Adventure Pass - Technical Difficulties

Due to circumstances outside of our control, the Des Moines Public Library’s Iowa Adventure Pass service will no longer be available in 2025. Any reservation already made for 2025 will be honored, but we encourage anyone with a current reservation to print those passes immediately. Customers can make new reservations for passes that must be used by December 31, 2024. We hope to reintroduce the service at a later time, and we apologize for the inconvenience. 

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Old In Art School

Nell Painter

A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, this memoir of one woman's later in life career change is “a smart, funny and compelling case for going after your heart's desires, no matter your age” (Essence).

Following her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school––in her sixties––to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. In Old in Art School, she travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, even as she comes to understand how they may be undervalued; and struggles with the unstable balance between the pursuit of art and the inevitable, sometimes painful demands of a life fully lived.

How are women and artists seen and judged by their age, looks, and race? What does it mean when someone says, “You will never be an artist”? Who defines what an artist is and all that goes with such an identity, and how are these ideas tied to our shared conceptions of beauty, value, and difference?

Bringing to bear incisive insights from two careers, Painter weaves a frank, funny, and often surprising tale of her move from academia to art in this "glorious achievement––bighearted and critical, insightful and entertaining. This book is a cup of courage for everyone who wants to change their lives" (Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage).

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Year of Yes

Shonda Rhimes

***AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER***

In this poignant, hilarious, and deeply intimate call to arms, Hollywood’s most powerful woman, the mega-talented creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal and executive producer of How to Get Away with Murder reveals how saying YES changed her life—and how it can change yours too.

She’s the creator and producer of some of the most groundbreaking and audacious shows on television today: Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder. Her iconic characters—Meredith Grey, Cristina Yang, Olivia Pope, Annalise Keating—live boldly and speak their minds. So who would suspect that Shonda Rhimes, the mega talent who owns Thursday night television (#TGIT), is an introvert? That she hired a publicist so she could avoid public appearances? That she hugged walls at splashy parties and suffered panic attacks before media interviews so severe she remembered nothing afterward?

Before her Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes was an expert at declining invitations others would leap to accept. With three children at home and three hit television shows on TV, it was easy to say that she was simply too busy. But in truth, she was also afraid. Afraid of cocktail party faux pas like chucking a chicken bone across a room; petrified of live television appearances where Shonda Rhimes could trip and fall and bleed out right there in front of a live studio audience; terrified of the difficult conversations that came so easily to her characters on-screen. In the before, Shonda’s introvert life revolved around burying herself in work, snuggling her children, and comforting herself with food.

And then, on Thanksgiving 2013, Shonda’s sister muttered something that was both a wake up and a call to arms: You never say yes to anything.

The comment sat like a grenade, until it detonated. Then Shonda, the youngest of six children from a supremely competitive family, knew she had to embrace the challenge: for one year, she would say YES to everything that scared her.

This poignant, intimate, and hilarious memoir explores Shonda’s life before her Year of Yes—from her nerdy, book-loving childhood creating imaginary friends to her devotion to creating television characters who reflected the world she saw around her (like Cristina Yang, whose ultimate goal wasn’t marriage, and Cyrus Beene, who is a Republican and gay). And it chronicles her life after her Year of Yes had begun—when Shonda forced herself out of the house and onto the stage, appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and giving the Dartmouth Commencement speech; when she learned to say yes to her health, yes to play and she stepped out of the shadows and into the sun; when she learned to explore, empower, applaud, and love her truest self. Yes.

This wildly candid and compulsively readable book reveals how the mega talented Shonda Rhimes, an unexpected introvert, achieved badassery worthy of a Shondaland character. And how you can, too.

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The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett

Annie Lyons

Infused with the emotional power of Me Before You and the irresistible charm of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Be Frank with Me, a moving and joyous novel about an elderly woman ready to embrace death and the little girl who reminds her what it means to live.

It's never too late to start living.

Eudora Honeysett is done with this noisy, moronic world—all of it. She has witnessed the indignities and suffering of old age and has lived a full life. At eighty-five, she isn’t going to leave things to chance. Her end will be on her terms. With one call to a clinic in Switzerland, a plan is set in motion. 

Then she meets ten-year-old Rose Trewidney, a whirling, pint-sized rainbow of sparkling cheer. All Eudora wants is to be left alone to set her affairs in order. Instead, she finds herself embarking on a series of adventures with the irrepressible Rose and their affable neighbor, the recently widowed Stanley—afternoon tea, shopping sprees, trips to the beach, birthday celebrations, pizza parties. 

While the trio of unlikely BFFs grow closer and anxiously await the arrival of Rose’s new baby sister, Eudora is reminded of her own childhood—of losing her father during World War II and the devastating impact it had on her entire family. In reflecting on her past, Eudora realizes she must come to terms with what lies ahead. 

But now that her joy for life has been rekindled, how can she possibly say goodbye? 

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Ron's Gone Wrong

The story of Barney, a socially awkward middle-schooler, and Ron, his new walking, talking, digitally connected device, which is supposed to be his 'Best Friend out of the Box.' Ron's hilarious malfunctions, set against the backdrop of the social media, age launch them into an action-packed journey in which boy and robot come to terms with the wonderful messiness of true friendship. Rated PG. 1hr 46min.

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Red Dawn (2012)

The unsuspecting citizens of Spokane, Washington, wake up one morning to the shocking sight of foreign paratroopers dropping from the sky in a surprise attack on the United States. Soon the entire city is under enemy control, but a group of courageous teenagers has decided to fight back, waging an all-out war against the invaders, to take back their town and their freedom. Rated PG-13. 1hr 33min.

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Scream (2022)

Twenty-five years after the original series of murders in Woodsboro, a new killer emerges, and Sidney Prescott must return to uncover the truth. Rated R. 1hr 54min.

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The Handmaid's Tale: Season 4

In Season Four, June strikes back against Gilead as a fierce rebel leader, but the risks she takes bring dangerous new challenges, and her quest for justice and revenge threatens to consume her. Rated TV-MA.

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Jockey

An aging jockey aims for a final championship, when a rookie rider arrives claiming to be his son. Rated R. 1hr 35min.

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Memphis

Tara M. Stringfellow

Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.

As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork, painting portraits of the community in Memphis. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination, and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition. Joan begins to understand that her mother, her mother’s mother, and the mothers before them persevered, made impossible choices, and put their dreams on hold so that her life would not have to be defined by loss and anger—that the sole instrument she needs for healing is her paintbrush.

Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of unforgettable voices that move back and forth in time, Memphis paints an indelible portrait of inheritance, celebrating the full complexity of what we pass down, in a family and as a country: brutality and justice, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice and love.

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Book Lovers

Emily Henry

An insightful, delightful new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beach Read and People We Meet on Vacation.

One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn't see coming...

Nora Stephens' life is books--she's read them all--and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.

Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters' trip away--with visions of a small town transformation for Nora, who she's convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they've met many times and it's never been cute.

If Nora knows she's not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he's nobody's hero, but as they are thrown together again and again--in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow--what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they've written about themselves.

"Emily Henry never fails to deliver ... this may just be her best yet."--Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Heartstopper

Alice Oseman

Shy and softhearted Charlie Spring sits next to rugby player Nick Nelson in class one morning. A warm and intimate friendship follows, and that soon develops into something more for Charlie, who doesn't think he has a chance.

But Nick is struggling with feelings of his own, and as the two grow closer and take on the ups and downs of high school, they come to understand the surprising and delightful ways in which love works.

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I Kissed Shara Wheeler

Casey McQuiston

From the New York Times bestselling author of One Last Stop and Red, White & Royal Blue comes a debut YA romantic comedy about chasing down what you want, only to find what you need...

Chloe Green is so close to winning. After her moms moved her from SoCal to Alabama for high school, she’s spent the past four years dodging gossipy classmates and the puritanical administration of Willowgrove Christian Academy. The thing that’s kept her going: winning valedictorian. Her only rival: prom queen Shara Wheeler, the principal’s perfect progeny.

But a month before graduation, Shara kisses Chloe and vanishes.

On a furious hunt for answers, Chloe discovers she’s not the only one Shara kissed. There’s also Smith, Shara’s longtime quarterback sweetheart, and Rory, Shara’s bad boy neighbor with a crush. The three have nothing in common except Shara and the annoyingly cryptic notes she left behind, but together they must untangle Shara’s trail of clues and find her. It’ll be worth it, if Chloe can drag Shara back before graduation to beat her fair and square.

Thrown into an unlikely alliance, chasing a ghost through parties, break-ins, puzzles, and secrets revealed on monogrammed stationery, Chloe starts to suspect there might be more to this small town than she thought. And maybe—probably not, but maybe—more to Shara, too.

Fierce, funny, and frank, Casey McQuiston's I Kissed Shara Wheeler is about breaking the rules, getting messy, and finding love in unexpected places.

 

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Time Is a Mother

Ocean Vuong

The highly anticipated collection of poems from the award-winning writer Ocean Vuong

How else do we return to ourselves but to fold
The page so it points to the good part

In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.

The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.

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The Agathas

Kathleen Glasgow

 

Welcome to Castle Cove --

a town cursed with missing girls,

bad boyfriends, family secrets,

and some very steep cliffs.

 

 

Last summer, Alice Ogilvie's basketball-star boyfriend, Steve, dumped her. Then she disappeared for five days. Where she went and what happened to her is the biggest mystery in Castle Cove. Or at least it was. Because now, another one of Steve's girlfriends has vanished: Brooke Donovan, Alice's ex-best friend. And it doesn't look like Brooke will be coming back ...

Enter Iris Adams, Alice's tutor. Iris has her own reasons for wanting to disappear, though unlike Alice, she doesn't have the money or the means. That could be changed by the hefty reward Brooke's family is offering. The police are convinced Steve is the culprit, but Alice isn't so sure, and with Iris on her side, she just might be able to prove her theory.

Luckily, Alice has exactly what they need to crack the case -- the complete works of Agatha Christie. If there's anyone who can teach the girls how to solve a mystery, it's the master herself.

But the town of Castle Cove holds many secrets, and Alice and Iris have no idea how much danger they're about to walk into ...

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The Romantic Agenda

Claire Kann

One of Buzzfeed's Most Anticipated LGBTQ Reads of 2022!

Joy is in love with Malcolm.
But Malcolm really likes Summer.
Summer is in love with love.
And Fox is Summer’s ex-boyfriend.
 
Thirty, flirty, and asexual Joy is secretly in love with her best friend Malcolm, but she’s never been brave enough to say so. When he unexpectedly announces that he's met the love of his life—and no, it's not Joy—she's heartbroken. Malcolm invites her on a weekend getaway, and Joy decides it’s her last chance to show him exactly what he’s overlooking. But maybe Joy is the one missing something…or someone…and his name is Fox.
 
Fox sees a kindred spirit in Joy—and decides to help her. He proposes they pretend to fall for each other on the weekend trip to make Malcolm jealous. But spending time with Fox shows Joy what it’s like to not be the third wheel, and there’s no mistaking the way he makes her feel. Could Fox be the romantic partner she’s always deserved?

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Ancestor Trouble

Maud Newton

An acclaimed writer goes searching for the truth about her wildly unconventional Southern family—and finds that our obsession with ancestors opens up new ways of seeing ourselves—in this “brilliant mix of personal memoir and cultural observation” (The Boston Globe).

“Newton is a logical thinker and a hyperacute observer, with a prodigious memory and a lacerating honesty. She’s a transparent and at times lyrical writer.”—Los Angeles Times

ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022—Oprah Daily, Time, Esquire, The Millions, The Week, Thrillist, She Reads, Lit Hub, BookPage

Maud Newton’s ancestors have vexed and fascinated her since she was a girl. Her mother’s father, who came of age in Texas during the Great Depression, was said to have married thirteen times and been shot by one of his wives. Her mother’s grandfather killed a man with a hay hook and died in an institution. Mental illness and religious fanaticism percolated through Maud’s maternal lines back to an ancestor accused of being a witch in Puritan-era Massachusetts. Maud’s father, an aerospace engineer turned lawyer, was an educated man who extolled the virtues of slavery and obsessed over the “purity” of his family bloodline, which he traced back to the Revolutionary War. He tried in vain to control Maud’s mother, a whirlwind of charisma and passion given to feverish projects: thirty rescue cats, and a church in the family’s living room where she performed exorcisms.

Her parents’ divorce, when it came, was a relief. Still, her position at the intersection of her family bloodlines inspired in Newton inspired an anxiety that she could not shake, a fear that she would replicate their damage. She saw similar anxieties in the lives of friends, in the works of writers and artists she admired. As obsessive in her own way as her parents, Newton researched her genealogy—her grandfather’s marriages, the accused witch, her ancestors’ roles in slavery and genocide—and sought family secrets through her DNA. But immersed in census archives and cousin matches, she yearned for deeper truths. Her journey took her into the realms of genetics, epigenetics, and the debates over intergenerational trauma. She mulled over modernity’s dismissal of ancestors along with psychoanalytic and spiritual traditions that center them.

Searching, moving, and inspiring, Ancestor Trouble is one writer’s attempt to use genealogy—a once-niche hobby that has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry—to expose the secrets and contradictions of her own ancestors, and to argue for the transformational possibilities that reckoning with our ancestors offers all of us.

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Four Treasures of the Sky

Jenny Tinghui Zhang

A propulsive and dazzling debut novel set against the backdrop of the Chinese Exclusion Act, about a Chinese girl fighting to claim her place in the 1880s American West

Daiyu never wanted to be like the tragic heroine for whom she was named, revered for her beauty and cursed with heartbreak. But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow, she is forced to keep reinventing herself to survive. From a calligraphy school, to a San Francisco brothel, to a shop tucked into the Idaho mountains, we follow Daiyu on a desperate quest to outrun the tragedy that chases her. As anti-Chinese sentiment sweeps across the country in a wave of unimaginable violence, Daiyu must draw on each of the selves she has been-including the ones she most wants to leave behind-in order to finally claim her own name and story.

At once a literary tour de force and a groundbreaking work of historical fiction, Four Treasures of the Sky announces Jenny Tinghui Zhang as an indelible new voice. Steeped in untold history and Chinese folklore, this novel is a spellbinding feat.

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Tell Me Everything

Erika Krouse

“The best story I’ve read in a long, long time." —Lacy Crawford, author of Notes on a Silencing

“Krouse’s vivid and original memoir is state of the art. Tell Me Everything is our new standard.” —Charles D’Ambrosio, author of Loitering

Part memoir and part literary true crime, Tell Me Everything is the mesmerizing story of a landmark sexual assault investigation and the female private investigator who helped crack it open.


Erika Krouse has one of those faces. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” people say, spilling confessions. In fall 2002, Erika accepts a new contract job investigating lawsuits as a private investigator. The role seems perfect for her, but she quickly realizes she has no idea what she’s doing. Then a lawyer named Grayson assigns her to investigate a sexual assault, a college student who was attacked by football players and recruits at a party a year earlier. Erika knows she should turn the assignment down. Her own history with sexual violence makes it all too personal. But she takes the job anyway, inspired by Grayson’s conviction that he could help change things forever. And maybe she could, too.

Over the next five years, Erika learns everything she can about P. I. technique, tracking down witnesses and investigating a culture of sexual assault and harassment ingrained in the university’s football program. But as the investigation grows into a national scandal and a historic civil rights case, Erika finds herself increasingly consumed. When the case and her life both implode at the same time, Erika must figure out how to help win the case without losing herself.

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The Hacienda

Isabel Cañas

Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches...
During the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz's father was executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife's sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security that his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost.

But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.

When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz's sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo's sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz's fears--but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark the doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano?

Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will save her.

Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, Andrés will have to rely on his skills as a witch to fight off the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda and protect the woman for whom he feels a powerful, forbidden attraction. But even he might not be enough to battle the darkness.

Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz's doom.

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Take My Hand

Dolen Perkins-Valdez

 

“Deeply empathetic yet unflinching in its gaze…an unforgettable exploration of responsibility and redemption.”—Celeste Ng
 
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY Newsweek San Francisco Chronicle Essence Yahoo! News ∙ The Nerd Daily ∙ Daily MailElectric Literature BookBub Ms. Magazine and more!

A searing and compassionate new novel about a young Black nurse’s shocking discovery and burning quest for justice in post-segregation Alabama, from the New York Times bestselling author of Wench.

Montgomery, Alabama, 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend intends to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she hopes to help women shape their destinies, to make their own choices for their lives and bodies.

But when her first week on the job takes her along a dusty country road to a worn-down one-room cabin, Civil is shocked to learn that her new patients, Erica and India, are children—just eleven and thirteen years old. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black, and for those handling the family’s welfare benefits, that’s reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica, and their family into her heart. Until one day she arrives at their door to learn the unthinkable has happened, and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.

Decades later, with her daughter grown and a long career in her wake, Dr. Civil Townsend is ready to retire, to find her peace, and to leave the past behind. But there are people and stories that refuse to be forgotten. That must not be forgotten.

Because history repeats what we don’t remember.

Inspired by true events and brimming with hope, Take My Hand is a stirring exploration of accountability and redemption.

 

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A Duke, the Spy, an Artist, and a Lie

Vanessa Riley

Critically acclaimed author Vanessa Riley infuses the ballroom settings of Regency England with Jamaican flair her Rogues & Remarkable Women series featuring a secret society of widows battling society to regain their money and a chance at love everlasting. In this sweeping, swoon-worthy final installment, an English spy must follow his neglected wife through the streets of London as she investigates her sister's death with the aid of the Widow's Grace. Can they find common ground and learn to work together? This vibrant and inclusive historical romance is perfect for Bridgerton binge-watcher!

Founded by the ton's most ingenious countess, the secret society The Widow's Grace comes to the aid of ill-treated widows and wives and helps them regain their fortunes, their families, and sometimes discover true love...

For adventurous Jamaican heiress Cecilia Thomas, marrying charming military lieutenant Lord Gantry to save him from danger--and herself from mercenary suitors--was a painful mistake. Instead of a passionate life together, she's stranded at his chilly Mayfair mansion with his unaccepting family. Worse, she finds he is actually a spy dedicated to duty over wedlock--and secrets over trust. So when she hears her sister has been driven to her death, Cecilia is determined to expose the powerful man responsible. Assisted by The Widow's Grace, she flees to Covent Garden with a new identity. But can she elude her formidable husband--even as the desire between them continues to flare even hotter?

Always calm, forever controlled, Gantry has put everything aside to hunt down the traitor who nearly killed him. It's only when Cecilia leaves that he realizes his real duty should have been to her. As she continually outwits him through London's most perilous streets, Gantry realizes his wife is a resourceful, courageous woman he longs to truly know. But when her pursuit threatens influential enemies, will his and Cecilia's only chance to gain justice separate them once and for all?

RAVES FOR VANESSA RILEY

"Bridgerton fans, if you read just one book on this list, make sure it's Vanessa Riley's terrific An Earl, the Girl, and a Toddler." --Popsugar

"Riley gifts readers a sparkling love story."
--Entertainment Weekly on A Duke, The Lady, and a Baby

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Sonic the Hedgehog

When the manic Dr Robotnik returns to Earth with a new ally, Knuckles the Echidna, Sonic and his new friend Tails is all that stands in their way. Rated PG. 2hr 2min.

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Old

A vacationing family discovers that the secluded beach where they're relaxing for a few hours is somehow causing them to age rapidly, reducing their entire lives into a single day. Rated PG-13. 1hr 48min.

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Sing 2

Buster Moon and his friends must persuade reclusive rock star Clay Calloway to join them for the opening of a new show. Rated PG. 1hr 50min.

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Marry Me

Music superstars Kat Valdez and Bastian are getting married before a global audience of fans. But when Kat learns, seconds before her vows, that Bastian has been unfaithful, she instead decides to marry Charlie, a stranger in the crowd. Rated PG-13. 1hr 52min.

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Young Rock: Season 1

Every legend has a beginning. Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson stars in a larger-than-life family comedy based on outrageous stories of his youth. The coming-of-age journey highlights the unforgettable moments and incredible relationships that took Dwayne from ordinary kid to extraordinary superstar revealing he's more like us than we know. Rated TV-PG.

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Atomic Habits

James Clear

The #1 New York Times bestseller. Over 4 million copies sold!

Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results


No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.

Learn how to:
make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy);
overcome a lack of motivation and willpower;
design your environment to make success easier;
get back on track when you fall off course;
...and much more.

Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.

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Portrait of a Thief

Grace D. Li

Named A Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by *Marie Claire* *Vulture* *NBC News*  *Buzzfeed* *Veranda* *PopSugar* *Paste* *The Millions* *Medium* *Crimereads* Goodreads* *Bookbub* *Boston.com* and more!

History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now. 

Will Chen plans to steal them back.

A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents' American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible—and illegal—job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago. 

His crew is every heist archetype one can imag­ine—or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they've cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down. 

Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they've dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted at­tempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.

Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful, and thrilling, Portrait of a Thief is a cultural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary cri­tique of the lingering effects of colonialism.

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Dexter: New Blood

Set ten years after Dexter Morgan went missing in the eye of Hurricane Laura; he is now living under an assumed name in Upstate New York, Iron Lake, far from his original home in Miami. Rated TV-MA.

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The Matrix Resurrections

Return to a world of two realities: one, everyday life; the other, what lies behind it. To find out if his reality is a construct, to truly know himself, Mr. Anderson will have to choose to follow the white rabbit once more. Rated R. 2hr 28min.

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Yellowstone: Season 4

Who shot John Dutton? That's the burning question that left fans reeling in the explosive season three finale. Following the brutal attacks on Kayce, Beth, and John Dutton, and with their fates unknown, Rip and the other wranglers wield their own brand of justice to take revenge and defend the Dutton legacy. Rated TV-MA.

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The River

Peter Heller

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

"A fiery tour de force... I could not put this book down. It truly was terrifying and unutterably beautiful." -Alison Borden, The Denver Post

From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, the story of two college students on a wilderness canoe trip--a gripping tale of a friendship tested by fire, white water, and violence

Wynn and Jack have been best friends since freshman orientation, bonded by their shared love of mountains, books, and fishing. Wynn is a gentle giant, a Vermont kid never happier than when his feet are in the water. Jack is more rugged, raised on a ranch in Colorado where sleeping under the stars and cooking on a fire came as naturally to him as breathing. When they decide to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada, they anticipate long days of leisurely paddling and picking blueberries, and nights of stargazing and reading paperback Westerns. But a wildfire making its way across the forest adds unexpected urgency to the journey. When they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank and decide to warn them about the fire, their search for the pair turns up nothing and no one. But: The next day a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the man they heard? And, if he is, where is the woman? From this charged beginning, master storyteller Peter Heller unspools a headlong, heart-pounding story of desperate wilderness survival.

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The Hobbit

J.R.R. Tolkein

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey 'there and back again'. They have a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon…

The prelude to The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit has sold many millions of copies since its publication in 1937, establishing itself as one of the most beloved and influential books of the twentieth century.

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Two Trees Make a Forest

Jessica J. Lee

This "stunning journey through a country that is home to exhilarating natural wonders, and a scarring colonial past . . . makes breathtakingly clear the connection between nature and humanity, and offers a singular portrait of the complexities inherent to our ideas of identity, family, and love" (Refinery29).

A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew.

Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall. Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island. Joyously attentive to the natural world, Lee also turns a critical gaze upon colonialist explorers who mapped the land and named plants, relying on and often effacing the labor and knowledge of local communities.

Two Trees Make a Forest is a genre–shattering book encompassing history, travel, nature, and memoir, an extraordinary narrative showing how geographical forces are interlaced with our family stories.

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Entangled Life

Merlin Sheldrake

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Merlin Sheldrake’s marvelous tour of these diverse and extraordinary life forms is eye-opening on why humans should consider fungi among the greatest of earth’s marvels. . . . Wondrous.”—Time

A mind-bending journey into the hidden universe of fungi, “one of those rare books that can truly change the way you see the world around you” (Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk).

WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time BBC Science Focus The Daily Mail Geographical The Times The Telegraph New Statesman London Evening Standard Science Friday

When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave.

In Entangled Life, the brilliant young biologist Merlin Sheldrake shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective. Sheldrake’s vivid exploration takes us from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the “Wood Wide Web,” to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.

Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH BOOK AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE

Entangled Life is a gorgeous book of literary nature writing in the tradition of [Robert] Macfarlane and John Fowles, ripe with insight and erudition. . . . Food for the soul.”—Eugenia Bone, Wall Street Journal

“[An] ebullient and ambitious exploration . . . This book may not be a psychedelic—and unlike Sheldrake, I haven’t dared to consume my copy (yet)—but reading it left me not just moved but altered, eager to disseminate its message of what fungi can do.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

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Upstream

Mary Oliver

One of O, The Oprah Magazine’s Ten Best Books of the Year 

The New York Times bestselling collection of essays from beloved poet, Mary Oliver
.

“There's hardly a page in my copy of Upstream that isn't folded down or underlined and scribbled on, so charged is Oliver's language . . .” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

“Uniting essays from Oliver’s previous books and elsewhere, this gem of a collection offers a compelling synthesis of the poet’s thoughts on the natural, spiritual and artistic worlds . . .” —The New York Times

 
“In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.” 

So begins Upstream, a collection of essays in which revered poet Mary Oliver reflects on her willingness, as a young child and as an adult, to lose herself within the beauty and mysteries of both the natural world and the world of literature. Emphasizing the significance of her childhood “friend” Walt Whitman, through whose work she first understood that a poem is a temple, “a place to enter, and in which to feel,” and who encouraged her to vanish into the world of her writing, Oliver meditates on the forces that allowed her to create a life for herself out of work and love. As she writes, “I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.” 
 
Upstream follows Oliver as she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, her boundless curiosity for the flora and fauna that surround her, and the responsibility she has inherited from Shelley, Wordsworth, Emerson, Poe, and Frost, the great thinkers and writers of the past, to live thoughtfully, intelligently, and to observe with passion. Throughout this collection, Oliver positions not just herself upstream but us as well as she encourages us all to keep moving, to lose ourselves in the awe of the unknown, and to give power and time to the creative and whimsical urges that live within us.

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A Walk in the Woods

Bill Bryson

God only knows what possessed Bill Bryson, a reluctant adventurer if ever there was one, to undertake a gruelling hike along the world's longest continuous footpath—The Appalachian Trail.

The 2,000-plus-mile trail winds through 14 states, stretching along the east coast of the United States, from Georgia to Maine. It snakes through some of the wildest and most spectacular landscapes in North America, as well as through some of its most poverty-stricken and primitive backwoods areas.

With his offbeat sensibility, his eye for the absurd, and his laugh-out-loud sense of humour, Bryson recounts his confrontations with nature at its most uncompromising over his five-month journey.

An instant classic, riotously funny, A Walk in the Woods will add a whole new audience to the legions of Bill Bryson fans.

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State of Wonder

Ann Patchett

In a narrative replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, scientific miracles, and spiritual transformations, State of Wonder presents a world of stunning surprise and danger, rich in emotional resonance and moral complexity.

As Dr. Marina Singh embarks upon an uncertain odyssey into the insect-infested Amazon, she will be forced to surrender herself to the lush but forbidding world that awaits within the jungle. Charged with finding her former mentor Dr. Annick Swenson, a researcher who has disappeared while working on a valuable new drug, she will have to confront her own memories of tragedy and sacrifice as she journeys into the unforgiving heart of darkness. Stirring and luminous, State of Wonder is a world unto itself, where unlikely beauty stands beside unimaginable loss beneath the rain forest's jeweled canopy.

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Vanishing Edge

Claire Kells

For fans of Christine Carbo and Scott Graham, an ex-FBI agent is on a desperate hunt for a party of vanished campers while a killer is on the loose.

The rugged landscape of Sequoia National Park is a challenge on the best of days—but when a park ranger discovers an abandoned exclusive campsite with an empty tent and high-end technical gear scattered on the shores of an alpine lake, the wilderness takes on a sinister new hue.

Thirty-two-year-old Felicity Harland—a former FBI agent who left the service in the wake of a personal tragedy and has taken her skills off the grid—is brought in as chief investigator. As a federal agent with the Investigative Services Bureau, she tackles crimes that occur on National Parks lands: unexplained falls, domestic disputes, and now a possible murder case.

The private company that set up the exclusive camp won’t reveal their client list, leaving Felicity with zero clues. As she struggles to find a lead, she’s also haunted by a painful past that dogs her at every step. But when she meets Ferdinand Huxley, a Navy SEAL turned park ranger, she begins to see the value in not just working with a partner, but trusting one, too.

The investigation takes Felicity and Hux deep into a wilderness that tests their physical limits to the extreme—and to the mean streets of Los Angeles, where they begin to learn the grisly truth behind the campers’ disappearance.

Bad things happen in the wilderness—and sometimes they’re not accidents.

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Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Kimmerer

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

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World of Wonders

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

"Hands-down one of the most beautiful books of the year." --NPR

From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction--a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us.

As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted--no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape--she was able to turn to our world's fierce and funny creatures for guidance.

"What the peacock can do," she tells us, "is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life." The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world's gifts.

Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.

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Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

Mary Roach

Join "America’s funniest science writer" (Peter Carlson, Washington Post), Mary Roach, on an irresistible investigation into the unpredictable world where wildlife and humans meet.

 

What’s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.

Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter’s Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque.

Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature’s lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem—and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.

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A Charm of Goldfinches and Other Wild Gatherings

Matt Sewell

"Most groups of wildlife can be described as a flock, herd, or shoal--but where is the fun in ending there?" -- from the IntroductionWhether you're an animal lover or a grammar geek, illustrator Matt Sewell has the perfect menagerie of beasts (and beast-related terms) for your reading pleasure. Along with fifty-five gorgeous color illustrations, Sewell presents the unexpected collective nouns used to describe groups of animals on land, in the air, and in the water. Discover the secret behind a "sleuth of bears," keep your eyes open for a "watch of nightingales," and learn something new about a "school of whales." Illustrated in inimitable watercolor, this book makes a great gift for nature and art lovers everywhere.

 

 

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The Overstory

Richard Powers

"An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back to life by creatures of air and light. A hearing-and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These four, and five other strangers -- each summoned in different ways by trees -- are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest."--

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Becoming a Successful Illustrator

Derek Brazell

Get ready to enter the working world of illustration with this freshly updated second edition of Brazell and Davies's Becoming a Successful Illustrator.

This edition features even more 'Spotlight on...' sections, with advice from practicing illustrators as well as the people that commission them. You can enjoy added coverage in fields such as moving image, character illustration and social media. There are also new exercises to get you started planning and building your business, and over 200 inspirational examples of artwork, most of which are new to this edition.

You can expect practical tips on how to seek work, how to market yourself and how to run your illustration business in an enterprising way, with advice that will prove useful long after your first commission. Building on the resources of the first edition, this continues to be the must-have guide to practicing professionally as an illustrator.


Featured illustrators include:

Millie Marotta
Mark Ulriksen
Natsko Seki
Ellen Weinstein
Stephen Collins
... and many more

Featured topics include:

Finding clients
Agency representation
Fields of work
Financial and legal requirements
Skills in art and design
Self-promotion
Showing work
Managing your business

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Becoming a Restaurateur

Patric Kuh

Award-winning journalist and food writer Patric Kuh explores the restaurant industry—based on the experiences of Lien Ta and Jonathan Whitener’s Here’s Looking at You restaurant in Los Angeles—and reveals essential details for anyone considering a path to this risky profession.

Everyone knows that opening a restaurant is a risky business, a venture with an astounding rate of failure. Patrick Kuh’s Becoming a Restaurateur takes readers behind the scenes of one of America’s trendiest new restaurants, revealing how Lien Ta and chef Jonathan Whitener of LA’s Here’s Looking at You managed to beat the odds. With valuable information about what daily life for a professional is like, this is an entertaining, practical guide to what makes a master restaurateur, from writing the business plan to opening night and beyond.

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The NEW Comedy Bible

Judy Carter

The New Comedy Bible is a step-by-step, no excuses manual for writing, performing, and launching your career as a stand-up comic. Written by Judy Carter, the author of The Comedy Bible (2001), which was called by The Washington Post and Forbes as a "Comedy Essential." This new book, penned in classic Carter's style -- part career coach and part comedy dominatrix -- has 100% new content where you will:

  • Partake in 48 new exercises to turn your problems into punchlines
  • Create 60 minutes of new material
  • Discover your authentic comedy persona
  • Conquer stage fright and slay hecklers
  • Push part procrastination and get booked

Whether you're a beginner just starting out or a pro looking to create new material for your next Netflix Comedy Special, Carter's proven methods are legendary among today's top performers. Alumni of her workshops include: Seth Rogan, Hannah Gadsby, Sherri Sheppard, and Maz Jobrani among others. As Lily Tomlin says, "Judy Carter helps others find their authentic persona and communicate in a way that makes audiences laugh." Interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, she said, "Judy Carter can show you how to make your sense of humor pay off."

The exercises in this book will get you off the couch and onto the stage, helping you develop the skills necessary to envision, and achieve, a successful career in comedy.

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Becoming an Interior Designer

Kate Bolick

A revealing guide to a career as an interior designer written by New York Times bestselling author Kate Bolick and based on the real-life experiences of the cofounders of the acclaimed Brooklyn firm Jesse Parris-Lamb—required reading for anyone considering a path to this profession.

Becoming an Interior Designer takes you behind the scenes to find out what it’s really like, and what it really takes, to become an interior designer. This artful profession combines visionary creativity and taste with architecture, engineering, and business savvy. Acclaimed Brooklyn-based studio Jesse Parris-Lamb specializes in crafting warm, textured room designs shaped by the people that inhabit them. Bestselling author Kate Bolick shadows founders Amanda Jesse and Whitney Parris-Lamb to show how this dream job becomes a reality. Visit their studio as they as they map out new projects. Watch as they inject beauty and atmosphere into open air lofts and historic brownstones. Decide on the perfect shade of blue that will complete a serene reading room. Gain professional wisdom as Bolick traces the founders’ paths to prominence, from attending design school and starting a studio, to building top-tier clients and planning landmark redesigns.

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Making It

Jaša

What Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential did for the world of chefs and restaurants, Making It does for the art world.

 

Making It is a gonzo memoir of an established artist crossed with objective advice, tips and tricks fleshed out by a best-selling art historian and Pulitzer finalist writer on art. It peels back the shroud and reveals the highs and struggles in the life and career of a working artist.

 

Specifically aimed at aspiring artists and art students, it will be of interest to anyone who wants to know what it is like to have an artist’s-eye-view of the art world, asking the tough and often glossed-over questions that rising artists inevitably have, not only about the creative process, but about navigating the turbulent waters of the social, professional, academic, critical, museum and trade elements of a career as a visual artist.

 

How best to deal with the abundance of alcohol, drugs and sex while wire-walking your own artistic dilemmas? How can an artist launch his or her career and help it flourish? What’s it like to achieve every artist’s dream, including showing at the Venice Biennale? What does it really mean to "make it" and how can you maintain your groove once you’ve arrived?

 

All these questions and more are answered in this combination tell-all memoir and how-to manual for rising artists and anyone wanting a behind-the-scenes tour of what it’s like to be an artist.

 

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Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer

J. Michael Straczynski

In the words of novelist Harlan Ellison, "The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.

New York Times bestselling author and British Academy Award nominee J. Michael Straczynski knew he wanted to be a writer ever since he was a child. What he didn't know was how to actually become, or stay, a writer. 

Now, he's giving fellow writers the comprehensive guide he wishes he had all along, personalized tips and techniques that can't be found in any other book on writing.

Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer culls from Straczynski's more than thirty years of experience writing for film, television, books, and comics. Designed for writers in any stage of their career, this quirky, insightful and often humorous book provides an inside look at these industries with advice and wisdom covering such topics such as:

   • What fledgling writers need to know to improve and sell their work—and avoid wasting valuable time
   • Tips for experienced writers who want to get to the next level
   • Staying disciplined when writing is your day job
   • Why writers should never wait for inspiration 
   • Story-planning strategies that don't kill your spontaneity
   • Expert techniques for effective, memorable world-building
   • How to get an agent and survive the writer's journey in more personal relationships
   • Revising and editing with precision
   • When and how to reinvent yourself as an artist 

Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer includes Straczynski's unique, tried-and-true methodologies that will help storytellers sharpen their work so that it's polished and ready for publication. Part toolbox and part survival guide, this book will be an indispensable guide throughout your entire writing career, offering fresh and practical insights every step of the way.

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Next Job Best Job

R. Barnett

This generous and useful book strips away the shame and fear from a job search and can help you get past the resume and see a better way forward. --Seth Godin, bestselling author of This is Marketing

If you're struggling to find work in an uncertain job market, Next Job, Best Job by headhunter Rob Barnett delivers game changing strategies to get you hired now. For readers at any phase of a career, Barnett saves you months of wasted time surfing random job postings and uploading resumes into oblivion. His new process gives you the end-to-end tools to find the work you want.

Rob Barnett is an innovator, a two-time entrepreneur, and a senior executive with five decades inside legendary media companies. As an advisor to thousands of job seekers and company heads, he is uniquely positioned to disrupt the job search industry. His inclusive platform is a life-saving escape hatch during the darkest hours of unemployment and an expert guide to the work you deserve.

With humor, compassion, and a healthy dose of tough love, Barnett covers everything from the essentials of a modern job search to ageism, ghosting, navigating LinkedIn and Zoom, and mastering the voodoo of social media.

Pivot from worrying to winning with inspired steps to:
- Score perfect job interviews
- Negotiate like a pro and get to "yes"
- Rebrand yourself with a unique resume, digital profile, and killer cover letter
- Ignite focus and restore motivation
- Identify the best career path
- Define the right job title
- Get immediate replies and callbacks
- Master networking
- Banish self-defeating thoughts
- Embrace success
- Pay it forward

New strategies replace ancient job search rules that lead nowhere. Rise above every other candidate with an empowering, easy method that finally works.

"Rob Barnett reimagines today's career search and offers a proven process to land the right job (or client) fast." --Small Business Trends

"(Barnett) leads the reader through a birth-to-earth version of job search, starting with being fired or laid off and culminating in his advice for negotiating the next offer. He peppers the steps along the way with anecdotes from his own experience and the kind of advice meant to help you keep the job once you land it." --St. Paul Pioneer Press

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SAT For Dummies

Geraldine Woods

The easy way to prepare for the SAT

The College Board has announced a redesign to the SAT in the spring of 2016. There's no doubt that students, parents, and educators are clamoring for a revised and authoritative resource on the latest iteration of this important standardized test. Packed with loads of concept review and practice questions that cover everything you can expect to encounter on the math, reading, and writing sections—and complemented with one-year access to additional SAT practice online—this 2016/2017edition of SAT For Dummies covers everything you need to increase your chances of scoring higher and getting into the college of your dreams.

The SAT is administered annually to more than 2 million students at approximately 6,000 test centers located in more than 170 countries. Nearly every college in America accepts the SAT or SAT Subject Test as part of its admission process. Written by veteran For Dummies author and test preparation guru Geraldine Woods, 2016/2017 SAT For Dummies breaks down the topics covered on the redesigned SAT into easily digestible parts and gives you ample practice opportunities to pinpoint where you need more help and go on to master every subject.

  • Offers strategies to stay focused on SAT test day
  • Helps you gauge how you measure up as you prepare for the SAT
  • Includes tips on how to manage your time wisely
  • Provides practice problems and exercises in print and digital formats to take your skills to the next level

If the thought of preparing for the SAT makes you sweat, fear not! SAT For Dummies takes the intimidation out of the exam and arms you with the confidence and know-how you need to make it your minion.

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HiSET Practice Questions

Mometrix Media LLC.

HiSET Practice Questions are the simplest way to prepare for the High School Equivalency Test. Practice is an essential part of preparing for a test and improving a test taker's chance of success. The best way to practice taking a test is by going through lots of practice test questions. If someone has never taken a practice test, then they are unprepared for the types of questions and answer choices that they will encounter on the official test. There is a tremendous advantage to someone taking the test that is already familiar with the questions and answer choices. Another advantage of taking practice tests is that you can assess your performance and see if you need to study and practice more, or if you're already prepared enough to achieve success on your test day. If you do well on the practice test, then you know you're prepared. If you struggle on the practice test, then you know you may still have more work to do to get prepared. Taking lots of practice tests helps ensure that you are not surprised or disappointed on your test day. Our HiSET Practice Questions give you the opportunity to test your knowledge on a set of questions. You can know everything that is going to be covered on the test and it will not do you any good on test day if you have not had a chance to practice. Repetition is a key to success and using practice test questions allows you to reinforce your strengths and improve your weaknesses. Detailed answer explanations are also included for each question. It may sound obvious, but you have to know which questions you missed (and more importantly why you missed them) to be able to avoid making the same mistakes again when you take the real test. That's why our HiSET Practice Questions include answer keys with detailed answer explanations. These in-depth answer explanations will allow you to better understand any questions that were difficult for you or that you needed more help to understand.

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ACT Strategy Smart

Kelly C. Roell

 

 

NEW! REA's ACT Strategy Smart Test Prep Helps You Get Into College!The ACT Strategy Smart test prep is designed to help college-bound students raise their score on the ACT and get into the college of their dreams!

Authored by About.com's test prep specialist and high school tutor, our innovative ACT Strategy Smart gives you crucial test-taking strategies you need to know before exam day. By learning these effective techniques, you can master the ACT and get a higher score.

Written in a student-friendly, easy-to-understand style, the author focuses on the content of the ACT, explains the concepts tested in each section of the test, and offers strategies, tips, and pointers on how to answer questions correctly. Practice drills and exercises reinforce what you have learned and identify the areas where you need extra study.

Divided into four weekly study sessions, each week covers the unique strategies you need to score high on the English, Math, Science, and Reading portions of the exam. An optional fifth week leads you through strategies for taking the ACT Writing Test.

After studying a section of the book, go to REA's Study Center and take a practice test on that week's subject. Our practice test is based on actual ACT questions and is the same length, configuration, and difficulty level as the ACT.

A full-length ACT practice exam with detailed answer explanations is included in the book and offered online. Our online test gives you the added benefits of automatic scoring and diagnostic feedback, so you can identify your strengths and weaknesses before exam day.

Get REA's ACT Strategy Smart and study for the ACT the "smart" way!
 

 

 

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Hot Words for the SAT

Linda Carnevale

Updated with more memory tips, expanded review exercises, and an alphabetical word index, the new edition of this popular vocabulary-building book presents and defines more than 365 words that frequently appear on SAT exams. The book is divided into 35 lessons, each lesson consisting of a word cluster. Each cluster contains words that have similar meanings or apply to similar circumstances. For instance, students encounter the words conciliate, mediate, and mitigate, and learn how they have different meanings that can sometimes be confused. A review exercise follows every five lessons with questions that closely reflect those found on the actual SAT.

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Basic Skills for the GED Test

The Princeton Review

 

Get the Help You Need to Successfully Prepare for the GED Test.
The GED Test and other high school equivalency tests like the HiSET or TASC can be intimidating for students who have been out of school for a while. Many test-takers find they aren't quite ready to dive into full test preparation, but need some extra basic practice and instruction first.

 

For those students, Basic Skills for the GED Test is a customized guide to the core skills you need to learn before you can get down to serious studying. With step-by-step explanations for tough concepts and easy-to-follow subject reviews, this book gives you:

Everything You Need to Begin Your Prep
- Clear, straightforward reviews of core topics and skills
- Engaging lessons in key topics in math, problem-solving, grammar, language, reading, writing, and graphic analysis
- Guided walk-throughs and examples for all concepts
- Clear goals lists to help you pinpoint areas for further review

Plenty of Opportunities to Practice As You Go
- Interactive exercises for every subject
- Comprehensive end-of-chapter drills with 725+ practice questions, all with complete answer explanations

If you've ever struggled to grasp the main point of a reading passage, interpret a graph, or make sense of an algebra problem, this book has you covered!

PLUS! Purchase of this book entitles you to a 20% discount on GED Ready: The Official Practice Test (details inside book!)

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The Official ACT Prep Guide 2020 - 2021, (Book + 5 Practice Tests + Bonus Online Content)

ACT

The only guide from the ACT organization, the makers of the exam, with 5 genuine, full-length practice tests in print and online.

The Official ACT Prep Guide 2020-2021 is the only guide from the makers of the exam and it includes actual ACT test forms (taken from past ACT exams). It offers 5 actual ACT tests (all with optional writing tests) so you can practice at your own pace. To help you review, this guide provides detailed explanations for every answer and practical tips on how to boost your score on the English, math, reading, science, and optional writing tests.

The test creators also created online resources accessible through this book. You can practice online with 5 full length practice tests to mimic the test day experience. These test questions can be organized, filtered, and tracked to test your exam performance.

Get ready for test day with this bestselling guide to the ACT. The Official ACT Prep Guide 2020-2021 will help you feel comfortable, confident, and prepared to do your best to ace the ACT!

The Official ACT Prep Guide 2020-2021 includes:

  • Information about the September 2020 ACT enhancements
  • Real ACT test forms used in previous years’ exams
  • Five full-length tests available in the book and online, including one NEW full-length test with optional writing test
  • Online practice that mimics the testing experience
  • Customizable questions bank with detailed answer explanations
  • Helpful advice for test day
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SAT Elite 1600

The Princeton Review

YOU NEED A STELLAR SAT SCORE TO PLAY IN THE BIG LEAGUES OF COLLEGE ADMISSIONS.

Designed specifically for those who have already mastered the basics of the SAT, The Princeton Review’s SAT Elite 1600 can help you gain total confidence in your test-taking skills and progress to the highest levels of scoring success.

Inside are exclusive tips and strategies for tackling the hardest questions on the SAT. You’ll also find pacing guidelines for test day and challenging practice materials to help get you into top test-taking shape. Features include:

Techniques That Actually Work.
· Effective strategies to help you beat the test and hit your top score
· Specialized tactics to avoid the trick questions that trap most students
· Alternative approaches to enable you to handle the toughest questions with confidence

Practice That Gets You to Perfection.
· Drills and tests with 400+ intensive practice problems (both in the book and online)
· Detailed answers and explanations to help you gain total content mastery
· Thorough review of all SAT sections: Math, Writing and Language,
and Reading, as well as tips for getting the most out of the optional Essay

This eBook edition has been specially formatted for on-screen viewing with cross-linked questions, answers, and explanations.

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Financial Security For Dummies

Eric Tyson

Boost your financial health so you’re ready for any economic or personal upheaval

Crisis is inevitable—but it doesn’t have to torpedo your finances! Financial Security For Dummies offers proven advice to help you prep your finances for the next economic downturn, personal setback, pandemic, plague of locusts—or anything else life throws your way. This book contains the historical perspective and up-to-date info you’ll need to anticipate, understand, and navigate a wide range of personal financial challenges.

If your monthly income and expenses are on steady ground and you’re ready to secure your financial future, this is the For Dummies guide for you. Not only will you create a plan to keep your family’s finances afloat during turbulent times, but you’ll also be liberated from the pressure to “keep up with the Joneses” so you can make smarter financial decisions, starting today. This book will help you:

  • Gain an understanding of how unforeseen personal or global events could affect your financial life
  • Learn strategies for protecting your assets when economic downturns and other emergencies occur
  • Feel confident in your unique path to financial freedom so you can remain calm when life takes an unexpected turn
  • Build a survival plan for protecting yourself with broader safety nets, better money decisions, and improved financial literacy

Whether you want to reduce your stress surrounding your financial goals or take advantage of financial opportunities crises create, Financial Security For Dummies will equip you to navigate financial challenges and ultimately achieve peace of mind.

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Money Matters for Teens

Youth Communication

In Money Matters for Teens, young writers discuss their financial fears and the strategies they've learned to help them spend their money wisely, save for the future, and pay for college.

The gap between the richest and the poorest Americans has been growing for decades, and experts predict it will continue to widen. Young people bear the brunt of this inequality because it makes it harder to get a job and to pay for the college education you need to move up the ladder. Political changes could help close the gap, but in the meantime, teens can help prepare themselves for financial independence. In this book, teens write about learning to handle money wisely, to manage their own income, to pay for college, and how our larger economic system determines their financial standing.

Essays include:

  • Equal Work, Unequal Pay
  • The Rags to Riches Myth
  • Job-Hopping to a Career
  • I Took a Scam Job
  • Job-Hunting Tips
  • A Guide to Drama-Free Banking
  • My Credit Card Gave Me False Security
  • We Don't Save It for a Rainy Day
  • How Am I Supposed to Pay for College?
  • Countdown to Independence
  • and more!


Through these essays, teen readers—as well as their parents, teachers, and caregivers—will pick up new tricks to managing their money but will also be provided a much-needed glimpse into how the world looks to our younger generations.

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Will College Pay Off?

Peter Cappelli

The decision of whether to go to college, or where, is hampered by poor information and inadequate understanding of the financial risk involved.

Adding to the confusion, the same degree can cost dramatically different amounts for different people. A barrage of advertising offers new degrees designed to lead to specific jobs, but we see no information on whether graduates ever get those jobs. Mix in a frenzied applications process, and pressure from politicians for "relevant" programs, and there is an urgent need to separate myth from reality.

Peter Cappelli, an acclaimed expert in employment trends, the workforce, and education, provides hard evidence that counters conventional wisdom and helps us make cost-effective choices. Among the issues Cappelli analyzes are:

What is the real link between a college degree and a job that enables you to pay off the cost of college, especially in a market that is in constant change?
Why it may be a mistake to pursue degrees that will land you the hottest jobs because what is hot today is unlikely to be so by the time you graduate.

Why the most expensive colleges may actually be the cheapest because of their ability to graduate students on time.
How parents and students can find out what different colleges actually deliver to students and whether it is something that employers really want.

College is the biggest expense for many families, larger even than the cost of the family home, and one that can bankrupt students and their parents if it works out poorly. Peter Cappelli offers vital insight for parents and students to make decisions that both make sense financially and provide the foundation that will help students make their way in the world.

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Making College Pay

Beth Akers

A leading economist makes the case that college is still a smart investment, and reveals how to increase the odds of your degree paying off.

"Full of easy-to-understand advice grounded in deep expertise and research."--Martin West, William Henry Bloomberg Professor of Education, Harvard University

The cost of college makes for frightening headlines. The outstanding balance of student loans is more than $1.5 trillion nationally, while tuitions continue to rise. And on the heels of a pandemic that nearly dismantled the traditional college experience, we have to wonder: Is college really worth it?

From a financial perspective, says economist Beth Akers, the answer is yes. It's true that college is expensive, but once we see higher education for what it is--an investment in future opportunities, job security, and earnings--a different picture emerges: The average college graduate earns an additionalmillion dollars over their career (compared to those who stopped their education after high school), and on average, two- and four-year schools deliver a 15 percent return on investment--double that of the stock market.

Yet these outcomes are not guaranteed. Rather, they hinge upon where and how you opt to invest your tuition dollars. Simply put, the real problem with college isn't the cost--it's the risk that your investment might not pay off.

In Making College Pay, Akers shows how to improve your odds by making smart choices about where to enroll, what to study, and how to pay for it. You'll learn

* why choosing the right major can matter more than where you enroll
* the best criteria for picking a school (hint: not price, selectivity or ranking)
* why working part-time while enrolled might set you back financially
* why it's often best to borrow, even if you don't have to
* the pros and cons of innovative alternatives to traditional college
* how to take advantage of new, low-risk financing tools

Full of practical advice for students and parents, Making College Pay reminds us that higher education remains an engine for opportunity, upward mobility, and prosperity.

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The Financial Diet

Chelsea Fagan

*A Refinery29 Best Book of 2018*
*One of Real Simple's Most Inspiring Books for Graduates*
*Indie Personal Finance Bestseller*

How to get good with money, even if you have no idea where to start.


The Financial Diet is the personal finance book for people who don’t care about personal finance. Whether you’re in need of an overspending detox, buried under student debt, or just trying to figure out how to live on an entry-level salary, The Financial Diet gives you tools to make a budget, understand investments, and deal with your credit. Chelsea Fagan has tapped a range of experts to help you make the best choices for you, but she also knows that being smarter with money isn’t just about what you put in the bank. It’s about everything—from the clothes you put in your closet, to your financial relationship habits, to the food you put in your kitchen (instead of ordering in again). So The Financial Diet gives you the tools to negotiate a raise and the perfect cocktail recipe to celebrate your new salary.

The Financial Diet will teach you:
• how to get good with money in a year.
• the ingredients everyone needs to have a budget-friendly kitchen.
• how to talk about awkward money stuff with your friends.
• the best way to make (and stick to!) a budget.
• how to take care of your house like a grown-up.
• what the hell it means to invest (and how you can do it).

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Budgeting 101

Michele Cagan

“Cagan makes the case that a budget isn’t a buzz killer. It’s financial salvation.” —The Washington Post

Don’t break the bank—learn to create and stick to a budget with this comprehensive, easy-to-understand guide to saving money sensibly in this edition of the popular 101 series.

Sometimes, it can seem like saving money is impossible. With everyday expenses, from groceries and gas, to the electric bill and lunch money, as well as those unexpected expenses, like car repairs and medical bills, getting—and keeping—control of your finances can feel overwhelming.

With Budgeting 101, you can start saving now. This clear and simple guide provides tons of practical advice for keeping track of your finances. With useful tips on setting financial goals, reducing debt, finding ways to save money, and creating and following a budget plan, you’ll have your dollars and cents under control in no time.

Why spend more of your hard-earned money on a financial advisor? Filled with expert advice on a wide range of the most common financial concerns and step-by-step instructions to managing your money both now and in the future, Budgeting 101 has you covered.

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Personal Finance For Dummies

Eric Tyson

Take stock of your financial situation

From budgeting, saving, and reducing debt, to making timely investment choices and planning for the future, Personal Finance For Dummies provides fiscally conscious readers with the tools they need to take charge of their financial life.

This new edition includes coverage of an extensive new tax bill that took effect in 2018 and the impact on individuals, families, small businesses, and on real estate and investing decisions. Plus, it covers emerging investing interests like technology and global investing, cryptocurrencies, pot stocks, the lifestyle changes occurring with millennials, and more.

  • Evaluate and manage your financial fitness
  • Assess your credit report and improve your score
  • Make smart investments in any economic environment
  • Find out about international investing

The expert advice offered in Personal Finance For Dummies is for anyone looking to ensure that their finances are on the right track—and to identify the areas in which they can improve their financial strategies.

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Happy Go Money

Melissa Leong

Featured on The Drew Barrymore Show Can money buy happiness? Maybe, but not like you may think ... The Social's finance expert gives practical advice on how to spend, budget, invest, and feel good about money With Happy Go Money, financial expert Melissa Leong cuts through the noise to show you how to get the most delight for your dollar. Happy Go Money combines happiness psychology and personal finance and distills it into an indispensable starter guide. Each snappy chapter provides practical, easy-to-understand advice on topics such as spending, budgeting, investing, and mindfulness, while weaving in research, interactive exercises, and relatable anecdotes. Frank, funny, and empowering, this primer challenges everyone to revamp their relationship with their money so they can dial down their worries and supersize their joy.

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Stacked

Joe Saul-Sehy

 

From the money nerds behind the award-winning Stacking Benjamins podcast, a new kind of personal finance book to get your house in order.

Rich. Wealthy. Well-heeled. Moneyed. Affluent. Not bad—but why not get Stacked instead? If you’ve ever dreamed of a basic philosophy of money that’ll help you live bigger, be bolder, and laugh harder, you need this book.
 
In these uncertain times, the basics matter more than ever. But for most of us, concepts such as investing, budgeting, and getting out of debt just don’t float our boats (or 150-foot yachts)—and so we put them off longer than we should. Joe Saul-Sehy and Emily Guy Birken are here to tell you that personal finance can be a lot more fun than you think. (No haberdashery, maritime knowledge, or specialized flatware required.)
 
Learn about everything from side hustles, to hiring a legit financial adviser, to planning for emergencies, to what’s new and exciting—and actually worth your time—in financial apps and software. If you’re looking for the same old get-rich-quick clichés, avocado toast shaming, or alphabet soup of incomprehensible financial terms, you won’t find them here. Instead, Saul-Sehy and Birken take you step by step along the way to financial success, with their signature blend of shrewd financial information and wacky humor.

 

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The Price You Pay for College

Ron Lieber

Named one of the best books of 2021 by NPR

New York Times Bestseller and a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice pick

“Masterly . . .represents an extraordinary achievement: It is comprehensive and detailed without being tedious, practical without being banal, impeccably well judged and unusually rigorous.”—Daniel Markovits, New York Times Book Review

“Ron Lieber is a gift.”—Scott Galloway 

The hugely popular New York Times Your Money columnist and author of the bestselling The Opposite of Spoiled offers a deeply reported and emotionally honest approach to the biggest financial decision families will ever make: what to pay for college—a decision made even more confusing because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sending a teenager to a flagship state university for four years of on-campus living costs more than $100,000 in many parts of the United States. Meanwhile, many families of freshmen attending selective private colleges will spend triple—over $300,000. With the same passion, smarts, and humor that infuse his personal finance column, Ron Lieber offers a much-needed roadmap to help families navigate this difficult and often confusing journey. 

Lieber begins by explaining who pays what and why and how the financial aid system got so complicated. He also pulls the curtain back on merit aid, an entirely new form of discounting that most colleges now use to compete with peers.

While price is essential, value is paramount. So what is worth paying extra for, and how do you know when it exists in abundance at any particular school? Is a small college better than a big one? Who actually does the teaching? Given that every college claims to have reinvented its career center, who should we actually believe? He asks the tough questions of college presidents and financial aid gatekeepers that parents don’t know (or are afraid) to ask and summarizes the research about what matters and what doesn’t.

Finally, Lieber calmly walks families through the process of setting financial goals, explaining the system to their children and figuring out the right ways to save, borrow, and bargain for a better deal. 

The Price You Pay for College gives parents the clarity they need to make informed choices and helps restore the joy and wonder the college experience is supposed to represent.

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1001 Ways to Pay for College: Strategies to Maximize College Savings, Financial Aid, Scholarships and Grants

Gen Tanabe

Completely revised with updated descriptions, contact information, websites, and available monies, this guide to financing higher education is the only resource students need to fund their pursuit of knowledge. Balancing detailed explanations with real-life examples and practical resources, the featured topics include finding and winning scholarships, requesting a reassessment from colleges for more financial aid, maximizing assistance from state and federal governments, taking advantage of educational tax breaks, and benefiting from government-subsidized student loans. Creative strategies--such as starting profitable dorm-room enterprises, trading tuition costs for volunteer service, and canceling debts with loan-repayment programs--help students find extra money when more traditional routes are exhausted. The provided tips are designed for students of all ages and levels and their parents.

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The Community College Advantage

Diane Melville

Maximize your college experience. Follow the track that costs less and pays more.

Whether you're looking to transfer to a four-year school or you want an edge in the job market, community college could be your key to success. The question is: How can you make community college work to your advantage?

The Community College Advantage: Your Guide to a Low-Cost, High-Reward College Experience is the first community college strategy guide focused on maximizing your college experience. With helpful tips and worksheets, you'll be prepared from the minute you set foot on campus.

Optimize your time in community college.
Uncover secrets to making the most of your classes, teachers, and peers.

Transfer to your dream school.
Follow a step-by-step guide to the transfer process and obtain access to the best colleges in the nation.

Gain life skills that prepare you for the real world.
Apply these tips and techniques to your life after college and see all your hard work pay off.

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Indebted

Caitlin Zaloom

How the financial pressures of paying for college affect the lives and well-being of middle-class families

The struggle to pay for college is a defining feature of middle-class life in America. Caitlin Zaloom takes readers into homes of families throughout the nation to reveal the hidden consequences of student debt and the ways that financing college has transformed our most sacred relationships. She describes the profound moral conflicts for parents as they try to honor what they see as their highest parental duty—providing their children with opportunity—and shows how parents and students alike are forced to gamble on an investment that might not pay off. Superbly written and unflinchingly honest, Indebted breaks through the culture of silence surrounding the student debt crisis, exposing the unspoken costs of sending our kids to college.

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Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 535 Easy(ish) Steps

Kelly Williams Brown

From breaking up with frenemies to fixing your toilet, this way fun comprehensive handbook is the answer for aspiring grown-ups of all ages.



If you graduated from college but still feel like a student . . . if you wear a business suit to job interviews but pajamas to the grocery store . . . if you have your own apartment but no idea how to cook or clean . . . it's OK. But it doesn't have to be this way.



Just because you don't feel like an adult doesn't mean you can't act like one. And it all begins with this funny, wise, and useful book. Based on Kelly Williams Brown's popular blog, Adulting makes the scary, confusing "real world" approachable, manageable--and even conquerable. This guide will help you to navigate the stormy Sea of Adulthood so that you may find safe harbor in Not Running Out of Toilet Paper Bay, and along the way you will learn:

  • What to check for when renting a new apartment--not just the nearby bars, but the faucets and stove, among other things.
  • When a busy person can find time to learn more about the world (It involves the intersection of NPR and hair-straightening.)
  • How to avoid hooking up with anyone in your office--imagine your coworkers having plastic, featureless doll crotches. It helps.
  • The secret to finding a mechanic you love--or, more realistically, one that will not rob you blind.
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Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life for Teens

Joseph V. Ciarrochi

If you could only get past feelings of embarrassment, fear, self-criticism, and self-doubt, how would your life be different? You might take more chances and make more mistakes, but you'd also be able to live more freely and confidently than ever before.

Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life for Teens is a workbook that provides you with essential skills for coping with the difficult and sometimes overwhelming emotions that stress you out and cause you pain. The emotions aren't going anywhere, but you can find out how to deal with them. Once you do, you will become a mindful warrior?a strong person who handles tough emotions with grace and dignity?and gain many more friends and accomplishments along the way.

Based in proven-effective acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), this book will arm you with powerful skills to help you use the power of mindfulness in everyday situations, stop finding faults in yourself and start solving your problems, how to be kinder to yourself so you feel confident and have a greater sense of self-worth, and how to identify the values that will help you create the life of your dreams.

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The 6 Most Important Decisions You'll Ever Make

Sean Covey

From the author of the wildly popular bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens comes the go-to guide that helps teens cope with major challenges they face in their lives—now updated for today’s social media age.

In this newly revised edition, Sean Covey helps teens figure out how to approach the six major challenges they face: gaining self-esteem, dealing with their parents, making friends, being wise about sex, coping with substances, and succeeding at school and planning a career.

Covey understands the pain and confusion that teens and their parents experience in the face of these weighty, life-changing, and common difficulties. He shows readers how to use the 7 Habits to cope with, manage, and ultimately conquer each challenge—and become happier and more productive.

Now updated for the digital and social media age, Covey covers how technology affects these six decisions, keeping the information and advice relevant to today’s teenagers.

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Life Sucks

Michael I. Bennett

From New York Times best-selling authors Michael I. Bennett, MD and Sarah Bennett--a book for teens that shows readers that we all deal with crap in our lives and how to laugh at some of the things we can't control.

Being a teenager can suck. Your friends can become enemies, and your enemies can become friends. Your family can drive you crazy. School and teachers can be a drag. Your body is constantly changing. And everyone seems to tell you to "just be you." But just who is that?

With their open and honest approach, father-daughter team Michael I. Bennett and Sarah Bennett's book is sure to appeal to teenagers and show them they aren't alone in dealing with fake friends, with parents who think they're "hip," and even how high school isn't everyone's glory days. Young readers--and their parents--are sure to find this no-nonsense, real-life advice helpful, and it will help them realize that it's okay to talk to their parents and other advisors around them about big issues that might be uncomfortable to discuss.

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Almost Adulting

Arden Rose

For fans of Grace Helbig and Alexa Chung comes a fresh, hilarious guide to growing up your way from social media influencer and lifestyle vlogger Arden Rose. Now in paperback with a brand-new chapter with tips from Arden about how to travel in style!

In Almost Adulting—perfect for budding adults, failing adults, and eaters of microwave mug brownies—Arden tells you how to survive your future adulthood. Topics include:

  • Making internet friends who are cool and not murderers
  • Flirting with someone in a way to make them think you are cool and not a murderer
  • Being in an actual relationship where you talk about your feelings in a healthy manner??? To the other person???????
  • Eating enough protein
  • Assembling a somewhat acceptable adult wardrobe when you have zero dollars
  • Going on adventures without starting to smell
  • How sex is supposed to feel, but, like, actually though

By the end of the book—a mash-up of essays, lists, and artwork—you'll have learned not only how to dress yourself, how to travel alone, how to talk to strangers online, and how to date strangers (in PERSON!), but also how to pass as a real, functioning, appropriately socialized adult.

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Adulting

Kelly Williams Brown

The "hilarious and super-relatable" (Cosmopolitan) New York Times bestselling guide to living your best life, with a new foreword and updated material

If you graduated from college but still feel like a student . . . if you wear a business suit to job interviews but pajamas to the grocery store . . . if you have your own apartment but no idea how to cook or clean . . . it's OK. But it doesn't have to be this way.
Just because you don't feel like an adult doesn't mean you can't act like one. And it all begins with this funny, wise, and useful book. Based on Kelly Williams Brown's popular blog, ADULTING, makes the scary, confusing "real world" approachable, manageable--and even conquerable. This guide will help you to navigate the stormy Sea of Adulthood so that you may find safe harbor in Not Running Out of Toilet Paper Bay, and along the way you will learn:
 

  • What to check for when renting a new apartment--Not just the nearby bars, but the faucets and stove, among other things.
  • When a busy person can find time to learn more about the world (It involves the intersection of NPR and hair-straightening.)
  • How to avoid hooking up with anyone in your office--Imagine your coworkers having plastic, featureless doll crotches. It helps.
  • The secret to finding a mechanic you love--Or, more realistically, one that will not rob you blind.

From breaking up with frenemies to fixing your toilet, this way fun comprehensive handbook is the answer for aspiring grown-ups of all ages.
 

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... and Then You Die of Dysentery

Lauren Reeves

A quirky, nostalgic send-up to the Oregon Trail computer game, featuring snarky and hard-earned life lessons from the trail.

Pack your wagons, find your ride-or-(literally) die friends, and roll up to Matt's General Store with a sack of cash--it's time to hit the Oregon Trail, twenty-first-century style! ...And Then You Die of Dysentery is the perfect send-up to the sometimes frustrating, always entertaining, and universally beloved Oregon Trail computer game. Featuring a four-color design in the game's iconic 8-bit format, alongside pop culture references galore, the book offers 50 humorous, snarky lessons gleaned from the game's most iconic moments, including gems such as:
--Suffering from exhaustion is a real thing. (It's not just PR code for why a celebrity went to rehab.)
--If you hunt too frequently in one area, game will become scarce. (The first signs of gentrification!)
--Invite your sweetie to cuddle with you while looking up at the stars. (The night sky was the original Netflix & Chill. Step 1: Loosen up Orion's belt...)

With its laugh-out-loud commentary and its absurdist nostalgia, ...And Then You Die of Dysentery is the ultimate trip down memory lane ... all the way to the Willamette Valley.

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I Really Didn't Think This Through

Beth Evans

Like Mindy Kaling meets Hyperbole and a Half, I Really Didn’t Think This Through gets at the heart of what makes life both so challenging and so joyful—figuring out how to be a person in the world. 

Did you ever wish your best friend—the person you would trust with your innermost secrets, the person whose wisdom and comfort you seek in times of stress or self-doubt—could draw?Armed with her beloved illustrations, popular Instagram artist Beth Evans tackles a range of issues—from whimsical musings to deeply personal struggles—in this imaginative anti-guide to being your own person.

This book is a compendium of Beth’s collected wisdom and stories, interwoven with her tremendously popular and loveable illustrations. The book is a wonderful mix of fun (playful meditations on the band Rush and international pen-pals) and thoughtful (Beth delves into her personal history with obsessive compulsive disorder and depression while commiserating on topics like dating and credit card shame) all with a simple candor that anyone from a teen to their grandparent can relate to. Through all of her experiences, Beth manages to extract valuable lessons, and the book is replete with friendly advice about caring for yourself, getting help no matter what your problems are, and embracing what makes you happy. Beth is a compelling storyteller, her drawings picking up where her words leave off, creating an approachable and immersive experience for the reader. Beth’s work feels like a hug from your best friend. And like a best friend, she’s here to say “You got this!”

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Guac Is Extra But So Am I

Sarah Solomon

Navigating the landscape of young adulthood is fraught with challenges big, small, and existential that leave even the best of us screaming internally. Guac Is Extra But So Am I: The Reluctant Adult's Handbook explains the realities of life people expect you to know-but aren't usually spelled out-through humorous, biting commentary, illustrations, and guidance from those who have seen it all.

Packed with discussions, tips, and advice on everything from the shifting etiquette surrounding modern dating (Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and tolerant of your substance abuse?) to how you should be forcing yourself to save for retirement (We're all just a few breakdowns away from becoming an interior designer or golf pro), job hunting (No, you cannot choose "muse" as a career path), to the highly emotional and physical trials of moving (The road to hell is paved with shag carpeting). These topics, and anything else that might fluster a young adult, are explored and addressed with the author's trademark wit and self-deprecating style. Add in contributions from leaders in their respective fields, including Mad Money's Jim Cramer and editors ranging from The New York Times to Town & Country. Guac Is Extra But So Am I becomes an illuminating guide to what it means to be a well-rounded individual in a digitally evolving world ridden with student debt and Instagram "models."

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Barely Functional Adult

Meichi Ng

“Funny, introspective, and touching. . . . The lessons Meichi gently shares with us through delightful stories are full of wisdom for people at any life stage who need a reminder they’re not alone.” —Mari Andrew, author of Am I There Yet?

From the creator of Barely Functional Adult, a painfully relatable webcomic with over 130k followers on Instagram, comes a never-before-seen collection of incriminating short stories about exes, murder, friendship, therapy, anxiety, Hufflepuff, sucking at things, freaking out about things, calming down momentarily, melodrama, wrinkles, pettiness, and other wonderful delights.

Wielding her trademark balance of artful humor, levity, and heartbreaking introspection, Meichi Ng’s indisputably relatable collection of short stories holds a mirror to our past, present, and future selves. Featuring a swaddled Barely Functional Adult as its protagonist who says all the things we think but dare not say, this book is equal parts humorous and heartbreaking as it spans a spectrum of topics from imposter syndrome, therapy, friendships, first loves, letting go of exes, to just trying to find your purpose in the world. Prepare to excitedly shove this book in your friend’s face with little decorum as you shout, “THIS IS SO US!”

In this beautiful, four-color collection compiled completely of never-before-seen content, Meichi perfectly captures the best and worst of us in every short story, allowing us to weep with pleasure at our own fallibility. Hilarious, relatable, and heart-wrenchingly honest, Barely Functional Adult will have you laughing and crying in the same breath, while taking solace in the fact that we’re anything but alone in this world.

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Grace's Guide

Grace Helbig

#1 New York Times Bestseller

By the host of The Grace Helbig Show on E! and the it’s Grace YouTube channel, comedian Grace Helbig offers an irreverent and illustrated guide to life for anyone faced with the challenge of growing up.

Infused with her trademark saucy, sweet, and funny voice, Grace’s Guide is a tongue-in-cheek handbook for millennials, encompassing everything a young or new (or regular or old) adult needs to know, from how to live online to landing a job to surviving a breakup to decorating a first apartment, and much more. Charmingly illustrated, Grace’s Guide features full-color photos, interactive worksheets, and exclusive stories from Grace’s own misadventures, including her disastrous interview for NBC’s Page Program, her lifelong struggles with anxiety, the first (and also last) time she entered a beauty pageant, meeting her first boyfriend at a high school Latin convention, and many other hilarious lessons she learned the hard way.

Amusing and unexpectedly educational, this refreshing and colorful guide proves that becoming an adult doesn’t necessarily mean you have to grow up.

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Hi, Just a Quick Question

Beth Evans

Human, touching, and hopeful, Beth Evans provides an empathetic guide to navigating some of life's universal challenges. --Sarah Andersen, author of Adulthood is a Myth, Big Mushy Happy Lump, and Herding Cats

Building on the success of I Really Didn't Think This Through, this long-awaited, hilarious sequel by popular Instagram artist Beth Evans (292k followers) offers her take on life's most daunting questions.

With 250 never-before-seen comics, Hi, Just a Quick Question is the follow-up to Beth Evans' wildly popular I Really Didn't Think This Through. Written in a fun Q&A style format, Beth tackles 50 "How do I" style questions with her endearing, self-effacing humor and keen insight for what we as human beings need most to hear: that we're all just figuring it out and that anyone who says (or posts) otherwise is pretending.

A How-to guide from someone who understands many of the day-to-day struggles we can encounter, Hi, Just a Quick Question tackles topics including personal effectiveness, friendship, anxiety, self-care, solitude, and forging our own identities in the world. Sample questions include:

- How do I stop procrastinating?

- How do I express my feelings when the words won't come out?

- How do I deal with emotional dark pits?

- How do I find coping skills that work for me?

- How do I make a self-care routine?

- How do I keep going forward when everything is hard?

- How do I handle people who don't take mental health seriously?

- How do I stay positive?

- How do I learn to love myself in a way that doesn't feel forced?

- How do I know if there's something wrong with me?

Hi, Just a Quick Question is the perfect gift for a new graduate, someone you love, or even for yourself.

 

 

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Welcome to College, Your Career Starts Now!

Brown, Victor

For every student, both a successful transition into college, and the subsequent transition from college to career, are critically important. Written by an author who has had long experience in both the corporate and academic worlds, "Welcome to College - Your Career Starts Now!" is the ideal book to help guide students through both transitions, while giving good advice on how to integrate the college years into the process of determining one's career. Many students arrive on a college campus in a state of confusion and uncertainty. They wonder how they should select their major, which elective courses to choose, how to determine a career path, how to interview effectively and how to make the best use of internships and study abroad opportunities. Just as important for them is to understand how to project an image as serious students, and how to develop the personal skill sets and behavior patterns they will need in both their college and career years. Vic Brown has drawn upon his extensive experience as a corporate executive and college faculty member, and imparts excellent advice on how to integrate coursework, internships and other activities into a focused preparation for long term career success. The author does not stop at college graduation. He continues to offer practical guidance to the new graduates while they navigate their way through the first several years of their careers. Brown's use of real-world examples on campus and in the workplace provides a wonderful way for the reader to understand the importance of the advice he offers, and this book is essential reading for college students at all stages of their education, for new members of the work force, and even as a refresher for those well along in their careers. Parents, high school guidance counselors, college admissions and career services staff, as well as faculty, will all benefit from the practical guidance offered in this easy to read, entertaining book.

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The Years That Matter Most

Paul Tough

What has gone wrong in our universities? And how do we make it right?

When Amy applied to university, she thought she’d be judged purely on her merits. But she never thought that her family background would have as much impact on her future as her grades.

When KiKi arrived at university, she knew she could be the only black woman in her class. But she didn’t know how out of place she would feel, nor how unwelcoming her peers would be.

When Orry graduated from university, he was told he’d probably land a six-figure salary. But he wasn’t told he’d end up barely scraping a living wage, struggling to feed his children.

Drawing on the stories of hundreds of American students, The Years That Matters Most is a revelatory account of a university system in crisis.

Paul Tough, bestselling author of How Children Succeed, exposes a world where small-town colleges go bust, while the most prestigious raise billions every year; where overstretched admissions officers are forced to pick rich candidates over smart ones; where black and working-class students are left to sink or swim on uncaring campuses. Along the way, he uncovers cutting-edge research from the academics leading the way to a new kind of university – one where students succeed not because of their background, but because of the quality of their minds.

The result is a call-to-arms for universities that work for everyone, and a manual for how we can make it happen.

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How to College

Andrea Malkin Brenner

The first practical guide of its kind that helps students transition smoothly from high school to college

The transition from high school—and home—to college can be stressful. Students and parents often arrive on campus unprepared for what college is really like. Academic standards and expectations are different from high school; families aren’t present to serve as “scaffolding” for students; and first-years have to do what they call “adulting.” Nothing in the college admissions process prepares students for these new realities.

As a result, first-year college students report higher stress, more mental health issues, and lower completion rates than in the past. In fact, up to one third of first-year college students will not return for their second year—and colleges are reporting an increase in underprepared first-year students.

How to College is here to help. Professors Andrea Malkin Brenner and Lara Schwartz guide first-year students and their families through the transition process, during the summer after high school graduation and throughout the school year, preparing students to succeed and thrive as they transition and adapt to college. The book draws on the authors’ experience teaching, writing curricula, and designing programs for thousands of first-year college students over decades.

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College Admissions During COVID

The Princeton Review

The ONLY COLLEGE ADMISSIONS ADVICE GUIDE SPECIFICALLY FOR STUDENTS GRADUATING IN 2021 and 2022! College Admissions During COVID provides the latest info & recommendations for successfully navigating your application process during the global coronavirus pandemic.· If my target school is test-optional, do I still need to take the SAT or ACT?
· What should I do if most of my extracurriculars were canceled due to lockdowns?
· Should I consider a gap year in the hopes that things will be more settled later?
· What should I expect if I have to take a standardized test (like the APs or ACT) from home?
· Is it even worth enrolling in college, if classes will all be remote?

Students in the entering classes of 2021 and 2022 face a college admissions landscape unlike any before. The massive changes wrought by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have upended once-standard admissions advice, with new questionslike those abovearising daily.

Fortunately, Rob Franek, editor-in-chief at The Princeton Review and nationally-recognized college admissions expert, is here to help you fill in those gaps with straightforward, balanced information.

COLLEGE ADMISSIONS DURING COVID (a new edition of our popular College Admissions 101, specifically updated with advice for the current situation) gathers together the 70+ questions that Rob is hearing most frequently from students and parents, and answers them with information garnered from deans, admissions officers, and his own 25+ years of expertise. 

Some things remain the same (yes, you should write an essay!), but others have changed (you may have to postpone that campus visit). No matter how crazy things seem, Rob and The Princeton Review are here to help guide you through this difficult time and set you up for college admission success!

 

 

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Who Gets In and Why

Jeffrey Selingo

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2020

From award-winning higher education journalist and New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Selingo comes a revealing look from inside the admissions office—one that identifies surprising strategies that will aid in the college search.

Getting into a top-ranked college has never seemed more impossible, with acceptance rates at some elite universities dipping into the single digits. In Who Gets In and Why, journalist and higher education expert Jeffrey Selingo dispels entrenched notions of how to compete and win at the admissions game, and reveals that teenagers and parents have much to gain by broadening their notion of what qualifies as a “good college.” Hint: it’s not all about the sticker on the car window.

Selingo, who was embedded in three different admissions offices—a selective private university, a leading liberal arts college, and a flagship public campus—closely observed gatekeepers as they made their often agonizing and sometimes life-changing decisions. He also followed select students and their parents, and he traveled around the country meeting with high school counselors, marketers, behind-the-scenes consultants, and college rankers.

While many have long believed that admissions is merit-based, rewarding the best students, Who Gets In and Why presents a more complicated truth, showing that “who gets in” is frequently more about the college’s agenda than the applicant. In a world where thousands of equally qualified students vie for a fixed number of spots at elite institutions, admissions officers often make split-second decisions based on a variety of factors—like diversity, money, and, ultimately, whether a student will enroll if accepted.

One of the most insightful books ever about “getting in” and what higher education has become, Who Gets In and Why not only provides an usually intimate look at how admissions decisions get made, but guides prospective students on how to honestly assess their strengths and match with the schools that will best serve their interests.

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Get Real and Get In

Dr. Aviva Legatt

An insider's college admissions guide that teaches students to identify and harness their unique passions, stand out from the crowd, and achieve their dreams.

Dr. Aviva Legatt has spent her career in higher education as a professor, counselor, and admissions officer in the Ivy League, and she wants to let students in on a secret: admissions offices are sick of seeing the same cookie-cutter applications. What were once considered best practices for “doing high school right” are now so commonplace that they have become a liability.

Get Real and Get In teaches readers to think outside of the box and focus on what admissions officers are really looking for—young people who dare to be their most authentic selves. Through engaging, accessible, and empathetic prose, this book forms an inspirational roadmap for readers to uncover their true passions and leverage them to create applications that truly stand out from the crowd. It also features a variety of useful exercises and candid stories from many influential figures, which teach students to look beyond just getting into a “good” college and focus more actively on identifying and attaining their long term goals.

Get Real and Get In is designed to ignite an essential mindset shift in students: stop trying to just “get in” and start figuring out exactly what you want from life and how to get it. Stop managing the impressions you make on admissions officers and start defying impressions. This is an essential guide to cutting through the noise of the admissions process and gaining the confidence to forge one’s own path to success—in college and beyond.

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Valedictorians at the Gate

Becky Munsterer Sabky

Named one of Grown & Flown's “Best Book on College Admissions and Paying for College”

“The most honest, most helpful book I’ve ever read on applying to college”
New York Times bestselling author Adam Grant

A former Ivy League Admissions Officer offers an inspiring battle cry for sanity in the college application process that looks beyond the rankings to successfully determine what’s truly the best school for you or your child.

After spending years as a college admissions director at Dartmouth, Becky Munsterer Sabky had seen it all. The perfect grades, the perfect scores, and the perfect extracurriculars. Valedictorians were knocking at the gate, but Becky realized that in their quest for admission many of these students were missing something. Their transcripts were golden, their interviews polished, but they weren’t applying for college, they were competing for it—and in the end they didn’t know what prize they were really striving for.

In Valedictorians at the Gate, Sabky looks beyond the smoke and mirrors of the intimidating admissions gauntlet and places the power firmly where it should be: in the hands of the students themselves. Offering prescriptive, actionable advice for students and their (hopefully not helicoptering) parents, Sabky illuminates the pathway to finding the school that is the ideal match.

Witty and warm, informative and inspiring, Valedictorians at the Gate is the needed tonic for overstressed, overworked, and overwhelmed students on their way to the perfect college for them.

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Game On

Susan F. Paterno

Director of the Chapman journalism program—and mother of four recent college grads—Susan F. Paterno leads you through the admissions process to help you and your family make the best decision possible.

How is it possible that Harvard is more affordable for most American families than their local state university? Or that up to half of eligible students receive no financial aid? Or that public universities are rejecting homegrown middle- and working-class applicants and instead enrolling wealthy out-of- state students? College admission has escalated into a high-stakes game of emotional and financial survival. How is the deck stacked against you? And what can you do about it?

Susan F. Paterno, a veteran academic and journalist, answers these questions and more in Game On. Paterno helped her four very different kids navigate the application process to a wide range of colleges, paying for their four-year educations on a finite budget. She incisively decodes the college admission industry—the consultants, the tutors, the rankers, the branding companies hawking “advantage”—and arms you with the knowledge you need to make the system work for you.

You’ll learn how to narrow your focus, analyze who gets in and why, and look for the right financial fit before considering anything else, including geography, reputation, and, especially, ranking.

Among the tools and insights in Game On:

· Why forty years of failed free-market policies have led to skyrocketing tuition and historic levels of student debt
· Why applying to college has become a bewildering maze and how to find your way to a successful result
· Why college costs are more terrifying than you think
· How to read beyond the rack rate to negotiate the best financial package with the least debt
· Why merit is a myth, but merit aid is essential
· The difference between family debt and student debt and how to split it

A playbook for the Hunger Games of higher education, Game On explains the anxiety, uncertainty, and chaos in college admission, explodes the myth of meritocracy, exposes the academy’s connection to America’s widening gap between rich and poor, and provides strategies to beat—and reform—a broken system.

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A Guide to Writing College Admissions Essays

Cory M. Franklin

This book is a guide for students writing their college admissions essays, primarily the 650-word Common App essay and supplementary essays that many schools require as part of their admission applications. With more students applying to college, and those students applying to more schools than ever before, college admission selection is far more competitive than in the past and the college essay is a key component.

We offer suggestions on good topics to write about without getting too specific (and just as importantly what not to write about), vital tips on writing approach, grammar, and usage. This guide can be for anyone who wants to write better, more clearly and crisply. If used properly, this book will help you craft a readable, interesting essay that will attract the college admissions reader by giving you a creative voice and the means to express yourself. No guarantees, but it just might make a difference in the final admission process.

 

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Soundbite

Sara Harberson

Crack the code to college admissions and help students craft the ultimate statement of self-identity and get into their school of choice with this groundbreaking guide from America's College Counselor.

On average, an admissions committee takes seconds to decide whether to admit a student. They must sum up the student in one sentence that will tell them if a student is going to be a good fit for their program.

What is the best way to transform this admissions process from a stressful, pressure-cooker arms race into an empowering journey that paves the way to the best individual outcome?

Written by a college admissions insider turned consultant, Soundbite guides parents and students through the admissions process from start to finish. Armed with her knowledge of how the system works, Sara Harberson shares tried-and-tested exercises that have helped thousands of students gain admission to their school of choice. The soundbite, her signature tool, presents an opportunity for students to take the reins to craft their ultimate statement of self-identity and formulate their own personal definition of what is best. With this soundbite in place as their foundation, students achieve maximum impact when they present themselves to colleges. In doing so, the tables are turned: the student's fate no longer rests on a soundbite composed by an admissions officer. Instead, the student employs their own soundbite to define themselves on their own terms. Soundbite shifts the way we talk about the admissions process—from "Getting You In" to "Getting the Best You In."

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College Admission Essays For Dummies

Jessica Brenner

College is supposed to be fun, remember? Take the stress out of the admissions process with expert advice on writing personal essays.

College can be an absolute blast. But making it into your dream school is no easy feat. Don't be intimidated—College Admission Essays For Dummies is here to alleviate your anxieties and help you craft an unforgettable personal essay with the potential to impress any admissions committee.

This helpful guide walks you through every step of the writing process, from brainstorming and prep to the final polishes and submission. You'll learn how to make your essay stand out from the ocean of other applicants and get your personality to pop off the page.

In addition to stellar examples of essays that got their writers into their first-choice schools, you'll get the inside scoop on how to:

  • Use writing to transform you from a statistic into a compelling and attractive candidate
  • Illustrate who you are through vivid storytelling and self-reflection
  • Deal with writer's block and essay anxiety to get the most out of your time
  • Learn about the most common question types and get your admissions officer's attention with your short answers

With colleges around the country beginning to discount the impact of SAT and ACT scores, the personal essay is more important than ever. College Admission Essays For Dummies is the up-to-date roadmap you need to navigate your way to the perfect college essay.

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Accepted!

Jamie Beaton

Now a USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller!

How do you REALLY get accepted to Harvard, Yale, and the Ivy League?

Told from the fresh and personal perspective of 26-year-old Crimson Education CEO and Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford graduate Jamie Beaton, Accepted! is an honest and practical guide on beating the odds and getting into Ivy League and other elite schools – the smart way.

Beaton takes you behind the doors of the world's top college admissions offices, revealing the highly strategic selection processes applied by institutions whose reputations depend on the number of students they admit, or more pointedly, the tens of thousands that they don't.

In Accepted!, Beaton delivers the ultimate insider "how to" and disrupts cliched admissions advice with savvy strategies like:

  • Moneyballing the university rankings and increasing your chances of admission
  • Class spamming your way to academic supremacy and acceptance
  • Playing the early application dating game and understanding how institutions are using it to their reputational advantage


Packed with real-life examples from the thousands of students Beaton has helped land a spot at Harvard, Stanford, and other esteemed universities, Accepted! is a never-before assembled culmination of secrets, insights, and application strategies guaranteed to maximize your chances of "getting in" to the school of your choice.

From ambitious students and their supportive parents to academic advisors and admissions professionals, Accepted! is the must-read guide to demystifying the often-convoluted and increasingly competitive world of elite college admissions.

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Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be

Frank Bruni

Read award-winning journalist Frank Bruni's New York Times bestseller: an inspiring manifesto about everything wrong with today's frenzied college admissions process and how to make the most of your college years.

Over the last few decades, Americans have turned college admissions into a terrifying and occasionally devastating process, preceded by test prep, tutors, all sorts of stratagems, all kinds of rankings, and a conviction among too many young people that their futures will be determined and their worth established by which schools say yes and which say no.

In Where You Go is Not Who You'll Be, Frank Bruni explains why this mindset is wrong, giving students and their parents a new perspective on this brutal, deeply flawed competition and a path out of the anxiety that it provokes.

Bruni, a bestselling author and a columnist for the New York Times, shows that the Ivy League has no monopoly on corner offices, governors' mansions, or the most prestigious academic and scientific grants. Through statistics, surveys, and the stories of hugely successful people, he demonstrates that many kinds of colleges serve as ideal springboards. And he illuminates how to make the most of them. What matters in the end are students' efforts in and out of the classroom, not the name on their diploma.

Where you go isn't who you'll be. Americans need to hear that--and this indispensable manifesto says it with eloquence and respect for the real promise of higher education.

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