Soft Skull (Over 7,100 results)

Hardback. Condition: Very Good. Jamestown chronicles a group of "settlers" (more like survivors) from the ravaged island of Manhattan, departing just as the Chrysler Building has mysteriously plummeted to the earth. This ragged band is heading down what's left of I-95 in a half-school bus, half-Millennium Falcon. Their goal is to establish an outpost in southern Virginia, find oil, and exploit the Indians controlling the area. Based on actual accounts of the Jamestown settlement from 1607 to 1617, Jamestown features historical characters including John Smith, Pocahontas, and others enacting an imaginative re-version of life in the pioneer colony. In this retelling, Pocahontas's father Powhatan is half-Falstaff, half-Henry V, while his consigliere is a psychiatrist named Sidney Feingold. John Martin gradually loses body parts in a series of violent encounters, and John Smith is a ruthless and pragmatic redhead continually undermining the aristocratic leadership. Communication is by text-messaging, IMing, and, ultimately, telepathy. Punctuated by jokes, rhymes, "rim shot" dialogue, and bloody black-comic tableaux, Jamestown is a trenchant commentary on America's past and present that confirms Matthew Sharpe's status as a major talent in contemporary fiction. …

Paperback. Condition: Good. "A witty and grisly gothic unlike anything I've ever read. You should absolutely read this." --Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble A new arrival at an isolated school for orphaned boys quickly comes to realize there is something wrong with his new home. He hears chilling whispers in the night, his troubled classmates are violent and hostile, and the Headmaster sends cryptic messages, begging his new charge to confess. As the new boy learns to survive on the edges of this impolite society, he starts to unravel a mystery at the school's dark heart. And that's when the corpses start turning up. A coming-of-age tale, a Gothic ghost story, and a murder mystery all in one, The Job of the Wasp is a bloodcurdling and brilliantly subversive novel about paranoia, love, and the nightmare of adolescence.…

Paperback. Condition: Good. What does it mean when a band is judged by how hard they pray rather than how hard they rock? Would Jesus buy "Got Jesus?" T-shirts or sport "witness wear"? What do Christian skate parks, raves, and romance novels say about evangelicalism -- and America? Meticulously reported, with the perfect blend of amusement and respect, Rapture Ready! is the story of Daniel Radosh's investigation into the wondrous but deeply weird world of Christian pop culture. This sprawling subculture -- a $7 billion industry and growing -- provides crucial insight into the social, spiritual, and political aspirations of evangelical Christians. In 18 towns from the Bible Belt to the outskirts of Hollywood, Radosh encounters dozens of memorable characters, including Bibleman, the Caped Christian; Rob Adonis, the founder and star of ultimate Christian wrestling; Ken Ham, the nation's leading prophet of creationism; and Jay Baker, the son of Jim and Tammy Faye Baker and pastor of his own liberal, punk rock church. From Christian theme parks to Passion plays and comedy nights, Radosh combines gonzo reporting with a keen eye for detail and just the right touch of wit. Rapture Ready! is a revealing survey of a parallel universe, a unique perspective on one of America's most important social movements.…

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. An anthology of poetry for young adults that realistically and beautifully deals with what it means to come of age as gay, lesbian, transgender, or, as is perhaps more often the case in adolescence, totally confused. The anthology approaches the seemingly unnavigable territory of teenage sexuality and confusion with poems written by adults who keenly remember the turmoil, pain and excitement of adolescence and sexual coming- of-age. These poems bring comfort, consolation and joy to an audience for whom poetry itself might seem as unfathomable as the adulthood they face.…

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. For readers of Michael Cunningham's The Hours and Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles, this genre-bending exploration of the tragic figure of Branwell Brontë and the dismal, dazzling landscape that inspired his sisters to greatness is now available in a new edition with an introduction by Darcey Steinke. Branwell Brontë--brother of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne-has a childhood marked by tragedy and the weight of expectations. After the early deaths of his mother and a beloved older sister, he is kept away from school and tutored at home by his father, a curate, who rests all his ambitions for his children on his only son. Branwell grows up isolated in his family's parsonage on the moors, learning Latin and Greek, being trained in painting, and collaborating on endless stories and poems with his sisters. Yet while his sisters go on to write Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Agnes Grey, Branwell wanders from job to job, growing increasingly dependent on alcohol and opium and failing to become a great poet or artist. With rich, suggestive sentences "perfectly fitted to this famously imaginative, headstrong family" (Publishers Weekly), Branwell is a portrait of childhood dreams, thwarted desire, the confinements of gender-and an homage to the landscape and milieu that inspired some of the most revolutionary works of English literature.…

Paperback. Condition: Good. A werewolf hybrid-slash-serial killer of the wicked prowls Portland's shadows--until a sinister tech corporation hunting his kind forces him into a deadly game, awakening old ghosts and an unstoppable fury in this addictive paranormal thriller "This is the werewolf as you haven't seen it before: talking like a Richard Kadrey novel, walking through Charlie Huston's dark streets, and snarling like a Jim Harrison creature." --Stephen Graham Jones, author of Mongrels Born in Missouri more than a century ago and raised in a Pentecostal orphanage, the creature now calling himself Gelson Verber has changed his name countless times. He's part-werewolf, and makes his living hunting certain kinds of bad men--criminals, rapists, thugs--in an often grotesque parody of the natural order. Verber is clearly suffering from the kinds of things a werewolf would be uniquely vulnerable to in the modern world: the horror of war, drug abuse, and isolation in the rain-drenched environment of Portland, Oregon. He has PTSD, but in a unique way, often flashing back to his time with a regiment in World War II. His smooth life as a serial killer takes a turn when he falls into the crosshairs of Salt Street, a development corporation running pirated criminology software and Big Data sieves to identify werewolf hybrids, who are then forced into servitude. As he falls deeper into the trap that has been set for him, his introduction to its evil architect triggers within Verber a string of recollections, conversations with the late werewolf-hybrid, John Jack Bridger. Salt Street's trap is masterful, but it does have one terrible flaw: you cannot cage someone--or something--like Gelson Verber.…

Paperback. Condition: Good. How did a loner destined for a niche domestic audience become one of the most famous writers alive? A "fascinating" look at the "business of bringing a best-selling novelist to a global audience" (The Atlantic)―and a "rigorous" exploration of the role of translators and editors in the creation of literary culture (The Paris Review). Thirty years ago, when Haruki Murakami's works were first being translated, they were part of a series of pocket-size English-learning guides released only in Japan. Today his books can be read in fifty languages and have won prizes and sold millions of copies globally. How did a loner destined for a niche domestic audience become one of the most famous writers alive? This book tells one key part of the story. Its cast includes an expat trained in art history who never intended to become a translator; a Chinese American ex-academic who never planned to work as an editor; and other publishing professionals in New York, London, and Tokyo who together introduced a pop-inflected, unexpected Japanese voice to the wider literary world. David Karashima synthesizes research, correspondence, and interviews with dozens of individuals-including Murakami himself-to examine how countless behind-the-scenes choices over the course of many years worked to build an internationally celebrated author's persona and oeuvre. His careful look inside the making of the "Murakami Industry" uncovers larger questions: What role do translators and editors play in framing their writers' texts? What does it mean to translate and edit "for a market"? How does Japanese culture get packaged and exported for the West.…

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. How did a loner destined for a niche domestic audience become one of the most famous writers alive? A "fascinating" look at the "business of bringing a best-selling novelist to a global audience" (The Atlantic)―and a "rigorous" exploration of the role of translators and editors in the creation of literary culture (The Paris Review). Thirty years ago, when Haruki Murakami's works were first being translated, they were part of a series of pocket-size English-learning guides released only in Japan. Today his books can be read in fifty languages and have won prizes and sold millions of copies globally. How did a loner destined for a niche domestic audience become one of the most famous writers alive? This book tells one key part of the story. Its cast includes an expat trained in art history who never intended to become a translator; a Chinese American ex-academic who never planned to work as an editor; and other publishing professionals in New York, London, and Tokyo who together introduced a pop-inflected, unexpected Japanese voice to the wider literary world. David Karashima synthesizes research, correspondence, and interviews with dozens of individuals-including Murakami himself-to examine how countless behind-the-scenes choices over the course of many years worked to build an internationally celebrated author's persona and oeuvre. His careful look inside the making of the "Murakami Industry" uncovers larger questions: What role do translators and editors play in framing their writers' texts? What does it mean to translate and edit "for a market"? How does Japanese culture get packaged and exported for the West.…

Hardback. Condition: Good. Finalist for the Libby Book Awards What if toxic pollutants traveled up the socioeconomic ladder rather than down it? A Black biochemist provides an answer in this wildly original novel of pollution, poison, and dark pleasure In Atlanta, Kenny Bomar is a biochemist-turned-coffee-shop-owner in denial about his divorce and grieving his stillborn daughter. Chemicals killed their child, leaching from a type of plant the government is hiding in Black neighborhoods. Kenny's coping mechanisms are likewise chemical and becoming more baroque-from daily injections of lethal snake venom to manufacturing designer drugs. As his grief turns corrosive, it taints every person he touches. Black epidemiologists Retta and Ebonee are called to the scene when a mysterious black substance is found to have killed a high school girl. Investigating these "blackouts" sends the women down separate paths of blame and retribution as two seemingly disparate narratives converge in a cinematic conclusion. Liquid Snakes is an immersive, white-knuckle ride with the spookiness of speculative fiction and the propulsion of binge-worthy shows like FX's Atlanta and HBO's Random Acts of Flyness. Transfiguring a whodunit plot into a labyrinthine reinterpretation of a crime procedural, Stephen Kearse offers an uncanny commentary on an alternative world, poisoned.…

Hardback. Condition: Very Good. When Kevin Powell's elderly mother became ill, he returned home every week to take her grocery shopping in Jersey City. Walking behind her during those trips, Powell began to hear her voice, stories, and language in a new way - examining his own healing while praying for hers. Grocery Shopping with My Mother originated as social media posts about these visits and evolved into a breath-taking collection of thirty-two new poems, crafted like an album, plus four bonus tracks celebrating a great love of wordplay. Culturally rooted in the literary traditions of Ntozake Shange and Allen Ginsberg, Powell's poems honour the likes of V (formerly Eve Ensler), bell hooks, and Sidney Poitier. Grocery Shopping with My Mother dives into the complexities of relationships and contemporary themes with honesty and vulnerability. Creatively and spiritually inspired by Stevie Wonder's 'Songs in the Key of Life', Powell's poems shift in form and style, from praise chants to reverential meditations to, most importantly, innovative hope.…

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. There was nothing out of the ordinary about Jim Koplin. He was just your typical central Minnesota gay farm boy with a Ph.D. in experimental psychology who developed anarchist-influenced, radical-feminist, and anti-imperialist politics, while never losing touch with his rural roots. But perhaps the most important thing about Jim is that throughout his life, almost literally to his dying breath, he spent some part of every day on the most important work we have: tending the garden. Plain Radical is a touching homage to a close friend and mentor taken too soon. But it is also an exploration of the ways in which an intensely local focus paired with a fierce intelligence can provide a deep, meaningful, even radical engagement with the world. Drawing on first hand accounts as well as the nearly 3,000 pages of correspondence that flowed between the two men between 1988 and 2012, this book is about the intersection of two biographies and the ideas two men constructed together. It is in part a love story, part intellectual memoir, and part political polemic; an argument for how we should understand problems and think about solutions--in those cases when solutions are possible--to create a decent human future.…

Paperback. Condition: Good. Titled for the last girl left alive in the classic horror movie, Final Girl traces the history of the archetypal lone survivor and her counterpart, the femme fatale. Sexy and tart, dark and comic, low-down and high hearted, in poems such as Slash', 'Vamp', 'Bride of Reanimator' and the 'Babysitter', Gottlieb identifies and articulates the desires, fears and traumas out of which pop culture is made - and then feeds pop culture back to itself. Poems explore the ways in which we're betrayed by our cultural assumptions and fantasies about abduction, gender, literature and pleasure.'.…

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Illustrated. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. A "scholarly, hip, and digressive" primer on the life and teachings of the great prophet Muhammad--and the stunning diversity of Islam (New Yorker)   "Muhammad is perfect . . . a book designed to seduce, educate, and irritate its audience into curiosity about Islam and Muhammad, and on all three fronts it succeeds." --NPR Books He ranks among the most venerated historical figures in the world, as well as among the most contested. Muhammad: Forty Introductions offers a distinct and nuanced take on the life and teachings of the prophet Muhammad, using a traditional genre of Islamic literature called the forty hadiths collection. Hadiths are the reported sayings and actions of Muhammad that have been collected by the tens of thousands throughout Islamic history. There is a tradition in which Muslim scholars take from this vast textual ocean to compile their own smaller collections of forty hadiths, an act of curation that allows them to present their particular understanding of Muhammad's legacy and the essential points of Islam. Here, Michael Muhammad Knight offers forty narrations that provide windows into the diverse ways in which Muslims envision Muhammad. He also examines his own relationship to Muslim traditions while exploring such topics as law, mysticism, sectarianism, gender, and sexuality. By revealing the Prophet to be an ongoing construction, he carefully unravels notions about Islam's center and margins.…

Paperback. Condition: Good. A "scholarly, hip, and digressive" primer on the life and teachings of the great prophet Muhammad--and the stunning diversity of Islam (New Yorker)   "Muhammad is perfect . . . a book designed to seduce, educate, and irritate its audience into curiosity about Islam and Muhammad, and on all three fronts it succeeds." --NPR Books He ranks among the most venerated historical figures in the world, as well as among the most contested. Muhammad: Forty Introductions offers a distinct and nuanced take on the life and teachings of the prophet Muhammad, using a traditional genre of Islamic literature called the forty hadiths collection. Hadiths are the reported sayings and actions of Muhammad that have been collected by the tens of thousands throughout Islamic history. There is a tradition in which Muslim scholars take from this vast textual ocean to compile their own smaller collections of forty hadiths, an act of curation that allows them to present their particular understanding of Muhammad's legacy and the essential points of Islam. Here, Michael Muhammad Knight offers forty narrations that provide windows into the diverse ways in which Muslims envision Muhammad. He also examines his own relationship to Muslim traditions while exploring such topics as law, mysticism, sectarianism, gender, and sexuality. By revealing the Prophet to be an ongoing construction, he carefully unravels notions about Islam's center and margins.…

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Dorte is twenty and adrift, pretending to study literature at Copenhagen University. In reality she is riding the trains and clocking up random encounters in her new home by the railway tracks. She remembers her ex, Per - the first boyfriend she tells us about, and the first she leaves - as she enters a new world of transient relationships, random sexual experiences and awkward attempts to write.…

Paperback. Condition: Good. Mike knew June in New York's downtown music scene in the eighties. Back then, he thought she was 'the living night - all the glamour and potential of a New York night when you're 25.' Now he's twice divorced and happy to be alone - so happy he's writing a book about it. Then he meets June again. Told in fragments of narrative, reveries, recipes, bits of conversation and snatches of weather, the book collapses a decade in Mike and June's life and shifts a reader to a glowing nostalgia for the present. …

paperback. Condition: Fair.

Paperback. Condition: Good. For the first time, Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the story of the precipitous rise and fall of the recording industry over the past three decades, when the incredible success of the CD turned the music business into one of the most glamorous, high-profile industries in the world - and the advent of file sharing brought it to its knees. In a comprehensive, fast-paced account full of larger-than-life personalities, Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper shows that, after the incredible wealth and excess of the '80s and '90s, Sony, Warner, and the other big players brought about their own downfall through years of denial and bad decisions in the face of dramatic advances in technology. Based on interviews with more than two hundred music industry sources - from Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. to renegade Napster creator Shawn Fanning - Knopper is the first to offer such a detailed and sweeping contemporary history of the industry's wild ride through the past three decades. From the birth of the compact disc, through the explosion of CD sales in the '80s and '90s, the emergence of Napster, and the secret talks that led to iTunes, to the current collapse of the industry as CD sales plummet, Knopper takes us inside the boardrooms, recording studios, private estates, garage computer labs, company jets, corporate infighting, and secret deals of the big names and behind-the-scenes players who made it all happen.…

Paperback. Condition: Fair. For the first time, Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the story of the precipitous rise and fall of the recording industry over the past three decades, when the incredible success of the CD turned the music business into one of the most glamorous, high-profile industries in the world - and the advent of file sharing brought it to its knees. In a comprehensive, fast-paced account full of larger-than-life personalities, Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper shows that, after the incredible wealth and excess of the '80s and '90s, Sony, Warner, and the other big players brought about their own downfall through years of denial and bad decisions in the face of dramatic advances in technology. Based on interviews with more than two hundred music industry sources - from Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. to renegade Napster creator Shawn Fanning - Knopper is the first to offer such a detailed and sweeping contemporary history of the industry's wild ride through the past three decades. From the birth of the compact disc, through the explosion of CD sales in the '80s and '90s, the emergence of Napster, and the secret talks that led to iTunes, to the current collapse of the industry as CD sales plummet, Knopper takes us inside the boardrooms, recording studios, private estates, garage computer labs, company jets, corporate infighting, and secret deals of the big names and behind-the-scenes players who made it all happen.…

Hardback. Condition: Good. In the wake of her parents' death, Aretha, a habitually single Black lawyer, has had only one obsession in life - success - until she falls for Aaron, a coffee entrepreneur. Moving into his Brooklyn brownstone to live along with his Hurricane Sandy - traumatized, illegal-gun-stockpiling, optimized-soy-protein-eating, bunker-building roommates, Aretha finds that her dreams of making partner are slipping away, replaced by an underground world, one of selling guns and training for a doomsday that's maybe just around the corner. For readers of Victor LaValle's The Changeling, Paul Beatty's The Sellout, and Zakiya Harris's The Other Black Girl, The Survivalists is a darkly humorous novel from a smart and relevant new literary voice that's packed with tension, curiosity and wit, and unafraid to ask the questions most relevant to a new generation of Americans: Does it make sense to climb the corporate ladder? What exactly are the politics of gun ownership? And in a world where it's nearly impossible for young people to earn enough money to afford stable housing, what does it take in order to survive. …

Condition: very_good. Cover may have light wear, pages in very good condition and binding is sturdy; may have other light shelf wear or creases. May have notes or highlighting.

Condition: very_good. Former library copy. Cover may have light wear, pages in very good condition and binding is sturdy; may have other light shelf wear or creases. May have notes or highlighting.

Paperback. Condition: Good. What if God told you to be a better person but the world wouldn't allow it? Such is the dilemma facing Joe Smith, a run-of-the-mill white collar businessman who survives an office shooting and is subsequently touched by what he believes to be divine vision. His journey toward personal enlightenment - past greed and lust and the other deadly sins - is, by turns, tense, hilarious, profane and heartbreaking. Exploring the narrow path to spiritual fulfilment, this play showcases Neil LaBute at his discomfiting best.…

Condition: very_good. Cover may have light wear, pages in very good condition and binding is sturdy; may have other light shelf wear or creases. May have notes or highlighting.

Paperback. Condition: Good. An embittered dog walker obsessed with a social media influencer inadvertently puts a curse on a young man - and must adventure into mysterious dimension in order to save him - in this wildly inventive, delightfully subversive, genre-nonconforming debut novel about illusion, magic, technology, kinship, and the emergent future.…

Paperback. Condition: Good. In the wake of her parents' death, Aretha, a habitually single Black lawyer, has had only one obsession in life - success - until she falls for Aaron, a coffee entrepreneur. Moving into his Brooklyn brownstone to live along with his Hurricane Sandy-traumatised, illegal-gun-stockpiling, optimised-soy-protein-eating, bunker-building roommates, Aretha finds that her dreams of making partner are slipping away, replaced by an underground world, one of selling guns and training for a doomsday that's maybe just around the corner. For readers of Victor LaValle's The Changeling, Paul Beatty's The Sellout, and Zakiya Harris's The Other Black Girl, The Survivalists is a darkly humorous novel from a smart and relevant new literary voice that's packed with tension, curiosity and wit, and unafraid to ask the questions most relevant to a new generation of Americans: Does it make sense to climb the corporate ladder? What exactly are the politics of gun ownership? And in a world where it's nearly impossible for young people to earn enough money to afford stable housing, what does it take in order to survive. …

Condition: very_good. Book is in very good condition and may include minimal underlining highlighting. The book can also include "From the library of" labels. May not contain miscellaneous items toys, dvds, etc. . We offer 100% money back guarantee and 24 7 customer service.

Condition: very_good. Book is in very good condition and may include minimal underlining highlighting. The book can also include "From the library of" labels. May not contain miscellaneous items toys, dvds, etc. . We offer 100% money back guarantee and 24 7 customer service.

Condition: very_good. Book is in very good condition and may include minimal underlining highlighting. The book can also include "From the library of" labels. May not contain miscellaneous items toys, dvds, etc. . We offer 100% money back guarantee and 24 7 customer service.