Once conduits to new music, frequently bypassing the corporate music industry in ways now done more easily via the Internet, record stores championed the most local of economic enterprises, allowing social mobility to well up from them in unexpected ways. Record stores speak volumes about our relationship to shopping, capitalism, and art. This book takes a comprehensive look at what individual record stores meant to individual people, but also what they meant to communities, to musical genres, and to society in general. What was their role in shaping social practices, aesthetic tastes, and even, loosely put, ideologies? From women-owned and independent record stores, to Reggae record shops in London, to Rough Trade in Paris, this book takes on a global and interdisciplinary approach to evaluating record stores. It collects stories and memories, and facts about a variety of local stores that not only re-centers the record store as a marketplace of ideas, but also explore and celebrate a neglected personal history of many lives.

Once conduits to new music, frequently bypassing the corporate music industry in ways now done more easily via the Internet, record stores championed the most local of economic enterprises, allowing social mobility to well up from them in unexpected ways. Record stores speak volumes about our relationship to shopping, capitalism, and art. This book takes a comprehensive look at what individual record stores meant to individual people, but also what they meant to communities, to musical genres, and to society in general. What was their role in shaping social practices, aesthetic tastes, and even, loosely put, ideologies? From women-owned and independent record stores, to Reggae record shops in London, to Rough Trade in Paris, this book takes on a global and interdisciplinary approach to evaluating record stores. It collects stories and memories, and facts about a variety of local stores that not only re-centers the record store as a marketplace of ideas, but also explore and celebrate a neglected personal history of many lives.

A true story, this fascinating page-turner demystifies what happens after we die and will forever change your views about life, death and the hereafter. Annie Kagan is not a medium or a psychic, she did not die and come back to life; in fact, when she was awakened by her deceased brother, she thought perhaps she had gone a little crazy In The Afterlife of Billy Fingers: How My Bad-Boy Brother Proved to Me There’s Life After Death, Kagan shares the extraordinary story of her after death communications (ADC) with her brother Billy, who began speaking to her just weeks after his unexpected death. One of the most detailed and profound ADC’s ever recorded, Kagan’s book takes the reader beyond the near-death experience. Billy’s vivid, real-time account of his on-going journey through the mysteries of death will change the way you think about life. Death and your place in the Universe. In his foreword, Dr. Raymond Moody, author of Life after Life, explains the phenomena of walkers between the worlds, known to us since ancient times, and says that Dr. Kagan’s thought-provoking account is an excellent example.

• Reveals the afterlife as a fluid realm of imagination and invention, a luminous landscape created entirely of consciousness • Explains how to navigate the early stages of the afterlife, how we learn and grow in the spirit world, and how to release anxiety about the end of life • Includes exercises and meditations to prepare you for navigating and communicating in spirit There is no better source of information on death and the afterlife than someone who has died and lives in spirit. Channeling his late son, Jordan, psychologist Matthew McKay offers a postdeath guide for the living, revealing in vivid detail what to expect when we die and how to prepare for the wonders of the afterlife. Specifically describing the transition experience and the early stages of the afterlife, including how to navigate each stage, Jordan shows how death is a fluid realm of imagination and invention, a luminous landscape created entirely of consciousness. He explains how a soul that has newly crossed over is an amnesiac, arriving without senses, a nervous system, and all that has anchored us to the world. Jordan details how to navigate without a body, how we learn and grow in the spirit world, and how to release anxiety about the end of life and instead view it as another stage of being. He shows that the inferno described by Dante is an optional nightmare caused by thought projections that overwhelm the newly transitioned soul, and he reveals that the bardos are where souls who are beset with fear and false beliefs spend time learning and recovering. Providing profound relief from the fear of death, as well as exercises to prepare you for navigating and communicating in spirit, Jordan’s message reveals how love is the bonding element that holds all of consciousness--and the afterlife--together. McKay also documents the unbreakable bond between the living and the dead and teaches the skill of channeling, allowing you to connect to loved ones who have passed.

“Ridiculously good” (The New York Times) author Thomas Pierce's debut novel is a funny, poignant love story that answers the question: What happens after we die? (Lots of stuff, it turns out). Jim Byrd died. Technically. For a few minutes. The diagnosis: heart attack at age thirty. Revived with no memory of any tunnels, lights, or angels, Jim wonders what--if anything--awaits us on the other side. Then a ghost shows up. Maybe. Jim and his new wife, Annie, find themselves tangling with holograms, psychics, messages from the beyond, and a machine that connects the living and the dead. As Jim and Annie journey through history and fumble through faith, they confront the specter of loss that looms for anyone who dares to fall in love. Funny, fiercely original, and gracefully moving, The Afterlives will haunt you. In a good way.

This is a true-crime story of the murder of an art form: punk rock. Gina Arnold has been witness to this gradual annihilation, and she's not shy about pointing out the perpetrators: Tipper Gore, Rolling Stone, Geffen Records, Miller beer, and even the progenitors of punk themselves, the Sex Pistols, are all implicated in the demise of independent music. In Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana, Gina Arnold gave us a road map to the defiant fury that shaped punk's harsh, musical bloodletting. But now Kurt Cobain is dead. And Courtney Love is playing shows sponsored by beer companies, MasterCard is financing the Monsters of Rock tour, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are sporting free Airwalk sneakers. Arnold knows something has gone terribly wrong. Bad Religion, Metallica, Rancid, Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Pearl Jam, the Fastbacks, Beastie Boys, Nine Inch Nails--find out who sold out, who stayed real, and what independent music must do now to regain its lost edge. In 1978 Sid Vicious mocked a Sinatra classic with his version of "My Way." Well, it's 1997, and punk has lost its way. In Kiss This Gina Arnold just may show it the way home.

Philip S. Johnston examines Israelite views on death and afterlife as reflected in the Hebrew Bible and in material remains, and sets them in their cultural, literary and theological contexts.

Food has played a major role in funerary and memorial practices since the dawn of the human race. In the ancient Roman world, for example, it was common practice to build channels from the tops of graves into the crypts themselves, and mourners would regularly pour offerings of food and drink into these conduits to nourish the dead while they waited for the afterlife. Funeral cookies wrapped with printed prayers and poems meant to comfort mourners became popular in Victorian England; while in China, Japan, and Korea, it is customary to offer food not only to the bereaved, but to the deceased, with ritual dishes prepared and served to the dead. Dying to Eat is the first interdisciplinary book to examine the role of food in death, bereavement, and the afterlife. The contributors explore the phenomenon across cultures and religions, investigating topics including tombstone rituals in Buddhism, Catholicism, and Shamanism; the role of death in the Moroccan approach to food; and the role of funeral casseroles and church cookbooks in the Southern United States. This innovative collection not only offers food for thought regarding the theories and methods behind these practices but also provides recipes that allow the reader to connect to the argument through material experience. Illuminating how cooking and corpses both transform and construct social rituals, Dying to Eat serves as a fascinating exploration of the foodways of death and bereavement.

A New York Times and USA TODAY Bestseller “50 Most Impactful Black Books of the Last 50 Years.” —Essence Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read The instant classic from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Life After Death brings the streets of New York to life in a powerful and utterly unforgettable novel. I came busting into the world during one of New York’s worst snowstorms, so my mother named me Winter. Ghetto-born, Winter is the young, wealthy daughter of a prominent Brooklyn drug-dealing family. Quick-witted, sexy, and business-minded, she knows and loves the streets like the curves of her own body. But when a cold Winter wind blows her life in a direction she doesn’t want to go, her street smarts and seductive skills are put to the test of a lifetime. Unwilling to lose, this ghetto girl will do anything to stay on top. Twenty-five years and over one million copies later, The Coldest Winter Ever is a bestseller and a national treasure, a classic handed down from one reading generation to the next. Whether you are reading it for the first time or have cherished it for years, you will never forget this Winter’s tale.

Celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the enduring gothic masterpiece Flowers in the Attic—the unforgettable forbidden love story that earned V.C. Andrews a fiercely devoted fan base and became an international cult classic. At the top of the stairs there are four secrets hidden—blond, innocent, and fighting for their lives… They were a perfect and beautiful family—until a heartbreaking tragedy shattered their happiness. Now, for the sake of an inheritance that will ensure their future, the children must be hidden away out of sight, as if they never existed. They are kept in the attic of their grandmother’s labyrinthine mansion, isolated and alone. As the visits from their seemingly unconcerned mother slowly dwindle, the four children grow ever closer and depend upon one another to survive both this cramped world and their cruel grandmother. A suspenseful and thrilling tale of family, greed, murder, and forbidden love, Flowers in the Attic is the unputdownable first novel of the epic Dollanganger family saga. The Dollanganger series includes: Flowers in the Attic, Petals in the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, Garden of Shadows, Beneath the Attic, and Out of the Attic.