In this deadly endgame, the final move is hers . . .In America, the Registry weds girls to the highest bidder and raises boys for its army.Mia Morrissey escaped to make her life her own, and now that she has, she will risk everything so that everyone can be free.Going undercover as part of a diplomatic mission, Mia returns to America. But life there is more dangerous than ever as the walls grow taller, and the forgotten country faces its most ruthless leader yet, Grant Marsden . . . a shadow from Mia's past. With the help of Andrew, Carter, and other members of the subversive group Affinity, she embarks on a perilous journey to defeat Grant, bring down the government, and destroy the Registry once and for all.But when a terrible betrayal exposes the operation, Mia discovers that her enemies have used her—and so have her friends. Alone and frightened, she's uncertain of whom to trust—or whether the mission is worth the sacrifice.With the fate of her friends and the future of her country on the line, Mia knows that her next step may be the last for her . . . and America.

Spanning over a decade, told in alternating voices, The Grown Ups explores the indelible bonds of friends and family and the connections that form between Sam, Suzie, and Bella as they navigate parents, siblings, and one another on the way to becoming who they really want to be when they grow up.

In the spring of 2003, Norman Mailer, who was then eighty years old, invited an improbable companion into his life: Dwayne Raymond, a young writer who was waiting tables at a restaurant in Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, where Mailer spent most of his final years. Raymond became Mailer's aide in all matters professional and private, assisting the Pulitzer Prize–winning author on the four books he published during this time, including his last novel, The Castle in the Forest. As Raymond's responsibilities grew, so too did his closeness to Mailer, who in turn taught him how to navigate his own personal challenges.In this touching memoir, Dwayne Raymond presents a loving portrait of Norman Mailer in his twilight years, depicting a quirky and complex but achingly human man so unlike the Mailer of disquieting legend. Beautifully written and honestly portrayed, Mornings with Mailer is a personal and revealing story of a great writer, his man Friday, and their unlikely but enduring friendship.

"Alexander's behavior was conditioned along certain lines -- heroism, courage, strength, superstition, bisexuality, intoxication, cruelty. He bestrode Europe and Asia like a supernatural figure."In this succinct portrait of Alexander the Great, distinguished scholar and historian Norman Cantor illuminates the personal life and military conquests of this most legendary of men. Cantor draws from the major writings of Alexander's contemporaries combined with the most recent psychological and cultural studies to show Alexander as he was -- a great figure in the ancient world whose puzzling personality greatly fueled his military accomplishments.He describes Alexander's ambiguous relationship with his father, Philip II of Macedon; his oedipal involvement with his mother, the Albanian princess Olympias; and his bisexuality. He traces Alexander's attempts to bridge the East and West, the Greek and Persian worlds, using Achilles, hero of the Trojan War, as his model. Finally, Cantor explores Alexander's view of himself in relation to the pagan gods of Greece and Egypt.More than a biography, Norman Cantor's Alexander the Great is a psychological rendering of a man of his time.

Chocolate cake for breakfast and a pound of spinach for dinnerLooking and feeling your best has never been so easy, so guiltless or so much fun!Let's be honest, ladies, are you tired of hearing about the eating habits of airbrushed celebritiesDo you want to feel sexy as you slide into your favorite jeans, but you're too confused by the complicated diet plans out thereWell, here is the antidote to all of that nonsense!With saucy wit and goodwill to spare, Lipper and Vincent reveal their tricks for how you can overcome any food obstacle, from which cocktails will keep you light on your feet past midnight to how you can stay on track when you're down in the dumps (or if you just got dumped). They'll teach you how to eat the foods you love with confidence, make smarter choices, and wake up your inner Hot Chick once and for all.It's time to end the vicious dieting cycle with this straightforward and hilarious guide to enjoying your food, embracing your body and celebrating yourself like only a true Hot Chick can.

The California condor has been described as a bird "with one wing in the grave."Flying on wings nearly ten feet wide from tip to tip, these birds thrived on the carcasses of animals like woolly mammoths. Then, as humans began dramatically reshaping North America, the continent's largest flying land bird started disappearing. By the beginning of the twentieth century, extinction seemed inevitable.But small groups of passionate individuals refused to allow the condor to fade away, even as they fought over how and why the bird was to be saved. Scientists, farmers, developers, bird lovers, and government bureaucrats argued bitterly and often, in the process injuring one another and the species they were trying to save. In the late 1980s, the federal government made a wrenching decision -- the last remaining wild condors would be caught and taken to a pair of zoos, where they would be encouraged to breed with other captive condors. Livid critics called the plan a recipe for extinction. After the zoo-based populations soared, the condors were released in the mountains of south-central California, and then into the Grand Canyon, Big Sur, and Baja California. Today the giant birds are nowhere near extinct.The giant bird with "one wing in the grave" appears to be recovering, even as the wildlands it needs keep disappearing. But the story of this bird is more than the story of a vulture with a giant wingspan -- it is also the story of a wild and giant state that has become crowded and small, and of the behind-the-scenes dramas that have shaped the environmental movement. As told by John Nielsen, an environmental journalist and a native Californian, this is a fascinating tale of survival.

The final word on what traits make for highly successful managers and a detailed explanation of how to identify potential standout performers. Executive Intelligence is about the substance behind great leadership. Inspired by the work of Peter Drucker and Jim Collins, Justin Menkes set out to isolate the qualities that make for the 'right' people. Drawing on his background in psychology and bolstered by interviews with accomplished CEOs, Menkes paints the portrait of the ideal executive.In a sense, Menkes's work reveals an executive IQ the cognitive skills necessary in order to excel in senior management positions. Star leaders readily differentiate primary priorities from secondary concerns; they identify flawed assumptions; they anticipate the different needs of various stakeholders and how they might conflict with one another; and they recognise the underlying agendas of individuals in complex exchanges.Weaving together research, interviews and the results of his own proprietary testing, Menkes exposes one of the great fallacies of corporate life, that hiring and promotion are conducted on a systematic or scientific basis that allows the most accomplished to rise to their levels of optimal responsibility. Finally, Menkes is a passionate advocate for finding and employing the most talented people, especially those who may have been held back by external assumptions.

Venturing into uncharted territory, mother and award-winning journalist Meredith Maran takes us inside teenagers' hearts, minds, and central nervous systems to explore the causes and consequences of our nation's drug crisis. In these pages we get to know the kids, the parents, the therapists, and the drug treatment programs at their best and worst. We're face-to-face with seventeen-year-old Mike, whose life revolves around selling, smoking, and snorting speed; fifteen-year-old Tristan -- the boy next door -- who can't get enough pot, pills, or vodka; and sixteen-year-old Zalika, a runaway, crack dealer, and prostitute since the age of twelve. Combining powerful on-the-street reporting and groundbreaking research, Dirty is essential reading for every parent and professional who works with or cares about children or teenagers.

In the bestselling tradition of The Dance of Anger, a compassionate and insightful guide that shows women how they can learn to feel good about who they are and what they do.

When Scott McKenzie was a young man, he thought he saw God . . .The deity was all in black with knee-high silver boots, a patent-leather breastplate, and full face makeup, clutching a beautiful, custom Les Paul guitar. Ace Frehley, lead guitarist for the rock group KISS, wasn't God but hearing his piercing, shrieking, screaming, outrageous guitar solos was a transcendent spiritual experience for a boy from rural Kentucky, making him feel uplifted, a witness to a higher power.Two decades later, a grown-up Scott McKenzie vowed to meet Ace Frehley in the flesh as well as the other gods and demigods who have held divine power over a generation of worshipful metal fans: legendary guitar champions like Glenn Tipton of Judas Priest and Phil Collen of Def Leppard, hallowed names like Steve Vai, Warren DeMartini, and John 5.Power Chord is a chronicle of Scott McKenzie's epic quest to stand in the presence of metal greatness to meet his omnipotent guitar gods face-to-face and get them to divulge their otherworldly secret.

Prominent feminist author Barbara Walker has revamped, retold, and infused with life some of your favorite classic fairy tales. No longer are women submissive, helpless creatures in need of redemption through the princely male! Instead they are vibrantly alive, strong women who take fate into their own hands.

From the freewheeling rush of hijacking trucks to the brutal race wars that marked his decade-long stint in jail, former Mafia insider Louis Ferrante describes his remarkable journey from rising mobster to federal prison inmate to full-time writer. As Louis Ferrante tells it, the bottom line was money and his word was good. During his teenage years, Ferrante and his crew members hijacked delivery trucks and drove them to drop-offs all over New York, reselling the merchandise and pocketing thousands of dollars per load. For a seventeen-year-old who liked fist fighting and fast cars, it was the quickest money on the street, and it soon earned Ferrante the attention of the infamous Gambino crime family, led by late Mob boss John Gotti. In the early nineties, Ferrante's growing Mafia connections enabled him to pull off some of the most lucrative heists in American history all by the age of twenty-one.But the same handshakes that once sealed deals soon could no longer be trusted, and the betrayal by several of his close friends brought the feds banging down Ferrante's door. Symptomatic of the nation's larger crackdown on organized crime, indictments came from the Secret Service, the Nassau County Organized Crime Force, and the FBI. By 1994, Ferrante faced a life sentence in prison. He pleaded guilty and would serve nearly a decade in some of the most notorious penitentiaries in America. With raucous violence teeming around him, Ferrante relied on his Mob connections and street smarts to keep him alive until an unexpected exchange with a guard propelled him to a painful self-reckoning: Who am IWhat is it that makes me this wayDo I have a purpose?Desperate to escape from his bleak surroundings, Ferrante immersed himself in the study of history and literature. Over the term of his incarceration, each book became a much-needed sanctuary from the brutal chaos of his everyday existence, each page a challenge to his rapidly expanding knowledge of the world. Ferrante read voraciously a journey of the mind that took him from philosophy and ancient classics to nineteenth-century fiction. He also learned the art of writing and studied the major world religions, eventually deciding to become an Orthodox Jew. And with only limited access to legal texts, Ferrante taught himself enough about the American justice system to successfully appeal his own conviction, in a case that is now cited in courtrooms across the country. Gritty and hard-hitting, Ferrante's memoir recounts his rapid rise to the upper echelons of the Mafia hierarchy, his time in prison, and his struggle to turn his life around. Unlocked is an astonishing journey a true story of personal transformation that is both shocking and unforgettable.

Did You Know Female alcoholics are twice as likely to die as male alcoholics in the same age group Women metabolize alcohol differently from men, more quickly developing such physical complications as liver disease, high blood pressure, and hepatitis. A female alcoholic is more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, which may not go away even if she stops drinking. An astonishing four million women in the U.S. meet the diagnostic criteria for abuse or dependence. When a woman drinks, she is five times more likely to be raped. These are just a few of the alarming facts you will learn from this book -- facts every woman needs to know. Mixing cutting-edge research with affecting stories of women who struggle with alcohol problems, Happy Hours challenges our assumptions and expands our awareness of the role alcohol plays in women's lives.

France, 1940. The once glittering boulevards of Paris teem with spies, collaborators, and the Gestapo now that France has fallen to Hitler's Wermacht. For André Breton, Max Ernst, Victor Serge, Marc Chagall, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, Remedios Varo, Benjamin Péret, and scores of other cultural elite denounced as enemies of the Third Reich, fear and uncertainty define daily life. One wrong glance, one misplaced confidence, could mean arrest, deportation, and death. Their only salvation is the Villa Air-Bel, a ch?teau outside Marseille where a group of young people will go to extraordinary lengths to keep them alive. Financed by the Emergency Rescue Committee, a private American relief organization, unlikely heroes—feisty graduate student Miriam Davenport, Harvard-educated classical scholar Varian Fry, beautiful and compelling heiress Mary Jayne Gold, and brilliant young Socialist and survivor of the Battle of Dunkerque Danny Bénédite and his British wife, Theo—cajole, outwit, and use every means possible to stave off the Nazis and newly installed Vichy government officials circling closer with each passing day. The ch?teau was a vibrant artistic salon, home to lively debates and clandestine affairs, to Sunday art auctions and subversive surrealist games. Relationships within the house were tense and arguments were common, but the will to survive kept the covert operation under wraps. Beyond the ch?teau's luscious fa?ade war raged, yet hope reverberated within its halls. With the aid of their young rescuers, this diverse intelligentsia—intense, brilliant, and utterly terrified—was able to survive one of the darkest chapters of the twentieth century. Villa Air-Bel is a powerfully told, meticulously researched true story. Rosemary Sullivan explores the diaries, memoirs, and letters of the individuals involved while uncovering their private worlds and the web of relationships they developed. Filled with suspense, drama, and intrigue, Villa Air-Bel is an excellent work of narrative nonfiction that delves into a fascinating albeit hidden saga in our recent history.

In the haunting tradition of Joe McGinniss's Fatal Vision and Mikal Gilmore's Shot in the Heart, True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa weaves a spellbinding tale of murder, love, and deceit with a deeply personal inquiry into the slippery nature of truth.The story begins in February of 2002, when a reporter in Oregon contacts New York Times Magazine writer Michael Finkel with a startling piece of news. A young, highly intelligent man named Christian Longo, on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list for killing his entire family, has recently been captured in Mexico, where he'd taken on a new identity Michael Finkel of the New York Times.The next day, on page A-3 of the Times, comes another bit of troubling news: a note, written by the paper's editors, explaining that Finkel has falsified parts of an investigative article and has been fired. This unlikely confluence sets the stage for a bizarre and intense relationship. After Longo's arrest, the only journalist the accused murderer will speak with is the real Michael Finkel. And as the months until Longo's trial tick away, the two men talk for dozens of hours on the telephone, meet in the jailhouse visiting room, and exchange nearly a thousand pages of handwritten letters.With Longo insisting he can prove his innocence, Finkel strives to uncover what really happened to Longo's family, and his quest becomes less a reporting job than a psychological cat-and-mouse game sometimes redemptively honest, other times slyly manipulative. Finkel's pursuit pays off only at the end, when Longo, after a lifetime of deception, finally says what he wouldn't even admit in court the whole, true story. Or so it seems.

When journalist Dennis Cass was nineteen years old his stepfather, Bill, suffered from a psychotic break. Cass tried to commit him to a mental institution only to watch Bill escape from a cab en route to a Harlem hospital and run raving down the streets of Manhattan. Some fifteen years later, a bout of writer's block turned Cass's thoughts toward the brain. A complete stranger to science, Cass immersed himself in the world of neuroscience, subjecting himself to brain scans, psychological tests, and scientific conferences, as he attempted to gain a better understanding of ADHD, anxiety, stress, motivation and reward, and consciousness. Then things got a little weird. What began as a more clinical effort to understand himself soon became a personal and emotional journey into the fragile, mysterious workings of the mind and the self. Head Case is a charming, hilarious, and at times harrowing memoir of scientific experimentation. It's a story of science and society, of fathers and sons, and of how the past lives on in the present. Along the way the book asks timeless questions: What do we know about ourselvesWhat can we know about ourselvesAnd how much self-knowledge can a single person handle?

Alexandra Stoddard, world famous interior decorator, author and lecturer, originally opened the eyes of millions to the beauty and grace of simplicity in her phenomenal bestseller Living a Beautiful Life and the books that followed. Now, in Making Choices, she teaches us to widen our horizons by helping us feel the pleasure, satifaction, and joy of creative decision making and self-reliance and to discover our inner being, our own destiny, the lifestyle that is ours, and the art of living in the light of self-expression and fulfillment.

Once upon a time, twenty-four grown men would play baseball together, eat together, carouse together, and brawl together. Alas, those hard-partying warriors have been replaced by GameBoy-obsessed, laptop-carrying, corporate soldiers who would rather punch a clock than a drinking buddy. But it wasn't always this way ...In The Bad Guys Won, award-winning former Sports Illustrated baseball writer Jeff Pearlman returns to an innocent time when a city worshipped a man named Mookie and the Yankess were the second-best team in New York. So it was in 1986, when the New York Mets -- the last of baseball's live-like-rock-star teams -- won the World Series and captured the hearts (and other select body parts) of fans everywhere.But their greatness on the field was nearly eclipsed by how bad they were off it. Led by the indomitable Keith Hernandez and the young dynamic duo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, along with the gallant Scum Bunch, the Amazin's won 108 regular-season games, while leaving a wide trail of wreckage in their wake -- hotel rooms, charter planes, a bar in Houston, and most famously Bill Buckner and the eternally cursed Boston Red Sox. With an unforgettable cast of characters -- Doc, Straw, the Kid, Nails, Mex, and manager Davey Johnson (as well as innumerable groupies) -- The Bad Guys Won immortalizes baseball's last great wild bunch of explores what could have been, what should have been, and thanks to a tragic dismantling of the club, what never was.

When Jason Mulgrew enrolls in a private high school in an exciting new neighborhood (North Philly, murder center of the city), he finds himlf displaced into a world of privilege and strict standards. His classmates, whose parents are lawyers and bankers, live in houses with yards and pools. Mulgrew, whose longshoreman father bought him a motorcycle upon completion of his driver's test, struggles to relate in this wider world, fighting his way through the gauntlet of high school as an awkward, sexless giant. Mulgrew tackles the glorious complications, misapprehensions, and obsessions of the teenage mind. He revisits his unhealthy fixations on dogs, his "bird," the Prep, friends who are girls, Kahlúa & Cream, and a certain position in student body government to craft yet another raunchy, honest, and relentlessly funny memoir.

You could hear the voices murmuring, small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body. A peerless American storyteller, Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury eighteen startling visions of humankind destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin. In this phantasmagoric sideshow, living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets. Provocative and powerful, Ray Bradbury The Illustrated Man is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth as exhilarating as interplanetary travel, as maddening as a walk in a million-year rain, and as comforting as simple, familiar rituals on the last night of the world.

In the beginning, there was The Average American Male . Maxim called it "pure filth." Even Penthouse called it "appalling." The New York Times called it "the literary love child of Neil LaBute, Judy Blume, and Eminem." Now, Chad Kultgen's unforgettable antihero is back this time as a married man. I can feel something hot twisting and burning in the pit of my stomach. For a fleeting moment I think back to a time when I was with Casey, my girlfriend before Alyna....I tried to initiate something by grabbing her tit and kissing her when we walked through her front door. She turned to me and said something about how our relationship didn't always have to be about sex. I remember how much I wanted to smash something when she said that, how much I wanted to scream in her face that our relationship was only about sex....Relationships between men and women are only about sex. The rest of the sh*t is incidental. Welcome back.