Love The Dark Days

Set in India, England, Trinidad and St Lucia, Love the Dark Days follows the story of a girl, Dolly, born of mixed Hindu-Muslim parentage in post-independence India. When she lives with her grandmother, member of an elite Muslim family, whose history is one of having colluded with the brutality of the British rule in India, Dolly unconsciously imbibes her grandmother's prejudices of class and race. As the dark child in her family, this makes her feel that she does not belong, leading to an over-anxiety to please the adults around her. That feeling of unbelonging is repeated when her family migrates to multicultural Trinidad, made up of people from many continents, where she encounters Indian people, several generations away from India, who have a very different sense of themselves, who appear contemptuous of what they see as her airs and graces. She begins writing about her experiences as a way of trying to make sense of them. In her darkest hour, she meets Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, who encourages her, when she visits him in St Lucia over a weekend, to leave the past behind and reinvent herself.

The future world has been divided into sectors—each the same as the other. Surrounded by thick steel fences, there is no way in and no way out. Yet a cyborg army penetrates each sector, picking off its citizens one by one, until no one is left. Behind the sectors’ thick walls, the citizens wait to die. Few will be chosen to survive what’s coming; the rest will be left behind to suffer. A new world has been created and its rulers are incredibly selective on who will become a citizen. They want only those with important roles in society to help create a more perfect future. Sixteen-year-old Sia lives in one of the sectors as part of a family that is far too ordinary to be picked to live. According to the digital clock that towers high above her sector, she has only fifteen days to live. Sia’s seen the reports and knows a horrific death is in store for her, but she is determined to make the most of her final days. Sia refuses to mourn her short life, instead promising herself that she’ll stay strong, despite being suffocated by her depressed mother and her frightened best friend. Just when Sia feels more alone than ever, she meets Mace, a mysterious boy. There is something that draws Sia to him, despite his dangerousness, and together, they join a group of rebels and embark on an epic journey to destroy the new world and its machines, and to put an end to the slaughter of innocent people. Aimed at 13- to 17-year-old readers, both boys and girls, Dark Days has subtle themes of environmentalism, government corruption, and teamwork. In the similar vein of The Hunger Games series, the gravity of Sia's situation with only fifteen days to live, will help bring some common teenage issues—friendship, self-esteem, budding romance—to the forefront. Sia is a strong female character who becomes a true leader, a good roll model for teenagers. Sky Pony Press, with our Good Books, Racehorse and Arcade imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of books for young readers—picture books for small children, chapter books, books for middle grade readers, and novels for young adults. Our list includes bestsellers for children who love to play Minecraft; stories told with LEGO bricks; books that teach lessons about tolerance, patience, and the environment, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Dewey Roscoe Jones was a pioneering African American journalist. While working for the Chicago Defender, the most widely read black newspaper in the United States, he edited a book review column and a poetry column whose contributors included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Frank Marshall Davis, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Jones personally wrote about fifty reviews, becoming Black Chicago’s premier literary critic and commentator on the Harlem Renaissance. Frequently disappointed by the novels emanating from New York, he endeavored to create his own masterwork of fiction. Dark Days is the fruit of his labors. Ishmael, the novel’s protagonist, comes to age in Oklahoma, “a wild territory” where former slaves and their offspring vie with former plantation owners and their offspring to make a new life. Theirs is a common legacy of frontier violence and frontier dreams, born in the aftermath of the Civil War, forcible removal of Native Americans, and the 1889 Land Rush. Black Ishmael loves white Denise, and their interlocked fates are the center of the tale. Ishmael’s turbulent journey follows Jones’s own path from Muskogee to Chicago to the trenches of war-torn France. Dark Days was completed midway between 1930 publication of Langston Hughes’s novel Not Without Laughter and Richard Wright’s Native Son in 1940. That chronology situates it in the closing days of Harlem’s Renaissance and on the cusp of Black Chicago’s creative flowering. By recovering his father’s novel, Dewey Roscoe Jones II has performed a service to all readers interested in the trajectory of African American creative expression in the early twentieth century. Richard A. Courage, Professor of English, Westchester Community College/SUNY; co-author of The Muse in Bronzeville: African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 1932-1950.

Being a hefty, deaf newcomer almost makes Will Halpin the least popular guy at Coaler High. But when he befriends the only guy less popular than him, the dork-namic duo has the smarts and guts to figure out who knocked off the star quarterback. Will can’t hear what’s going on, but he’s a great observer. So, who did it? And why does that guy talk to his fingers? And will the beautiful girl ever notice him? (Okay, so Will’s interested in more than just murder . . .) Those who prefer their heroes to be not-so-usual and with a side of wiseguy will gobble up this witty, geeks-rule debut.

Lamb of god vocalist D. Randall Blythe finally tells the whole incredible story of his arrest, incarceration, trial, and acquittal for manslaughter in the Czech Republic over the tragic and accidental death of a concertgoer in this riveting, gripping, biting, bold, and brave memoir. On June 27, 2012, the long-running, hard-touring, and world-renowned metal band lamb of god landed in Prague for their first concert there in two years. Vocalist D. Randall "Randy" Blythe was looking forward to a few hours off--a rare break from the touring grind--in which to explore the elegant, old city. However, a surreal scenario worthy of Kafka began to play out at the airport as Blythe was detained, arrested for manslaughter, and taken to PankráPrison--a notorious 123-year-old institution where the Nazis' torture units had set up camp during the German occupation of then-Czechoslovakia, and where today hundreds of prisoners are housed, awaiting trial and serving sentences in claustrophobic, sweltering, nightmare-inducing conditions. Two years prior, a 19-year-old fan died of injuries suffered at a lamb of god show in Prague, allegedly after being pushed off stage by Blythe, who had no vivid recollection of the incident. Stage-crashing and -diving being not uncommon occurrences, as any veteran of hard rock, metal, and punk shows knows, the concert that could have left him imprisoned for years was but a vague blur in Blythe's memory, just one of the hundreds of shows his band had performed over their decades-long career. At the time of his arrest Blythe had been sober for nearly two years, having finally gained the upper hand over the alcoholism that nearly killed him. But here he faced a new kind of challenge: jailed in a foreign land and facing a prison sentence of up to ten years. Worst of all, a young man was dead, and Blythe was devastated for him and his family, even as the reality of his own situation began to close in behind PankráPrison's glowering walls of crumbling concrete and razor wire. What transpired during Blythe's incarceration, trial, and eventual acquittal is a rock 'n' roll road story unlike any other, one that runs the gamut from tragedy to despair to hope and finally to redemption. While never losing sight of the sad gravity of his situation, Blythe relates the tale of his ordeal with one eye fixed firmly on the absurd (and at times bizarrely hilarious) circumstances he encountered along the way. Blythe is a natural storyteller and his voice drips with cutting humor, endearing empathy, and soulful insight. Much more than a tour diary or a prison memoir, Dark Days is D. Randall Blythe's own story about what went down--before, during, and after--told only as he can.

Atsuko’s father is a drunk, and she’s shunned by her classmates as "the poor kid." Walking the streets in a dark fog of despair, Atsuko cons perverts out of their money to survive. Then, one day, she meets Itaru, the heir to a wealthy family, who happens to look exactly like her. Itaru hatches a plan: Atsuko will live his tedious public life for him, and she will get a taste of the luxuries enjoyed by the 1%. Everybody’s (finally) happy. Right?

For centuries Mira has been a nightwalker—an unstoppable enforcer for a mysterious organization that manipulates earth-shaking events from the darkest shadows. But elemental mastery over fire sets her apart from others of her night-prowling breed . . . and may be all that prevents her doom. The foe she now faces is human: the vampire hunter called Danaus, who has already destroyed so many undead. For Mira, the time has come to hunt . . . or be hunted.

"In April 1812, as she is preparing for her debut presentation to Queen Charlotte, Lady Helen Wrexhall finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy reaching to the very top of society, and learns the truth about her mother, who died ten years ago"--