Twenty

“A book to hold against your heart long after the last page is turned.” —New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs This warm and heartfelt novel will appeal to avid followers of Reese’s Book Club picks. Twenty captures the provocative moral questions presented in the works of Jodi Picoult but with a hint of mystical wonder. What happens when you decide to go…right when you finally learn how to live again…. “Along with naming me Marguerite after her favorite daisy, Mama gave me three things: Red hair that hasn’t faded. A love of nature. And a belief that somewhere between heaven and earth there is magic.” At age fifty-five, Meg’s life is too filled with loss for her to remember what magic feels like. All she has left is a yard brimming with plants that are wilting in the scorching Iowa summer—and a bone-deep feeling that she’s through with living. Meg has something else too: a bottle of mysterious pills, given to her years ago by an empathetic doctor. He promised that they would offer her dying mother a quick, painless end in exactly twenty days. Though her mother never needed them, Meg does. But a strange thing happens after Meg swallows the little green pearls . . . Now that she’s decided to leave this world, Meg is rediscovering the joy in it. She sheds everything she no longer needs—possessions, regrets, guilt—and reconnects with those she cares for. Finally confronting the depth of her grief, she’s learning that love runs deeper still. But is it too late to choose to stay? “Twenty reminds us to live with our hearts wide open even when they’ve been broken, and how to love even when it hurts.” —Julie Cantrell, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Perennials “Written with such strong and heartfelt faith in the magic and power of never-ending love, it will renew your own.” —Judy Reene Singer, author of In the Shadow of Alabama

Jack Swyteck and his family are caught in the crossfire after a deadly school shooting claims twenty casualties—Florida’s fifth mass shooting in as many years—in this provocative and timely thriller from Harper Lee Prize–winner James Grippando that touches on some of the most contentious issues roiling America today. It is the message every parent of a school-age child fears: “Active Shooter on Campus.” Jack Swyteck is at his office when he receives the emergency text from Riverside Day School. Both his daughter, Righley, and his wife, FBI agent Andie Henning, are in danger. Andie is in the school’s rec center when she hears the fire alarms, then loud popping noises and screams coming from the hallway. A trained law-enforcement officer, Andie knows she’s supposed to stay locked down inside the room. But Righley is in her kindergarten classroom and Andie must get her to safety. The tragedy prompts mass hysteria—and dangerous speculation. The police haven’t identified the shooter, but they find a handgun on the school grounds registered to a parent, a Muslim man named Amir Khoury. News of the gun and its owner leaks and quickly goes viral. Within minutes Al Qaeda claims responsibility. Andie is shocked—Amir is married to her friend, Lilly, a WASP whose bloodline goes back to the American Revolution. When Xavier, Amir and Lilly’s oldest child and an eighteen-year-old senior at Riverside confesses to the crime, the local community’s anti-Muslim fervor explodes to levels unseen since 9/11. Terrified for her son’s life, Lilly asks Jack to step in. A seasoned defense attorney with a passion to see justice done, he’s taken on plenty of complicated cases. Xavier’s, however, is not one he’s inclined to take—until an old friend who lost his daughter in the shooting tells him that he must. With the public calling for blood and prosecutors confident their case is air tight, Jack must unearth the Khourys’ family secrets in order to expose the shocking truth and save his client from certain death. But he may not be able to save everyone—including himself.

Published to commemorate the influential band's twentieth anniversary, an illustrated portrait covers their achievements while sharing reproductions of rare archival memorabilia, personal photos, and tour notes.

From the proprietors of the renowned Brooklyn shop and cafe comes the ultimate pie-baking book for a new generation of bakers. Melissa and Emily Elsen, the twenty-something sisters who are proprietors of the wildly popular Brooklyn pie shop and cafe Four & Twenty Blackbirds, have put together a pie-baking book that's anything but humble. This stunning collection features more than 60 delectable pie recipes organized by season, with unique and mouthwatering creations such as Salted Caramel Apple, Green Chili Chocolate, Black Currant Lemon Chiffon, and Salty Honey. There is also a detailed and informative techniques section. Lavishly designed, Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book contains 90 full-color photographs by Gentl & Hyers, two of the most sought-after food photographers working today. With its new and creative recipes, this may not be you mother's cookbook, but it's sure to be one that every baker from novice to pro will turn to again and again.

A year unlike any other, 2020 brought a public health crisis, a national reckoning on racism, and a pivotal election. At the center of it all - the Black experience. Twenty20 in Black is a powerful visual time capsule of 2020. Published by NAACP/The Crisis Publishing Company, this hardbound book documents the news and events of 2020 through stunning photographs and images. It gives voice to not only the pain and anger of a unique time in history but the joy and resilience of communities across the country and around the world.

Twenty-first Century Schools traces the extension of political control over Britain's school system and, through US case studies, looks at alternative methods of organisation.

The first true insider’s account of private equity, revealing what it takes to thrive among the world’s hungriest dealmakers “Brilliant . . . eloquently takes readers inside the heroic world of private equity . . . [an] essential read.”—Forbes ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Next Big Idea Club Private equity was once an investment niche. Today, the wealth controlled by its leading firms surpasses the GDP of some nations. Private equity has overtaken investment banking—and well-known names like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley—as the premier destination for ambitious financial talent, as well as the investment dollars of some of the world’s largest pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and endowments. At the industry’s pinnacle are the firms’ partners, happy to earn “two and twenty”—that is, a flat yearly fee of 2 percent of a fund’s capital, on top of 20 percent of the investment spoils. Private equity has succeeded in near-stealth—until now. In Two and Twenty, Sachin Khajuria, a former partner at Apollo, gives readers an unprecedented view inside this opaque global economic engine, which plays a vital role underpinning our retirement systems. From illuminating the rituals of firms’ all-powerful investment committees to exploring key precepts (“think like a principal, not an advisor”), Khajuria brings the traits, culture, and temperament of the industry’s leading practitioners to life through a series of vivid and unvarnished deal sketches. Two and Twenty is an unflinching examination of the mindset that drives the world’s most aggressive financial animals to consistently deliver market-beating returns.

Twenty Four Years of Mondays is a novel that takes place in New Yorks East Village, the home of Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan and a host of others at the end of the Beat Generation. The book sketches the life of Gideon Polinsky, his love for the deceased writer Herman Hesse culminating in a bizarre existence as a hopeless madman caught up in several lifestyles. It is a dilemma of the very guts of the creative mind with its madness, its hunger, its suffering, and building to a crescendo within existence where the end connects the reader to the horror of possibility. Gideons lifestyle is extremely diverse, relentlessly packed with a raw, devouring painful side of life capturing the verve and passion of Greenwich Village in the early 60s.

Contemporary war is as much a quest for decisive technological, organizational, and doctrinal superiority before the fighting starts as it is an effort to destroy enemy militaries during battle. Armed forces that are not actively fighting are instead actively reengineering themselves for success in the next fight and imagining what that next fight may look like. Twenty-First Century Military Innovation outlines the most theoretically important themes in contemporary warfare, especially as these appear in distinctive innovations that signal changes in states’ warfighting capacities and their political goals. Marcus Schulzke examines eight case studies that illustrate the overall direction of military innovation and important underlying themes. He devotes three chapters to new weapons technologies (drones, cyberweapons, and nonlethal weapons), two chapters to changes in the composition of state military forces (private military contractors and special operations forces), and three chapters to strategic and tactical changes (targeted killing, population-centric counterinsurgency, and degradation). Each case study includes an accessible introduction to the topic area, an overview of the ongoing scholarly debates surrounding that topic, and the most important theoretical implications. An engaging overview of the themes that emerge with military innovation, this book will also attract readers interested in particular topic areas.