Alan Olifson has a knack for taking relatable experiences - parenting mistakes, botched home improvements, the hassles of having to act like a grownup - and making them way funnier than I remember them being when they happened to me. - Jonathan Green, writer/producer of Superstore and The Office How to use a hacksaw? Car maintenance advice? How to avoid getting hustled by a twelve-year-old psychic? You will not likely find answers to those questions in Alan Olifson's hilarious, smart, real collection of essays. But you'll laugh, like a lot, as you read about Olifson's journey to figure it all out. - Rachna Fruchbom, writer of Fresh Off the Boat and Parks and Recreation Alan Olifson isn't just funny. As he proves in Manchild, he's whip smart and deeply honest.
Six Gallery Press
|
9781926616858
|
Paperback
Diary of a Drag Queen
By Crystal, Rasmussen,
"This book changed my life. Tom Rasmussen's honesty, vulnerability, and fearlessness jump out of every page and every word. It is the queer bible I've always needed." -- Sam Smith, singer and songwriterIn these pages, find glamour and gaffes on and off the stage, clarifying snippets of queer theory, terrifyingly selfish bosses, sex, quick sex, KFC binges, group sex, the kind of honesty that banishes shame, glimmers of hope, blazes of ambition, tender sex, mad dashes in last night's heels plus a full face of make-up, and a rom-com love story for the ages. This is where the unspeakable becomes the celebrated. This is the diary of a drag queen -- one dazzling, hilarious, true performance of a real, flawed, extraordinary life. "I hope people like me will read this and feel seen and loved by it. I hope people who aren't like me will enjoy it, laugh with it, learn from it. And I hope people who don't like me will file lawsuits just so I can wear my brand-new leopard-print skirt suit and bust their asses in court." -- Crystal Rasmussen, in Refinery29
FARRAR STRAUSS & GIROUX
|
9780374538576
|
This Is Just My Face
By Sidibe, Gabourey
The Oscar-nominated Precious star and Empire actress delivers a much-awaited memoir - wise, complex, smart, funny - a version of the American experience different from anything we've read Gabourey Sidibe - "Gabby" to her legion of fans - skyrocketed to international fame in 2009 when she played the leading role in Lee Daniels's acclaimed movie Precious. In This Is Just My Face, she shares a one-of-a-kind life story in a voice as fresh and challenging as many of the unique characters she's played onscreen. With full-throttle honesty, Sidibe paints her Bed-Stuy/Harlem family life with a polygamous father and a gifted mother who supports her two children by singing in the subway. Sidibe tells the engrossing, inspiring story of her first job as a phone sex "talker." And she shares her unconventional (of course!) rise to fame as a movie star, alongside "a superstar cast of rich people who lived in mansions and had their own private islands and amazing careers while I lived in my mom's apartment." Sidibe's memoir hits hard with self-knowing dispatches on friendship, depression, celebrity, haters, fashion, race, and weight ("If I could just get the world to see me the way I see myself," she writes, "would my body still be a thing you walked away thinking about?") . Irreverent, hilarious, and untraditional, This Is Just My Face will resonate with anyone who has ever felt different, and with anyone who has ever felt inspired to make a dream come true.
Houghton Mifflin
|
9780544786769
|
Hardcover
Ballad of the Green Beret
By Leepson, Marc
The rough-and-tumble life of Special Forces vet and Sixties pop star Barry SadlerThe top Billboard Hot 100 single of 1966 wasn't The Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black" or the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine"--it was "The Ballad of the Green Berets," a hyper-patriotic tribute to the men of the Special Forces by Vietnam veteran, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. But Sadler's clean-cut, all-American image hid a darker side, a Hunter Thompson-esque life of booze, girls, and guns. Unable to score another hit song, he wrote a string of popular pulp fiction paperbacks that made "Rambo look like a stroll through Disneyland." He killed a lover's ex-boyfriend in Tennessee. Settling in Central America, Sadler ran guns, allegedly trained guerrillas, provided medical care to residents, and caroused at his villa.
Stackpole Books
|
9780811717496
|
Hardcover
Please Wait to Be Tasted
By Perez-gallardo, Carla
Foreword by Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello.Home cooks will love serving up bold-flavored tropical comfort food from Please Wait to Be Tasted, the first cookbook from Lil' Deb's Oasis, the James Beard Award-nominated hotspot in Hudson, New York. More than a recipe collection, it's a big-hearted celebration of food, love, and community.For flavor-craving, art-loving, community-celebrating home cooks, Please Wait to Be Tasted serves up tropical comfort recipes, alongside musings on wine, music, love, sex, friendship, and fashion. At Lil' Deb's Oasis in the Hudson Valley of New York, chefs Carla Kaya Perez-Gallardo and Hannah Black, both art school graduates, have created a bright, welcoming, rainbow-colored, LGBTQ inclusive community, where guests are treated to "hot, sticky, juicy, moist fever dreams of flavor.
Princeton Architectural Press
|
9781648960253
|
Hardcover
Calypso
By Sedaris, David
David Sedaris returns with his most deeply personal and darkly hilarious book.If you've ever laughed your way through David Sedaris's cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you're getting with Calypso. You'd be wrong. When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself.With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny--it's a book that can make you laugh 'til you snort, the way only family can. Sedaris's powers of observation have never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumor joke. Calypso is simultaneously Sedaris's darkest and warmest book yet--and it just might be his very best.
Little Brown and Company
|
9780316392389
|
eBook
Black Privilege
By God, Charlamagne Tha
Charlamagne Tha God - the self-proclaimed "Prince of Pissing People Off", cohost of Power 105.1s The Breakfast Club, and "hip-hops Howard Stern" - shares his unlikely success story as well as how embracing ones truths is a fundamental key to success and happiness. In his new book, Charlamagne Tha God presents his comic, often controversial, and always brutally honest insights on how living an authentic life is the quickest path to success. Beginning with his journey from the small town of Moncks Corner, South Carolina, to his headline grabbing interviews with celebrities like Justin Bieber, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, and Hillary Clinton, he shares how he turned his troubled early life around by owning his (many) mistakes and refusing to give up on his dreams, even after his controversial opinions got him fired from several on-air jobs. Combining his own story with bold advice and his signature commitment to honesty at all costs, Charlamagne hopes this book will give others the confidence to live their own truths.
Touchstone Books
|
9781501145308
|
Hardcover
Drawing for Joy
By Jones, Stephanie Peterson
In Drawing for Joy, author and illustrator Stephanie Peterson Jones offers beginning artists a low-stress way to build a successful daily drawing practice in just 15 minutes a day. The accessible series of 52 week-by-week exercises, each with 7 drawing prompts or starts, teaches readers how to draw by exploring line, texture, pattern, and color. The book begins with basic information on the required materials for completing the exercises and essential techniques and strategies for coloring your creations. The exercises start with a focus on simple shapes such as circles, squares, and other geometric textures, then progress gradually toward creating more realistic motifs, including florals and other natural shapes, all built with line and pattern.
Quarry Books
|
9781631592959
|
Paperback
Dark Star
By Strachan, Alan
Vivien Leigh was perhaps the most iconic actress of the twentieth-century. As Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche Du Bois she took on some of the most pivotal roles in cinema history. Yet she was also a talented theatre actress with West End and Broadway plaudits to her name. In this ground-breaking new biography, Alan Strachan provides a completely new full-life portrait of Leigh, covering both her professional and personal life. Using previously-unseen sources from her archive, recently acquired by the V&A, he sheds new light on her fractious relationship with Laurence Olivier, based on their letters and diaries, as well as on the bipolar disorder which so affected her later life and work. Revealing new aspects of her early life as well as providing glimpses behind-the-scenes of the filming of "Gone with the Wind" and "A Streetcar Named Desire", this book provides the essential and comprehensive life-story of one of the twentieth century's greatest actresses.
I. B. Tauris
|
9781788312080
|
Hardcover
My Sisters And Me
By Dickenson, Lisa
Meet the Lake sisters... 'Fresh, funny and hugely entertaining' CATHY BRAMLEY'The perfect book!' HEIDI SWAIN'Cracking, cosy, emotional and witty'KIRSTY GREENWOOD 'You are all going to completely fall in love with this story' HOLLY MARTIN 'A feel-good hoot of a read' HEAT The BRAND NEW feel-good, kick-ass novel about sisterhood and second chances. Perfect for fans of Sophie Kinsella, Lindsey Kelk, Mhairi McFarlane and Anna Bell. **** They're fixing up their childhood home. It's going to get messy. When Willow Lake asks her daughters for help renovating the family home, each has a reason to hesitate about returning to Maplewood . . . For quiet and bookish Emmy going back to the town that ridiculed her fills her with dread. The youngest Noelle is perfectly comfortable in herself now, but once wanted to fit in so badly that she walked away from her first love.
Manchild
By Olifson, Alan
Alan Olifson has a knack for taking relatable experiences - parenting mistakes, botched home improvements, the hassles of having to act like a grownup - and making them way funnier than I remember them being when they happened to me. - Jonathan Green, writer/producer of Superstore and The Office How to use a hacksaw? Car maintenance advice? How to avoid getting hustled by a twelve-year-old psychic? You will not likely find answers to those questions in Alan Olifson's hilarious, smart, real collection of essays. But you'll laugh, like a lot, as you read about Olifson's journey to figure it all out. - Rachna Fruchbom, writer of Fresh Off the Boat and Parks and Recreation Alan Olifson isn't just funny. As he proves in Manchild, he's whip smart and deeply honest.
Diary of a Drag Queen
By Crystal, Rasmussen,
"This book changed my life. Tom Rasmussen's honesty, vulnerability, and fearlessness jump out of every page and every word. It is the queer bible I've always needed." -- Sam Smith, singer and songwriterIn these pages, find glamour and gaffes on and off the stage, clarifying snippets of queer theory, terrifyingly selfish bosses, sex, quick sex, KFC binges, group sex, the kind of honesty that banishes shame, glimmers of hope, blazes of ambition, tender sex, mad dashes in last night's heels plus a full face of make-up, and a rom-com love story for the ages. This is where the unspeakable becomes the celebrated. This is the diary of a drag queen -- one dazzling, hilarious, true performance of a real, flawed, extraordinary life. "I hope people like me will read this and feel seen and loved by it. I hope people who aren't like me will enjoy it, laugh with it, learn from it. And I hope people who don't like me will file lawsuits just so I can wear my brand-new leopard-print skirt suit and bust their asses in court." -- Crystal Rasmussen, in Refinery29
This Is Just My Face
By Sidibe, Gabourey
The Oscar-nominated Precious star and Empire actress delivers a much-awaited memoir - wise, complex, smart, funny - a version of the American experience different from anything we've read Gabourey Sidibe - "Gabby" to her legion of fans - skyrocketed to international fame in 2009 when she played the leading role in Lee Daniels's acclaimed movie Precious. In This Is Just My Face, she shares a one-of-a-kind life story in a voice as fresh and challenging as many of the unique characters she's played onscreen. With full-throttle honesty, Sidibe paints her Bed-Stuy/Harlem family life with a polygamous father and a gifted mother who supports her two children by singing in the subway. Sidibe tells the engrossing, inspiring story of her first job as a phone sex "talker." And she shares her unconventional (of course!) rise to fame as a movie star, alongside "a superstar cast of rich people who lived in mansions and had their own private islands and amazing careers while I lived in my mom's apartment." Sidibe's memoir hits hard with self-knowing dispatches on friendship, depression, celebrity, haters, fashion, race, and weight ("If I could just get the world to see me the way I see myself," she writes, "would my body still be a thing you walked away thinking about?") . Irreverent, hilarious, and untraditional, This Is Just My Face will resonate with anyone who has ever felt different, and with anyone who has ever felt inspired to make a dream come true.
Ballad of the Green Beret
By Leepson, Marc
The rough-and-tumble life of Special Forces vet and Sixties pop star Barry SadlerThe top Billboard Hot 100 single of 1966 wasn't The Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black" or the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine"--it was "The Ballad of the Green Berets," a hyper-patriotic tribute to the men of the Special Forces by Vietnam veteran, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. But Sadler's clean-cut, all-American image hid a darker side, a Hunter Thompson-esque life of booze, girls, and guns. Unable to score another hit song, he wrote a string of popular pulp fiction paperbacks that made "Rambo look like a stroll through Disneyland." He killed a lover's ex-boyfriend in Tennessee. Settling in Central America, Sadler ran guns, allegedly trained guerrillas, provided medical care to residents, and caroused at his villa.
Please Wait to Be Tasted
By Perez-gallardo, Carla
Foreword by Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello.Home cooks will love serving up bold-flavored tropical comfort food from Please Wait to Be Tasted, the first cookbook from Lil' Deb's Oasis, the James Beard Award-nominated hotspot in Hudson, New York. More than a recipe collection, it's a big-hearted celebration of food, love, and community.For flavor-craving, art-loving, community-celebrating home cooks, Please Wait to Be Tasted serves up tropical comfort recipes, alongside musings on wine, music, love, sex, friendship, and fashion. At Lil' Deb's Oasis in the Hudson Valley of New York, chefs Carla Kaya Perez-Gallardo and Hannah Black, both art school graduates, have created a bright, welcoming, rainbow-colored, LGBTQ inclusive community, where guests are treated to "hot, sticky, juicy, moist fever dreams of flavor.
Calypso
By Sedaris, David
David Sedaris returns with his most deeply personal and darkly hilarious book.If you've ever laughed your way through David Sedaris's cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you're getting with Calypso. You'd be wrong. When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself.With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny--it's a book that can make you laugh 'til you snort, the way only family can. Sedaris's powers of observation have never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumor joke. Calypso is simultaneously Sedaris's darkest and warmest book yet--and it just might be his very best.
Black Privilege
By God, Charlamagne Tha
Charlamagne Tha God - the self-proclaimed "Prince of Pissing People Off", cohost of Power 105.1s The Breakfast Club, and "hip-hops Howard Stern" - shares his unlikely success story as well as how embracing ones truths is a fundamental key to success and happiness. In his new book, Charlamagne Tha God presents his comic, often controversial, and always brutally honest insights on how living an authentic life is the quickest path to success. Beginning with his journey from the small town of Moncks Corner, South Carolina, to his headline grabbing interviews with celebrities like Justin Bieber, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, and Hillary Clinton, he shares how he turned his troubled early life around by owning his (many) mistakes and refusing to give up on his dreams, even after his controversial opinions got him fired from several on-air jobs. Combining his own story with bold advice and his signature commitment to honesty at all costs, Charlamagne hopes this book will give others the confidence to live their own truths.
Drawing for Joy
By Jones, Stephanie Peterson
In Drawing for Joy, author and illustrator Stephanie Peterson Jones offers beginning artists a low-stress way to build a successful daily drawing practice in just 15 minutes a day. The accessible series of 52 week-by-week exercises, each with 7 drawing prompts or starts, teaches readers how to draw by exploring line, texture, pattern, and color. The book begins with basic information on the required materials for completing the exercises and essential techniques and strategies for coloring your creations. The exercises start with a focus on simple shapes such as circles, squares, and other geometric textures, then progress gradually toward creating more realistic motifs, including florals and other natural shapes, all built with line and pattern.
Dark Star
By Strachan, Alan
Vivien Leigh was perhaps the most iconic actress of the twentieth-century. As Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche Du Bois she took on some of the most pivotal roles in cinema history. Yet she was also a talented theatre actress with West End and Broadway plaudits to her name. In this ground-breaking new biography, Alan Strachan provides a completely new full-life portrait of Leigh, covering both her professional and personal life. Using previously-unseen sources from her archive, recently acquired by the V&A, he sheds new light on her fractious relationship with Laurence Olivier, based on their letters and diaries, as well as on the bipolar disorder which so affected her later life and work. Revealing new aspects of her early life as well as providing glimpses behind-the-scenes of the filming of "Gone with the Wind" and "A Streetcar Named Desire", this book provides the essential and comprehensive life-story of one of the twentieth century's greatest actresses.
My Sisters And Me
By Dickenson, Lisa
Meet the Lake sisters... 'Fresh, funny and hugely entertaining' CATHY BRAMLEY'The perfect book!' HEIDI SWAIN'Cracking, cosy, emotional and witty'KIRSTY GREENWOOD 'You are all going to completely fall in love with this story' HOLLY MARTIN 'A feel-good hoot of a read' HEAT The BRAND NEW feel-good, kick-ass novel about sisterhood and second chances. Perfect for fans of Sophie Kinsella, Lindsey Kelk, Mhairi McFarlane and Anna Bell. **** They're fixing up their childhood home. It's going to get messy. When Willow Lake asks her daughters for help renovating the family home, each has a reason to hesitate about returning to Maplewood . . . For quiet and bookish Emmy going back to the town that ridiculed her fills her with dread. The youngest Noelle is perfectly comfortable in herself now, but once wanted to fit in so badly that she walked away from her first love.