Solo

Solo by Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess is a New York Times bestseller! Kirkus Reviews said Solo is, “A contemporary hero’s journey, brilliantly told.” Through the story of a young Black man searching for answers about his life, Solo empowers, engages, and encourages teenagers to move from heartache to healing, burden to blessings, depression to deliverance, and trials to triumphs. Blade never asked for a life of the rich and famous. In fact, he’d give anything not to be the son of Rutherford Morrison, a washed-up rock star and drug addict with delusions of a comeback. Or to no longer be part of a family known most for lost potential, failure, and tragedy, including the loss of his mother. The one true light is his girlfriend, Chapel, but her parents have forbidden their relationship, assuming Blade will become just like his father. In reality, the only thing Blade and Rutherford have in common is the music that lives inside them. And songwriting is all Blade has left after Rutherford, while drunk, crashes his high school graduation speech and effectively rips Chapel away forever. But when a long-held family secret comes to light, the music disappears. In its place is a letter, one that could bring Blade the freedom and love he’s been searching for, or leave him feeling even more adrift. Solo: Is written by New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Book Award-winner Kwame Alexander Showcases Kwame’s signature intricacy, intimacy, and poetic style, by exploring what it means to finally go home An #OwnVoices novel that features a BIPOC protagonist on a search for his roots and identity Received great reviews from Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Booklist, and Kirkus. If you enjoy Solo, check out Swing by Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess.

With eye-opening statistics, original data, and vivid portraits of people who live alone, renowned sociologist Eric Klinenberg upends conventional wisdom to deliver the definitive take on how the rise of going solo is transforming the American experience. Klinenberg shows that most single dwellers—whether in their twenties or eighties—are deeply engaged in social and civic life. There's even evidence that people who live alone enjoy better mental health and have more environmentally sustainable lifestyles. Drawing on more than three hundred in-depth interviews, Klinenberg presents a revelatory examination of the most significant demographic shift since the baby boom and offers surprising insights on the benefits of this epochal change.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A woman returns to her small Maine hometown, uncovering family secrets that take her on a journey of self-discovery and new love, in this warm and charming novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Evvie Drake Starts Over. “A testament to the truth that love comes in all shapes, sizes, and situations.”—Jodi Picoult ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, PopSugar Smarting from her recently canceled wedding and about to turn forty, Laurie Sassalyn returns to her Maine hometown of Calcasset to handle the estate of her great-aunt Dot, a spirited adventurer who lived to be ninety-three. Alongside boxes of Polaroids and pottery, a mysterious wooden duck shows up at the bottom of a cedar chest. Laurie’s curiosity is piqued, especially after she finds a love letter to the never-married Dot that ends with the line “And anyway, if you’re ever desperate, there are always ducks, darling.” Laurie is told that the duck has no financial value. But after it disappears under suspicious circumstances, she feels compelled to figure out why anyone would steal a wooden duck—and why Dot kept it hidden away in the first place. Suddenly Laurie finds herself swept up in a righteous caper that has her negotiating with antiques dealers and con artists, going on after-hours dates at the local library, and reconnecting with her oldest friend and her first love. Desperate to uncover her great-aunt’s secrets, Laurie must reckon with her own past and her future—and ultimately embrace her own vision of flying solo. With a cast of unforgettable characters and a heroine you will root for from page one, Flying Solo is a wonderfully original story about growing up, coming home, and learning to make a life for yourself on your own terms.

"My family doesn't do happy endings. We do sad endings or frustrating endings or no endings at all. We are hardwired to expect the next interruption or disappearance or broken promise." Hope Solo is the face of the modern female athlete. She is fearless, outspoken, and the best in the world at what she does: protecting the goal of the U.S. women's soccer team. Her outsized talent has led her to the pinnacle of her sport—the Olympics and the World Cup—and made her into an international celebrity who is just as likely to appear on ABC's Dancing with the Stars as she is on the covers of Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, and Vogue. But her journey—which began in Richland, Washington, where she was raised by her strong-willed mother on the scorched earth of defunct nuclear testing sites—is similarly haunted by the fallout of her family history. Her father, a philanderer and con man, was convicted of embezzlement when Solo was an infant. She lost touch with him as he drifted out of prison and into homelessness. By the time they reunited, years later, in the parking lot of a grocery store, she was an All-American goalkeeper at the University of Washington and already a budding prospect for the U.S. national team. He was living in the woods. Despite harboring serious doubts even about the provenance of her father's last name (and her own), Solo embraces him as fiercely as she pursues her dreams of being a world-class soccer player. When those dreams are threatened by her standing within the national team, as when she was famously benched in the semifinals of the 2007 World Cup after four shutouts and spoke her piece publicly, we see a woman of uncompromising independence and hard-won perseverance navigate the petty backlash against her. For the first time, she tells her version of that controversial episode, and offers with it a full understanding of her hard-scrabble life. Moving, sometimes shocking, Solo is a portrait of an athlete finding redemption. This is the Hope Solo whom few have ever glimpsed. Signed poster inside.

As parents face the difficult reality of a broken home, a sense of being completely overwhelmed can shut down the perspective they need to find restoration. Parents need to know that they can choose to define this season of their lives, instead of becoming defined by circumstances. They can deliberately look toward God and come to a deeper understanding of His true nature, power, and intimate care. As this former Christian music industry executive shares his story of divorce, his seven years as a single father, and his transition to a second marriage and a blended family, he also offers readers some hard-learned lessons and insights on being an effective, empathetic, and empowered single parent, answering crucial questions such as: How do I find peace when everything around me is chaos? How do I manage meeting needs when I have nothing to give? How and where do I begin again? The author addresses the fears and exhaustion of single parenting, while revealing the keys to gaining strength and courage for each day. He also shares how he found his “solo” relationship with his heavenly Father through his “solo” parenting season. Readers will learn five helpful habits and practical healing principles they can immediately apply in this season of life.

Sarah must miss her ballet solo to go to her cousin's wedding. Her disappointment leads to delight when Sarah gets caught up in the hypnotic music and dance of her family's Jewish tradition.

“Kind, realistic, and genuinely helpful...Install a copy on whatever surface is functioning as your desk, and you may even feel a little bit less alone.” —The Observer (London) A practical, accessible, and charming guide for finding joy while navigating your professional life working remotely from home—without losing your mind. Like it or not, working alone is now the new normal. The COVID-19 pandemic may have accelerated the process, but the trend is clear—making a living outside the confines of a public workplace is here to stay. For anyone who needs guidance on how to navigate working from a home office—or a home sofa—here is a charming, expert, and genuinely helpful guide to managing a productive career without impromptu hallway conversations or on-call IT support, but with more joy—and, for most of us, better coffee. Written by a dedicated work-from-home expert, Solo culls wisdom from the latest research in psychology, economics, and social science and explores what we gain, or lose, in the shift to solo work. In chapters like “Loneliness and Solitude,” “The Power of Planning,” and “The Curse of Comparison (and Why Social Media Sucks),” it picks up where the bibles for freelancers stop, offering practical, inspiring, and uniquely reassuring advice culled from a range of influences, from Aesop’s fables to medical journals, and explaining what helps us stay resilient, productive, and focused in a company of one.

2 That nagging voice in your head is probably right. I am not on a crusade to convince everyone to go solo. My crusade is to reach those who want to go solo but are afraid to try to pull it off. Jim Voigt had had the spirit of a solo professional from a young age, starting his first business “Corporate Start-Ups” at the age of 14. After a successful career in sales, Jim turned to law and put his sales skills to work building a strong book of business. But traditional employment never “clicked” and Jim longed for more freedom both financially and personally. His transition to solo practice went well, but he saw other solo professionals struggle. He wanted to help. Going Solo is the result of his research into the struggles and successes of his own career and those professionals he met along his journey. Jim now brings his practical message of the attainability of solo freedom to others who feel trapped in traditional firms or underperforming solo practices.

One of the jewels in the crown of Johann Sebastian Bach's sacred music is its use of astonishingly subtle and complex allegorical and representational devices. But when similar devices appear in the context of one of Bach's untexted, secular, instrumental collections such as the Six Solos (sonatas and partitas) for violin, the question arises whether he might be intending to embed discernible theological significances there as well, thus infusing the secular with the sacred. Such designs would be reasonably plausible within Bach's musical, cultural, and religious context. Shute carefully investigates the extent to which musical features of the Six Solos that seem to invite theological parallels might indeed have been intended to do so. Although the precise extent of Bach's intentions cannot be ascertained with certainty, the degree of correlation among strong potential signifiers would seem to suggest that they, and many other features of the Six Solos, are best explained as the product of extensive theological-allegorical designs on Bach's part, like those evident in his texted vocal music.

Focusing specifically on solo making and performing, this unique and exciting text allows the experts to speak for themselves. In interviews with Misri Dey, six recognised solo performers working across a range of performance genres – including theatre, dance, live and performance art, site-specific performance, music video and film – provide insightful and practical strategies for creative making and performing processes. Interviewees include Bryony Kimmings, Tim Etchells, Bobby Baker, Mike Pearson, Wendy Houstoun and Nigel Charnock. Engaging and accessible, this is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of theatre, performance and acting, scholars, lecturers and performance practitioners. It will also appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students of women's studies, creative writing and the visual arts.