The college president is found dead in his office after a turbulent board meeting. A Crooked College reflects life in a fictitious New Jersey community college, weaving together imaginative portrayals of crooked behaviors, chaos, and confusion while interspersing humor and empathy. The overarching narrative provides descriptions of 1970s culture, creating a truly authentic and insightful depiction of higher education. Was the president’s death from natural causes, an accident, suicide, or murder? If murder, who did it, and why? What unscrupulous actions and foul play by various faculty, staff, and trustees will be uncovered as motives? Follow the sheriff as he completes his criminal investigation and pathological analyses. Then follow the coroner at the suspenseful inquest, where he calls witnesses to testify, unraveling crooked practices and arriving at the surprising truth to the president’s death.

“A masterful debut” that follows four generations of Cherokee women across four decades—from the Plimpton Prize–winning author (Sarah Jessica Parker). It’s 1974 in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and fifteen-year-old Justine grows up in a family of tough, complicated, and loyal women, presided over by her mother, Lula, and Granny. After Justine’s father abandoned the family, Lula became a devout member of the Holiness Church—a community that Justine at times finds stifling and terrifying. But Justine does her best as a devoted daughter, until an act of violence sends her on a different path forever. Crooked Hallelujah tells the stories of Justine—a mixed-blood Cherokee woman—and her daughter, Reney, as they move from Eastern Oklahoma’s Indian Country in the hopes of starting a new, more stable life in Texas amid the oil bust of the 1980s. However, life in Texas isn’t easy, and Reney feels unmoored from her family in Indian Country. Against the vivid backdrop of the Red River, we see their struggle to survive in a world—of unreliable men and near-Biblical natural forces, like wildfires and tornados—intent on stripping away their connections to one another and their very ideas of home. In lush and empathic prose, Kelli Jo Ford depicts what this family of proud, stubborn, Cherokee women sacrifices for those they love, amid larger forces of history, religion, class, and culture. This is a big-hearted and ambitious novel of the powerful bonds between mothers and daughters by an exquisite and rare new talent. “A compelling journey through the evolving terrain of multiple generations of women.” —The Washington Post

Each fall, thousands of eager freshmen descend on college and university campuses expecting the best education imaginable: inspiring classes taught by top-ranked professors, academic advisors who will guide them to a prestigious job or graduate school, and an environment where learning flourishes outside the classroom as much as it does in lecture halls. Unfortunately, most of these freshmen soon learn that academic life is not what they imagined. Classes are taught by overworked graduate students and adjuncts rather than seasoned faculty members, undergrads receive minimal attention from advisors or administrators, and potentially valuable campus resources remain outside their grasp. Andrew Roberts’ Thinking Student’s Guide to College helps students take charge of their university experience by providing a blueprint they can follow to achieve their educational goals—whether at public or private schools, large research universities or small liberal arts colleges. An inside look penned by a professor at Northwestern University, this book offers concrete tips on choosing a college, selecting classes, deciding on a major, interacting with faculty, and applying to graduate school. Here, Roberts exposes the secrets of the ivory tower to reveal what motivates professors, where to find loopholes in university bureaucracy, and most importantly, how to get a personalized education. Based on interviews with faculty and cutting-edge educational research, The Thinking Student’s Guide to College is a necessary handbook for students striving to excel academically, creatively, and personally during their undergraduate years.

Readers will find this an invaluable guide to the preoccupations and features of Micheaux's remarkable career and the insight it provides into the African American experience of the 1920s and 30s.

In his youth, a mean-spirited stepfather teaches Vladimir Antonovich that the only way to succeed in life is to become highly proficient in the art of fighting. Vladimir's early years are filled with fights and brutality. At the age of eighteen, he's drafted into the Soviet Army. He swears he will kill his stepfather some day, once the Army shows him how.He faces a new brutality at the Course of the Young Soldier, but survives it, too, and is selected to attend an Airborne College where he is commissioned a lieutenant. Later, he marries Aleksandra and they have a son. The hate for his stepfather still burns.Eleven years later, in 1980, he's given a special assignment to Afghanistan where he assassinates a Mujahedin leader, after losing most of his men. He returns home a hero with the hate for his stepfather burning even more. He finally visits him one last time, and while they talk and drink vodka, ugly images flash. He recalls the brutality of his youth, the brutality of basic training, and the brutality of Afghanistan. His brain crackling with fire, a question flashes. Should he kill the old man or not?