Adventures With Claudie

Claudie is traveling from Harlem to Georgia with Mama and Cousin Sidney to meet her grandmother and cousins for the first time. She hopes that learning her family's story will inspire her for the variety show she's planning to raise money to save the boardinghouse her family lives in. Claudie's grandmother tells her a legend from slavery times called “The People Could Fly." In it, an old man whispers magic words, and the enslaved people grow wings and fly home to Africa. This gives Claudie an amazing idea for the finale of her show—but will Claudie's creativity be enough to save the home she loves?

Claudie Wells is growing up in 1920s Harlem and is in awe of the artists all around her. Her father is a talented baker, her mother is a reporter for a renowned newspaper, and her boardinghouse mates include a jazz singer, cornet player, and painter. Claudie dreams of having a special talent all her own but struggles to find her calling. When an eviction notice threatens her beloved home, Claudie takes a risk to pursue an idea that just might turn things around. Her story is richly illustrated and includes an introduction from the author. --Provided by publisher.

Mathilda Mongoose decided that it was time for her sons to go out into the world and make their own fortunes. After all, Mathilda was now a widow. Her husband, Maurice Mongoose, had only recently met with a most unfortunate accident. It had seemed so easy to get the young chickens from inside the cage. What Maurice did not know is that it was a trap set to catch him. Poor Maurice! That had been the end of him. Now, Mathilda was having a difficult time finding enough food for herself and her three children. With the high price of food, the human people were not leaving many scraps so the rat colony had moved away in search of better hunting grounds. Since rats are the main food of mongooses, Mathilda knew that she too, would have to find a new home where there might be more food. Mathilda Mongoose called a family council of her two sons and one daughter. When everyone was settled, Mathilda Mongoose told her children that hard times were upon them because there was not enough food in the neighborhood. My sons, the two of you must now go out into the world and find new hunting grounds for yourselves. Magnolia will remain with me until she can find a suitable husband who can provide for her.

A delightful collection from legendary character actor Stephen Tobolowsky—who currently appears on The Goldbergs, HBO’s Silicon Valley, and the serial podcast The Tobolowsky Files— “a series of true stories that wrestle with a big idea: how belief shapes our lives. Funny, smart, and moving, this is a wonderful account of our relationship with the unknowable” (Susan Orlean, New York Times bestselling author of The Orchid Thief and Rin Tin Tin). In My Adventures with God, Stephen Tobolowsky explores the idea that most people’s lives seem to fit into the template of the Old Testament. We all have powerful creation myths: tales of our childhood and family, our first battles won and lost. It is our Genesis. Then, like in the Book of Exodus, we go into slavery. Rather than building pyramids, we lose ourselves in fear and ambition—in first loves, first jobs, too many dreams mixed with too much beer. We eventually become free, only to wander in the wilderness. At some point we stop and proclaim to the universe who we are. This is our Leviticus moment. We reconcile what we thought we would be with what we have become. We often attempt a mid-course correction. Then, as in the Book of Numbers, we are shaped by mortality as we bear the loss of family and friends. Finally, we retell our stories to our children hoping to make sense of the journey, like Moses did in Deuteronomy. Tobolowsky’s stories tell of a boy growing up in the wilds of Texas, finding and losing love, losing and finding himself—all told through the prism of the Torah and Talmud, mixed with insights from science, and refined through a child’s sense of wonder. My Adventures with God is a “fast-paced, precise, wide-ranging, and impressive book draws on the I Ching, Talmud, Einstein, Grimms’ Fairy Tales, and reruns of SportsCenter to create counterpoints when discussing his life of faith. This is a well-told, must-read…for anyone interested in a comedic adventure with the divine” (Publishers Weekly).

MARTIN FREEMAN is one of Britain's best-loved actors. After being cast in bit parts and cameos - such as The Bill (his first onscreen role) and the beat-boxing Ricky C in Ali G Indahouse - he made his big break as Tim Canterbury in The Office.Freeman was later cast, among other roles, as the mundane character of Arthur Dent in the sci-fi movie adaption of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and, labelled an 'everyday' bloke by journalists, began to run the risk of being stereotyped. However, in 2010 he completely turned his career around when he took on the role of Dr John Watson in the incredibly successful Sherlock. His biggest role followed as he portrayed Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit trilogy and, in recent years, Freeman has shown a dark edge to his thespian skills by portraying Richard III in the West End and Lester Nygaard in the critically acclaimed US drama series Fargo.An intensely private man, Freeman is in a long-term relationship with the actress Amanda Abbington, whom he met on the set of the 2000 Channel 4 TV movie Men Only and who played his onscreen partner in Sherlock. The Unexpected Adventures of Martin Freeman explores the rise to fame of this unassuming actor, how he has successfully managed to avoid the pitfalls of stardom, and how he has become one of the greatest actors of his generation. It is a must-read for any fan.

The American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman in this “forceful, beautifully written” (Associated Press) collection that brings together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case. On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays “full of struggle, emotion, fear, resilience, hope, and triumph” (Los Angeles Review of Books) about landmark cases in the organization’s one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona—need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue. Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights—which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU’s spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU’s stance on campaign finance. These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever today, and that we can never take our liberties for granted. Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.