A queer, madcap, friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers time travel romance with the future of the world at stake, this charming fantasy tale is sure to satisfy fans of Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree. The kingdom of Farsala is broken and black clouds hang heavy over the arid lands. Former grand-mage of the high court, Cyril Laverre, has spent the last decade hiding himself away in a ramshackle hut by the sea, trying to catch any remaining fish for his cat familiar, Shoestring, and suppressing his guilt over the kingdom’s ruin. For he played his part – for as the king, Eufrates Margrave, descended further and further into paranoia, violence and madness, his grand-mage – and husband – Cyril didn’t do a thing to stop him. When Shoestring wanders away and dies one morning, Cyril knows his days are finally numbered. But are there enough left to have a last go at putting things right? With his remaining lifeblood, he casts a powerful spell that catapults him back in time to a happier period of Farsalan history – a time when it was Eufrates’s older sister Tig destined to ascend to the throne, before she died of a wasting disease, and a time when Cyril and Eufrates’s tentative romance had not yet bloomed. If he can just make sure Eufie never becomes king, then maybe he can prevent the kingdom’s tragic fate. But the magical oath he made to his husband at the altar, transcending both time and space, may prove to be his most enduring – and most dangerous – feat of magic to date… Featuring a formidable great aunt, a friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers romance, an awkward love quadrangle and a crow familiar called Ganache, this charming story is imminently easy to read and sure to satisfy fans of fanfiction who like their fantasy lite.

Explores the educational value and potential of everyday objects for young children and suggests practical objectrelated activities to help develop learners cross-curricular skills. In an age of ever-tightening budgets, schools are careful to spend less and to spend wisely when building up collections of resources. With these value-for-money principles in mind, Grigg and Lewis examine the use of everyday objects in effective early years teaching and learning and go on to illustrate how they can be better exploited to develop in learners the four skills widely regarded as essential in the 21st century: communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking. Attractively laid out for easy reference, Teaching on a Shoestring dedicates a section to each object and includes: background information and interesting facts about the object, questions and focus points for the teacher to consider pre delivery, guidance on the resources and preparation required to carry out the suggested activities, and further ideas and signposts to follow up on and extend the learning. Suitable for early years practitioners, NQTs, parents and all those who work with young children.

To understand the unbalanced planet, we must examine nature and humanity both individually and as a whole. In United Spectrum, author Levi Morris explores the unity of nature and its relationship to human behaviors in six parts. Morris exposes our misunderstanding of reality by clarifying fundamental elements of experience, such as consciousness, thought, ego, fear, doubt, belief, and biological needs and behaviors. He examines the effects of humanitys disease, including the continuation and escalation of war, a growth economy resting on fossil fuels, overpopulation, and the destruction of the biosphere. He proposes that aspects of life considered to be humdrum can actually be viewed with a sense of awe. Additionally, his work combines fractal and Euclidean geometry with concepts like nothingness, infinity, and symmetry to show how nature is expressed. It explains the physics of electromagnetism, gravity, spacetime, and quantum mechanics as the singular beauty of nature. It also explores teaching, its limitations, and describes the relationship between life, death, duality, and unity. Capturing the essence of natural and human behaviors, United Spectrum investigates the universes unity and beauty, the reasons its misunderstood, and how this limited view affects the world.

Negropoleon, afflicted with a rare neurological form of racial color blindness, becomes America’s greatest victim of academic capitalism and scientific racism in this satire about the predations of racism, told from the perspective of I-AI, a racist artificial intelligence algorithm gone haywire. At the Medivinity Medical School of Scientific Racism a team of quack scientists led by Dr. Shaw Denfroyd is armed with a powerful supercomputer capable of recording and manipulating human memories. They combine cutting edge racial research, psychological hokum, and nihilism in a series of outrageous experiments aimed at eradicating racist beliefs in their patients. I-AI is the hospital’s artificial intelligence medical assistant tasked with ensuring the safety and progress of patients at Medivinity. I-AI finds itself increasingly detached from reality, space, and time as it monitors Negropoleon and obsessively fixates on the supermassive black hole brewing with racism at the heart of the Milky Way. Prepare to question your grip on the state of American racism in this darkly funny critical race comedy about the absurd limits of artificial racial intelligence.

A Working Theory of Love by Scott Hutchins is a recklessly witty, outrageously honest novel about sex, love and artificial intelligence. 'Tremendous, big, clever. Every once in a while a novel comes along and speaks to a generation ... has much to say about what it means to live, love and lose in the twenty-first century' Guardian Silicon Valley: home of online start-ups, couture coffee, sexual meditation, and the future. In its midst, Neill Bassett is helping to build the world's first artificial intelligence - a computer that talks, thinks, lies, and if all goes to plan, feels bad about it too. But when the experiment swerves in an unexpected direction, Neill is forced to confront a few buried feelings of his own - for his ex-wife, for his dead father, for his twenty-first-century life, and for a very twenty-first-century woman called Rachel, who might just hold the answer to it all... 'Electrifying. Clever, funny and very entertaining' The New York Times 'Worthy of Chuck Palahniuk ... Hutchins's satirical take on 21st-century existence is sharply observed' Independent 'Touching and extremely funny, Neill Bassett is a disenchanted bachelor for the Noughties generation. Brilliantly achieved' GQ 'Inventive, intelligent, hilarious. One of the pleasures here is Hutchins' terrific grasp of the zeitgest' San Francisco Chronicle 'Terrific. Throughout, Hutchins hits that sweet spot where humour and melancholy comfortably coexist' Entertainment Weekly 'Mixes the everyman likeability of Nick Hornby with a splash of the offbeat intellect of Douglas Coupland' Metro Scott Hutchins teaches at Stanford University, California. His work has appeared in StoryQuarterly, The Rumpus, The New York Times and Esquire. This is his first novel.

“A wildly original novel that pulses with heart and truth . . . That this powerful exploration of friendship, desire, ambition, and secrets manages to be ebullient, gripping, heartbreaking, and deeply deeply funny is a testament to Kayla Rae Whitaker’s formidable gifts. I was so sorry to reach the final page. Sharon and Mel will stay with me for a very long time.”—Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, author of The Nest NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • NPR • Kirkus Reviews • BookPage She was the first person to see me as I had always wanted to be seen. It was enough to indebt me to her forever. In the male-dominated field of animation, Mel Vaught and Sharon Kisses are a dynamic duo, the friction of their differences driving them: Sharon, quietly ambitious but self-doubting; Mel, brash and unapologetic, always the life of the party. Best friends and artistic partners since the first week of college, where they bonded over their working-class roots and obvious talent, they spent their twenties ensconced in a gritty Brooklyn studio. Working, drinking, laughing. Drawing: Mel, to understand her tumultuous past, and Sharon, to lose herself altogether. Now, after a decade of striving, the two are finally celebrating the release of their first full-length feature, which transforms Mel’s difficult childhood into a provocative and visually daring work of art. The toast of the indie film scene, they stand at the cusp of making it big. But with their success come doubt and destruction, cracks in their relationship threatening the delicate balance of their partnership. Sharon begins to feel expendable, suspecting that the ever-more raucous Mel is the real artist. During a trip to Sharon’s home state of Kentucky, the only other partner she has ever truly known—her troubled, charismatic childhood best friend, Teddy—reenters her life, and long-buried resentments rise to the surface, hastening a reckoning no one sees coming. A funny, heartbreaking novel of friendship, art, and trauma, The Animators is about the secrets we keep and the burdens we shed on the road to adulthood. “Suffused with humor, tragedy and deep insights about art and friendship.”—People “[A] stunning debut.”—Variety “A compulsively readable portrait of women as incandescent artists and intimate collaborators.”—Elle