Bestselling author, artist, and illustrator Lisa Congdon brings her expertise to this guide to the process of artistic self-discovery. Find Your Artistic Voice helps artists and creatives identify and nurture their own visual identity. This one-of-a-kind book helps artists navigate the influence of creators they admire, while simultaneously appreciating the value of their personal journey. • Features down-to-earth and encouraging advice from Congdon herself • Filled with interviews with established artists, illustrators, and creatives • Answers the question "how do I develop a unique artistic style?" An artist's voice is their calling card—it's what makes each of their works vital and particular, but developing such singular artistry requires effort and persistence. Find Your Artistic Voice offers everyday strategies, inspirational anecdotes, and practical advice to push through fear and insecurity in your artistic practice. • Makes a perfect gift for aspiring artists and creatives, serious hobbyists, art students, makers, teachers, budding creative professionals, and fans of Lisa Congdon • A self-help creativity book for those looking for artistic guidance • Great for those who enjoyed reading The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, and Art/ Everything You Need to Know (and Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber

A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life. Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income. In I’m Glad My Mom Died , Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly , she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants. Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.

Brian, Nik and Darby - three friends practiced in ennui, binge-drinking, hooking up with strangers and fighting supernatural crime (when Brian's not committing it as a werewolf once a month) - have been sent by Abe Van Helsing (yes, one of those Van Helsings) to try to track down a colleague who has gone missing in London. As they putz around the city, following any leads that might help them find their British counterpart, they uncover a clairvoyancy smuggling ring, located right in the heart of the financial district. Who's kidnapping all the fortune tellers in Soho and why? And is it coincidence, fate or something more sinister altogether that Maeve, a timid trans woman taking time out of her job to track down her birth mother, turns up on the gang's doorstep...and has the uncanny ability to know just what's going to happen next?

Brian, an aimless slacker, works doubles at his shift job, forgets to clean his room and lays about with his friends Nik and Darby. He's been struggling to manage his transition to adulthood almost as much as his monthly transitions to a werewolf. Really, he is not great at the whole werewolf thing, and his recent murderous slip-ups have caught the attention of Tyler, a Millennial were-mentor determined to take the mythological world by storm. Tyler has got a plan, and weirdly his self-help punditry actually encourages Brian to shape up and to stop accidently marking out guys who ghosted him on Grindr as potential monthly victims. But as Brian gets closer to Tyler's pack, and alienated from Nik and Darby, he realises that Tyler's expansion plans are much more nefarious than a little lupine enlightenment...

Soft Science explores queer, Asian American femininity. A series of Turing Test-inspired poems grounds its exploration of questions not just of identity, but of consciousness―how to be tender and feeling and still survive a violent world filled with artificial intelligence and automation. We are dropped straight into the tangled intersections of technology, violence, erasure, agency, gender, and loneliness.

Many of us grew up believing in a meritocracy, where hard work brings rewards. Go to university, get a job, put in the hours and things will be OK. That's what we were told – but the reality is that life chances and opportunities are no longer shaped by what we learn or earn but by whether we have access to the Bank of Mum and Dad. We're living in an inheritocracy, where parental support is what matters most – whether that's covering the cost of university, stumping up for a house deposit or helping with childcare. And let's be honest, this isn't something we like to talk about with our friends, families or as a society. It's a modern taboo.In these pages, generational expert Eliza Filby explores the emergence of this inheritocracy through her own life story, revealing how her family's financial circumstances shaped everything from her education to her dating life, from her career to her class identity. Inheritocracy is a thought-provoking and candid blend of memoir and cultural commentary, told through Eliza's humorous and insightful voice.With trillions of pounds set to be passed down the generations over the next two decades, a significant divide is emerging between those who can rely on family wealth and those who can't. Inheritocracy offers a fresh, captivating and honest look at our recent past and a future that will be shaped – for better or worse – by family fortunes.

A grieving daughter’s search for her mother becomes a journey across alternate realities in Bridge, a wildly entertaining, reality-bending new thriller from Lauren Beukes, author of the AppleTV+ smash hit The Shining Girls.It was a game they played; the other worlds, the other lives. It was part of her mom’s grand delusions. It wasn’t real. Unless it was…  Bridget Kittinger has always been paralyzed by choices. It has a lot to do with growing up in the long shadow of her mother, Jo, a troubled neuroscientist. Jo’s obsession with one mythical object, the “dreamworm”—which she believed enabled travel to other worlds—led to their estrangement. Now, suddenly, Jo is dead. And in packing up her home, Bridge finds a strange device buried deep in Jo’s freezer: the dreamworm. Against all odds, it actually can open the door—to all other realities, and to all other versions of herself, too. Could Bridge find who she should be in this world, by visiting the others? And could her Jo still be alive somewhere? But there’s a sinister cost to trading places, and others hunting the dreamworm who would kill to get their hands on it . . . Across a thousand possible lives, from Portland to Haiti, from Argentina to the alligator-infested riverways of North Carolina, Bridge takes readers on a highly original thrill ride, pushing the boundaries of what we know about mothers and daughters, hunters and seekers, and who we each choose to be.

After 1989, capitalism has presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system. What effects has this “capitalist realism” had on work, culture, education and mental health? Is it possible to imagine an alternative to capitalism that is not some throwback to discredited models of state control?

Meadows’ Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life. Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking. While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner. In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.

Twenty-Five Hundred years ago, Sun Tzu wrote this classic book of military strategy based on Chinese warfare and military thought. Since that time, all levels of military have used the teaching on Sun Tzu to warfare and civilization have adapted these teachings for use in politics, business and everyday life. The Art of War is a book which should be used to gain advantage of opponents in the boardroom and battlefield alike.

This lyrical debut novel is at once a passionate coming-of-age story, a meditation on illness and death, and a kaleidoscopic journey through one woman’s life—told in part by the malevolent voice of her disease. Lia, her husband Harry, and their beloved daughter, Iris, are a precisely balanced family of three. With Iris struggling to navigate the social tightrope of early adolescence, their tender home is a much-needed refuge. But when a sudden diagnosis threatens to derail each of their lives, the secrets of Lia’s past come rushing into the present, and the world around them begins to transform. Deftly guided through time, we discover the people who shaped Lia’s youth; from her deeply religious mother to her troubled first love. In turn, each will take their place in the shifting landscape of Lia’s body; at the center of which dances a gleeful narrator, learning her life from the inside, growing more emboldened by the day. Pivoting between the domestic and the epic, the comic and the heart-breaking, this astonishing novel unearths the darkness and levity of one woman’s life to symphonic effect.

Professor Patricia Wiltshire will take you on a journey through the fascinating edgeland where nature and crime are intertwined. She'll take you searching for bodies of loved ones - through woodlands, along hedgerows, field-edges, and through plantations - solving time since death, and disposal of remains, from ditches to living rooms. She will give you glimpses of her own history: her loves, her losses, and the narrow little valley in Wales where she first woke up to the wonders of the natural world. Pat will show you how her work with a microscope reveals tell-tale traces of the world around us, and how these have taken suspects of the darkest criminal activities to court. From flowers, fungi, tree trunks to car pedals, walking boots, carpets, and corpses' hair, Traces is a unique book on life, death, and one's indelible link with nature.

After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home. They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe. Becky Chambers's new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter? They're going to need to ask it a lot.

It is early spring, a turbulent, perilous time of sudden storms, frozen river fractures and drifting ice. Fleeing from a demon intent on devouring his souls, Wolf is swept out to Sea far from the Forest and his pack. The ocean too teems with danger: sea wolves, sharks and hunters of the deep, and the demon is gaining ground. Torak and Renn must race to save their pack-brother, battling the harsh, icy waves and merciless torrents. If they can't find Wolf in time, the bond between them will be severed for ever... Run wild with Wolf Brother for the last time in a Stone Age world we all want to be part of, with three-million-copy-selling author Michelle Paver, Creator of Legends.

An unlikely self-love story between a broken girl and her strange brain.Using a refreshing, unexpected, and clever combination of self-deprecation and profound insightfulness, Cindy Robinson shares the story of how her ADHD, OCD, and childhood trauma aided both in her downfall as well as her ultimate triumph.Her humorous and heartfelt vignettes invite you to walk alongside her as she attempts to prove she’s “normal” (and fails repeatedly). Determined not to give up on herself, she ultimately finds solace in a surprising place... her strangeness. Witness her artfully blossom from self-hatred to self-compassion, highlighting the path along the way for any reader to follow. It is a beautiful and endearing story of unmasking, embracing, and enlightening.