Kirjahaku

What if women really could change men? Sex and the City meets Misery in this brilliantly twisted take on chick lit.On the surface, Cassandra French is living the typical LA lifestyle. A lawyer at a film studio, she spends her days bored by the tedium of the Business Affairs department, and her evenings either dating a string of useless men or meeting up with her girlfriends to bemoan the uselessness of said men. But luckily none of this matters, because Cassandra French has a vocation. Cassandra is a woman on a mission. And her mission is to reform men. Because how is it that she's got such great girlfriends but never meets a man worthy of them? How is it that a man can have no conversation, no manners and no fashion sense...and yet he gets his pick of beautiful women? Something has to be done. And so, in her basement, she's set up her own Finishing School for Boys. There, men learn to dress well, to date well, to compliment a woman, to make great dinner conversation, and to leave behind all the arrogance, brutishness and idiocy that society has bred into them. It's all going brilliantly--her students are happy, Cassandra's succeeding at something she believes in passionately--until she enrolls Jason Kelly, the studio's biggest star. And suddenly Cassie's in over her head...

Is it possible to have it all? If by 'all' you mean irritants building up into one great mess, then that's exactly what Cassandra French has got - a mother who's under house arrest for fraud, a boring job as a lawyer for a Hollywood film studio, and three men in her basement. Actually, the three men are proving to be the least of her worries.

"This book is a message from autistic people to their parents, friends, teachers, coworkers and doctors showing what life is like on the spectrum. It's also my love letter to autistic people. For too long, we have been forced to navigate a world where all the road signs are written in another language."With a reporter's eye and an insider's perspective, Eric Garcia shows what it's like to be autistic across America.Garcia began writing about autism because he was frustrated by the media's coverage of it: the myths that the disorder is caused by vaccines, the narrow portrayals of autistic people as white men working in Silicon Valley. His own life as an autistic person didn't look anything like that. He is Latino, a graduate of the University of North Carolina, and works as a journalist covering politics in Washington, DC. Garcia realized he needed to put into writing what so many autistic people have been saying for years--autism is a part of their identity, they don't need to be fixed. In We're Not Broken, Garcia uses his own life as a springboard to discuss the social and policy gaps that exist in supporting those on the spectrum. From education to healthcare, he explores how autistic people wrestle with systems that were not built with them in mind. At the same time, he shares the experiences of all types of autistic people, from those with higher support needs, to autistic people of color, to those in the LGBTQ community. In doing so, Garcia gives his community a platform to articulate their own needs, rather than having others speak for them, which has been the standard for far too long

A People Beach Book of the Week"Very funny." -Dave Barry "Startling and clever...hilarious and chilling." -T.C. Boyle"All the elements of a cult classic." -Entertainment Weekly "Great." -Orlando Sentinel "Fast, funny, and smoothly written." -Seattle Times"A detective thriller featuring a velociraptor PI and a secret society of dinosaurs disguised as humans?...Awesomely funny....Vincent Rubio has a washed-up Los Angeles detective agency, lousy credit, and a dead partner--on top of an addiction to basil and a hard time keeping his tail tucked away in his latex human suit. A routine arson investigation promises to get him back on his (clawed) feet, until the case sends him to New York, the scene of his partner's suspicious death by runaway taxi. Witty, fast-paced detective work makes for a good mystery, but the story's sly, seamlessly conceived dinosaur underworld contains all the elements of a cult classic. Grade: A." -Entertainment Weekly "Debut novelist Eric Garcia pulls off this parallel dino world to a T (rex). His] descriptions are delicious...inventive and imaginative. He cleverly avoids what could have been a one-joke book with charm, sly humor and a terrific narrative pace." -USA Today"What would the world be like if the dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct? As this very funny book shows, for one thing, L.A. would be even weirder than it is now." -Dave Barry"First-time novelist Eric Garcia pulls it off, keeping the laughs frequent and the plot intriguing. After a few chapters, it seems downright logical to believe we're surrounded by a cast out of Jurassic Park. Apart from showing off a splendidly warped imagination, Garcia provides a solid mystery." -People "Garcia has come up with an imaginative twist to the detective fiction genre." -Daily Variety "Audacious and imaginative. You might not believe any of this 30 seconds after you close the covers, but while it's going on you're going to be dazzled by Garcia's energy and chutzpah." -Publishers Weekly"Garcia plays it almost completely straight, respecting all noir traditions, and comes up with lovely touches." -Chicago Tribune"A 'noir-asaurus' of a novel, bellowing for attention, the first and only of its breed in the dinosaur detective genre. Garcia has written something so strange, so bizarre, that he's to be admired just for the attempt. And he not only pulls it off, he also actually makes you wonder why someone hasn't thought of it before. Garcia's tough guy deadpan is perfect for navigating his outrageous lost world, and the easy, familiar tone is probably what makes the premise so simple to swallow. Garcia talks the talk, and more importantly, he smirks in all the right places." -The Miami Herald "Vincent Rubio, the protagonist of this first-person--er, first-dino narrative is so likeable, the story handled with such deftness, that it actually, incredibly works. Spider Robinson meets Sam Spade. The writing is sardonic and strong in the hard-boiled tradition, and laced with jokes about the history humans think they know: Oliver Cromwell was a Brontosaur, and 'Capone and Eliot Ness were just two Diplodoci with a grudge to settle.'" -The Richmond Times Dispatch"Anonymous Rex leaps out of its gumshoe formula fast enough to break the genre barrier. Imagine a hard-boiled detective novel crossed with magical realism. Think film noir with great special effects. Think fabulous read. Well p...

What if the dinosaurs faked their own extinction? New in the genre-bending, species-bending, gender-bending romp of a series. This is the "awesomely funny...cult classic" (Entertainment Weekly) series with the "incredible idea-brilliantly executed" (Brad Meltzer), that inspired Dave Barry to ask, "What would the world be like if the dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct? For one thing, L.A. would be even weirder than it is now." Enjoy the most satisfying rex yet...

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE - A novel about grifters with issues, by the acclaimed cult author of Anonymous Rex and Casual Rex Roy and Frankie are matchstick men--con artists. Partners in elegant crimes for years, they know each other like brothers and have perfected the rules of the game. Roy is the careful one, saves every penny. Frankie is the adventurous one, hungry for a big score. He wants Roy to join him in running a tricky game, but Roy is distracted by the discovery that he is the father of a punky teenage daughter from a brief marriage that ended years ago. The kid wants to get to know her father. She also wants to learn the family business. Novelist Eric Garcia takes readers into the fast and funny world of grifters with issues. Matchstick Men is a dazzling literary con game that will keep readers guessing until the last page.

"This book is a message from autistic people to their parents, friends, teachers, coworkers and doctors showing what life is like on the spectrum. It's also my love letter to autistic people. For too long, we have been forced to navigate a world where all the road signs are written in another language." With a reporter's eye and an insider's perspective, Eric Garcia shows what it's like to be autistic across America. Garcia began writing about autism because he was frustrated by the media's coverage of it; the myths that the disorder is caused by vaccines, the narrow portrayals of autistic people as white men working in Silicon Valley. His own life as an autistic person didn't look anything like that. He is Latino, a graduate of the University of North Carolina, and works as a journalist covering politics in Washington D.C. Garcia realized he needed to put into writing what so many autistic people have been saying for years; autism is a part of their identity, they don't need to be fixed. In We're Not Broken, Garcia uses his own life as a springboard to discuss the social and policy gaps that exist in supporting those on the spectrum. From education to healthcare, he explores how autistic people wrestle with systems that were not built with them in mind. At the same time, he shares the experiences of all types of autistic people, from those with higher support needs, to autistic people of color, to those in the LGBTQ community. In doing so, Garcia gives his community a platform to articulate their own needs, rather than having others speak for them, which has been the standard for far too long.