Showing results by narrator "Eunice Wong" in All Categories

In recent years, cosplay—the practice of dressing up in costume as a character—has exploded, becoming a mainstream cultural phenomenon. But what are the circumstances that made its rise possible? Andrew Liptak—a member of the legendary 501st Legion, an international fan-based organization dedicated to the dark side of Star Wars—delves into the origins and culture of cosplay to answer this question. Cosplay: A History looks at the practice’s ever-growing fandom and conventions.

In this young readers edition of the New York Times bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before.

The concept of feminism has evolved and changed so much over the last few decades that it can be confusing for people to keep up. Luckily, Anney Reese and Samantha McVey break it all down every week on their popular iHeart podcast, Stuff Mom Never Told You. In this book—their first—they explore the history, strategy, and emotion that went into several milestones and emergent issues of the recent feminist movement.

A smog has spread. Food crops are disappearing. A chef escapes her career in London to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world's troubles. There, her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch and her own body. In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and seductive violence, the chef's boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.

Whether it's correctly naming the parts of a horse, knowing how lords and ladies address one another, or building a realistic fantasy army, getting the details right takes fantasy writing to the next level. Featuring some of the most popular articles from Dan Koboldt’s Fact in Fantasy blog as well as several never-before-seen essays, this book gives aspiring and established fantasy writers alike an essential foundation to the fascinating history and cultures of our own world, which serve as a jumping-off point for more inspired and convincing fantasy.

Ava’s mom is about to have twins, and the pregnancy isn’t going well. All Ava wants to do is stay by her mother’s side, but instead, she is sent away to stay with her grandparents. Normally, spending time at the lake with Nonna and Nonno is wonderful. But everything is different now. While her mom’s hospital visits are getting serious back home, Ava grapples with anxiety. As summer storms rock the island, electricity goes out at the cabin, and an annoyingly cheerful boy named Cody seems determined to pop up everywhere she goes.

Asian American Sexual Politics explores the topics of beauty, self-esteem, and sexual attraction among Asian Americans. The book draws on sixty in-depth interviews to show how constructions of Asian American gender and sexuality tend to reinforce the social and political dominance for whites, particularly white males, even in the supposed “post-racial” United States.

Since its publication in 1982, The Color Purple has resonated with generations of readers across the globe. The novel catapulted author Alice Walker to international fame, brought Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg acting acclaim in the 1985 film adaptation, and inspired theatrical productions around the world, including the Tony Award–winning Broadway musical. This cultural touchstone—which so profoundly touches on race, family, survival, spirituality, sisterhood, and love in all forms—continues to beget new iterations, most recently a feature film.

Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet.

Neurologist Helen Chang Frobisher is on a mission to ban hockey from Portland to prevent the kind of concussive brain injury that plagues her father. Oregon Wolves player Adam Magnus is desperately trying to secure his career and his retirement despite the team's dismal record. But while the two spar in public over the future of a sports franchise on the brink, in private, they battle an impossible attraction. When their no-strings-attached fling turns into the real thing, Helen and Adam must decide what's really important to them.

Sisters Lu and Min have always known their places as the princesses of the Empire of the First Flame: assertive Lu will be named her father's heir and become the dynasty's first female ruler while timid Min will lead a quiet life in Lu's shadow. Until their father names their male cousin Set his heir instead, sending ripples through the realm and throwing both girls' lives into utter chaos. Determined to reclaim her birthright, Lu has no choice but to go on the run, leaving Min to face the volatile court alone.

A Christmas Anthology of several of the best Christmas Novellas you have never heard from authors who were prolific in their time. Including the author of the Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms series, the Little Bear children's series, Charles Dickens & Howard Hughes' award winning novelist/playwright brother.

In this accessible and beautiful book, Yen Ooi explains the various facets of Rén and explores how this philosophy applies to everything from our relationship with ourselves and the people in our lives, to how we relate to society and the wider world. She shows us how, using the basic principles of Rén and through simple changes to our lives, we can connect better with friends, family, and colleagues, become helpful members of society, and find fulfillment in ideas of community, justice, morality, and compassion.

Will Chen, a Chinese American art history student at Harvard, has spent most of his life learning about the West—its art, its culture, all that it has taken and called its own. He believes art belongs with its creators, so when a Chinese corporation offers him a (highly illegal) chance to reclaim five priceless sculptures, it's surprisingly easy to say yes.

Triumph. Tragedy. The empyreal. The infernal. Even the mundane, filtered through the fantastical. Superheroes are, appropriately enough, a sort of super-genre, encompassing all other story types. This YA anthology features thirteen short stories that creatively turn superhero tropes on their head, while still paying homage to the genre that has found fans for more than eight decades. And there will be no mistake—superheroes don’t have to just be generic handsome white dudes.

Copywriter Ruby Sugars is in a rut. Her life consists of the following: long hours, boring neutral colors, and regular fat shaming from her stick-insect-looking boss. But Ruby isn't really a Bland Betty - she's a complete Bettie Page hottie, with an enviable collection of vintage couture and very naughty vixen lingerie. Now if only she could channel that girl into her real life.... Cue Ruby's best friend, whose recent fixation is "fantasy matchmaking." She's decided that all Ruby needs is one night with a sexy, delectable man....

Seeking ways to understand video games beyond their imperial logics, Patterson turns to erotics to re-invigorate the potential passions and pleasures of play. Video games vastly outpace all other mediums of entertainment in revenue and in global reach. On the surface, games do not appear ideological, nor are they categorized as national products. Instead, they seem to reflect the open and uncontaminated reputation of information technology. Like literature and film before it, video games have become the main artistic expression of empire today.

It's 1980s New York, and though the coke flows freely, money and glamour are the more powerful intoxicants. While fortunes are being made in SoHo galleries and on Wall Street, an underclass of transient drag queens and dandies, club kids and strippers, artists and actors, models and waitstaff wander the streets, providing the city's background color, cheap labor, and even cheaper entertainment.

In the spirit of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and conceived of as a modern-day vade mecum, Letters to a New Vegan consists of 32 humorous, evocative, spirited, and even tender epistles offering advice, counsel, and inspiration from activists and leaders who’ve followed the vegan path for years.

In Heiress Apparently, Gemma Huang’s big acting break led her to Beijing, where she uncovered an incredible family secret. This second novel in the Daughters of the Dynasty series delves further into Gemma’s complex and storied legacy, moving back one generation to tell the story of Gemma’s mother, Lei, as she finds love against the backdrop of 1980s China and the Tiananmen Square protests and makes a difficult decision that forever alters the course of her life.