Named one of Time magazine's most influential leaders of her generation, celebrated writer Rebecca Walker delivers her stunning debut novel--a heartbreaking, unforgettable love story in the tradition of Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending and Marguerite Duras's The Lover.

If only life were as simple as a good-looking guy and a great dress. Samantha “Sam” Cathner gave up needing Peter years ago, but now her theater needs his play. She knows how fairytales end once the house lights are up, so she steadies herself to work with the brilliant playwright who once broke her heart. Peter Everoad is back in Pasadena, the hometown he traded for the bright lights of New York as soon as he graduated. The Pasadena Playhouse, where his oldest friend and one time lover Sam works, is in financial trouble, they need him and his new play Looking In. Sam is flustered to reencounter this new version of Peter—as always, witty and smart, and now handsome and successful. But he’s still the jerk who crushed her happily-ever-after. She’s not going to let him waltz in and unsettle her carefully ordered life. But she’s drawn to him and intrigued by the autobiographical undertones of Looking In—is the Pasadena debutante “Sally” supposed to be her? Can Sam ever really trust Peter again, or will the demons that drove them apart the first time, tear them apart again? Below are courtesy content warnings to the best recollection. They cover the major topics/themes, but may not be as nuanced as other trigger/content warning sites. alcoholism, suicide

“Christopher Moore is a very sick man, in the very best sense of the word.” —Carl Hiaasen The undead rise again in Bite Me, the third book in New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore’s wonderfully twisted vampire saga. Joining his farcical gems Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck, Moore’s latest in continuing story of young, urban, nosferatu style love, is no Twilight—but rather a tsunami of the irresistible outrageousness that has earned him the appellation, “Stephen King with a whoopee cushion and a double-espresso imagination” from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and inspired Denver’s Rocky Mountain News to declare him, “the 21st century’s best satirist.”

Love at First Book is a sweet, romantic YA short story in verse.From across the coffee shopLorelei catches a stanzaof heart-stopping description of a boy with a book in his back pocket. And that might have been her last line if he didn't leave it behind with a poem tucked between the pages. A poem about a candy-striper with bright hair and an angel's voice who reads to hospital patients like Lorelei does.

Being a Christian does not mean never having to say you're sorry - that's ridiculous. In fact, we American Christians may have so much to apologize for before we can begin to mount an apologetic, we seem to have lost our voice with the lost and all credibility for the Gospel. In each our own individual act of idolatry, we have each chosen our own Jesus to match our beliefs, rather than choosing our beliefs to match Jesus. We have recreated God in our own image and we have lost our way. Love Story isolates on some large, vitally important ways that we have drifted from our faith, making it much more American than Godly - we have become idolators of individualism, freedom, democracy, capitalism and even idolators of America itself. We have little understanding of suffering, little to say about the meaning of life, and we've missed entirely the spectacular nature of the universe and life. We have much to unlearn before we can dare to speak of our faith.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian reflects on her 42-year marriage with Dick Goodwin, one of the shining stars of John F. Kennedy's New Frontier and the journey of going through the letters, diaries, documents and memorabilia he saved over the years.

Parmelee shows how presidential primary campaign videocassettes serve many functions for candidates on their road to the White House. These videocassettes, which include images and issues often based on polling data and focus groups, are sent out before the primaries to battleground states to establish an initial image of the candidate. A variety of methods are used to explore the videocassettes of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates—Gary Bauer, Bill Bradley, George W. Bush, Steve Forbes, Al Gore, and John McCain—who released presidential primary meet the candidate videos during the 2000 race. Frame analysis, quantitative content analysis, and in-depth interviews with the producers of these videos were employed to provide answers to Parmelee's main research question: What function do candidate videos serve in presidential primary campaigns? Findings indicate that these videos, which can run from 5 to 20 minutes in length, serve a clear educational function to explain the candidates' stand on key policy issues. The videos—which are mailed to voters, journalists, and potential doners, and shown to Democratic and GOP faithful at party functions—also serve as fundraisers, surrogate speakers, and inoculators. But, while the videos share some common functions, each campaign targets its video to a slightly different audience based on the campaign's overall strategy. Of particular interest to scholars, students, and other researchers involved with American presidential politics and political communications.

An original, funny and poignant story about those things in life that you just can't plan for... Eloise Elliot is one of Dublin's youngest newspaper editors. Respected and revered by her peers, she's at the very top of her game. On the eve of her thirtieth birthday, Eloise is hit by a long, sharp pang of loneliness and realises she craves to be a mother. Three years on, after a successful trip to the sperm bank, Eloise is now the adoring, yet fraught single mother to Lily. But panic sets in when Lily starts asking about her 'daddy' and Eloise if left with no choice but to try and find him. What could possibly go wrong? Perfect for the fans of Marian Keyes.

Love stories formed a major part of the classical short story genre in China from as early as the eighth century, when men of letters began to write about romantic encounters. In later centuries, such stories provided inspiration for several new literary genres. While much scholarly attention has been focused on the short story of both the medieval and late imperial eras, comparatively little work has been attempted on the interim stage, the Song and Yuan dynasties, which spanned some five hundred years from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries. Yet this was a crucial developmental period for many forms of narrative literature—so much so that any understanding of late imperial narrative should be informed by the earlier tradition. The first study of its kind in English, The Chinese Love Story from the Tenth to the Fourteenth Century traces the development of the love story throughout this important yet overlooked era. Using Tang dynasty stories as a point of comparison, Alister D. Inglis examines and appraises key new themes, paying special attention to period hallmarks, gender portrayal, and textuality. Inglis demonstrates that, contrary to received scholarly wisdom, this was a highly innovative period during which writers and storytellers laid a fertile foundation for the literature of late imperial China.