From USA Today bestselling author Kilby Blades, a tale of first teenage love, complete with interfering friends and mixtapes... Compared to life on tour with her wannabe rock star mother, finishing high school in Rye is a snooze. At least Roxy has her best friend, Zoë, her dad, and her music. When her standoffish Civics class partner, Jag Monroe, breaks ranks and randomly friends her on Instagram, Roxy swiftly declines. Jag is Roxy's total opposite: stinking rich, conceited, and hot in that obvious kind of way. Roxy's sure that his repeated friend requests must be a joke. Then Zoë does the unthinkable: snatches Roxy's phone, accepts Jag's latest friend request, and follows him back. As the posts (and sparks) fly, Roxy begins to suspect that Jag may not be as shallow as everyone thinks, and that he may be into more than just her music. “This YA mosaic novel uses music as an effective backdrop for a tale of social media, drama, and romance.” - Publisher’s Weekly review of Friended, Book 1 in the Modern Love series "This book is super hilarious, and the music references make me want to pull up Spotify and disappear in them for awhile." - Auburn, Goodreads Reviewer "This novel was funny, nostalgic, and heartwarming. With a depth you would find surprising." -Isiah, Goodreads Reviewer "A fabulous story of teen love. I love that this story is about the ice breaking, the friends, and the scary parts. So many modern love stories are about sex but this is about love. A great book." - Teen Angel, Amazon Reviewer Awards and Accolades for Friended - 1st Place Winner: 2019 New England Reader’s Choice Award - 2nd Place Winner: 2019 International Digital Award - Finalist: 2019 WISRWA Write Touch Award - Finalist: 2019 National Excellence in Romantic Fiction Award - Finalist: 2019 CRWA Stiletto Contest - Finalist: 2019 Book Buyer’s Best Contest

For most of us, clicking “like” on social media has become fairly routine. For a Marine, clicking “like” from the battlefield lets his social network know he’s alive. This is the first time in the history of modern warfare that US troops have direct, instantaneous connection to civilian life back home. Lisa Ellen Silvestri’s Friended at the Front documents the revolutionary change in the way we communicate across fronts. Social media, Silvestri contends, changes what it's like to be at war. Based on in-person interviews and online fieldwork with US Marines, Friended at the Front explores the new media habits, attitudes, and behaviors of troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some of the complications that emerge in their wake. The book pays particular attention to the way US troops use Facebook and YouTube to narrate their experiences to civilian network members, to each other, and, not least of all, to themselves. After she reviews evolving military guidelines for social media engagement, Silvestri explores specific practices amongst active duty Marines such as posting photos and producing memes. Her interviews, observations, and research reveal how social network sites present both an opportunity to connect with civilians back home, as well as an obligation to do so—one that can become controversial for troops in a war zone. Much like the war on terror itself, the boundaries, expectations, and dangers associated with social media are amorphous and under constant negotiation. Friended at the Front explains how our communication landscape changes what it is like to go to war for individual service members, their loved ones, and for the American public at large.

A major study on childhood and adolescent friendships.

Weaving the author's own lived experience with theoretical insights from the fields of game studies, psychology, and anthropology, Esport Play probes and advances current gaming topics such as addiction, skill development, and toxicity. With a focus on League of Legends – one of the flagship esports of our time – Karhulahti explicates what esport play is: documenting and identifying competitive play as a present-day means to satisfy basic human needs. Ultimately, the book presents a theory of psycholudic development that explains and organizes the development of player-play relationships that may last for years.