So You Think You Know The Ocean State

Set in a working-class town on the Rhode Island coast, O’Nan’s latest is a crushing, beautifully written, and profoundly compelling novel about sisters, mothers, and daughters, and the terrible things love makes us do. In the first line of Ocean State, we learn that a high school student was murdered, and we find out who did it. The story that unfolds from there with incredible momentum is thus one of the build-up to and fall-out from the murder, told through the alternating perspectives of the four women at its heart. Angel, the murderer, Carol, her mother, and Birdy, the victim, all come alive on the page as they converge in a climax both tragic and inevitable. Watching over it all is the retrospective testimony of Angel’s younger sister Marie, who reflects on that doomed autumn of 2009 with all the wisdom of hindsight. Angel and Birdy love the same teenage boy, frantically and single mindedly, and are compelled by the intensity of their feelings to extremes neither could have anticipated. O’Nan’s expert hand paints a fully realized portrait of these women, but also weaves a compelling and heartbreaking story of working-class life in Ashaway, Rhode Island. Propulsive, moving, and deeply rendered, Ocean State is a masterful novel by one of our greatest storytellers.

So You Think You're Smart is an eclectic collection of word games, riddles and logic puzzles to tantalize, tease and boggle the brains of readers of all ages and educational levels. The brain teasers are about ordinary words and things that everybody knows about so only common sense and a bit of resourcefulness are needed to solve them. The book is in its 17th printing and has appeared on Saturday Night Live.

If those walls could talk...this is what they would say. A story of Rhode Island. Clam cakes...Quonset huts...diners...summer stock theater...the CCC...Roger Williams...frozen lemonade...roadside architecture...the U.S. Open tennis Tournament...American chateaus...Triangle Trade...the Paw Sox...shore dinners...King Philip's War...This book will have you telling stories like a native in no time. Imagine a group of settlers arriving in an undeveloped location. First come shelters in which to live and then structures in which to work and shop. There are buildings for worship and education. As the community grows government buildings are required. With prosperity comes places in which to spend leisure time. And each step along the way builds a story only Rhode Island can call its own. That story is all around you in the work of those who came before you. In these pages you'll learn the explanations behind the quirks, the traditions and the secrets that make Rhode Island uniquely Rhode Island. The building invented in Rhode Islad that transformed the military? Solved. Where to find hockey-style side-by-side dugouts on a baseball field? Mystery solved. The oldest merry-go-round in America with horses suspended from chains? Identified. The clubhouse where players in golf's first U.S. Open changed their shoes? Revealed. Almost all of the selections within are open to the public, or at least visible from public spaces. So, if you haven't seen these landmarks in person, fire up your GPS and get out and see the story of the Ocean State standing in plain sight on Rhode Island streets!

When it comes to immigration, the population explosion, the collapse of the family, the north-south divide, devolution, or the death of the countryside, common wisdom tells us that we are in trouble; however, this is far from the truth. In his brilliant anatomy of contemporary Britain, leading geographer Daniel Dorling dissects the nation and reveals unexpected truths about the way we live today, contrary to what you might read in the news: The human mosaic: Most children who live above the fourth floor of tower blocks in England are Black or Asian. The higher you go in a building, the darker skinned children tend to be. Relationships: The more times a person's heart is broken, the nearer they will tend to move to the sea. If you want to find a good man to marry head for the countryside. North and South: People in the south move home on average every seven years and job every eight years. This is a year faster than in the north of England, but a year slower than is usual in Scotland. Optimum population: Emmigrant nation - There are twice as many grandchildren of British-born people living over-seas as there are people living in Britain who have grandparents who were themselves born abroad. The problem now is more about getting pregnant than a population explosion and we need more immigration not less. Immigration: Muslims are far more likely to marry non-Muslims in Britain than Christians are to marry non-Christians. The elderly: Most people in Britain never live long enough to experience being burgled. In some areas you would have to live for over five hundred years to have an 'evens' chance of being a crime victim. Town and Country - divided since the enclosures: Step children are most commonly found in the most leafy of idyllic rural villages. Nuclear family homogeneity is now an inner city phenomena. Why are there no cheap homes in the countryside any more? Transport: The greatest threat to life in Britain of all those aged under 40 is the car. For adults aged over 24 they most likely die as a driver, over 15 as a passenger, and over age 4 as a pedestrian. Work: There is no need for us to work until we drop - all could retire early. Reviews for Injustice: "A geographer maps the injustices of Selfish Capitalism with scholarly detachment." --Oliver James. "Dorling provides the brain-cleaning software we need to begin creating a happier society. " --Richard Wilkinson author of The Spirit Level.