Before the online game Carpe Noctem hit the market, the average person wasted a third of their life sleeping. Now, instead of lying in bed dreaming about showing up late to class in their underwear, players step into a breathtaking world of fantasy and adventure. For most users, this is a dream come true. For players like MaxDamage24 and his sidekick Kirabell, it is about to become something else. After being fired, one of Noctem’s creators sets into motion a plan to bring the system crashing down. To stop the collapse, Max and Kira will have to gather their most trusted friends and embark on a quest that will push them to their absolute limits. Together they’ll face creepy dungeons, impossible bosses, and their own nightmares, all while doing their best to stay alive. With a mission this big, none of them will be the same after. The real question is… how much will they be forced to change? Only one thing is certain - if they want to survive, they’re gonna have to Party Hard.

Ludger was supposed to be just another forgotten soul, reborn into a quiet life under the care of his young mother, Elaine. With nothing but a mysterious system in his vision and the faint promise of growth, he resigned himself to learning the humble trade of cooking. Knives, fire, seasoning—his skills grew sharper than his years, but it wasn’t the power-fantasy adventure he once dreamed of. That is, until one reckless night in the tavern, when a hooded mage and a simple spell shattered the illusion of normalcy forever. Marked by the system as a prodigy, Ludger finds himself juggling more than just knives and plates. Every Job, every Class, every Master holds a new path forward, and he refuses to let his second life waste away like his first. From kitchen tricks to forbidden magic, his journey forces him to carve out his place in a world that rewards ambition—but punishes those who rise too quickly. Allies, enemies, and masters appear in unexpected places, and Ludger soon learns that every choice he makes reshapes not only his future, but the balance of power around him. What begins as the daily grind of a precocious child slowly transforms into the legend of a boy who refuses to follow anyone’s script but his own. With wit, stubborn pride, and the determination to never be helpless again, Ludger steps onto the path of true ascendance—one coin, one skill, and one risky gamble at a time.

The Connected System has come to Earth, bringing with it the apocalypse... In an instant, life as it was known is gone, replaced by a System called The Connection. It doesn't come quietly as earthquakes rock the planet, the chosen survivors falling unconscious as the Connection takes their bodies and Adapts them. Lochlan Brady and his family were on their way home from a camping weekend when the Connection appears. He awakens with a new Adapted body, finding his wife missing. Now Loch must survive and thrive in this new world with his two teenage daughters, Harper and Piper. All Loch wants to do is protect his daughters and find his wife. A chance encounter with creatures straight out of myth will force the family to quickly confront the reality of their new lives, the changed world and give Loch a jump in power. But with that power will come responsibility and more danger. Along with the attention of some of the most powerful beings in The Connected System.

In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation—that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation—the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments—that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day. Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north. As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post–World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. “The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important book” (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein’s invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.

A group of high schoolers get more than they bargained for when the drag show they’re attending is attacked by monsters in this funny YA graphic novel from acclaimed queer comics creator Sina Grace Marvin Matocho just wanted to have a simple night out with his friends at the local drag show. But when a mysterious pink snow starts to fall, Marvin finds himself the hero of his own story when Los Angeles suddenly becomes overrun by monsters. Now, he, along with his group of friends consisting of several queer teens, a drag queen, and a 50-something bar manager, are the only folks who can prevent the complete annihilation of the city—that is, if they can sort through their personal issues before they become dead meat. As they fight for their lives through a thrilling night, the gang must work together to find out who’s behind the sinister pink snow. With the city of angels overrun with demons, these misfits will have to solve the mystery—or die trying.

Non-stop action, space battles and intrigue abound in the second in a galactic-scale, gender-swapped space opera trilogy inspired by the life of Alexander The Great. The epic finale to Kate Elliott's action-packed Sun Chronicles.

Non-stop action, space battles and intrigue abound in the second in a galactic-scale, gender-swapped space opera trilogy inspired by the life of Alexander The Great. The Republic of Chaonia fleets under the joint command of Princess Sun and her formidable mother, Queen-Marshal Eirene, have defeated and driven out an invading fleet of the Phene Empire, although not without heavy losses. But the Empire remains strong and undeterred. While Chaonia scrambles to rebuild its military, the Empire's rulers are determined to squash Chaonia once and for all by any means necessary. On the eve of Eirene's bold attack on the rich and populous Karnos System, an unexpected tragedy strikes the republic. Sun must take charge or lose the throne. Will Sun be content with the pragmatic path laid out by her mother for Chaonia's future? Or will she forge her own legend despite all the forces arrayed against her?

Finn Foley has a lunchbox, and when he opens it, weird things come out . . . like a seven-foot-tall robot and a strange, blinking device that glues itself to his chest. The lunchbox also opens wormholes--shortcuts through space--that take Finn to the farthest corners of the galaxy. Sounds awesome, right? Not so much. Rocketing through the cosmos attracts the attention of the Plague, a race of gigantic bugs. The thing on Finn's chest belongs to them--it's the most dangerous weapon in the universe--and they want it back. To fight the Plague, Finn will need the lunchbox, as well as an unlikely squad of assistants: Lincoln, the bully; Julep, the coolest girl in school; Kate, Finn's unicorn-obsessed little sister; and Highbeam, a robot spy from another galaxy. If they can learn to work together, they just might have a chance, but the bugs are coming, and they'll stop at nothing to get their weapon--even if it means destroying the world.