"An unambitious twenty-two-year-old, Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC's hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team. Darren, the only Black person in the company, reimagines himself as 'Buck,' a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and family....

"A girl's body is found floating in the water in what seems to be a ritual. At the heart of this episode is the superficial world of some rich, successful young men who have an evil lifelong bond and are a world apart from the victim: poor, and a survivor of the violence of her homeland"--Amazon.com.

"Henry Fielder, solitary and unmoored in his thirties, runs into an old lover and finds himself ready to tell the story he has harbored for two decades. He is fifteen, in rural western Oregon, enduring a year of sorrows. His mother has died, his father is physically abusive, and his extraordinary spiritual affinity for the wild lives of his native country seems to desert him. An older couple, retiring to the area from California, offer solace and...

Uenoyama realizes he's in love with Mafuyu and steals a kiss from him backstage at their first live performance. But now he's even more confused--he hasn't shared his feelings with Mafuyu and has no idea how Mafuyu feels about him. In contrast to their naive romance, Haruki has been harboring a secret desire for bandmate Akihiko, who's already entangled in an intense, conflicted relationship with someone else.

" An autobiographical novel about growing up gay in a working-class town in Picardy. "Every morning in the bathroom I would repeat the same phrase to myself over and over again. Today I'm really gonna be a tough guy." Growing up in a poor village in northern France, all Eddy Bellegueule wanted was to be a man in the eyes of his family and neighbors. But from childhood, he was different -- "girlish," intellectually precocious, and attracted to other...

Sometimes a song can save your life. Love of music unites the four members of the band Given: hotheaded guitarist Uenoyama, playboy drummer Akihiko, gentle bassist Haruki, and Mafuyu, a singer gifted with great talent and burdened by past tragedy. Their struggles and conflicts may drive them apart, but their bond to the music-and to one another-always brings them back together again. Hiragi's band-with Uenoyama's help-is ready to make their big debut....

Benny Catspaw's perpetually sunny disposition is tested when he loses his job, his reputation, his fiancée, and his favorite chair. He's not paranoid. Someone is out to get him. He just doesn't know who or why. Then Benny receives an inheritance from an uncle he's never heard of: a giant crate and a video message. All will be well in time. How strange, though it's a blessing, his uncle promises. Stranger yet is what's inside the crate. He's a seven-foot-tall...

Love of music unites the four members of the band Given: hotheaded guitarist Uenoyama, playboy drummer Akihiko, gentle bassist Haruki, and Mafuyu, a singer gifted with great talent and burdened by past tragedy. Their struggles and conflicts may drive them apart, but their bond to the music--and to one another--always brings them back together again. Now that Given has an offer to record their debut album, each of the band's members must decide whether...

Sometimes a song can save your life. Love of music unites the four members of the band Given: hotheaded guitarist Uenoyama, playboy drummer Akihiko, gentle bassist Haruki, and Mafuyu, a singer gifted with great talent and burdened by past tragedy. Their struggles and conflicts may drive them apart, but their bond to the music — and to each other — always brings them back together again. As the band focuses on creating new songs and preparing for...