The year was 1979 and the fifteen teenagers on the Crenshaw High Cougars were the most talented team in the history of high school baseball. They were pure ballplayers, sluggers and sweet fielders who played with unbridled joy and breathtaking skill. The national press converged on Crenshaw. So many scouts gravitated to their games that they took up most of the seats in the bleachers. Even the Crenshaw ballfield was a sight to behold -- groomed by the players themselves, picked clean of every pebble, it was the finest diamond in all of inner-city Los Angeles. On the outfield fences, the gates to the outside stayed locked against the danger and distraction of the streets. Baseball, for these boys, was hope itself. They had grown up with the notion that it could somehow set things right -- a vague, unexpressed, but persistent hope that even if life was rigged, baseball might be fair. And for a while it seemed they were right. Incredibly, most of of this team -- even several of the boys who sat on the bench -- were drafted into professional baseball. Two of them, Darryl Strawberry and Chris Brown, would reunite as teammates on a National League All-Star roster. But Michael Sokolove's The Ticket Out is more a story of promise denied than of dreams fulfilled. Because in Sokolove's brilliantly reported poignant and powerful tale, the lives of these gifted athletes intersect with the realities of being poor, urban, and black in America. What happened to these young men is a harsh reminder of the ways inspiration turns to frustration when the bats and balls are stowed and the crowd's applause dies down. Just as Friday Night Lights portrayed the impact of high school sports on the life of a Texas community, and There Are No Children Here examined the viselike grip of poverty on minority youngsters, The Ticket Out presents an unforgettable tale of families grasping for opportunities, of athletes praying for one chance to make it big, of all of us hoping that the will to succeed can triumph over the demons haunting our city streets.

A poignant and inspiring story of young boys with big sports dreams, "The Ticket Out" is a brilliantly rendered narrative of Darryl Strawberry's 1970 Crenshaw High baseball team. of photos.

Ann Whitehead is sick of her job. She's a movie critic for a counterculture rag in Los Angeles and she needs a break badly. Instead of a break, she gets a murder. A woman dies in Ann's bathtub: the victim is a film school grad and Industry hopeful. It's the kind of story Ann was born to write, but the disgraced LAPD detective leading the investigation is determined to stop her. The search for the killer turns into a search for the victim's missing script, the story of another woman murdered in 1944. Suddenly there are two killers, and a complicated conspiracy spanning decades. Ann is smack in the middle and everyone she meets wants into the film business--whatever the price. There's never been a thriller hitched as brilliantly to the underbelly of Hollywood as this one. Helen Knode is a startling and original voice.

An essential compendium of James Baldwin’s most powerful nonfiction work, calling on us “to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country.” Personal and prophetic, these essays uncover what it means to live in a racist American society with insights that feel as fresh today as they did over the 4 decades in which he composed them. Longtime Baldwin fans and especially those just discovering his genius will appreciate this essential collection of his great nonfiction writing, available for the first time in affordable paperback. Along with 46 additional pieces, it includes the full text of dozens of famous essays from such books as: • Notes of a Native Son • Nobody Knows My Name • The Fire Next Time • No Name in the Street • The Devil Finds Work This collection provides the perfect entrée into Baldwin’s prescient commentary on race, sexuality, and identity in an unjust American society.

A true story of taming OCD: “Her description of her escalating illness is irreverent, brutally honest, and compelling [and] her successes are inspiring.” —Booklist It’s like the meanest, wildest monkey running around my head, constantly looking for ways to bite me. That was how Kirsten Pagacz described her OCD to her therapist in their first session when she was well into her thirties. She’d been following orders from this mean taskmaster for twenty years, without understanding why. The tapping, counting, cleaning, and ordering brought her comfort and structure, two things lacking in her family life. But it never lasted. The loathsome self-talk only intensified, and the rituals she had to perform got more bizarre. By high school, she was anorexic and a substance abuser—common “shadow syndromes” of OCD. By adulthood, she could barely hide her problems and held on to jobs and friends through sheer grit. Help finally came in the form of a miraculously well-timed public service announcement about OCD—at last, her illness had an identity. After finally learning how to conquer her OCD, Pagacz shares her story—from her traumatic childhood to the escalation of her disorder to her triumph over it—along with knowledge and insight about such techniques as meditation, yoga, cognitive-behavioral therapy, medication, and exposure therapy, to help others leave the OCD circus and live a better life.

In The Ticket That Exploded, William S. Burroughs’s grand “cut-up” trilogy that starts with The Soft Machine and continues through Nova Express reaches its climax as inspector Lee and the Nova Police engage the Nova Mob in a decisive battle for the planet. Only Burroughs could make such a nightmare vision of scientists and combat troops, of ad men and con men whose deceitful language has spread like an incurable disease be at once so frightening and so enthralling.

"Hilarious!" " Simply amazing." "A beautiful story." "I didn't want it to end!" A fictional tale inspired by "the most viral human interest story on record," which had over 4 billion traditional media impressions, according to PR experts in late 2015. Fasten your seat belts for a journey filled with humor and adventure. Bachelor & newscaster Pete McCarney buys two plane tickets for a trip around the world with his girlfriend, but they split up shortly before the trip, and he can't get a refund. In a gutsy last minute move, Pete goes on social media asking for women with his girlfriend's exact name to apply to join him on the trip. Twenty-one women apply, and the ensuing interview process is both awkward and hilarious. When he finally chooses a feisty, headstrong, recently-divorced lawyer, he has no idea what to expect from their world wide adventures - and neither does Allie James. She has pretty much sworn off men since her divorce. Will either of them get the vacation they were so desperately hoping for? Kobo Writing Life Award Shortlisted (October 2015) "Heather Grace Stewart is an author to watch out for." Quebec Life Magazine

Tells how to avoid and contest moving violations, discusses speed limits, radar, and drunk driving, and describes traffic court procedures.