A scholar and bride-to-be spends a year without mirrors to get a better view of what really matters When Kjerstin Gruys became engaged, she was thrilled—until it was time to shop for a wedding dress. Having overcome an eating disorder years before, Gruys found herself struggling to maintain a positive self-image; so she decided to refocus her attention. Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall charts Gruys’s awakening as she vows to give up mirrors and other reflective surfaces, relying on friends and her fiancé to help her gauge both her appearance and outlook on life. The result? A renewed focus on what truly matters, regardless of smeared makeup or messy hair. With humorous and poignant scenes from Gruys’ life, Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall sparks important conversations about body image and reclaiming the power to define beauty.

Famous professor Joseph Wieder was brutally murdered, and the crime was never solved. Years later when literary agent Peter Katz receives an incomplete memoir written by a student of the murdered professor, he becomes obsessed with solving the crime.

Mirrors is one of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz's more unusual works. First published in serialized form in the Egyptian television magazine, it consists of a series of vignettes of characters from a writer's life--a writer very like Mahfouz himself. And accompanying each vignette is a portrait of the character by a friend of the author, the renowned Alexandrian artist Seif Wanli. Through each vignette--whether of a lifelong friend, a sometime adversary, or a childhood sweetheart--not only is that one character described but much light is thrown on other characters already familiar or yet to be encountered, as well as on the narrator himself, who we come to know well through the mirrors of his world of acquaintances. At the same time, Mirrors also reflects the recent history of Egypt, its political movements, its leaders, its wars, and its peace, all of which affect the lives of friends and enemies and of the narrator himself. As the translator writes in his Introduction, "the narrator's acquaintances from childhood, schooldays, and civil service career take him from the lofty heights of intellectual salons to the seemy squalor of brothels and drug dens; from the dreams of youth and nationalistic ideals to the sobering realities of post-revolutionary society and clashing economic and political values."The apparently simple but penetrating portraits by Seif Wanli add an extra, distinctive dimension to this already intriguing book. They originally appeared with the serialized texts in the television magazine, but were omitted when the book was first published in 1972, and were also omitted when the English translation first appeared in 1977. Now, in this special edition, the pictures and the complete text appear together for the first time.

An innovative, two-in-one picture book follows a parallel day in the life of two families: one in a Western city and one in a North African village. Somewhere in Sydney, Australia, a boy and his family wake up, eat breakfast, and head out for a busy day of shopping. Meanwhile, in a small village in Morocco, a boy and his family go through their own morning routines and set out to a bustling market. In this ingenious, wordless picture book, readers are invited to compare, page by page, the activities and surroundings of children in two different cultures. Their lives may at first seem quite unalike, but a closer look reveals that there are many things, some unexpected, that connect them as well. Designed to be read side by side — one from the left and the other from the right — these intriguing stories are told entirely through richly detailed collage illustrations.

Stonygates had been built originally as a kind of Temple to Victorian Plutocracy - Philanthropy had made of it a home for Juvenile Deliquents. Over the entrance were inscribed the words "Recover Hope All Ye Who Enter Here". But Miss Jane Marple came to Stonygates in fulfilment of a promise to an old school friend to find out what was wrong at this most unusual college, now being run by the friend's third husband and housing, besides two hundred juvenile deliquents, the stepchildren of her previous marriages. As soon as she arrived Jane Marple knew thet her friend was right: something was wrong at Stonygates. What she saw around her was illusion, not reality. In the words of the conjuror "They do it with mirrors" But who? And why?

Pop Quiz: • Have you ever woken up and felt bad about yourself for no reason whatsoever? • Have you spent time trying to figure out how to get into the popular group at school? • Have you ever been embarrassed by your dad singing in the car with your friends? • Have you noticed that things are starting to feel different than ever before? • Do you change your opinion—or even your personality around different friends? • Do you get overwhelmed with all of the thoughts and feelings bouncing around inside of you? If you answered yes to even one of these questions, you passed the quiz. That means you’re a normal girl, who is going through the confusing changes of growing up! Sometimes it might feel like you woke up in a whole new world—kind of like Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz. The good news is, you’re not alone. Melissa and Sissy, the authors of this book, think they can help you figure out some of the big questions in your life. Even if you haven’t asked them out loud, chances are you’ve started to wonder: • Who am I? • What do I want? • What should I do? • Who do I want to be? While they’re no longer teenagers, Melissa and Sissy remember a bit about what it was like to be 11 or 12—almost a teenager. But more than that, they talk with girls who are a lot like you every day—girls who are feeling confused or overwhelmed, who are feeling like they’re changing in ways they don’t understand—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—and they feel like their lives are out of their own control. In this book, Melissa and Sissy, along with girls your age, will share some insight into what’s going on in your life. You’ll find that you’re not going crazy—you’re just growing up and becoming the person God has created you to be.

"Reading to Make a Difference shows teachers how to move beyond including diverse literature in their classroom to become caring citizens and agents of change. With examples from many classrooms across grade levels, Lester and Katie engage students in critical conversations around topics that arise in literature and in life. They share concrete steps for how teachers can support students to take action and make a difference in their classroom, school or community"--

The bestselling author of "An Unexpected Light" conducts a fascinating journey through the cultural and artistic landscape of Iran, both past and present. 15 halftones. Two 16-page photo inserts.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “From The New Yorker’s beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.”—Esquire Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times • “A whip-smart, challenging book.”—Zadie Smith • “Jia Tolentino could be the Joan Didion of our time.”—Vulture FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE’S JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND HARVARD CRIMSON AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Chicago Tribune • The Washington Post • NPR • Variety • Esquire • Vox • Elle • Glamour • GQ • Good Housekeeping • The Paris Review • Paste • Town & Country • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews • BookRiot • Shelf Awareness Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity. Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die. Gleaming with Tolentino’s sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and marked by her desire to treat the reader with profound honesty, Trick Mirror is an instant classic of the worst decade yet. FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY

A “marvelous history”* of medieval Europe, from the bubonic plague and the Papal Schism to the Hundred Years’ War, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Guns of August *Lawrence Wright, author of The End of October, in The Wall Street Journal The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. In this revelatory work, Barbara W. Tuchman examines not only the great rhythms of history but the grain and texture of domestic life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries, and guilty passions, Tuchman re-creates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, dominating all, the knight—in all his valor and “furious follies,” a “terrible worm in an iron cocoon.” Praise for A Distant Mirror “Beautifully written, careful and thorough in its scholarship . . . What Ms. Tuchman does superbly is to tell how it was. . . . No one has ever done this better.”—The New York Review of Books “A beautiful, extraordinary book . . . Tuchman at the top of her powers . . . She has done nothing finer.”—The Wall Street Journal “Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . a great book, in a great historical tradition.”—Commentary