Collection: Adult

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I hope that in your life, your dreams will glow ever so brightly, and that you will grow wildly, unhindered and unwavering.

--Salad Days

This is a story about a poor but gentle, honest ballet boy and a passionate, determined boxing boy.

The two met at the Children's Center, and since then, they've grown up supporting each other-even in the face of hardships and challenges-as they resolutely pursue their dreams.

The beauty of salad days lies in the sweat from struggles and the nurturing of friendships.

Even though the two have completely different lives, what remains the same is their warm feelings for each other...

Will Darling is all right. His business is doing well, and so is his illicit relationship with Kim Secretan--disgraced aristocrat, ex-spy, amateur book-dealer. It's starting to feel like he's got his life under control.

And then a brutal murder in a gentleman's club plunges them back into the shadow world of crime, deception, and the power of privilege. Worse, it brings them up against Kim's noble, hostile family, and his upper-class life where Will can never belong.

With old and new enemies against them, and secrets on every side, Will and Kim have to fight for each other harder than ever-or be torn apart for good.

Called "tremendously entertaining" (The New York Times) Stephanie Storey's brilliant bestselling debut, brings early 16th-century Florence, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo Buonarroti alive for art lovers and readers of historical fiction.

With extraordinary empathy into the minds and souls of the two great Renaissance artists, Storey offers a stunning art history thriller. From 1501 to 1505, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti both lived and worked in Florence. Leonardo was a charming, handsome fifty year-old at the peak of his career. Michelangelo was a temperamental sculptor in his mid-twenties, desperate to make a name for himself.

Michelangelo is a virtual unknown when he returns to Florence and wins the commission to carve what will become one of the most famous sculptures of all time: David. Even though his impoverished family shuns him for being an artist, he is desperate to support them. Living at the foot of his misshapen block of marble, Michelangelo struggles until the stone finally begins to speak. Working against an impossible deadline, he begins his feverish carving.

Meanwhile, Leonardo's life is falling apart: he loses the hoped-for David commission; he can't seem to finish any project; he is obsessed with his ungainly flying machine; he almost dies in war; his engineering designs disastrously fail; and he is haunted by a woman he has seen in the market--a merchant's wife, whom he is finally commissioned to paint. Her name is Lisa, and she becomes his muse.

Leonardo despises Michelangelo for his youth and lack of sophistication. Michelangelo both loathes and worships Leonardo's genius.

Oil and Marble is the story of their nearly forgotten rivalry.

Countless writers have been inspired by the beauty of birds - their colours, their easy flight, their lightness and softness, and the grace and whimsicality of their ways. Our literature, especially our poetry, is full of them.

Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover.

Spanning from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, Poems About Birds captures the enticing lives of birds through the eyes of classic poets. From John Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale' to Sylvia Lynd's 'The Return of the Goldfinches', and from Alfred Lord Tennyson's 'The Eagle' to William Wordsworth's 'To The Skylark', countless varieties of bird are celebrated here. This annotated edition of Poems About Birds selects the very best from H. J. Massingham's original collection which was first published in 1922.

The vivid and masterful story of Isabella Stewart Gardner--creator of one of America's most stunning museums--an American original whose own life was remade by art. Includes archival photos of Isabella's world, museum, and the art she collected.

Isabella Stewart Gardner's museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston's Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture.

An extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty illuminates the fascinating ways the museum and its holdings can be seen as a kind of memoir, dazzling and haunting, created with objects instead of words and displayed per Isabella's wishes in the exact placements she initially curated.

Born in 1840 to a privileged New York family, Isabella Stewart married Boston Brahmin Jack Gardner as she turned twenty. She was misunderstood by Boston's insular society and suffered the death of her only child, a beloved boy, not yet two years old.

But in time came friendships, glittering and bohemian; awe-inspiring world travels; and collecting beautiful things with a keen eye and competitive pace--all these were balm for loss. Henry James and John Singer Sargent--whose portrait of Isabella was a masterpiece and a scandal--came to recognize her originality. Bernard Berenson, leading connoisseur of the Italian Renaissance, was her art dealer.

From award-winning author Natalie Dykstra, Chasing Beauty is the story of the complex and singular woman behind one of the most fascinating museums in the nation and the world--a tale of beauty and loss, grit and American self-invention.

"Men and women who have despaired that their sex lives would never change will find hope and answers in this friendly, encouraging, and essential guide." --Laura Davis, coauthor of The Courage to Heal and author of Allies in Healing

This widely esteemed, highly respected resource helps survivors of sexual abuse heal from the past, improve relationships, and discover the joys of sexual intimacy.

Compassionate and enduring, renowned author, psychotherapist, and certified sex therapist Wendy Maltz presents a comprehensive program for healing that sensitively takes readers step-by-step through the recovery process, integrating expert advice with groundbreaking exercises, proven techniques, and first-person accounts of women and men at every stage of sexual healing. This compassionate resource can help you to:

• Identify the sexual effects of sexual abuse
• Eliminate negative sexual behavior and resolve specific problems
• Gain control over upsetting automatic reactions to touch and sex
• Develop a healthy sexual self-concept

Originally published two decades ago, The Sexual Healing Journey is a highly respected resource for understanding and healing the intimate sexual problems caused by sex abuse.The updated third edition features a new preface, revised materials, and an updated, expanded resource section.

It's been two months since Will Darling saw Kim Secretan, and he doesn't expect to see him again. What do a rough and ready soldier-turned-bookseller and a disgraced, shady aristocrat have to do with each other anyway?

But when Will encounters a face from the past in a disreputable nightclub, Kim turns up, as shifty, unreliable, and irresistible as ever. And before Will knows it, he's been dragged back into Kim's shadowy world of secrets, criminal conspiracies, and underhand dealings.

This time, though, things are underhanded even by Kim standards. This time, the danger is too close to home. And if Will and Kim can't find common ground against unseen enemies, they risk losing everything.

Powerful and important . . . an instant classic.
--The Washington Post Book World

The award-winning look at an ugly aspect of American racism by the bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, reissued with a new preface by the author

In this groundbreaking work, sociologist James W. Loewen, author of the classic bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me, brings to light decades of hidden racial exclusion in America. In a provocative, sweeping analysis of American residential patterns, Loewen uncovers the thousands of sundown towns--almost exclusively white towns where it was an unspoken rule that blacks weren't welcome--that cropped up throughout the twentieth century, most of them located outside of the South.

Written with Loewen's trademark honesty and thoroughness, Sundown Towns won the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist, and launched a nationwide online effort to track down and catalog sundown towns across America.

In a new preface, Loewen puts this history in the context of current controversies around white supremacy and the Black Lives Matter movement. He revisits sundown towns and finds the number way down, but with notable exceptions in exclusive all-white suburbs such as Kenilworth, Illinois, which as of 2010 had not a single black household. And, although many former sundown towns are now integrated, they often face second-generation sundown town issues, such as in Ferguson, Missouri, a former sundown town that is now majority black, but with a majority-white police force.

From the bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus comes a novel about a struggling writer who gets his big break, with a little help from the most famous woman in America.

After years of trying to make it as a writer in 1990s New York City, James Smale finally sells his novel to an editor at a major publishing house: none other than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Jackie--or Mrs. Onassis, as she's known in the office--has fallen in love with James's candidly autobiographical novel, one that exposes his own dysfunctional family. But when the book's forthcoming publication threatens to unravel already fragile relationships, both within his family and with his partner, James finds that he can't bring himself to finish the manuscript.

Jackie and James develop an unexpected friendship, and she pushes him to write an authentic ending, encouraging him to head home to confront the truth about his relationship with his mother. Then a long-held family secret is revealed, and he realizes his editor may have had a larger plan that goes beyond the page...

From the bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus comes a funny, poignant, and highly original novel about an author whose relationship with his very famous book editor will change him forever--both as a writer and a son.

Common Bonds is an anthology of speculative short stories and poetry featuring aromantic characters. At the heart of this collection are the bonds that impact our lives from beginning to end: platonic relationships. Within this anthology, a cursed seamstress finds comfort in the presence of a witch, teams of demon hunters work with their rival to save one of their own, a peculiar scholar gets attached to those he was meant to study, and queerplatonic shopkeepers guide their pupil as they explore their relationship needs and desires. Through nineteen stories and poems, Common Bonds explores the ways platonic relationships enrich our lives.

Contributors include: Morgan Swim, Vida Cruz, Camilla Quinn, Jennifer Lee Rossman, Syl Woo, A. Z. Louise, Cora Ruskin, E. H. Timms, Thomas Leonard Shaw, Jeff Reynolds, Marjorie King, Avi Silver, Ren Oliveira, Mika Stanard, Ian Mahler, Adriana C. Grigore, Rosiee Thor, Polenth Blake

"You're just being greedy."
"Are you sure you're not gay?"
"Pick a side."

Being a bisexual man isn't easy - something Vaneet Mehta knows all too well. After spending more than a decade figuring out his identity, Vaneet's coming out was met with questioning, ridicule and erasure. This experience inspired Vaneet to create the viral #BisexualMenExist campaign, combatting the hate and scepticism m-spec (multi-gender attracted spectrum) men encounter, and helping others who felt similarly alone and trapped.

This powerful book is an extension of that fight. Navigating a range of topics, including coming out, dating, relationships and health, Vaneet shares his own lived experience as well as personal stories from others in the community to help validate and uplift other bisexual men. Discussing the treatment of m-spec men in LGBTQ+ places, breaking down stereotypes and highlighting the importance of representation and education, this empowering book is a rallying call for m-spec men everywhere.

Never before available, the unexpurgated last interview with James Baldwin

"I was not born to be what someone said I was. I was not born to be defined by someone else, but by myself, and myself only." When, in the fall of 1987, the poet Quincy Troupe traveled to the south of France to interview James Baldwin, Baldwin's brother David told him to ask Baldwin about everything--Baldwin was critically ill and David knew that this might be the writer's last chance to speak at length about his life and work.

The result is one of the most eloquent and revelatory interviews of Baldwin's career, a conversation that ranges widely over such topics as his childhood in Harlem, his close friendship with Miles Davis, his relationship with writers like Toni Morrison and Richard Wright, his years in France, and his ever-incisive thoughts on the history of race relations and the African-American experience.

Also collected here are significant interviews from other moments in Baldwin's life, including an in-depth interview conducted by Studs Terkel shortly after the publication of Nobody Knows My Name. These interviews showcase, above all, Baldwin's fearlessness and integrity as a writer, thinker, and individual, as well as the profound struggles he faced along the way.

A damning portrait of the dire realities of retirement in the United States--and how we can fix it.

While the French went on strike in 2023 to protest the increase in the national retirement age, workers in the United States have all but given up on the notion of dignified retirement for all. Instead, Americans--whose elders face the highest risk of poverty compared to workers in peer nations--are fed feel-good stories about Walmart clerks who can finally retire because a customer raised the necessary funds through a GoFundMe campaign.

Many argue that the solution to the financial straits of American retirement is simple: people need to just work longer. Yet this call to work longer is misleading in a multitude of ways, including its endangering of the health of workers and its discrimination against people who work in lower-wage occupations. In Work, Retire, Repeat, Teresa Ghilarducci tells the stories of elders locked into jobs--not because they love to work but because they must.

But this doesn't need to be the reality. Work, Retire, Repeat shows how relatively low-cost changes to how we finance and manage retirement will allow people to truly choose how they spend their golden years.

"Carefully considered, successful instances of experimental fiction" disrupt gender, genre, and identity in this deranged, otherworldly collection (Literary Hub).

A woman metamorphoses into a giant slug; another quite literally eats her heart out; a wasp falls in love with an orchid; and hair starts sprouting from the walls. These stories slip and slide between genres--from video games to fan fiction, body horror to choose-your-own-adventure--as characters cycle through giddying changes in gender, physiology, species, and identity. Collapsing boundaries between bodies and forms, these fictions interrogate the visceral, gross, and absurd.

"This book is fucking weird," wrote Brit Mandelo in 2015. It's only gotten weirder since. Slug and Other Stories is a revised and expanded edition of a contemporary cult classic. Finally back in print, this collection is a testament to the messy anti-logic of queer feelings by a revelatory new voice.

From Billy Porter, the incomparable Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winner, Unprotected is a powerful and revealing autobiography about race, sexuality, art, and healing.

"Bold, hilarious, honest, and singular . . . Unprotected is a record of survival, commitment to authenticity, and healing; a road map out of hell."--Leslie Odom Jr.

It's easy to be yourself when who and what you are is in vogue. But growing up Black and gay in America has never been easy. Before Billy Porter was slaying red carpets and giving an iconic Emmy-winning performance in the celebrated TV show Pose; before he was the groundbreaking Tony and Grammy Award-winning star of Broadway's Kinky Boots; and before he was an acclaimed recording artist, actor, playwright, director, and all-around legend, Porter was a young boy in Pittsburgh who was seen as different, who didn't fit in. At five years old, Porter was sent to therapy to "fix" his effeminacy. He was endlessly bullied at school, sexually abused by his stepfather, and criticized at his church. Porter came of age in a world where simply being himself was a constant struggle.

Billy Porter's Unprotected is the life story of a singular artist and survivor in his own words. It is the story of a boy whose talent and courage opened doors for him, but only a crack. It is the story of a teenager discovering himself, learning his voice and his craft amid deep trauma. And it is the story of a young man whose unbreakable determination led him through countless hard times to where he is now; a proud icon who refuses to back down or hide. Porter is a multitalented, multifaceted treasure at the top of his game, and Unprotected is a resonant, inspirational story of trauma and healing, shot through with his singular voice.

'A must-read!' FINLAY GAMES

This essential survival guide gives autistic trans and/or non-binary adults all the tools and strategies they need to live as their very best self.

Blending personal accounts with evidence-based insights and up-to-date information, and written from a perspective of empowerment and self-acceptance, the book promotes pride, strength and authenticity, covering topics including self-advocacy, mental health and camouflaging and masking as well as key moments in life such as coming out or transitioning socially and/or physically.

Written by two leading autistic trans activists, this book honestly charts what life is like as an autistic trans person and is vital, life-affirming reading.