"I am hoping for a sequel. The Lay of LaLa Land was undoubtedly an extraordinary page-turner." - San Francisco Book Review After being caught peeping in on his nubile young step-mom with his makeshift peeping contraption, 12 year-old Lenny Dushoff's abusive, gluttonous father sends him off to a mental hospital for a 72 hour psychiatric evaluation. In a year's time from the peeping incident, Lenny will suffer a great loss, one that will riddle him with guilt throughout his adolescence. Seven years later, Lenny, now quiet, insecure and sexually inexperienced, escaped the trauma of his upbringing to the campus of a major university, where as a sophomore psychology major he finally finds the love that he's dreamed of since boyhood. But as boy meets girl, Lenny discovers Jane's "dirty" secret, one that could destroy her entire life. In a dramatic, darkly comic, but often absurdist coming of age tale about college sexual mayhem, Lenny uncovers the childhood roots of Jane's human condition, and in the process, comes to a deeper understanding of his own. "A.Y. Miles writes a brutally honest portrait of life, love, and reality in his book, The Lay of Lala Land... This book was one crazy ride from beginning to startling end." - Seattle Book Review

The romantic musical comedy-drama film La La Land is the winner of six Oscars, seven Golden Globes and five BAFTAs. This selection of songs from the Oscar-winning music by Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul has been simplified for easy piano. Features the Oscar-winning song 'City of Stars'. This is the eBook version of the original, artist-approved edition. Contents: - Another Day of Sun - Someone in the Crowd - Mia & Sebastian's Theme - A Lovely Night - City of Stars - Planetarium - Start a Fire - Engagement Party - Audition (The Fools Who Dream) - Epilogue

From the authors of Sisters In Crime/Los Angeles, twelve tales of mystery and murder that confirm how L.A. got its name]] "La-La land." This is the LA chapters third anthology, the first two being "Murder on Sunset Boulevard" and the second, "LAndmarked for Murder."

“Extremely funny.” --The Washington Post Elinor Tomlinson moved to New York armed with a journalism degree and a dream. Instead, she’s working as a nanny and sleeping on a foam pad in a weird apartment. So when Elinor is offered a job at Journalism.ly, the digital media brainchild of a Silicon Valley celebrity, she jumps at the chance. There, Elinor discovers her true gift: she has a preternatural ability for writing sharable content. But as she experiences professional success, the rest of her life falters: her boyfriend dumps her, two male colleagues insist on “mentoring” her, and a piece she writes about her personal life lands her on local television. As Elinor grapples with the bewildering etiquette of online dating, the preening male ego, and the capricious nature of Internet fame, she faces a new challenge—how to reconcile her internal self with the world of thoughts and feelings online.

Addicted to crack cocaine and heading toward self-destruction, Bleu must decide if she will let her best friend save her, or if she will she stick with the kingpin she's fallen in love with.

A LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER. NAMED A BEST CALIFORNIA BOOKS OF 2021 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES A provocative, exhilaratingly new understanding of the United States’ most confounding metropolis—not just a great city, but a full-blown modern city-state America is obsessed with Los Angeles. And America has been thinking about Los Angeles all wrong, for decades, on repeat. Los Angeles is not just the place where the American dream hits the Pacific. (It has its own dreams.) Not just the vanishing point of America’s western drive. (It has its own compass.) Functionally, aesthetically, mythologically, even technologically, an independent territory, defined less by distinct borders than by an aura of autonomy and a sense of unfurling destiny—this is the city-state of Los Angeles. Deeply reported and researched, provocatively argued, and eloquently written, Rosecrans Baldwin's Everything Now approaches the metropolis from unexpected angles, nimbly interleaving his own voice with a chorus of others, from canonical L.A. literature to everyday citizens. Here, Octavia E. Butler and Joan Didion are in conversation with activists and astronauts, vampires and veterans. Baldwin records the stories of countless Angelenos, discovering people both upended and reborn: by disasters natural and economic, following gospels of wealth or self-help or personal destiny. The result is a story of a kaleidoscopic, vibrant nation unto itself—vastly more than its many, many parts. Baldwin’s concept of the city-state allows us, finally, to grasp a place—Los Angeles—whose idiosyncrasies both magnify those of America, and are so fully its own. Here, space and time don’t quite work the same as they do elsewhere, and contradictions are as stark as southern California’s natural environment. Perhaps no better place exists to watch the United States’s past, and its possible futures, play themselves out. Welcome to Los Angeles, the Great American City-State.

"Cryptozoology is the study of mysterious creatures that fall between the realm of real and imaginary on the scientific spectrum. Cryptid Creatures: A Field Guide offers a closer look at fifty of these amazing creatures, examining the best possible evidence for each, including scientific papers, magazine and newspaper articles, and credible eyewitness accounts. The fifty cryptids are arranged in order alphabetically, and in addition to speculative illustrations, include details like when they were first reported, whether they are terrestrial, aerial, or aquatic, and each have a reality rating of 1 to 6, in which 1 means that the cryptid has been confirmed as a hoax, and 6 means the cryptid has been proven as real. This page-turning guide will inspire curious readers to investigate more on their own, and maybe even help to prove if a cryptid is a hoax or is real." --

Alice Raikes takes a train from London to Scotland to visit her family, but when she gets there she witnesses something so shocking that she insists on returning to London immediately. A few hours later, Alice is lying in a coma after an accident that may or may not have been a suicide attempt. Alice's family gathers at her bedside and as they wait, argue, and remember, long-buried tensions emerge. The more they talk, the more they seem to conceal. Alice, meanwhile, slides between varying levels of consciousness, recalling her past and a love affair that recently ended. A riveting story that skips through time and interweaves multiple points of view, After You'd Gone is a novel of stunning psychological depth and marks the debut of a major literary talent.

At long last, Sarah Britton, called the “queen bee of the health blogs” by Bon Appétit, reveals 100 gorgeous, all-new plant-based recipes in her debut cookbook, inspired by her wildly popular blog. Every month, half a million readers—vegetarians, vegans, paleo followers, and gluten-free gourmets alike—flock to Sarah’s adaptable and accessible recipes that make powerfully healthy ingredients simply irresistible. My New Roots is the ultimate guide to revitalizing one’s health and palate, one delicious recipe at a time: no fad diets or gimmicks here. Whether readers are newcomers to natural foods or are already devotees, they will discover how easy it is to eat healthfully and happily when whole foods and plants are at the center of every plate.

Normal Accidents analyzes the social side of technological risk. Charles Perrow argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensuring safety--building in more warnings and safeguards--fails because systems complexity makes failures inevitable. He asserts that typical precautions, by adding to complexity, may help create new categories of accidents. (At Chernobyl, tests of a new safety system helped produce the meltdown and subsequent fire.) By recognizing two dimensions of risk--complex versus linear interactions, and tight versus loose coupling--this book provides a powerful framework for analyzing risks and the organizations that insist we run them. The first edition fulfilled one reviewer's prediction that it "may mark the beginning of accident research." In the new afterword to this edition Perrow reviews the extensive work on the major accidents of the last fifteen years, including Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Challenger disaster. The new postscript probes what the author considers to be the "quintessential 'Normal Accident'" of our time: the Y2K computer problem.