Not all black cats are bad luck, aren’t they? Join Lowkey and Gabe on their adventures of friendship to show us that even if you are a kitty, you are still family.

Not all black cats are bad luck, aren't they? Join Lowkey and Gabe on their adventures of friendship to show us that even if you are a kitty, you are still family.

Low Key is the story of Los Angeles detective and Marfan syndrome sufferer, Illy Robin. In 2025, after the self-driving car has revolutionized transportation and forced thousands into homelessness, Illy is hired by billionaire real estate tycoon Randolph Royce to find his daughter, Dorothy. As a reward, Royce sets Illy on a string of blind dates but every girl winds up dead the next day after the date. Suspected by police for his involvement, Illy must clear his name and find the real killer. Perverting the archetypes of our childhood-favorite animated films, Illy sees every girl that he fancies as a different Princess, showing us the raw streets of Los Angeles through “Disneyfied” eyes.

Covering over 10,000 idioms and collocations characterized by similarity in their wording or metaphorical idea which do not show corresponding similarity in their meanings, this dictionary presents a unique cross-section of the English language. Though it is designed specifically to assist readers in avoiding the use of inappropriate or erroneous phrases, the book can also be used as a regular phraseological dictionary providing definitions to individual idioms, cliches, and set expressions. Most phrases included in the dictionary are in active current use, making information about their meanings and usage essential to language learners at all levels of proficiency.

Frankie Malone is out and proud. She works at an animal shelter, volunteers at a local LGBTQ youth center, and helps out at her favorite café. But even with all that personal fulfillment, it seems like something’s missing in her life. When one of the shelter cats makes a run for it, Frankie bumps into the woman who might just change her world. If Lily Lancaster can keep up the perfect image her manager has crafted for her, she could be the next big thing in country music—even if it means wearing just the right clothes, singing just the right songs, and being seen with just the right people. Hiding her true self seems like a small price to pay for making her dream come true. But when Lily scores a gig in Las Vegas during Rodeo Week she meets free-spirited Frankie—who turns her whole idea of a perfect world upside down.

Ellen is forty-six, divorced, and having no luck with personal ads when her Chinese girlfriend comes up with a plan: she has a brother in China, Zhong-hua, who’s lonely too. Maybe they’d like each other? Taking a leap of faith that most of us wouldn’t dare, Ellen travels to China to meet him. Though they speak only a few words of each other’s language, there’s an unspoken connection between them and they decide to marry. What follows is a remarkably touching and humorous story of two people from completely different worlds trying to make a marriage work. Settling in at Ellen’s ramshackle farmhouse in upstate New York, they quickly discover the cultural chasm that lies between them. Ellen and her teenage daughter decide to adopt a policy of nonjudgment as Zhong-hua lobbies to sell their refrigerator ("Just three people, no need"), serves them giant sea slugs for dinner, and brusquely nudges Ellen aside without an "excuse me" ("Family no need these kind of words"). Zhong-hua is not the type to offer his wife impromptu smiles or hugs, but in bed at night he holds her tightly like she’s "something long lost and precious that might not live until morning." The Natural Laws of Good Luck is an unusual and exquisitely written love story—one that will resonate with anyone who has ever contemplated with wonder the spaces that exist between us and those we care about.

Ezra is the boss of all bosses, and when Lil’ Shad calls him with an emergency, he will boss up in a major way. Of course, he can’t go back to Dallas without running into Star. With Emerald by his side, Star quickly learns her place, or so you would think. Star becomes the least of his worries when he learns that his name was mentioned around unfamiliar company —an unforgiveable violation causing Ezra to transform into Juice and handle things like a boss. Emerald and Ezra’s relationship is like a match made in heaven. Ezra is everything that Emerald imagined he would be, and more. Even with that being the case, Emerald is holding on to a secret that could change their lives forever. Going back to Cali for Hollywood’s graduation is not something that Emerald is looking forward to, especially since she still hasn’t spoken to him. With Ezra by her side, she is comfortable, but still walking on eggshells. Yes, Ezra is the bosses of all bosses, but Emerald reminds you why she is the low-key boss. Taylin has a lot going on these days. Juggling two guys that want her, she can’t decide which one to choose. When McKinley expresses his feelings for her, it makes her think twice about ending their relationship. But Nosa? He is the perfect guy. Taylin is stuck between a rock and a hard place, trying to decide who she will ultimately give her love to. After her run-in with McKinley and Kaneshia, it becomes easier to abandon her feelings for McKinley and give things with Nosa a chance— but a pop up visit to New York could change everything. Hollywood is slowly turning into a young man, yet staying true to his real self. His friendship with Lexi has remained constant, but everything changes in the blink of an eye. He has never known what love feels like, so he isn’t sure if that’s what he feels for her or not. Though his mind isn’t sure, his actions show it, but seeing Stormy could either unravel or tighten his bond with Lexi. Hollywood isn’t the only one with a love triangle going— one of his ladies has a triangle of her own. In the final installment of Infatuated by a Low-Key Boss, half-truths will be told, secrets will be revealed, and gunshots will ring out. When the smoke clears, bodies will be on the ground, but whose? H-Town is where it all began, so that is where it will end.

In It's Bigger Than Hip Hop, M. K. Asante, Jr. looks at the rise of a generation that sees beyond the smoke and mirrors of corporate-manufactured hip hop and is building a movement that will change not only the face of pop culture, but the world. Asante, a young firebrand poet, professor, filmmaker, and activist who represents this movement, uses hip hop as a springboard for a larger discussion about the urgent social and political issues affecting the post-hip-hop generation, a new wave of youth searching for an understanding of itself outside the self-destructive, corporate hip-hop monopoly. Through insightful anecdotes, scholarship, personal encounters, and conversations with youth across the globe as well as icons such as Chuck D and Maya Angelou, Asante illuminates a shift that can be felt in the crowded spoken-word joints in post-Katrina New Orleans, seen in the rise of youth-led organizations committed to social justice, and heard around the world chanting "It's bigger than hip hop."

Written by a Sydney native, English, The Aussie Way: A Fun Guide to Australia’s Colourful Phrases, Words, and Expressions offers an amusing way for English or non-English speakers around the world to learn the colloquial phrases for which Australia is famous. This user-friendly reference provides words/phrases and meanings/synonyms by using an example sentence. Says the author, “For seven years I housed international students who were attending English language schools in Sydney, and I realised that although they had a good grasp of formal grammar, they struggled to understand not only colloquial English, but many of the commonly used phrasal verbs, which could not be found in a standard English/Spanish, French, etc., dictionary. It was then that I decided to start writing some of them down for future reference and it grew from there.”

Flipping through a dictionary pages will now be having a new meaning while reading through Professional Learner’s Dictionary of Spoken English. Designed as the Encyclopaedia of Communicative English, the dictionary contains whole gamut of idioms, sayings and phrases which are used in conversations—in both formal and informal situations. The book has been conceptualised and conceived for the ESL (English As a Second Language) learners, for whom English is a foreign language, but who are eager to speak Real English like the native speakers of English. This book attempts to go beyond the traditional approaches of Spoken English, and takes a communicative approach. Besides making a user aware of the meaning of a term, this book educates skillfully how to speak effective English, what to speak and what not to speak, in order to communicate flawlessly. Conversational ability, fluency in speaking, situation-specific (such as welcome speech) and format-based speaking (such as participating in a group discussion) are some other features of the book that will help a learner pick up the language effortlessly with ease. The book will be of immense utility for the students of Engineering, Management, Communication and all those for whom expressing their thoughts in words is a barrier, and who want to learn English and succeed in Professional and Personal life.