an ancient-tech interface who can’t carry a tune outside the net. When the Blue Dragon gang kidnaps her while he’s off chasing down a rumor about the Ganymede conflict that got him temporarily killed, Joe’s ready to fight for the woman and the club; but it’s going to take both of them to save the venerable stage and each other.

The richest place in America's musical landscape is that fertile ground occupied by jazz. Scott DeVeaux takes a central chapter in the history of jazz—the birth of bebop—and shows how our contemporary ideas of this uniquely American art form flow from that pivotal moment. At the same time, he provides an extraordinary view of the United States in the decades just prior to the civil rights movement. DeVeaux begins with an examination of the Swing Era, focusing particularly on the position of African American musicians. He highlights the role played by tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, a "progressive" committed to a vision in which black jazz musicians would find a place in the world commensurate with their skills. He then looks at the young musicians of the early 1940s, including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk, and links issues within the jazz world to other developments on the American scene, including the turmoil during World War II and the pervasive racism of the period. Throughout, DeVeaux places musicians within the context of their professional world, paying close attention to the challenges of making a living as well as of making good music. He shows that bebop was simultaneously an artistic movement, an ideological statement, and a commercial phenomenon. In drawing from the rich oral histories that a living tradition provides, DeVeaux's book resonates with the narratives of individual lives. While The Birth of Bebop is a study in American cultural history and a critical musical inquiry, it is also a fitting homage to bebop and to those who made it possible.

IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics synthesize and remix 40 years of Turtles’ lore and transform it into a single sprawling epic! This sourcebook collects and catalogs every character, every location, and every notable event—and serves as a comprehensive companion to that epic—into four issues by writer Patrick Ehlers. When the mutagen bomb goes off, the wall goes up and shell breaks loose! The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles join throngs of new mutants and try to live normal lives in an extremely strange place. Issue #4 of TMNT: Sourcebook takes a tour of Mutant Town and explores how society reinvents itself in the wake of a paradigm shift. Men become beasts, friends become strangers, and enemies…become bandmates. Go inside the Splinter Clan’s efforts to protect Mutant Town from humans, aliens, gods, and even from itself.

Since ascending onto the world stage in the 1990s as one of the premier bassists and composers of his generation, William Parker has perpetually toured around the world and released over forty albums as a leader. He is one of the most influential jazz artists alive today. In Universal Tonality historian and critic Cisco Bradley tells the story of Parker’s life and music. Drawing on interviews with Parker and his collaborators, Bradley traces Parker’s ancestral roots in West Africa via the Carolinas to his childhood in the South Bronx, and illustrates his rise from the 1970s jazz lofts and extended work with pianist Cecil Taylor to the present day. He outlines how Parker’s early influences—Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and writers of the Black Arts Movement—grounded Parker’s aesthetic and musical practice in a commitment to community and the struggle for justice and freedom. Throughout, Bradley foregrounds Parker’s understanding of music, the role of the artist, and the relationship between art, politics, and social transformation. Intimate and capacious, Universal Tonality is the definitive work on Parker’s life and music.