I first started writing this book, I Am a Real Person, as therapy for myself. Although I’ve had help from various therapists and counsellors, there are some things that I have never been able to talk about or come to terms with, and writing this book has helped me. It tells of how and why I felt so worthless, even from a young age, and everything written is exactly how I remember it. From even before I was married, my life started to go downhill. At first, I believed it would pick up, but after years of abuse I came to the conclusion that it would never change, and I just wanted out. Until things went from bad to worse and something was said to me that made me realise I had to do something positive. I hope that my story will offer encouragement to anyone going through something similar. There is always a way out, however difficult it may seem.

She thought, brightly, This is the worst life decision I have ever made! And she marvelled at herself for a while, at the mystery of this person who’d just done this bizarre, inexplicable thing. Margot meets Robert. They exchange numbers. They text, flirt and eventually have sex – the type of sex you attempt to forget. How could one date go so wrong? Everything that takes place in Cat Person happens to countless people every day. But Cat Person is not an everyday story. In less than a week, Kristen Roupenian’s New Yorker debut became the most read and shared short story in their website’s history. This is the bad date that went viral. This is the conversation we’re all having. This gift edition contains photographs by celebrated photographer Elinor Carucci, who was commissioned by the New Yorker to capture the image that accompanied Kristen Roupenian’s Cat Person when it appeared in the magazine. You Know You Want This, Kristen Roupenian’s debut collection, will be published in February 2019.

Charles Mingus was one of the most innovative jazz musicians of the 20th Century, and ranks with Ives and Ellington as one of America's greatest composers. By temperament, he was a high-strung and sensitive romantic, a towering figure whose tempestuous personal life found powerfully coherent expression in the ever-shifting textures of his music. Now, acclaimed music critic Gene Santoro strips away the myths shrouding "Jazz's Angry Man," revealing Mingus as more complex than even his lovers and close friends knew. A pioneering bassist and composer, Mingus redefined jazz's terrain. He penned over 300 works spanning gutbucket gospel, Colombian cumbias, orchestral tone poems, multimedia performance, and chamber jazz. By the time he was 35, his growing body of music won increasing attention as it unfolded into one pioneering musical venture after another, from classical-meets-jazz extended pieces to spoken-word and dramatic performances and television and movie soundtracks. Though critics and musicians debated his musical merits and his personality, by the late 1950s he was widely recognized as a major jazz star, a bellwether whose combined grasp of tradition and feel for change poured his inventive creativity into new musical outlets. But Mingus got headlines less for his art than for his volatile and often provocative behavior, which drew fans who wanted to watch his temper suddenly flare onstage. Impromptu outbursts and speeches formed an integral part of his long-running jazz workshop, modeled partly on dramatic models like Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. Keeping up with the organized chaos of Mingus's art demanded gymnastic improvisational skills and openness from his musicians-which is why some of them called it "the Sweatshop." He hired and fired musicians on the bandstand, attacked a few musicians physically and many more verbally, twice threw Lionel Hampton's drummer off the stage, and routinely harangued chattering audiences, once chasing a table of inattentive patrons out of the FIVE SPOT with a meat cleaver. But the musical and mental challenges this volcanic man set his bands also nurtured deep loyalties. Key sidemen stayed with him for years and even decades. In this biography, Santoro probes the sore spots in Mingus's easily wounded nature that helped make him so explosive: his bullying father, his interracial background, his vulnerability to women and distrust of men, his views of political and social issues, his overwhelming need for love and acceptance. Of black, white, and Asian descent, Mingus made race a central issue in his life as well as a crucial aspect of his music, becoming an outspoken (and often misunderstood) critic of racial injustice. Santoro gives us a vivid portrait of Mingus's development, from the racially mixed Watts where he mingled with artists and writers as well as mobsters, union toughs, and pimps to the artistic ferment of postwar Greenwich Village, where he absorbed and extended the radical improvisation flowing through the work of Allen Ginsberg, Jackson Pollock, and Charlie Parker. Indeed, unlike Most jazz biographers, Santoro examines Mingus's extra-musical influences--from Orson Welles to Langston Hughes, Farwell Taylor, and Timothy Leary--and illuminates his achievement in the broader cultural context it demands. Written in a lively, novelistic style, Myself When I Am Real draws on dozens of new interviews and previously untapped letters and archival materials to explore the intricate connections between this extraordinary man and the extraordinary music he made.

Forty percent of all food produced in the US is wasted—the author of 101 Ways to Go Zero Waste is here with solutions! Kathryn Kellogg is taking her accessible tips for a zero-waste lifestyle and focusing on the heart of the house. Our kitchens can produce a shocking amount of waste and, even though food scraps may seem harmless, they can’t properly decompose in a landfill. What’s more: wasting food can strain your wallet. The average American family of four will lose $1,500 annually on food waste. It’s time to turn things around! 101 Tips for a Zero Waste Kitchen is your guide to reducing waste in your kitchen. Kathryn will teach you how to buy in bulk, avoid unnecessary packaging, upcycle jars, and more. Plus, she’ll give you recipes that make use of your scraps: preserve your lemon peels for extra flavor, create simple syrup from strawberry tops, and revive shriveled mushrooms. With a little work and Kathryn in your corner, you’ll have the tools you need to reach the ultimate goal: no produce left behind!

Do you have a mythical creature living in your head? Does it look like you are off to prison because you cleared your bowels in your neighbors garden? Is your child a vampire? Do you want to be a dog? Are you unable to stop sweating to the point that you will evaporate? If you have ever asked yourself any of these questions then my book is for you.

What is it like to meet God, to converse with him about the most important questions of human life, and then to have union with him? What is it like for a finite being to stand in the presence of the infinite being? James Amore, a philosopher, is in quest of God. This quest originated from a strong desire to have union with the sun of all suns: God. This desire took hold of his heart and mind when he was a young man; it grew and developed into an overwhelming passion when he became an adult. Relying on information he received from his grandmother, who was a clandestine mystic, he decided to meet God on the Peakless Mountain. After twelve days of ascent, which was dangerous and exposed him to death a few times, he met God. To his surprise, God speaks, and he spoke to him in English. He had a two-day conversation with him, and then he declared to God that he would not leave until he had union with him. God warned him against this request, but James Amore was determined to sit in his lap and listen to the music of his heartbeats. Well, God granted him his wish. We do not know how long this union lasted, but we know that when James emerged from it, he was an old man and a deaf flute player! We meet him playing his flute at St. John the Divine, a cathedral in Jackson, Tennessee.

A devastating virus. A nation-wide quarantine. A ruthless government at war with the world. And it’s all seventeen-year-old Lyra Harmon’s fault. Lyra is the only person known to have “phoenix cells,” which regenerate no matter the injury or illness. If she had just let the doctors clone her cells when Hecate’s Plague was first discovered, she could have stopped the pandemic—and the war. But her parents knew the government would also use her cells to clone an undefeatable army and wanted to protect Lyra from being a pawn in anyone’s game. So they kept her hidden and have now been on the run for years. It’s a lonely, isolating existence and Lyra hates it. When she secretly befriends a young girl orphaned by the plague, Lyra takes a stand. She won’t run again. But her impulsive decision has devastating consequences: her parents contract the deadly virus, leaving them only three days to live—unless Lyra can save them. But as she’s sucked into a dangerous political game, she no longer knows the right thing to do. With time running out, she must finally decide what—or who—she’s willing to sacrifice in order to find a cure.