By night, Brian Johnson sings in the biggest rock ’n’ roll band on the planet. But by day, AC/DC’s frontman drives balls to the wall. Cars and rock ’n’ roll—they were made for each other. When he was a young boy growing up in a working-class English town, Brian developed what would become a lifelong passion for cars, trolling junkyards and even pretending to drive the family car. From there, he steamed up the windows of his old Mini Cooper as a teenager, spent untold time in hygienically challenged tour buses with helpful signs such as No Shitting Allowed. Shagging Expected, was chauffeured in leather-trimmed limos, and raced cars to a checkered flag. Featuring guest stars Cliff Williams, Malcolm and Angus Young, and many, many others, even Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rockers and Rollers is a tribute to Brian’s obsession with four wheels. By turns surprising, poignant, funny, and maybe a little bit bawdy, these are the stories of a man who drives as hard as he rocks.

What do Amy Poehler, Bjork, Felicia Day, Martha Stewart, Miranda July, and Zooey Deschanel have in commonThey're just a few of the amazing women proving that geek is no longer a four-letter word.In recent years, male geeks have taken the world by storm. But what about their female counterpartsAfter all, fangirls are just like fanboys they put on their Imperial Stormtrooper Lycra pants one leg at a time. Geek Girls Unite is a call to arms for every girl who has ever obsessed over music, comics, film, comedy, books, crafts, fashion, or anything else under the Death Star. Music geek girl Leslie Simon offers an overview of the geek elite by covering groundbreaking women, hall-of-famers, ultimate love matches, and potential frenemies, along with her top picks for playlists, books, movies, and websites. This smart and hilarious tour through girl geekdom is a must-have for any woman who has ever wondered where her sassy rebel sisters have been hiding.

Newly revised and updated! The tenth anniversary edition of the inspirational book that has brought countless mothers and daughters closer together! The Mother-Daughter Book Club is the story of a group of mothers and their daughters, and how their relationships were strengthened and changed by starting a monthly reading club. But it is also a practical step-by-step guide filled with stories, anecdotes, and reading lists that will inspire parents to start reading clubs of their own.Shireen Dodson's message is a powerful one: Reading, learning, and sharing ideas can help nourish a daughter's confidence, strength, spirit, and independence. A reading club offers a mother the opportunity to enjoy her daughter's burgeoning mind as she moves toward womanhood. The Mother-Daughter Book Club is not merely about books. It is about mothers and daughters, girls and women, and how reading and talking enriches our relationships with one another.

This Amigurumi handbook is filled with new breeds of adorable miniature puppies. Photos inside reveal the secret, devilish world of your little friends, along with easy-to-follow patterns to help you create them. These sweet creatures are perfect additions to any Amigurumi collection.

The Glass Castle meets A League of Their Own in Solo, a candid and moving memoir about family, loss, and reconciliation from Hope Solo, the supremely talented, headline-making goalkeeper for the U.S. women’s national soccer team. During the 2011 Women’s World Cup, Solo became an idol, role model, and sex symbol to a new generation of young American sports enthusiasts, inspiring the kind of intense devotion not seen since the days of Mia Hamm. An Olympic gold medalist and arguably America’s sexiest athlete, Hope has been featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated (twice), in ESPN: The Magazine, and as a contestant on the hit ABC television show Dancing with the Stars, and her poignant, compelling, and profoundly inspiring personal history will score big with her legion of fans.

Street fighting. Brazilian jujitsu. Grappling. Welcome to BJ Penn's island. Don't worry, he won't hurt you (much). For the last decade, BJ Penn has been one of the most successful and feared fighters in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), rising through the ranks to become, pound for pound, one of the best in the world. Along the way, people have been quick to judge, praise, criticize, and hype him. They have torn him down only to build him back up. They have spilled ink and blood trying to understand what makes him the provocative and controversial fighter that he is.Why I Fight is the answer that everyone critics, fans, commentators, pundits, and perhaps even Dana White, current president of the UFC has been waiting for. In his own words, Penn tells the story of his life spent fighting, explaining what led a scrappy teenager from the rough streets of Hilo, Hawaii, onto the biggest stage in all of mixed martial arts (MMA). From his earliest days, becoming one of the preeminent practitioners of Brazilian jujitsu in the world, to his first MMA fights and his battles with UFC champions like Matt Hughes and Georges St-Pierre, Penn shows that in life, just like in the Octagon, he is never one to back down from a fight.A blunt and brutal look at his hardest-fought victories and his most frustrating defeats, Why I Fight is the story of how BJ Penn became one of only two fighters in UFC history to hold belts in two different weight classes. It is the story of a kid from Hawaii who loved to fight. It is the story of a true prodigy.

A little Coco Chanel, a lot Carrie Bradshaw, with a dash of Maureen Dowd a hip, hilarious collection of mini-profiles in shopping and romantic courage. From one very fabulous and elusive little pink raincoat (to woo the commitment phobe) to a pair of very persuasive peach panties (gift from a dazzling doc), author Gigi Anders relates her experiences as they deal with her dual obsessions of clothing and men. Here are ten vignettes chronicling ten choice sartorial items and the corresponding boyfriends that would undoubtedly love her stylishly ever after...even if they didn't.Featuring items and boyfriends from Anders's real life, real (extremely jammed) closet, and real bed, Little Pink Raincoat is a very tasty, very funny, universal, uplifting, pop cultural meditation on the things we crave and the lengths we'll go to get them.

It is perhaps the most memorable event of the twentieth century, a moment that left a family and a nation mourning, one that many Americans recall as their first historical memory the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.Within seven weeks of the President's death, Jacqueline Kennedy received more than 800,000 condolence letters. Two years later, the volume of correspondence would exceed 1.5 million letters. For the next forty-six years, the letters would remain essentially untouched.Now historian Ellen Fitzpatrick has selected approximately 250 of these letters for inclusion in Letters to Jackie, a remarkable human record that perfectly preserves the heart-wrenching grief and soul searching of the nation in a time of crisis. Capturing the extraordinary eloquence of so-called ordinary Americans across generations, regions, race, political leanings, and religion in messages written on elegant stationery, scraps of paper, in pencil, type, ink smudged by tears, and in barely legible handwriting the letters capture what John F. Kennedy meant to the country, and how his death for some divided American history into Before and After.In Letters to Jackie, Fitzpatrick allows Americans to write their own history of these tumultuous times. "The coffin was very small," as one sixteen-year-old girl observed, "to contain so much of so many Americans." In reflecting on their sense of loss, their fears, and their striving, the authors of these letters wrote an American elegy as poignant and as compelling as their shattered and cherished dreams.

From Dan Fante, the son of novelist John Fante, comes a gritty detective novel featuring JD Fiorella, an ex-private investigator who's bent on avenging his friend's murder.Failed private investigator JD Fiorella was a pro at finding trouble. Mixing it up with the wrong people in New York, he escaped to L.A.—only to hit rock-bottom after too many nightmares and too much booze.Now forty-six and sober, JD?is working hard to get it together. Living in Malibu at his mother's house in Point Dume, he's got a new job selling used cars with his friend Woody and a new girlfriend. But just as things are looking up, JD discovers a gruesome murder. Now the ex-private detective has to make a choice.Determined to exact vengeance, he follows a twisting trail of clues that leads him to unexpected truths about himself and his new life—and to a psychopathic killer with an eerie connection to his past. And, as JD soon learns, this time there's no easy way out.

The revered New York Times bestselling author, recognized as “America’s greatest crime writer” (Newsweek), brings back U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, the mesmerizing hero of Pronto, Riding the Rap, and the hit FX series Justified. With the closing of the Harlan County, Kentucky, coal mines, marijuana has become the biggest cash crop in the state. A hundred pounds of it can gross $300,000, but that’s chump change compared to the quarter million a human body can get you—especially when it’s sold off piece by piece. So when Dickie and Coover Crowe, dope-dealing brothers known for sampling their own supply, decide to branch out into the body business, it’s up to U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens to stop them. But Raylan isn’t your average marshal; he’s the laconic, Stetson-wearing, fast-drawing lawman who juggles dozens of cases at a time and always shoots to kill. But by the time Raylan finds out who’s making the cuts, he’s lying naked in a bathtub, with Layla, the cool transplant nurse, about to go for his kidneys.The bad guys are mostly gals this time around: Layla, the nurse who collects kidneys and sells them for ten grand a piece; Carol Conlan, a hard-charging coal-mine executive not above ordering a cohort to shoot point-blank a man who’s standing in her way; and Jackie Nevada, a beautiful sometime college student who can outplay anyone at the poker table and who suddenly finds herself being tracked by a handsome U.S. marshal. Dark and droll, Raylan is pure Elmore Leonard—a page-turner filled with the sparkling dialogue and sly suspense that are the hallmarks of this modern master.

From the unparalleled imagination of award-winning author Jeffrey Ford come twenty short stories (one, "The Wish Head," written expressly for this collection) that boldly redefine the world. Crackpot Palace is a sumptuous feast of the unexpected—an unforgettable journey that will carry readers to amazing places, though at times the locales may seem strangely familiar, almost like home. Whether he's tracking ghostly events on the border of New Jersey's mysterious Pine Barrens or following a well-equipped automaton general into battle, giving a welcome infusion of new blood to the hoary vampire trope or exposing the truth about what really went down on Dr. Moreau's Island of Lost Souls, Jeffrey Ford has opened a door into a dark and fantastic realm where dream and memory become one.

It's 2008. In three days, family man and Silicon Valley speechwriter Dan Jordan will see his start-up stock vest. He'll cash out with $1.1 million, turn in his frenetic Valley life in for a slower one on the beach with his wife and two children, and finally live the life he's supposed to live. Or so he thinks. Before he can collect his cash and get outta Dodge, all hell breaks loose. Dan is kidnapped by a gang of tiny IT nerds who threaten to get him fired before the options can vest, stalked by a potentially murderous corporate security muscle man, and confronted with the possible disintegration of his marriage, all while his sociopath neighbor, Crazy Larry, threatens to ruin everything. . . .Side-splittingly funny and full of larger-than-life characters, Cash Out is like Office Space as reimagined by the creators of The Hangover—a sly caper gone outrageously, unforgettably awry.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think my father's rage at the trenches took me over, when I was very young, and has never left me. Do children feel their parents' emotionsYes, we do, and it is a legacy I could have done without. What is the use of itIt is as if that old war is in my own memory, my own consciousness.In this extraordinary book, the 2007 Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing explores the lives of her parents, each irrevocably damaged by the Great War. Her father wanted the simple life of an English farmer, but shrapnel almost killed him in the trenches, and thereafter he had to wear a wooden leg. Her mother, Emily, spent the war nursing the wounded in the Royal Free Hospital after her great love, a doctor, drowned in the Channel.In the fictional first half of Alfred and Emily, Doris Lessing imagines the happier lives her parents might have made for themselves had there been no war; a story that begins with their meeting at a village cricket match outside Colchester. This is followed by a piercing examination of their relationship as it actually was in the shadow of the Great War, of the family's move to Africa, and of the impact of her parents' marriage on a young woman growing up in a strange land."Here I still am," says Doris Lessing, "trying to get out from under that monstrous legacy, trying to get free." Triumphantly, with the publication of Alfred and Emily, she has done just that.

Steven Winn and his wife, Sally, held out for as long as they could. When the San Francisco couple finally gave in to their only child Phoebe's pleas for a dog, they adopted a scraggly terrier mutt from a local animal shelter. The new family pet, Como, turned out to hate men especially the author and proved to be a cunning escape artist. Traumatized, single-minded, and exceptionally clever, Como was bent on breaking Winn's sanity and self-respect, his bank account and his heart. Come Back, Como is the story of one man's hilarious and poignant quest to win the trust of a dog who wanted nothing to do with him. With humor and pathos, Winn describes the maddening but ultimately rewarding effects Como had on his family, the misadventures and ordeals and terrifying events he and his dog endured together, and the greatest lesson Como taught him: that loving a dog can make us more human.