After putting on a successful and sensual(?) show of food tasting at the garden banquet, Maomao is the talk of the palace! But she soon discovers that notoriety isn’t the only thing the party has granted her! Her collection of hairpins from the event brings the young herbalist a brief window of freedom beyond the palace walls, as she returns to the pleasure district for the first time in ten months! But while reunions with her father and her friends await, so too does another mystery…

After explaining to Jinshi the circumstances behind the poisoned cup at the garden party, Maomao returns home to the pleasure district for the first time in ten months, thanks to the ornate hairpin she received at the party. But there, she gets swept up in yet another mystery?!

Near the end of World War II and after, a small-town Nebraska youth, Jimmy Kugler, drew more than a hundred double-sided sheets of comic strip stories. Over half of these six-panel tales retold the Pacific War as fought by "Frogs" and "Toads," humanoid creatures brutally committed to a kill-or-be-killed struggle. The history of American youth depends primarily on adult reminiscences of their own childhoods, adult testimony to the lives of youth around them, or surmises based on at best a few creative artifacts. The survival then of such a large collection of adolescent comic strips from America's small-town Midwest is remarkable. Michael Kugler reproduces the never-before-published comics of his father's adolescent imagination as a microhistory of American youth in that formative era. Also included in Into the Jungle! A Boy's Comic Strip History of World War II are the likely comic book models for these stories and inspiration from news coverage in newspapers, radio, movies, and newsreels. Kugler emphasizes how US propaganda intended to inspire patriotic support for the war gave this young artist a license for his imagined violence. In a context of progressive American educational reform, these violent comic stories, often in settings modeled on the artist's small Nebraska town, suggests a form of adolescent rebellion against moral conventions consistent with comic art's reputation for "outsider" or countercultural expressions. Kugler also argues that these comics provide evidence for the transition in American taste from war stories to the horror comics of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Kugler's thorough analysis of his father's adolescent art explains how a small-town boy from the plains distilled the popular culture of his day for an imagined war he could fight on his audacious, even shocking terms.

The Great American Novel of love and betrayal in the Jazz Age. ‘I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited – they went there’. Considered one of the all-time great American works of fiction, Fitzgerald’s glorious yet ultimately tragic social satire on the Jazz Age encapsulates the exuberance, energy and decadence of an era. After the war, the mysterious Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire pursues wealth, riches and the lady he lost to another man with stoic determination. He buys a mansion across from her house and throws lavish parties to try and entice her. When Gatsby finally does reunite with Daisy Buchanan, tragic events are set in motion. Told through the eyes of his detached and omnipresent neighbour and friend, Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald’s succinct and powerful prose hints at the destruction and tragedy that awaits.

Tequio in Mexico, auzolan in Basque Country, lumbung in Indonesia, ubuntu in South Africa, mutirao in Brazil - all terms used around the world to describe the concept of collective work. Bringing together 8 publishing houses and 7 writers, each writing in a different language, Lumbung Stories is a true product of communal action. From speculative essays and experimental texts to intimate stories that portray collective work as something every day and habitual, each writer presents their unique take on what a "lumbung story" is. These tales take us from olive groves in Andalusia to tiger-filled forests in Indonesia; from youths fumbling through adolescence together in the Basque country, to outsiders uniting through vibrant rituals in Sao Paulo, and from explorations of intergenerational and transhistorical struggle in South Africa, to an academic text from a society rebuilding in a post-Capitalist, post-climate-crisis future. Blurring the lines between realism and fiction, the past and the future, this unique and powerful collection brims with life and is a vital reminder of the ties that unite us all.

From the author of "The Homesman," Glendon Swarthout's "Bless the Beasts & Children" is the classic coming-of-age novel that explores the fabric of the American ideal--as seen through the eyes of rebellious youth.
"Send us a boy--we'll send you a cowboy" It doesn't matter if the kid hates the sight of horses. Or if he still sucks his thumb and wets the bed. He's got to be taught to toe the line. To measure up. To dig in his spurs--because that's the way things are at the Box Canyon Boys Camp in Arizona.
Based on the adventures of the author's own son, "Bless the Beasts & Children" tells a tragicomic tale of a group of disturbed teenaged boys from over-privileged families who are sent by their inattentive parents to camp in hopes that their lazy, urban kids will be toughened up in the cowboy program. Complications arise, but these problem boys band together to take up an important cause.
In this remarkable novel, Glendon Swarthout presents an electrifying portrait of six adolescent "misfits" on a desperate mission to save themselves. And, in a society dedicated to one narrow view of success, they learn something important about what it means to be a man. This is "an exciting mission-pursuit story with an engrossing cast of characters" ("Publishers Weekly").