"I didn't know you were a... demon." "You idiot. I'm the demon." Kai's having a long day in Martha Wells' Witch King... After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well. But why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World Coalition appear to be growing in influence? Kai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions. He’s not going to like the answers.

She's promised to be loyal, dutiful, and obedient, but to whom? Lady Ammalie Avington, Baroness of Faebarrow, has discovered the truth, and it should not come as a surprise: the blood mage who threatened, spellbound, and abducted her intends to bring ruin to the realm--the very one she is sworn to serve. It's just a terribly inconvenient fact to learn because, well...he's rather cute. But it's not safe to pine after the son of a demon, especially not whilst locked up in a tower surrounded by infernal beings and a rival for your affection, nor trapped below ground in a den of beguiling vampires, nor even in the heart of a wild jungle under the tutelage of esoteric witches. Amma just can't help herself around Damien Maleficus Bloodthorne, danger be damned, but, truly, what danger is there? Damien's heart, the one he swears to not have, has been softening right before her eyes. Nevermind the weird smoke that sometimes unwittingly emanates from his hands or that faraway look he gets to his eyes, and a voice she can't hear telling him that he's meant to be a vessel? Surely it's all just a bad dream. After finally tasting freedom and learning that Amma may have ancient, innate magical powers of her own, why not use them to do exactly as she pleases?

His dark destiny awaits, and nothing will stand in his way. Except her. Dark lord Demon spawn Prophesied realm destroyer With a demon for a father, Damien Maleficus Bloodthorne’s destiny could be nothing but nefarious, and with the completion of his most vicious spell, Damien is on the cusp of fulfilling the evil inevitability all of his dark machinations have led to. And then, her. Bubbly Obnoxious Blonde Harboring secrets of her own, a tiny yet troublesome thief calling herself Amma completely upsets Damien’s malevolent plans when she mistakenly gets chained to his side through magic, forcing him to drag her across the realm. Killing her would fix things, of course, but the nauseatingly sweet Amma proves herself useful on Damien's unholy crusade and then proves herself the source of something even more sinister: feelings. Will Damien be forced to abandon his villainous birthright to help the tender thorn in his side? Or will he manage to overcome the virtue Amma insists on inspiring and instead cut it out at the heart?

An irreverent and charming collection of deeply personal essays about the joys of low pop culture and bad taste, exploring coming of age in the 2000s in the age of Hot Topic, Creed, and frosted lip gloss—from the James Beard Award-nominated writer of the Catapult column "Store-Bought Is Fine” Tacky is about the power of pop culture—like any art—to imprint itself on our lives and shape our experiences, no matter one's commitment to "good" taste. These fourteen essays are a nostalgia-soaked antidote to the millennial generation's obsession with irony, putting the aesthetics we hate to love—snakeskin pants, Sex and the City, Cheesecake Factory's gargantuan menu—into kinder and sharper perspective. Each essay revolves around a different maligned (and yet, Rax would argue, vital) cultural artifact, providing thoughtful, even romantic meditations on desire, love, and the power of nostalgia. An essay about the gym-tan-laundry exuberance of Jersey Shore morphs into an excavation of grief over the death of her father; in "You Wanna Be On Top," Rax writes about friendship and early aughts girlhood; in another, Guy Fieri helps her heal from an abusive relationship. The result is a collection that captures the personal and generational experience of finding joy in caring just a little too much with clarity, heartfelt honesty, and Rax King's trademark humor. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL

A fundamental reevaluation of how to be a sports fan by an acclaimed baseball writer. Sports fandom isn’t what it used to be. Owners and executives increasingly count on the blind loyalty of their fans and too often act against the team’s best interest. Intentionally tanking a season to get a high draft pick, scamming local governments to build cushy new stadiums, and actively subverting the players have become business as usual in professional sports. In Rethinking Fandom, sportswriter (and lifelong sports fan) Craig Calcaterra argues that fans have more power than they realize to change how their teams behave. With his characteristic wit and piercing commentary, Calcaterra calls for a radical reexamination of what it means to be a fan in the twenty-first century.

The best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with “dignity.” Fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for their dead. In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dress his grandfather’s mummified body. Grandpa’s mummy has lived in the family home for two years, where the family has maintained a warm and respectful relationship. She meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls), and introduces us to a Japanese kotsuage, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved-ones’ bones from cremation ashes. With curiosity and morbid humor, Doughty encounters vividly decomposed bodies and participates in compelling, powerful death practices almost entirely unknown in America. Featuring Gorey-esque illustrations by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity introduces death-care innovators researching green burial and body composting, explores new spaces for mourning—including a glowing-Buddha columbarium in Japan and America’s only open-air pyre—and reveals unexpected new possibilities for our own death rituals.

With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. For generations of Americans, the abolition of slavery was sheerest illusion. Similarly,the entrenched system of racial segregation seemed to last forever, and generations lived in the midst of the practice, with few predicting its passage from custom. The brutal, exploitative (dare one say lucrative?) convict-lease system that succeeded formal slavery reaped millions to southern jurisdictions (and untold miseries for tens of thousands of men, and women). Few predicted its passing from the American penal landscape. Davis expertly argues how social movements transformed these social, political and cultural institutions, and made such practices untenable.In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration", and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.

His dark destiny awaits, and nothing will stand in his way. Except her. Dark lord Demon spawn Prophesied realm destroyer With a demon for a father, Damien Maleficus Bloodthorne’s destiny could be nothing but nefarious, and with the completion of his most vicious spell, Damien is on the cusp of fulfilling the evil inevitability all of his dark machinations have led to. And then, her. Bubbly Obnoxious Blonde Harboring secrets of her own, a tiny yet troublesome thief calling herself Amma completely upsets Damien’s malevolent plans when she mistakenly gets chained to his side through magic, forcing him to drag her across the realm. Killing her would fix things, of course, but the nauseatingly sweet Amma proves herself useful on Damien's unholy crusade and then proves herself the source of something even more sinister: feelings. Will Damien be forced to abandon his villainous birthright to help the tender thorn in his side? Or will he manage to overcome the virtue Amma insists on inspiring and instead cut it out at the heart?