The Lovely Bones

Susie Salmon is just like any other young American girl. She wants to be beautiful, adores her charm bracelet and has a crush on a boy from school. There's one big difference though – Susie is dead. Add: Now she can only observe while her family manage their grief in their different ways. Susie is desperate to help them and there might be a way of reaching them... Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones is a unique coming-of-age tale that captured the hearts of readers throughout the world. Award-winning playwright Bryony Lavery has adapted it for this unforgettable play about life after loss.

Watching from heaven, Susie Salmon sees her happy suburban family devastated by her death, isolated even from one another as they each try to cope with their terrible loss alone. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love, do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet.

Now in paperback, returning to the universe of New York Times Notable book This Alien Shore comes a new space opera from an acknowledged master of science fiction. When deep-space travel altered the genes of the first interstellar colonists, Earth abandoned them. But some of the colonies survived, and a new civilization of mental and physical “Variants” has been established, centered around clusters of space stations known as the outworlds. Now the unthinkable has happened: a suicide assault has destroyed the life support system of a major waystation. All that is known about the young men responsible is that in their last living moments they were receiving messages from an uninhabited sector of space, and were playing a virtual reality game. Two unlikely allies have joined forces to investigate the incident: Ru Gaya, a mercenary explorer with a taste for high risk ventures, and game designer Micah Bello, who must find the parties responsible for the attack in order to clear his name. From the corridors of a derelict station lost to madness to an outlaw stronghold in the depths of uncharted space, the two now follow the trail of an enemy who can twist human minds to his purpose, and whose plans could bring about the collapse of outworld civilization.

The Women’s Media Center—founded by Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, and Robin Morgan—presents its first comprehensive guide to using accurate, inclusive, creative, and clear language. At a time when language is too often used to “spin” instead of communicate, Unspinning the Spin: The Women’s Media Center Guide to Fair and Accurate Language was created to help everyone understand and be understood. Unspinning the Spin offers the convenience of a dictionary, the authority of a usage guide, the helpfulness of a thesaurus, and the wit and wisdom of an entertaining and authoritative teacher of the subject. Organized alphabetically for easy use, with cross-references to related words, phrases, and issues, this book goes beyond the scope of the usual reference book. It mines a wide variety of fields to present the background, current uses, accuracy, alternatives, and best practices for choosing and decoding common words and phrases, and offers a trove of suggestions for bias-free language. Unspinning the Spin is a practical, indispensable how-to that is fun to read. It’s invaluable for journalists, bloggers, students, teachers, government officials, and communications professionals, and it will be compelling for any reader who loves the English language. The author, Rosalie Maggio, has been an expert and widely read authority on language for more than 25 years. She is the author of the award-winning Dictionary of Bias-Free Usage and the editor of The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women. Unspinning the Spin includes a preface by Robin Morgan, feminist activist, former editor-in-chief of Ms., and award-winning author of more than 20 books; and Gloria Steinem, writer, activist, editor, bestselling author, and cofounder of Ms. This book is the first publication of WMC Press, the publishing arm of the Women’s Media Center. “Given the growing awareness of sexism imbedded in our everyday speech, we—and the news media in particular—need alternative language. Unspinning the Spin should be a welcome resource for journalists, and for anyone who works with words, to consult. At last we have a comprehensive, authoritative (and funny!), feminist Fowler’s.” —Suzanne Braun Levine, author, first editor of Ms., and first woman editor of The Columbia Journalism Review “Language is power and debates are won or lost on how the arguments are shaped. Anyone who cares about politics, power, and the histories we make today will find Unspinning the Spin: The Women’s Media Center Guide to Fair and Accurate Language a reference for all seasons.” —Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor and Publisher of The Nation

In "The Lovely Bones," the spirit of fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon describes her murder and her family's efforts to find the killer; and in "Looking Glass," Susie's story is integrated with cases of actual missing children.

Helen Knightly has spent a lifetime trying to win the love of a mother who had none to spare. And as this electrifying novel opens, she steps over a boundary she never dreamt she would even approach. But while her act is almost unconscious, it also seems like the fulfilment of a lifetime's buried desire. Over the next twenty-four hours, her life rushes in at her as she confronts the choices that have brought her to this crossroads. 'Exhilarating, unforgettable ... This is a remarkable novel in which every word is vital, each nuance felt ... Candid, gut-wrenching, at times horribly funny and often beautifully touching ... The genius which guides The Almost Moon is its absolute, horrible, multiple truths; its staggering clarity' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times 'As moving as it is unquestionably gripping' Observer 'As gripping as it is strange and wild ... My God, it grips ... I lay awake half the night, feverishly hoping both that it would never end, and that it would all be over soon' Rachel Cooke, Evening Standard

With an introduction by the author of Circe and The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller In Lucky Alice Sebold reveals how her life was irrevocably changed when, as an eighteen-year-old college freshman, she was raped and beaten inside a tunnel near her campus. In this same tunnel, a girl had been raped and dismembered. By comparison, Alice was told by police, she was lucky. Though Alice’s friends and family try their best to offer understanding and support, in the end it is Alice’s formidable spirit which resonates most in these pages. In a narrative both painful and inspiring, Alice Sebold shines a light on the true experience of violent trauma. Sebold’s redemption turns out to be as hard-won as it is real.

Pennies From Across the Veil is a love story... about death. Karl Himmel tells the story to an unknown presence, of how he met, fell in love, and married the woman of his dreams, Jenny Engels. But at the time of the telling, Karl and Jenny find themselves on different sides of the veil—the separation we call death. But not even death can stop true love. Powerful signs come to those from loved ones who have passed. They can be found any and everywhere, we just need to look for them. The most significant for Karl and Jenny was the finding of numerous wheat-back pennies. However, could there have been many others, and did these signs have a deeper meaning?