Songs For A Summer Night

Xiaomi will never forget the magical sounds she heard one hot summer evening when the power went out in her family’s apartment building. It happened at day’s end while her parents were preparing dinner. Her father lit candles while suggesting they take out their musical instruments and descend to the yard to perform for their neighbors. He played the erhu and her mother the accordion while she danced. The songs made their way into each home, and soon, everyone joined the concert, laughing and singing under the moonlight: a joyful, music celebration that brought them together.

It's not just a weekend for Lux Castelo. She has a plan, of course. Phase One: Escape to the beach for a music festival. Phase Two: Deal with what she can't control. Phase Three: Return to reality whole and ready. Nowhere in that plan is Micah Jacinto, self-proclaimed adventurer and the kind of boy with his head stuck in the clouds and the moon inked on his arm-everything her rational sense tells her to stay away from. And yet Lux finds herself welcoming the distraction. As they spend the entire weekend together, Micah leads her to rediscover the lost pieces of herself amidst the excitement and the confusion of a raving mosh pit. But all weekends come to an end and Lux needs to return to the dreaded reality she's running away from. Does being brave enough to leave summer behind mean being brave enough to ask Micah to stay?

Not too far away from the flea markets, dusty attics, cluttered used record stores and Ebay is the world of the vinyl junkies. Brett Milano dives deep into the piles of old vinyl to uncover the subculture of record collecting. A vinyl junkie is not the person who has a few old 45s shoved in the cuboard from their days in high school. Vinyl Junkies are the people who will travel over 3,000 miles to hear a rare b-side by a German band that has only recorded two songs since 1962, vinyl junkies are the people who own every copy of every record produced by the favorite artist from every pressing and printing in existance, vinyl junkies are the people who may just love that black plastic more than anything else in their lives. Brett Milano traveled the U.S. seeking out the most die-hard and fanatical collectors to capture all that it means to be a vinyl junkie. Includes interviews with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Peter Buck from R.E.M and Robert Crumb, creator of Fritz the cat and many more underground comics.

As night falls on a soft summer evening, neighborhood children are drawn out of their houses by the sights and sounds of the world after dark. First the fireflies come sparkling past, followed by a host of domestic and wild animals, from cats and dogs to owls and skunks. Accomplished children’s poet Robert Heidbreder creates a world of enchantment, while Qin Leng’s illustrations conjure the harmonious interplay between our everyday domestic world and one that is just a little bit wilder. All the characters, both human and otherwise, have their moment on the nighttime stage, but eventually, the curtain falls, and sleepiness beckons.

By turns tender and punk-tough, Shine of the Ever is a literary mixtape of queer voices out of 1990s Portland. This collection of short stories explores what binds a community of queer and trans people as they negotiate love, screwing up and learning to forgive themselves for being young and sometimes foolish.