Severed Heads, Broken Hearts

Severed Heads, Broken Hearts
Author: Robyn Schneider
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2013-08-15
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 147111547X

Perfect for fans of John Green, Nicola Yoon and Gayle Forman. If you've managed to survive disaster, what happens when it strikes again? Ezra Faulkner believes everyone has a tragedy waiting for them - a single encounter after which everything that really matters will happen. His own tragedy waited until he had everything to lose. In one night, a reckless driver shatters Ezra's knee, his athletic career, and his perfect life. No longer part of the popular crowd, Ezra finds himself at the table of misfits, where he encounters Cassidy Thorpe. Intelligent, effortless and wonderfully weird, she is unlike anyone Ezra's ever met before. Together they discover flash mobs, buried treasure, secret movie screenings and a poodle with a questionable history. But as Ezra dives into new friendships and new love, he is forced to ask: if you've managed to survive disaster, what happens when it strikes again? "Maybe it's time to expand your list of literary crushes to include someone other than Augustus Waters." MTV.com "I couldn't help but think of John Green's novels - I think his fans will eat this up." Publishers Weekly "Heartbreaking and hilarious. I have no doubt that girls everywhere are going to fall madly, deeply, hopelessly in love with Ezra Faulkner." Sarah Mlynowski, NYT bestselling author. "This is one of the most literary teen books I've read for a long time - up there with John Green - and it's a delight to read… the ending absolutely blew me away, being unpredictable, powerful, and altogether fantastic." The Bookbag Severed Heads, Broken Hearts is a lyrical, witty and heart-wrenching novel about how difficult it is to play the part that people expect, and how new beginnings can stem from abrupt and tragic endings.

The Beginning of Everything

The Beginning of Everything
Author: Robyn Schneider
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2013-08-27
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0062217151

Robyn Schneider's The Beginning of Everything is a witty and heart-wrenching teen novel that will appeal to fans of books by John Green and Ned Vizzini, novels such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and classics like The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye. Varsity tennis captain Ezra Faulkner was supposed to be homecoming king, but that was before—before his girlfriend cheated on him, before a car accident shattered his leg, and before he fell in love with unpredictable new girl Cassidy Thorpe. As Kirkus said in a starred review, "Schneider takes familiar stereotypes and infuses them with plenty of depth. Here are teens who could easily trade barbs and double entendres with the characters that fill John Green's novels." Funny, smart, and including everything from flash mobs to blanket forts to a poodle who just might be the reincarnation of Jay Gatsby, The Beginning of Everything is a refreshing contemporary twist on the classic coming-of-age novel—a heart-wrenching story about how difficult it is to play the part that people expect, and how new beginnings can stem from abrupt and tragic endings.

Extraordinary Means

Extraordinary Means
Author: Robyn Schneider
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2015-06-04
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1471115496

John Green's The Fault in Our Stars meets Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park in this darkly funny novel from the critically acclaimed author of The Beginning of Everything. Up until his diagnosis, Lane lived a fairly predictable life. When he's sent to Latham House, a boarding school for sick teens, Lane thinks his life may as well be over. But when he meets Sadie and her friends - a group of eccentric troublemakers - he realises that maybe getting sick is just the beginning. That illness doesn't have to define you, and that falling in love is its own cure. Robyn Schneider's Extraordinary Means is a heart-wrenching yet ultimately hopeful about true friendships, ill-fated love and the rare miracle of second chances. Praise for Extraordinary Means 'This captivating book about life, death, fear, and second chances will fly off the shelves' VOYA 'Schneider’s subtlety, combined with themes about learning to live life fully, makes this an easy recommendation for those seeking titles similar in premise to John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars' School Library Journal 'The perfect read-next for fans of the sick-lit trend and readers looking for a tear-stained romance' Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books 'Fans of John Green’s blockbuster The Fault in Our Stars who are eager for more of that kind of story will likely be satisfied.' Booklist

Severed Heads: The Hearts of the Helpless, We DIE in Gray Skies, The Wicked Within

Severed Heads: The Hearts of the Helpless, We DIE in Gray Skies, The Wicked Within
Author: William Goodman
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 124
Release: 2017-07-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1483473023

Three completely unique stories that form one cohesive story. Each story is written in a different writing style to capture a new perspective. ""Severed Heads"" is enhanced poetry. It's like you're reading the lyrics to any great hip-hop song. It flows seamlessly with captivating imagery and creative word play. Each story is dark and heavy and covers a wide range of topics like: addiction, depression, vanity, sexual abuse, religion, and revenge. William has been crafting a unique writing style. His love for lyrical hip-hop has lead him to create a genre he calls, "rhyme story." Meaning, it's lush like poetry, but has the technique of any skilled lyricists.

Invisible Ghosts

Invisible Ghosts
Author: Robyn Schneider
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0062568108

Robyn Schneider, author of Extraordinary Means and The Beginning of Everything, delivers a sharply funny, romantic girl-meets-boy novel with a twist: boy-also-meets-girl’s-ghost-brother. When one girl’s best friend is her dead brother’s ghost, romance can be tricky. Perfect for fans of John Green and Nicola Yoon. Rose Asher believes in ghosts. She should, since she has one for a best friend: Logan, her annoying, Netflix-addicted brother, who is forever stuck at fifteen. But Rose is growing up, and when an old friend moves back to Laguna Canyon and appears in her drama class, things get complicated. Jamie Aldridge is charming, confident, and a painful reminder of the life Rose has been missing out on since her brother’s death. She watches as Jamie easily rejoins their former friends—a group of magnificently silly theater nerds—while avoiding her so intensely that it must be deliberate. Yet when the two of them unexpectedly cross paths, Rose learns that Jamie has a secret of his own, one that changes everything. Rose finds herself drawn back into her old life—and to Jamie. But she quickly starts to suspect that he isn’t telling her the whole truth. All Rose knows is that it’s becoming harder to choose between the boy who makes her feel alive and the brother she isn’t ready to lose.

The Severed Head

The Severed Head
Author: Julia Kristeva
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2012
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0231157207

Renowned philosopher and cultural theorist Kristeva (Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection) offers an extended consideration of artistic figurations of the severed head, the organizing theme to an exhibition she coordinated at the Louvre in 1998. Though she follows a single historical trajectory, moving from Paleolithic skull cults to antique Greek sculpture to the Surrealist drawings, Kristeva eschews the disciplinary constraints of art history, instead employing psychoanalysis to explore the intertwined problems of representation and mortality posed by the severed head. For Kristeva, the capacity to figure the life of the mind first requires a confrontation with this horrific object that stands at the boundary between life and death, registering not only the loss of corporeal form but also subjective interiority. Though this book does not engage with recent images of decapitation, it is not without contemporary political-cultural import; for Kristeva, these cruel artistic figurations offer us the capacity to contemplate the sacred within a technology-driven contemporary visual culture. Verdict While a challenging text, this beautifully written and richly layered meditation on mortality and representation will undoubtedly appeal to those readers interested in semiotic and psychoanalytically informed readings of art.-Jonathan Patkowski, CUNY Graduate Ctr.(c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Chulito

Chulito
Author: Charles Rice-González
Publisher: Querelle Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781936833030

Set against a vibrant South Bronx neighborhood and the queer youth culture of Manhattan's piers, Chulito is a coming-of-age, coming out love story of a sexy, tough, hip hop-loving, young Latino man and the colorful characters who populate his block. Chulito, which means "cutie," is one of the boys, and everyone in his neighborhood has seen him grow up--the owner of the local bodega, the Lees from the Chinese restaurant, his buddies from the corner, and all of his neighbors and friends, including Carlos, who was Chulito's best friend until they hit puberty and people started calling Carlos a pato...a faggot. Culito rejects Carlos, buries his feelings for him, and becomes best friends with Kamikaze, a local drug dealer. When Carlos comes home from his first year away from college and they share a secret kiss, Chulito's worlds collide as his ideas of being a young man, being macho, and being in love are challenged. Vivid, sexy, funny, heartbreaking, and fearless, this knock out novel is destine to become a gay classic.

Pulp Macabre

Pulp Macabre
Author: Mike Hunchback
Publisher: Feral House
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2015-04-27
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1627310088

"There was never an artist who came close to capturing horror and dread like Lee Brown Coye. He was master of the weird and grotesque illustration. Coye's sketches had the shape of nightmares."—Robert Weinberg, The Weird Tales Story "It was always my belief that a good drawing was a good drawing, whether it was in the archives of the Metropolitain Museum or in a pulp magazine."— Lee Brown Coye No other artist working in mid-century pulp fiction created work as twisted as Lee Brown Coye. By the 1970s, after surviving a life-threatening illness, Coye would outdo himself, creating lurid illustrations exclusive to rare privately published books and fanzines. With nearly one hundred gloriously rendered Coye-penned images, Pulp Macabre showcases Coye's final and darkest era, containing some of the most passionately ghoulish artwork ever made. Mike Hunchback is an enthusiast of various eras of extreme and bizarre underground art, and is currently working on a biography of original Fangoria magazine editor Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin. Caleb Braaten operates Sacred Bones Records, which has recently teamed with David Lynch to release his new album The Big Dream.

The Broken Places

The Broken Places
Author: Ace Atkins
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2013-05-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101592702

In the third gripping crime novel in Ace Atkins’s New York Times bestselling series, small town sheriff Quinn Colson takes on deadly criminals and even deadlier weather... A year after becoming sheriff of Tibbehah County, Mississippi, Quinn Colson is faced with a pardoned killer’s return to Jericho. Jamey Dixon now preaches redemption and forgiveness, but the family of the woman he was convicted of killing isn’t buying it. They warn Quinn that his sister’s relationship with Dixon could be fatal. Others don’t think the new preacher is a changed man, either—a couple of dangerous convicts who confided in Dixon about an armored car robbery believe he’s after the money they hid. So they do the only thing they can: break out and head straight to Jericho, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. Colson and his deputy, Lillie, have their work cut out for them. But they don’t count on one more unwelcome visitor: a tornado that causes havoc just as the manhunt heats up. Communications are down, the roads are impassable—and the rule of law is just about to snap.