Jessica Wakefield tries to deal with nasty rumors about her which are circulating around her school.

Yonkers, New York, finds its place on the literary map of America. Transcending all the limitations of "ethnic literature" and mobster stereotyping, David Prete flawlessly (and seemingly effortlessly) nails Italian-American life to the page and elevates it to a new place in American writing. Say That to My Face introduces us to Joey Frascone and his family and friends in the tense, violent, racially divided Yonkers of the Seventies and Eighties. His childhood segmented between four homes and his teenage dreams pulling him towards the challenge and excitement of New York City, Joey is a handsome kid whose intense and conflicting loyalties threaten to tear him apart. Whether responding to the crush of a motherless girl whose sister he adores; flirting with danger during the terrifying summer of mass-murderer "Son of Sam"; cheating his teammates of a victory to save a friend on the ballfield; watching his mother play softball against his father ("in her lovely red dress, she pretended to fix her crotch and spit out a wad of chewing tobacco... With one shake of her ass in the batter's box of a church parking lot, my mother dropped thirty years"); or struggling with the mind-blowing high of a lifetime while running drugs from Jamaica, Frascone wins the reader's steadfast allegiance as he tries to figure out where his own truest loyalties lie. Capturing people in flux between their better and worse selves, David Prete is one outstanding storyteller. With hilarious, thrilling, and painful accuracy, he evokes the color and poignancy and humor of Italian-American speech and the characters who use it. Like barman Frank Gianguzzi, whose favorite term of affection is "coog," from the Italian "cugino," or cousin, or any of its variations: "coog-o, coogini, coogette, coogie coog, coog a'bell, coog a'brut." Or Benny Colangelo, the quintessential neighborhood guy, "emanating his future. A future of work, neighborhood, family, and the beautiful poetry of routine." Or Joey's butcher grandfather, scratching his grandson's back with his thick, heavy butcher's nails, as he yells, "Look at the prince here." Or his Uncle Gingy, whose motto — "the one thing you don't mess with is family"-doesn't seem to apply to how he treats his wife. Having come of age among characters as memorable as any in Faulkner's Mississippi, Joey finds that even when he escapes Yonkers for the sophisticated city sparkling at the other side of the bridge, his past isn't forgotten: the past isn't even past.

The actor and founder of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science traces his personal quest to understand how to relate and communicate better, from practicing empathy and using improv games to storytelling and developing better intuitive skills.

Alfred Hayes is one of the secret masters of the twentieth century novel, a journalist and scriptwriter and poet who possessed an immaculate ear and who wrote with razorsharp intelligence about passion and its payback. My Face for the World to See is set in Hollywood, where the tonic for anonymity is fame and you’re only as real as your image. At a party, the narrator, a screenwriter, rescues a young woman who staggers with drunken determination into the Pacific. He is living far from his wife in New York and long ago shed any illusions about the value of his work. He just wants to be left alone. And yet without really meaning to, he gets involved with the young woman, who has, it seems, no illusions about love, especially with married men. She’s a survivor, even if her beauty is a little battered from years of not quite making it in the pictures. She’s just like him, he thinks, and as their casual relationship takes on an increasingly troubled and destructive intensity, it seems that might just be true, only not in the way he supposes.

Born out of the popular blog Kale & Caramel, this sumptuously photographed and beautifully written cookbook presents eighty recipes for delicious vegan and vegetarian dishes featuring herbs and flowers, as well as luxurious do-it-yourself beauty products. Plant-whisperer, writer, and photographer Lily Diamond believes that herbs and flowers have the power to nourish inside and out. “Lily’s deep connection to nature is beautifully woven throughout this personal collection of recipes,” says award-winning vegetarian chef Amy Chaplin. Each chapter celebrates an aromatic herb or flower, including basil, cilantro, fennel, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme, lavender, jasmine, rose, and orange blossom. Mollie Katzen, author of the beloved Moosewood Cookbook, calls the book “a gift, articulated through a poetic voice, original and bold.” The recipes tell a coming-of-age story through Lily’s kinship with plants, from a sun-drenched Maui childhood to healing from heartbreak and her mother’s death. With bright flavors, gorgeous scents, evocative stories, and more than one hundred photographs, Kale & Caramel creates a lush garden of experience open to harvest year round.

Relearn the intuitive language of face reading From birth, face is our first language. We are born face readers—knowing to seek out human features and faces from the moment our eyes open. We all have the intuitive ability to read and interpret the feelings and expressions of those around us. In Read the Face, master face reader Eric Standop unlocks the power of this innate human ability, sharing his own journey to become a face reading master, along with stories that illustrate the power of this unique language. Using a combination of three different schools of face reading, along with a scientific accuracy to detect the most fleeting microexpressions, Standop is able to read personality, character, emotions, and even the state of a person’s health—all from simply glancing at their face. The book is divided into sections focusing on specific ways that face reading can offer insight, such as Health, Love, Communication, Work and Success. The stories are accompanied by detailed black and white illustrations of faces, allowing readers to observe the same features that Standop interpreted. The final section of the book outlines the meanings of dozens of facial features and face shapes, so that readers can recognize their own innate intuitive powers and develop them. Read the Face is a guide to using the ancient art and science of face reading to go beyond the surface and create the boldest life possible.

Named a Favorite Book for Southerners in 2020 by Garden & Gun "Donovan is such a vivid writer—smart, raunchy, vulnerable and funny— that if her vaunted caramel cakes and sugar pies are half as good as her prose, well, I'd be open to even giving that signature buttermilk whipped cream she tops her desserts with a try.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR Noted chef and James Beard Award-winning essayist Lisa Donovan helped establish some of the South's most important kitchens, and her pastry work is at the forefront of a resurgence in traditional desserts. Yet Donovan struggled to make a living in an industry where male chefs built successful careers on the stories, recipes, and culinary heritage passed down from generations of female cooks and cooks of color. At one of her career peaks, she made the perfect dessert at a celebration for food-world goddess Diana Kennedy. When Kennedy asked why she had not heard of her, Donovan said she did not know. "I do," Kennedy said, "Stop letting men tell your story." OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HUNGER is Donovan's searing, beautiful, and searching chronicle of reclaiming her own story and the narrative of the women who came before her. Her family's matriarchs found strength and passion through food, and they inspired Donovan's accomplished career. Donovan's love language is hospitality, and she wants to welcome everyone to the table of good food and fairness. Donovan herself had been told at every juncture that she wasn't enough: she came from a struggling southern family that felt ashamed of its own mixed race heritage and whose elders diminished their women. She survived abuse and assault as a young mother. But Donovan's salvations were food, self-reliance, and the network of women in food who stood by her. In the school of the late John Egerton, OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HUNGER is an unforgettable Southern journey of class, gender, and race as told at table.

The undead stand defiant before the dawn, determined to outlive and outrun the end of forever. One final time we shall know their pain and suffering for ourselves. It's time to run with the wild ones and break loose from the pack, as over twenty authors from around the world unleash their tales of an eternity gone wrong. Dare you brave such epically depraved circumstance one final time?

The Oscar-nominated Precious star and Empire actress delivers a much-awaited memoir which is wise, complex, smart and funny. This Is Just My Face is the whirlwind tour of Gabourey Sidibe’s life so far. In it, we meet her polygamous father, her gifted mother who fed the family by busking on the subway, and the psychic who told her she’d one day be ‘famous like Oprah’. Gabby shows us round the Harlem studio apartment where she grew up, relives the debilitating depression that hit her at college, and reminisces about her first ever job as a phone sex ‘talker’ (less creepy than you’d think). With exhilaratingly honest (and often hilarious) dispatches on friendship, depression, celebrity, haters, fashion, race, and weight, This Is Just My Face will resonate with anyone who has ever felt different - and with anyone who has ever felt inspired to make a dream come true. 'Frank, funny, and insanely charming' Lena Dunham 'A read that lives up to the unforgettable attitude of its name' Glamour 'You’re the BOMB, girl!' President Barack Obama

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In these hilarious essays, the Saturday Night Live head writer and Weekend Update co-anchor learns how to take a beating. “I always wanted to punch his face before I read this book. Now I just want to kick him in the balls.”—Larry David NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Cosmopolitan • Vulture • Parade If there’s one trait that makes someone well suited to comedy, it’s being able to take a punch—metaphorically and, occasionally, physically. From growing up in a family of firefighters on Staten Island to commuting three hours a day to high school and “seeing the sights” (like watching a Russian woman throw a stroller off the back of a ferry), to attending Harvard while Facebook was created, Jost shares how he has navigated the world like a slightly smarter Forrest Gump. You’ll also discover things about Jost that will surprise and confuse you, like how Jimmy Buffett saved his life, how Czech teenagers attacked him with potato salad, how an insect laid eggs inside his legs, and how he competed in a twenty-five-man match at WrestleMania (and almost won). You'll go behind the scenes at SNL and Weekend Update (where he's written some of the most memorable sketches and jokes of the past fifteen years). And you’ll experience the life of a touring stand-up comedian—from performing in rural college cafeterias at noon to opening for Dave Chappelle at Radio City Music Hall. For every accomplishment (hosting the Emmys), there is a setback (hosting the Emmys). And for every absurd moment (watching paramedics give CPR to a raccoon), there is an honest, emotional one (recounting his mother’s experience on the scene of the Twin Towers’ collapse on 9/11). Told with a healthy dose of self-deprecation, A Very Punchable Face reveals the brilliant mind behind some of the dumbest sketches on television, and lays bare the heart and humor of a hardworking guy—with a face you can’t help but want to punch.