We Re Gonna Be Weird Old People

A symphony of contemporary New York through the magnificent words of its people—from the best-selling author of Londoners. In the first twenty years of the twenty-first century, New York City has been convulsed by terrorist attack, blackout, hurricane, recession, social injustice, and pandemic. New Yorkers weaves the voices of some of the city's best talkers into an indelible portrait of New York in our time--and a powerful hymn to the vitality and resilience of its people. Best-selling author Craig Taylor has been hailed as "a peerless journalist and a beautiful craftsman" (David Rakoff), and acclaimed for the way he "fuses the mundane truth of conversation with the higher truth of art" (Michel Faber). In the wake of his celebrated book Londoners, Taylor moved to New York and spent years meeting regularly with hundreds of New Yorkers as diverse as the city itself. New Yorkers features 75 of the most remarkable of them, their fascinating true tales arranged in thematic sections that follow Taylor's growing engagement with the city. Here are the uncelebrated people who propel New York each day--bodega cashier, hospital nurse, elevator repairman, emergency dispatcher. Here are those who wire the lights at the top of the Empire State Building, clean the windows of Rockefeller Center, and keep the subway running. Here are people whose experiences reflect the city's fractured realities: a Latina mother of a teenager jailed at Rikers, a BLM activist in the wake of police shootings. And here are those who capture the ineffable feeling of New York, such as a balloon handler in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or a security guard at the Statue of Liberty. Vibrant and bursting with life, New Yorkers explores the nonstop hustle to make it; the pressures on new immigrants, people of color, and the poor; the constant battle between loving the city and wanting to leave it; and the question of who gets to be considered a "New Yorker." It captures the strength of an irrepressible city that--no matter what it goes through--dares call itself the greatest in the world.

Then Sings My Soul is a gritty, humorous, and ultimately loving story of a family shaken to the core by the death of their father. Cora and her children continue to struggle seven years after their father was killed during the D-Day invasion. Cora works two jobs in the oil town of Tulsa, Oklahoma. She’s a waitress at the refinery diner and on her off days is employed as a domestic. Her eldest, Josh, works for the railroad by day and dreams of a baseball career at night. Her second son, Bobby, has just graduated high school and taken a job at a filling station. Sarah, only fourteen, goes to school, takes care of the home and looks after her six-year-old sister, Jonda. As her children spiral out of control, Cora undergoes a dreadful experience that could wreck the only thing she has left—her faith. And so begins one of the most captivating and enthralling stories you will ever read.

"The Splendid Baron Submarine is delightfully absurd, imaginative, and fun—a wonderful book for middleschool children to read on their own, and an even better book for families to read aloud together." - Foreword Reviews, Starred Review Pirate treasure? A top secret mission? A terribly rude monkey with personal boundary and hygiene issues? Two out of three of those things sound like a dream come true to the young, clumsy, and terribly unscientific Waldo “W.B.” Baron, when his clever inventor parents are hired to go on a secret treasure hunt. The Baron family dives into adventure with their steam-powered submarine, but they aren’t prepared for the complications that occur during their trip, which include shark attacks, deep sea diving mishaps, and even a pirate’s curse, all of which W.B. is lucky enough to discover, one stumble, trip, and fall at a time.

CityZen: an eco-friendly city that uses its incredible trees to heal a post-apocalyptic Earth. Amal, an ultra-committed high school student, is ready to do her part as soon as she finishes her studies. But she'll have to contend with her sister, Sana, an activist who's determined to destroy this ethical city—a bastion of short supply chains and degrowth... Torn between her love for her sister and her environmental beliefs, Amal will have to choose a side!French singer Jain steps away from the world of music to write this unexpected, entertaining, and uncompromising reflection on environmentalism.

A “hilarious” novel of a rock and roll dream gone awry (The New York Times Book Review). The Wonderkids are living the dream: sold-out concerts, screaming fans, TV shows, number-one hits. Unfortunately, it’s because the lead singer, Blake Lear, made a deal—wild success in exchange for transforming the band into a children’s entertainment act. Now the seats are packed with grade schoolers instead of cool hipsters, and the television appearances happen on Saturday morning. But hey, rock and roll has always been for the kids, right? The money is good, and things go very right—until they go very wrong. The temptations of the road are many, and the Wonderkids are big kids, too. Narrated by a boy whom Blake adopts on a whim, who becomes the band’s disciple, merch guy, amateur psychologist, and—eventually—damage control guru, Wonderkid is a delirious and surprisingly touching novel of the dangers of compromise, thwarted ambition, and fathers and sons, told with tremendous humor and energy. “If Stace’s latest novel, his fourth, rings true, it’s because he is writing what he knows. For 25 years, he performed smart indie rock under the pseudonym John Wesley Harding . . . A great rock ’n’ roll novel.” —The Boston Globe “Deliciously entertaining.” —The Wall Street Journal “[Wonderkid is] sweet and funny and knowing—and this is me, holding up my lighter for more.” —Joshua Ferris, National Book Award finalist and author of Then We Came to the End

It is impossible to overstate the importance of British novelist CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) not only to literature in the English language, but to Western civilization on the whole. He is arguably the first fiction writer to have become an international celebrity. He popularized episodic fiction and the cliffhanger, which had a profound influence on the development of film and television. He is entirely responsible for the popular image of Victorian London that still lingers today, and his characters-from Oliver Twist to Ebenezer Scrooge, from Miss Havisham to Uriah Heep-have become not merely iconic, but mythic. But it was his stirring portraits of ordinary people-not the upper classes or the aristocracy-and his fervent cries for social, moral, and legal justice for the working poor, and in particular for poor children, in the grim early decades of the Industrial Revolution that powerfully impacted social concerns well into the 20th century. Without Charles Dickens, we may never have seen the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Upton Sinclair, or even Bob Dylan. Here, in 30 beautiful volumes-complete with all the original illustrations-is every published word written by one of the most important writers ever. The essential collector's set will delight anyone who cherishes English literature...and who takes pleasure in constantly rediscovering its joys. This volume contains Part II of The Old Curiosity Shop, which was originally serialized in Dickens's own periodical, Master Humphrey's Clock, in 1840 and 1841. The story of the orphan Nell Trent, who lives with her grandfather in the establishment by which the book takes its name, it is both beloved and disparaged for Dickens's treatment of, as Oscar Wilde famously termed it, "the death of little Nell," the suspense surrounding which was comparable to the Harry Potter phenomenon of today.