Nick and Laurel Salupo currently live in Newburgh Heights Ohio. Laurel is a housewife, freelance writer, and child care provider. Nick is a writing instructor and Adjunct Faculty at Western and Metro Campuses of Tri-C. They are working on two more fictional novels that should be completed in the near future.

A taxonomy we didn’t know we needed for identifying and cataloging stray shopping carts by artist and photographer Julian Montague. Abandoned shopping carts are everywhere, and yet we know so little about them. Where do they come from? Why are they there? Their complexity and history baffle even the most careful urban explorer. Thankfully, artist Julian Montague has created a comprehensive and well-documented taxonomy with The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America. Spanning thirty-three categories from damaged, fragment, and plow crush to plaza drift and bus stop discard, it is a tonic for times defined increasingly by rhetoric and media and less by the plain objects and facts of the real world. Montague’s incomparable documentation of this common feature of the urban landscape helps us see the natural and man-made worlds—and perhaps even ourselves—anew. First published in 2006 to great perplexity and acclaim alike, Montague’s book now appears in refreshed and expanded form. Told in an exceedingly dry voice, with full-color illustrations and photographs throughout, it is both rigorous and absurd, offering a strangely compelling vision of how we approach, classify, and understand the environments around us. A new afterword sheds light on the origins of the project.

Salupo’s Groceries is a beautiful written story about two young loves that met and married in Sicily. Carolina and Nicolo had their share of heartaches and happiness over the years. Nicolo was an Army Veteran from the Turkish Italian war. Together the newly married couple traveled from Sicily to America. Once they arrived in the land of the free, they settled in the Woodland area of Cleveland Ohio. Like many young European travelers, it took time to assimilate and plant roots like many immigrants of that time in the early 1920’s. Nicolo had many dreams: he wanted a home, and a neighborhood grocery store, but most of all he wanted a family. With the love of his life by his side, Carolina, they worked hard and achieved many of their goals. Life can be joyous and tragic, and it was for the Salupo family. Together as a family they pulled though tragedy, forging forward in life remembering the true inner strength of Nicolo, who was a husband and their loving father.

You are a loving person, and you love kids. But what is love, exactly, by your definition? Have you ever really thought about it? Is love simply some warm “fuzzy” that you’ve been taught to express with three little words? Or is it much more than that? And how would you describe it? Have you explored any of the beliefs, the rote script comments, the auto-responses, the unquestioned systems, all the “that’s just the way it is” programs, the generational patterns, the inconsistent behaviors that send mixed messages, and the copy-and-paste words and attitudes that you inadvertently share with kids? And have you intentionally worked to raise the frequency of your own lovelight, revealing and healing any parts of you that may affect the energy, and thus, the growth, brilliance and resilience of children in your care? Come. Let’s explore and train our hearts to see through the lens of love to make the necessary adjustments to our programming. Let’s shine the light on and disrupt the old ways of thinking and behaving that have created the undesirable, inequitable energies of the collective consciousness and the current systems. With that light, we can heal, change, grow and create a brighter, new environment for the kids, with the kids, preserving and maintaining the strength of our inherent lovelights.

In a literary tapestry of the beauties and terrors of family life, Klass--a five-time O. Henry Award winner--explores the lives of parents, doctors, patients, friends, and lovers who encounter one another in sickness and in health, for better or for worse.

"Flowers can't tell lies. If you keep the sun off of them, dry up their waterbeds, and throw in weeds to choke 'em out, ain't no way or reason for them to bloom. If a rose is in full bloom when you know it's only been kept in darkness, and the ground it's planted in is cracked and cold, don't stop to smell that rose. There's a trap somewhere in those tempting, dark red petals. There's deceit. Maybe even death. Run from that flowerbed. You don't want to get buried in that soil." It's a few weeks before her fortieth birthday, and Sienna finally has the life she's dreamed of: a husband who loves her, a private practice that's flourishing, and an extended family that has finally put its skeletons to rest. However, when a homeless woman named Sweet Violet comes under Sienna's care with nothing on her but broken memories and a pocket watch stopped at 5:11, Sienna knows the peaceful life she's been enjoying will come to a screeching halt. Despite her best attempts not to get too involved, Sienna quickly discovers the dangerous past of Sweet Violet, and decades-old secrets and shadows come creeping into the present with violent results. Further complicating matters is a shocking midlife surprise for Sienna, and an unwelcomed guest her son Roman brings home. Life and death, love and loss, remain on the line as Sienna seeks answers, ducks bullets, and tries to be a good wife.

The spirits, sorcerers, and truly desperate in San Francisco’s seedy neighborhoods know Johnny Talon, a private detective who can solve impenetrable cases in a way no one else can. His use of lucid dreams and subconscious insights lead him to the truth. Talon has his work cut out for him when he’s hired by Eve, a sex worker, to find and free the soul of her deceased wife from a sorcerer who hopes to entrap Eve. The closer he gets to finding the soul of Eve’s wife, the more Talon’s life may be on the line as he learns that there is more to his client than an angry woman. When his investigation leads him into hell, Talon has an epiphany: if he’s going to free Eve’s wife, he has to uncover Eve’s true identity. The things a gumshoe does to pay the rent.

In clear, graceful prose, author Peter Sonderegger explores the many nuances of love and marriage. While Susan and Jack admit to their passion, Eric and Janet keep a tight rein on their mutual attraction. As the book progresses, Sonderegger expertly probes the pasts of all the lovers: how they met, how they married, and how their marriages began to falter or fade. This is a luminous novel about the richness of love, the sorrow of divorce, and the possibility of new alignments and long-awaited second chances. Deftly written and warmly told, Nor'east Love Storm is a modern love story that no reader will likely forget. - Ellen Tanner Marsh, New York Times Best Selling Author

My name is Qiao Weiwei and I come from a small town. My family is quite poor, so studying in this big city is naturally very difficult. However, my figure is very good. With this hard condition, under the introduction of my dorm mate Du Xiaoxiao, I started to work part-time as a Taobao model. However, the boss was very lustful and often ate tofu. After witnessing the relationship between Du Xiaoxiao and the boss, when I was about to resign, I received a call from home. Dad was sick and needed a lot of surgery fees. Du Xiaoxiao and I drew 30,000 yuan, but it was still far from enough. The next day, the boss tried to molest me while I was changing my clothes. I smashed him with an ashtray and escaped into the elevator, meeting the CEO of Tulip's Kiss, Chu Haocheng helped me settle the boss. I was brought back to the company by his bodyguard.

Have you ever wanted to peer through a telescope into the lives of others? Who hasn't wanted to, right? In the pages of this book, God Spells Love with an X, no telescope is needed. The author, Brigitta Hebdon, welcomes the reader into her crazy family that is profoundly affected by Fragile X syndrome. This is not a parenting book, although it's told from a mother's perspective. It's not a how-to book for righteous living, because goodness knows she hasn't figured that out! It will not demonstrate exemplary positivity. You'll find that the author is human. She yells, curses, and fights. She also cries, prays, seeks forgiveness, and keeps going. It's not a book about God, although he is present in every chapter. This is a tale of remarkable love. Jared teaches his mom every day how to view the world in unique and hilarious ways. The lessons are chronicled in the Facebook posts Brigitta has kept for the last fifteen years since Jared was in elementary school. This book is guaranteed to make you laugh, cry, and probably get a little mad. It's not a story about disability. These life lessons are for everyone, the most important one being that God is with you regardless of your circumstances. Jared's world is beautiful, something he has to remind his mom of every day. The tapestry of his life is woven in colorful threads of childlike innocence, imagination, and his keen sense of humor. The dark hues are a result of mood and behavior disorders, as well as other affectations brought on by his disability. But a tapestry without shadows and contrasts is flat and boring. The dynamic between Jared and his mom is anything but boring! For example... Arguing with Jared about whether or not his lunch (that I packed) sucks. Finally, he ended the "discussion" with this, "Gosh, you're being a brat." --Facebook, November 2014, age 13 This book will make you smile and be grateful for your own life's challenges, just like the feeling you get when you watch someone pull gum out of their hair. You'll laugh at the circumstances, all the while being happy it's not you pulling out your own hair. However, these life lessons will give you tools for your own struggles, because we don't always get gum in our hair, but eventually, we all step on it! Cover Design by Rian Elaine