An Ordinary Youth is a novel drawn directly from the author's boyhood in Nazi Germany. Nine-year-old Walter's family is moving house when the novel opens, but Walter's main concerns are his tin soldiers and his older brother’s jazz records, his father’s fluctuating moods, and his mother’s ministrations and anxieties. While Walter is absorbed by his private life, the extraordinary accumulation of contemporary idioms that accompany his point of view—dialogue, song, literary quotations, commercials, and political slogans—tell a different story.  Through this echo chamber of voices, Kempowski shows a hugely turbulent and murderously intolerant nation racing toward disaster. An immediate bestseller when it was first published in Germany in 1971 (as Tadellöser & Wolff) and the best known of Kempowski's novels in Germany, An Ordinary Youth is now available in English for the first time.

"WHEN YOU GREW UP IN THE PROJECTS, THERE WERE NO CHOICES. NO GOOD ONES, AT LEAST." In the Frederick Douglass Project where DeShawn lives, daily life is ruled by drugs and gang violence. Many teenagers drop out of school and join gangs, and every kid knows someone who died. Gunshots ring out on a regular basis. DeShawn is smart enough to know he should stay in school and keep away from the gangs. But while his friends have drug money to buy fancy sneakers and big-screen TVs, DeShawn's family can barely afford food for the month. How can he stick to his principles when his family is hungry? In this gritty novel about growing up in the inner city, award-winning author Todd Strasser opens a window into the life of a teenager struggling with right and wrong under the ever-present shadow of gangs.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Moonbreaker comes the last Secret Histories adventure, where the Droods will take on the most unexpected of enemies, the inhabitants of the Nightside.The Droods are all about control, making people do what they're told for a greater good. The Nightside is all about choice: good and bad and everything in between. The Droods want to make the world behave; the Nightside wants to party. They were never going to get along.For centuries, ancient Pacts have kept the Droods out of the Nightside, but now the Droods see the Nightside as a threat to the whole world. So they march into the long night, in their armour, to put it under their control. All too soon, the two sides are at war. It's Eddie Drood and Molly Metcalf against John Taylor and Shotgun Suzie. The Drood Sarjeant-at-Arms and their Armourer against Dead Boy and Razor Eddie. More groups join in, on either side: the London Knights, the Ghost Finders, the...

Product DescriptionSupermodel Lanny Shanks is coming to town for a photo shoot. The whole school is excited‹even Principal Blanco. By winning a contest, Jake Sherman lands a job as Lanny1s personal assistant. But when Jake accidentally switches bodies with her, he can1t get used to starving all the time, and his new blonde hair is always in his way. Worst of all, he must ward off the principal1s advances!

The nonfiction debut from the author of the international bestseller Sacred Games about the surprising overlap between writing and computer codingVikram Chandra has been a computer programmer for almost as long as he has been a novelist. In this extraordinary new book, his first work of nonfiction, he searches for the connections between the worlds of art and technology. Coders are obsessed with elegance and style, just as writers are, but do the words mean the same thing to both? Can we ascribe beauty to the craft of writing code?     Exploring such varied topics as logic gates and literary modernism, the machismo of tech geeks, the omnipresence of an “Indian Mafia” in Silicon Valley, and the writings of the eleventh-century Kashmiri thinker Abhinavagupta, Geek Sublime is both an idiosyncratic history of coding and a fascinating meditation on the writer’s art. Part literary essay, part technology story, and part...

Middle school geniuses Sam, Martina, and Theo head to Glacier National Park to find the second of seven artifacts—keys that unlock a secret weapon—left by the country's Founding Fathers. The clues lead them to look for Thomas Jefferson's Eagle's Quill at a Montana ranch. But dangerous Gideon Arnold, descendant of the infamous Benedict Arnold, is hot on their trail. He takes their chaperone and the ranch owners hostage until the kids deliver the quill. Can Sam, Martina, and Theo, with the help of rancher girl Abby, find Jefferson's artifact before it's too late? They enter the wilderness to solve riddles and escape traps that protect the quill . . . but if they find it, can they keep it away from Arnold and save everyone? In this fast-paced adventure full of action and interactive puzzles, the kids and readers must use their wits to save our nation by uncovering its greatest secrets.

Three novels.Two heroes.One volume.Here, collected for the first time in a single volume, are three complete Hawk & Fisher novels: Wolf in the Fold, Guard Against Dishonor,and The Bones of Haven...In the dark city of Haven, where everything's for sale, two city-guard cops cannot be bought: Hawk & Fisher. They're a husband-and-wife team with fast blades and even faster mouths, who dare to cleanse Haven's corrupted soul. Together they are the perfect crimebusters with a touch of magic.Praise for Simon R. Green's Adventures of Hawk & Fisher:"Good fun."--Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine"Intrigue and magic....an interesting and well-conceived blend." --Science Fiction Chronicle

For "enjoyable, fast-paced, and fun entertainment" ("SF Revu"), "New York Times" bestselling author Simon R. Green employs his license to thrill in the Secret Histories Novels featuring the first name in supernatural spy-craft... My name is Drood, Eddie Drood, aka Shaman Bond. For generations my family has protected you ordinary mortals against things that lurk in the darkness, just out of sight, but not at all out of mind. Unfortunately, I've had a falling out with my near and dear (some of whom were trying to kill me), so my true love--and powerful witch--Molly Metcalf and I are now in the employ of The Department of the Uncanny. We've been given an Extremely Important Assignment: attend Casino Infernale, an annual event held by the Shadow Bank, financiers of all global supernatural crime. Our mission: rig the game and bring down the Shadow Bank. But at Casino Infernale, the stakes are high indeed--winner takes all and losers give up their souls...