The Paper

A heartfelt and personal immigration story, new from critically acclaimed author Thao Lam

Life is hard for ten-year-old Safiyah in the Kibera slum outside Nairobi. Too poor to go to school, she makes a meager living for herself and her grandmother Cucu by selling things she finds at the garbage dump. After using scavenged paper to fix up the inside of the hut, Safiyah starts a mural on the outside. As word of the paper house spreads, Safiyah begins to take pride in her creation. When Cucu collapses after a fire, Safiyah stays at the hospital to help care for her grandmother. While Safiyah is away, her friend Pendo works on the mural, which upsets Safiyah. But when Pendo attracts media attention to the paper house, Safiyah and her grandmother are given a chance of a better life.

From the New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt, a definitive history of paper and the astonishing ways it has shaped today’s world. Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce, and art; it has formed the foundation of civilizations, promoting revolutions and restoring stability. By tracing paper’s evolution from antiquity to the present, with an emphasis on the contributions made in Asia and the Middle East, Mark Kurlansky challenges common assumptions about technology’s influence, affirming that paper is here to stay. Paper will be the commodity history that guides us forward in the twenty-first century and illuminates our times.

An office at night is reimagined as a fantastical kingdom of paper complete with friendly dragons in this own voices picture book. When the babysitter is unable to come, Daniel is woken out of bed and joins his parents as they head downtown for their jobs as nighttime office cleaners. But the story is about more than brooms, mops, and vacuums. Mama and Papa turn the deserted office building into a magnificent kingdom filled with paper. Then they weave a fantasy of dragons and kings to further engage their reluctant companion--and even encourage him to one day be the king of a paper kingdom. The Paper Kingdom expresses the joy and spirit of a loving family who turn a routine and ordinary experience into something much grander. Magical art by Pascal Campion shows both the real world and the fantasy through the eyes of the young narrator.

Gather all your wits for this book-wide riddle solving, puzzle completing adventure. Can you solve it? To solve The Paper Labyrinth, you will need to flick from page to page solving a maze of interconnected riddles and puzzles. Each puzzle will either send you to another page, or give you a component for a puzzle that you are already solving. The Paper Labyrinth is suitable for all ages - adults and kids alike, but recommended for ages 11+. The puzzles and riddles within are of a range of difficulties to hopefully cater for most audiences. If you ever get stuck on a puzzle, there are hints and solutions pages within the book.

“Take The Talented Mr. Ripley, cross it with Suspiria, add a dash of La La Land and mix . . . and this arty psychological stalker novel is what might result.” —The New York Times Book Review Named a Best Book of the Summer by The New York Times, O Magazine, Elle, Town & Country, Tatler, and Publishers Weekly and one of “5 books not to miss” by USA Today In small-town Michigan, Abby Graven leads a solitary life. Once a bright student on the cusp of a promising art career, she now languishes in her childhood home, trudging to and from her job as a supermarket cashier. Each day she is taunted from the magazine racks by the success of her former best friend Elise, a rising Hollywood starlet whose life in pictures Abby obsessively scrapbooks. At night, Abby escapes through the films of her favorite director, Auguste Perren, a cult figure known for his creative institute the Rhizome. Inspired by Perren, Abby draws fantastical storyboards based on her often premonitory dreams, a visionary gift she keeps hidden. When Abby encounters Elise again at their high school reunion, she’s surprised and warmed that Elise still considers her not only a friend but a brilliant storyteller and true artist. Elise’s unexpected faith in Abby reignites in her a dormant hunger, and when Elise offhandedly tells Abby to look her up if she’s ever in LA, Abby soon arrives on her doorstep. There, Abby discovers that while Elise is flourishing professionally, she is lonely and disillusioned behind her glossy magazine veneer. Ever the supportive friend, Abby becomes enmeshed in Elise’s world, even as she guards her own dark secret and burning desire for greatness. As she edges closer to Elise, the Rhizome, and her own artistic ambitions, the dynamic shifts between the two friends—until Abby can see only one way to grasp the future that awaits her. An electrifying novel by the author of The Wonder Garden, The Paper Wasp is a knife-edge story of dark friendship and twisted ambition against the backdrop of contemporary Hollywood. “[A] page turner . . . a stunning portrait of a fixated woman and an addictive, modern commentary on an eternal theme of obsession . . . Lauren Acampora gives us a soul trip/head trip/rarefied LA trip replete with surrealism and social commentary.” —Caroline Kepnes, author of You

“An absolutely breathtaking book -- in its thoughtfulness and imaginativeness, in the breadth and depth of the research which it entailed, in its geographical, cultural, and historical situatedness, and in its profound critical empathy for all of the key players. Beautifully and skillfully written.” – Sydney White, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Asian Studies, and Women's Studies at Temple University "The Paper Road is an eloquent, even haunting narrative of the relationships between colonial explorers/scientists and their native collaborators that makes vivid the theme of 'colonial intimacy.' It speaks to scholars working on Chinese minorities and frontier relations, to historians of comparative colonialism, to experts on Tibet and Buddhism, and probably also simply to lovers of tales of mountains and exploration." –Charlotte Furth, Professor Emerita of Chinese History , University of Southern California.

"Bound to a magic she never wanted, a young apprentice falls deeper into its mysteries when she must use everything she's learned from her master in order to save him, and his heart"--P. [4] of cover.