Everywhere, the birds: sparrows and skylarks and thrushes, starlings and bellbirds, fantails and pipits &– but above them all and louder, the magpies. We are here and this is our tree and we' re staying and it is ours and you need to leave and now. Tama is just a helpless chick when he is rescued by Marnie, and this is where his story might have ended. &‘ If it keeps me awake,' says Marnie' s husband Rob, a farmer, &‘ I' ll have to wring its neck.' But with Tama come new possibilities for the couple' s future. Tama can speak, and his fame is growing. Outside, in the pines, his father warns him of the wickedness wrought by humans. Indoors, Marnie confides in him about her violent marriage. The more Tama sees, the more the animal and the human worlds &– and all of the precarity, darkness and hope within them &– bleed into one another. Like a stock truck filled with live cargo, the story moves inexorably towards its dramatic conclusion: the annual Axeman' s Carnival. Part trickster, part surrogate child, part witness, Tama the magpie is the star of this story. Though what he says aloud to humans is often nonsensical (and hilarious with it), the tale he tells us weaves a disturbingly human sen

"Every word here feels set down with care and fierce conscience. The resulting narrative glows." —San Francisco Chronicle A novel of rich details and landscapes, Winter Kept Us Warm follows three friends through six decades — from postwar Berlin to Manhattan, 1960s Los Angeles to contemporary Morocco. A twisting narrative reveals their mysteries in fragments, examining their long–ago love triangle and how it changed their lives forever. "This novel is a profound success that manages to take its place in the canon of excellent war literature while also maintaining a kind of magical surreality . . . This is an astonishing read, a best–of, and a masterful treatise on enduring." —Lambda Literary

The debut collection of raucous, dark, strange, satirical stories from the former Late Show with Stephen Colbert writer and New Yorker contributor, featuring a foreword by Stephen Colbert “Jen Spyra’s stories are shocking, silly, smart, and absurdly funny. Underline both those words, I don’t care how much it costs!”—Tina Fey A bride so desperate to get in shape for her wedding that she enrolls in a new kind of workout program that promises the moon but costs more than she bargained for. A snowman who, on the wish of a child, comes to life in a decidedly less savory way than in the childhood classic. And in the title story, a time-hopping 1940s starlet tries to claw her way to the top in modern-day Hollywood, despite being ridiculously unwoke. In this uproarious, addictive debut, Jen Spyra takes a culture that seems almost beyond parody and holds it up to a funhouse mirror, immersing the reader in a world of prehistoric influencers, woodland creatures plagued by millennial neuroses, and an all-out birthday bash determined to be the most lavish celebration of all time, by any means necessary. Welcome, brave soul, to the world of Jen Spyra.

When Clifford Stilton dies, his son Gene crams his carefully kept diaries into a hall cupboard - but Clifford's words have too much life in them to be ignored, and start to permeate his family's world. Clifford taught Gene about how to find rocks and fossils, and about how to kill birds and fish. Gene passes on a similar inheritance to his daughters, Bridget and Christina - they have their own ways of digging and discovering the past, keeping an account of life, watching out for the varieties of death that lie hidden. Etta their mother tells a very different story of her 1940s childhood. In a fishbone church spans continents and decades. From the Berlin rave scene to the Canterbury duck season, from the rural 1950s to the cosmopolitan present, these five vivid lives cohere in a deeply affecting and exhilarating novel. In a fishbone church, Catherine Chidgey's acclaimed debut, won the Hubert Church Award for Best First Book in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, the Adam Award, the regional Commonwealth Prize for Best First Novel, and a Betty Trask Award in the UK, where it was also longlisted for the Orange Prize. First published in 1998, it has been a bestseller in New Zealand and has been published around the world.

With the humanity and intimacy of "Ordinary People," this novel reinvents a classic narrative archetype to follow a young family coping with staggering loss. A graphic-novel subplot adds both humor and visual interest to this moving tale of hope and redemption. Illustrations.

Help your teens grow into the very best versions of themselves! From rule-breaking and risk-taking to defensive communication and disrespect, parenting a teenager can feel like modern warfare--but it doesn't have to be that way. In 1-2-3 Magic Teen, Thomas W. Phelan, an internationally renowned expert in child discipline and mental health, explains how to better understand your teenager, which problems are not worth fighting over, and why your child's behavior likely matches the definition of a normal adolescent! With helpful, straightforward advice backed up by research and parent-tested strategies, 1-2-3 Magic Teen will help you establish a calmer, more respectful home and family life and show you how to guide your teenager into healthy, functional young adulthood. This book offers practical strategies to address common issues such as attitude, independence, technology use, academic pressures, and social life. Dr. Phelan provides guidance on fostering open communication, cultivating emotional maturity, and supporting your teen's growth into a responsible, resilient adult. You'll also find tools and advice tailored for the challenges of a teen lifestyle, including: Forgetting to do chores Absence in family outings Drop in grades Missed curfews Parties and drinking Work responsibilities Whether you're trying to navigate daily communication challenges or the larger issues of adolescence, 1-2-3 Magic Teen provides the tools you need to maintain a positive relationship with your teenager and help them navigate their path to adulthood.

From the intersection of public and private fear, Kerri Webster’s award-winning collection speaks of anxiety and awe, vanishings and reappearances. A city both rises and falls; worlds are simultaneously spoken into being and torn down by words. “This is how time sounds,” Webster writes; this is the hum and click of bodies “desirous of believing we’re all vehicle, every wet atom of us,” even as the saved seeds root in the fallen brickwork and the artifacts pile up: wisdom teeth, hummingbird skulls, plumb bobs, icons, antlers, incandescent bulbs. Grand & Arsenal begins “Bless me I am not myself,” but it is not long before the probability of being blessed is revealed to be as remote as the concept of a whole self. Thus begins the book’s defining struggle, enacted by a multitude of voices which move from rush to stumble and back again—meanwhile using all the tools we as a culture use to hold fear at arm’s length. We hear a familiar irony, as in “On a trip West, porn in the hotel room. I can take or leave it. The climax that puts me in the seats? World’s end.” We hear humor, as in “I believed in . . . / . . . a certain apocalypse not so much foretold as crafted / by large-brained monkeys.” We hear understatement, as in “knowing it does not matter / in the grand—she would say scheme, I would say / mishap—.” Most importantly, though, these poems allow for the fleeting triumph of an undefended voice, which appears often to emerge tentatively from a sort of exhausted collapse.

At a high school party, a girl finds her best friend murdered, only to be discovered holding the weapon and accused of the crime.

Two zombie apocalypse survivors search for a cure and fight the undead together in this inventive and darkly funny romantic comedy perfect for fans of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Sarah and David have survived the zombie apocalypse. They stood side by side and fought the undead, mad scientists, and even bionic monsters until the unthinkable happened. A zombie bite. But not even that could stop them. Now, with a possible cure in hand, they're headed east, looking for a safe zone behind the rumored "Wall." They're feeling pretty optimistic. That is until Dave stops sleeping and starts lifting huge objects. Eat. Slay. Love. Because they haven't got a prayer.