New Releases by Lance Rubin

It’s an all-new thrilling adventure about growing up and facing your fears in Monsters Take Manhattan, the second novel in the Monster Club series from the creative minds of Darren Aronofsky, Ari Handel, and Lance Rubin. Ever since Eric “Doodles” King and his friends saved Coney Island from Crumple Monster and its minions, Eric’s life has been changing faster than he ever expected. His parents’ divorce has gone through, his mom has moved to a deluxe apartment in Manhattan, and now she’s making him start all over at a fancy new private school. Suddenly, Eric’s trapped between two worlds – his old Coney Island friends and the rich, cool kids at his new school who treat him like a celebrity. At least, Eric thinks, his days of epic monster battles are behind him. But what he doesn’t realize is that the magic mermaid ink that brought his drawings to life hasn’t been destroyed like he thought. Quite the opposite, King Neptune has found a way to take the last remaining drops to create a new class of creatures perfectly designed to put New York City right back where it belongs – underwater. Now it’s up to Eric to rally Monster Club again and find a way to bring back Brickman, Bellybeast, Skelegurl, DecaSpyder, and RoboKillz so they can stop Neptune before it’s too late. Monster Club: Monsters Take Manhattan is the second epic, heart-pounding adventure from award-winning screenwriter, director, and author Darren Aronofsky, Ari Handel, and Lance Rubin.

A tragicomic story of bad dates, bad news, bad performances, and one girl''s determination to find the funny in high school from the author of Denton Little''s Deathdate. Winnie Friedman has been waiting for the world to catch on to what she already knows: she''s hilarious. It might be a long wait, though. After bombing a stand-up set at her own bat mitzvah, Winnie has kept her jokes to herself. Well, to herself and her dad, a former comedian and her inspiration. Then, on the second day of tenth grade, the funniest guy in school actually laughs at a comment she makes in the lunch line and asks her to join the improv troupe. Maybe he''s even . . . flirting? Just when Winnie''s ready to say yes to comedy again, her father reveals that he''s been diagnosed with ALS. That is . . . not funny. Her dad''s still making jokes, though, which feels like a good thing. And Winnie''s prepared to be his straight man if that''s what he wants. But is it what he needs? Caught up in a spiral of epically bad dates, bad news, and bad performances, Winnie''s struggling to see the humor in it all. But finding a way to laugh is exactly what will see her through. **A Junior Library Guild Selection**

"Denton and his quirky friends are laugh-out-loud funny, even as their riotous adventures raise deeper questions about science, government control, life, and death." -- SLJ You only live once—unless you’re Denton Little! Denton Little lives in a world exactly like our own except that everyone knows the day on which they will die. The good news: Denton has lived through his deathdate. Yay! The bad news: He’s being chased by the DIA (Death Investigation Agency), he can never see his family again, and he may now die anytime. Huh. Cheating death isn’t quite as awesome as Denton would have thought. . . . Lance Rubin’s debut novel, Denton Little’s Deathdate, showed readers just how funny and poignant imminent death could be. Now in this sequel, he takes on the big questions about life. How do we cope, knowing we could die at any time? Would you save someone from dying even if they were a horrible person? Is it wrong to kiss the girl your best friend is crushing on if she’s really into you instead? What if she’s wearing bacon lip gloss? Praise for Denton Little’s Deathdate: “Highly original, fantastically entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny, Denton Little’s Deathdate is a wild romp through a night like no other.” —Jennifer E. Smith, author of The Geography of You and Me “Let’s all pray the grim reaper is even half as witty (and wise) as the deadly talented Lance Rubin. Till then: skip this book at your own peril.” —Tim Federle, author of Better Nate than Ever and The Great American Whatever “Rubin is really funny, but like John Green, he manages to be poignant. . . . In other words, it’s a keeper.” —Bustle

Si vive una sola volta. O forse no? Denton Little non è ancora morto! In un mondo in cui tutti conoscono la data della propria morte fin dalla nascita, Denton è l''unico ad aver superato indenne il giorno fatidico. Non sa perché proprio a lui sia capitato questo straordinario destino, sa solo che ora tutti lo cercano. La sua famiglia, il suo migliore amico Paolo, e Veronica, la ragazza che ha baciato poco prima di darsi alla fuga e che non riesce a togliersi dalla testa. Persino la polizia lo sta cercando. Lui è la prova vivente che è possibile scampare alla propria data di morte, e ora tutti vogliono un pezzo di Denton Little. Questo è decisamente un problema, soprattutto perché il Governo preferirebbe ucciderlo piuttosto che ammettere l''anomalia del sistema. Come se non bastasse, mancano pochi giorni al decesso di Paolo. Proprio adesso che il poveretto si è reso conto di essere follemente, perdutamente innamorato di Millie, l''unica ragazza al mondo che non potrà mai ricambiare i suoi sentimenti. Tra fughe rocambolesche e amori impossibili, Denton cerca di salvare gli amici e smascherare i nemici. Ma come si comporterà ora che non conosce più la data della propria fine e la morte può incombere in ogni momento? Dalla penna di Lance Rubin, il brillante sequel di Deathdate. Un romanzo dal ritmo mozzafiato e dallo stile affilato dove anche la morte è un''avventura emozionante. "Divertimento, suspense, drammi, amori e folli inseguimenti in macchina: sembra di essere in un film!" - School Library Journal

**The Snapchat Original series, Denton''s Deathdate, is here—check it out!** Get ready to die laughing: this is an outrageously funny ride through the last hours of a teenager’s life as he searches for love, meaning, answers, and (just maybe) a way to live on. Denton Little’s Deathdate takes place in a world exactly like our own except that everyone knows the day on which they will die. For Denton, that’s in just two days—the day of his senior prom. Despite his early deathdate, Denton has always wanted to live a normal life, but his final days are filled with dramatic firsts. First hangover. First sex. First love triangle—as the first sex seems to have happened not with his adoring girlfriend, but with his best friend’s hostile sister. (Though he’s not totally sure—see, first hangover.) His anxiety builds when he discovers a strange purple rash making its way up his body. Is this what will kill him? And then a strange man shows up at his funeral, claiming to have known Denton’s long-deceased mother, and warning him to beware of suspicious government characters. . . . Suddenly Denton’s life is filled with mysterious questions and precious little time to find the answers. Fall in love with Denton Little! "Rubin is really funny but like John Green, he manages to be poignant at the same time. You''ll laugh out loud while you read this, but you''re probably going to tear up a bit too." --Bustle "The dialogue is witty and raunchy, the plot is uniquely twisted, and the ending is to die for. This book will fly off the shelves."--VOYA “Lance Rubin creates a world in which (almost) everyone can answer the question, ‘What would you do if you knew when you were going to die?’ and holy s*#! the answers are hilarious. I don’t think I’ve laughed at death so much in a long, long time. Read this book, it’ll have you dying.” —Isabel Quintero, Morris Award-winning author of Gabi, A Girl in Pieces "Hilarious, thought-provoking, irreverent, unforgettable. . . . Live your own death, Dent. We love you." --Catherine Gilbert Murdock, author of Dairy Queen “If Six Feet Under had been created by John Hughes: that’s Denton Little’s Deathdate.” —Tim Federle, author of The Great American Whatever “Wildly funny, brilliantly weird, and achingly heartfelt.” —Becky Albertalli, Morris Award–winning author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda "Highly original, fantastically entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny, Denton Little''s Deathdate is a wild romp through a night like no other." --Jennifer E. Smith, author of The Geography of You and Me "An utterly enjoyable, engrossing page-turner." -- Bulletin "The tweaked contemporary setting, irreverent end-of-life humor, and big, existential questions make this a good pick for fans of John Corey Whaley’s Noggin." -- Publishers Weekly

Living sucks when you have to pretend to be dead. SPOLER ALERT: Denton didn''t die. But as the only person in the world, apparently, not to have kicked it on his deathdate, there are lots of people after him. And some of those people are not good people. And some of them would rather just kill him than have to deal with it. And also his Mum''s involved. Even though he thought she was dead too. It''s all pretty confusing. Lance Rubin''s incredible sense of humour shines through once again in this laugh-out-loud sequel to DENTON LITTLE''S DEATHDATE.

With social and political issues providing the foreground of literary studies over the past several years, William Dean Howells has re-emerged as a major author. Yet, among canonical American writers, Howells simultaneously attracts both significant attention and curious neglect. While studies devoted to his novels, The Rise of Silas Lapham and A Hazard of New Fortunes, are proliferating, the attention paid to his later writing, particularly his short fiction, is not only far less sustained but often dismissive, promoting a continuous inattention to the process by which the author discovers new forms and expression. William Dean Howells and the American Memory Crisis confronts the frequent refusal to see Howells as a writer whose lifelong engagement with literature pushed him through generic boundaries in search of new ways of shaping his fiction and questioning American identity. By focusing on Howellss preoccupation with tropes of memory and amnesia, this book positions his work within the American memory crisis, the turn-of-the-centurys pervasive feelings of fragmentation, loss, and dislocation that followed breathtaking transformations in the pace of everyday life and traditional social structures, which contributed to the sense that the linear inheritance of the past was severely weakened, if not broken beyond repair. As Americans engaged in a politics of memorywith various groups battling for their stake in shaping Americas present and future by defining its pastHowellss work interacts with a number of social discourses and practices through which national identity was being (re)constructed and debated. The book explores these sites of memory, including historiography, therhetoric of imperialism, the revival in historical romantic fiction, the rise of photography, the boom in monument construction, the beginnings of modern advertising, the interest in spiritualism and the occult, and literary history itself. By focusing on two neglected areas of Howells studieshis late short fiction and his engagement in the politics of memoryWilliam Dean Howells and the American Memory Crisis clarifies the convergence of his aesthetic and political goals and challenges recent innovative studies that situate Howells and literary realism as reinforcing late-nineteenth-century hierarchies of race, class, and gender. As a major figure of the traditional canon, Howells routinely has been positioned as a powerful cultural authority who was either deceptive of his real goals, willfully hypocritical, or ignorant of the actual political scene in which he was working. Rubins book complicates some of these accepted views by arguing that, while not apolitical, Howells was not as nave or as reactionary as some have claimed. By not accounting for the direction Howells takes in his later work, particularly as it imagines and represents memory, previous studiesso reliant on postmodern-influenced criticism seem to have often overlooked Howellss own postmodern leanings. Tropes of memory and amnesia have become prominent in postmodern theories of history and subjectivity, registering anxiety about the stability of the self and serving as metaphors for the impossibility of objective and secure historical narratives. Howellss work, this book maintains, consistently gestures toward these and other characteristics of the postmodern in its approach to history and questions the versions ofliterary realism that have become sacrosanct within the academy. Ultimately, this book provides other teachers, researchers, and students with a new framework with which to approach Howells and American realism. As his discussion draws on a variety of discourse in its exploration of Americas politics of memory, a secondary, more interdisciplinary audience includes those interested in political and social theory, history, and cultural studies. This is an important book for scholars, students, and te

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