"A hilarious and irreverent illustrated book based off of the popular Twitter feed, which tells the story of a Tween Girl who packed a bindle full of glitter pens and snuck out of math class one Monday afternoon to hop the rails in search of freedom, adventure, and her own personal white whale: Bieber tickets"--

The Anachronistic Turn: Historical Fiction, Drama, Film and Television is the first study to investigate the ways in which the creative use of anachronism in historical fictions can allow us to rethink the relationship between past and present. Through an examination of literary, cinematic, and popular texts and practices, this book investigates how twenty-first century historical fictions use creative anachronisms as a way of understanding modern issues and anxieties. Drawing together a wide range of texts across all forms of historical fiction - novels, dramas, musicals, films and television - this book re-frames anachronism not as an error, but as a deliberate strategy that emphasises the fictionalising tendencies of all forms of historical writing. The book achieves this by exploring three core themes: the developing trends in the twenty-first century for creators of historical fiction to include deliberate anachronisms, such as contemporary references, music, and language; the ways in which the deliberate use of anachronism in historical fiction can allow us to rethink the relationship between past and present, and; the way that contemporary historical fiction uses anachronism to better understand modern issues and anxieties. This book will appeal to students and scholars of historical fiction, contemporary historical film and television studies, and historical theatre studies.

This book explores the diversity of meanings that accrue around the terms 'hobo', 'tramp', and 'vagabond'.

From playwright and TV writer Alena Smith comes a hilarious and irreverent illustrated book based on the popular Twitter feed (@tweenhobo), featuring a young spunky girl who sets out in search of freedom, adventure, and her own personal obsession: Justin Bieber tickets. Get ready to laugh and learn with the littlest hobo. She’s only twelve years old, but a “hard twelve.” You’ll meet her friends: Stumptown Jim (her weatherbeaten BFFL); Tin Cap Earl (who’s always down to shoot a junkyard haul video); Toothpick Frank (who learns to love Pinterest); Salt Chunk Annie (a “woman of the night,” whatever that means); and Hot Johnny Two-Cakes (who Tween Hobo swears she does NOT have a crush on). Find out how she survives, thanks in part to strawberry lip gloss. You’ll hear her take on major cultural events (“I go off a fiscal cliff every time I go near a Claire’s”). And you’ll enjoy beautiful hand-rendered illustrations that bring out the beauty in her words—just like how eyeliner makes a hobo’s look really pop. Often snarky and frequently ridiculous, this imaginative journal-like book includes maps, jokes, laughs, doodles, tips, hobo symbols (“House with a triangle on top means PIZZA PARTY!!!), games, stories, and more. So grab your iPhone and wrap it in a handkerchief, tie it to a stick, and let’s roll!

"We are a family on a journey to a place called wonderful" is the motto of Deza Malone's family. Deza is the smartest girl in her class in Gary, Indiana, singled out by teachers for a special path in life. But it's 1936 and the Great Depression has hit Gary hard, and there are no jobs for black men. When her beloved father leaves to find work, Deza, Mother, and her older brother, Jimmie, go in search of him, and end up in a Hooverville outside Flint, Michigan. Jimmie's beautiful voice inspires him to leave the camp to be a performer, while Deza and Mother find a new home, and cling to the hope that they will find Father. The twists and turns of their story reveal the devastation of the Depression and prove that Deza truly is the Mighty Miss Malone.

Childhood buddies whose paths have diverged reunite on a late summer afternoon for some beer, grilling and weed-but deep within their friendships lurk ghosts that rock the patio beneath them. Bitingly comic and ruthlessly recognizable, this is the story of a generation at war with itself over what it means to man up.

This is a fun-read western, but it is not pulp fiction. It’s a classic human conflict in a western setting, with serious philosophical issues. Think of “The Ox-Bow Incident,” the classic novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, but as readable as a Louis L’Amour western. A young man finds himself an outsider among the rough hands of a western ranch in Idaho during the Great Depression. An impassable rift between the kid and the cowboys happens on a scorching hot day in August, when men’s tempers are boiling. The kid’s working partner that day is violently killed when he impulsively and violently confronts a vagrant believed to be trespassing across the ranch. Critical events during the seconds leading to the cowboy’s violent death are not clear. Unable to save his friend, the kid rides for help and a posse forms. The kid believes the cowboy’s provocation led to his own death. But the ranch hands in the posse are convinced the tramp caused the death, so they insist on hanging him. Serious issues beset the kid and the ranch during the three difficult days after the death. The personal conflicts will be man-making for the young cowboy. The question is whether the posse will reflect and deal with its conflicts in a civilized way.

THE STORY: Rose Spencer has just achieved the ultimate young-intellectual’s dream: becoming a staff writer for a prestigious New York literary/criticism journal. And her editor, the smart and attractively cynical Benjamin, is definitely flirting with her—while also respecting her writing. With the sudden rise of an Occupy-style political movement in a public park right outside the journal’s offices, Rose sees a way to participate in what may be the defining activist movement for her generation, but too quickly she must learn to recognize the difference between sincere action and skillful self-promotion.