“GRIPPING . . . the kind of book you simply don’t want to stop reading.”—Neil Gaiman He calls himself Halloween. He is a unique student attending a most prestigious boarding school—the Idlewild Immersive Virtual Reality Academy. While his body sleeps, his mind interacts with those of his fellow students under the tutelage of the enigmatic artificial intelligence known as Maestro. An inexplicable energy surge has damaged the IVR and fragmented Halloween’s mind. Convinced this anomaly was deliberately triggered to kill him, Halloween is desperate to recover his memories—only to discover a devastating revelation about his true existence. “Idlewild builds, not just in tension but in what it demands from the reader, ending up as a dark exploration of hidden realities.”—The Guardian “Sagan provides plenty of suspense and perfectly captures the angry adolescent solipsism that makes kids into hackers and superheroes.”—Entertainment Weekly

Once considered the most famous African-American resort community in the country, Idlewild was referred to as the Black Eden of Michigan in the 1920s and '30s, and as the Summer Apollo of Michigan in the 1950s and '60s. Showcasing classy revues and interactive performances of some of the leading black entertainers of the period, Idlewild was an oasis in the shadows of legal segregation. Idlewild: Black Eden of Michigan focuses on this illustrative history, as well as the decline and the community's contemporary renaissance, in over 200 rare photographs. The lively legacy of Lela G. and Herman O. Wilson, and Paradise Path is included, featuring images of the Paradise Club and Wilson's Grocery. Idlewild continued its role as a distinctive American resort throughout the 1950s, with photographs ranging from Phil Giles' Flamingo Club and Arthur Braggs's Idlewild Revue.

Desiree Johnson hasn't been home to Idlewild, Michigan, in over seventeen years, but she and her son Tyree rush there when she receives news about her father. Tyson Blackwell is taken aback by her return. Their summer relationship was once powerful, but he succumbed to family pressure and let Desiree go. Now that she's back, he vows it will not happen again--despite the presence of a wife in his life.

In a last ditch effort to revive the Detroit gastropub he opened with his late husband, Asher Schenck hires a new staff. Among them is Tyler Heyward, a recent college graduate working his way toward med school. When they fall for each other, it's not race or class that challenges their love, but the ghosts and expectations of their pasts.

Idlewild and SoakZone has charmed people across Western Pennsylvania and beyond since the late 1800s. The park was developed by Pittsburgh's Mellon family as a picnic grove to boost traffic on the Ligonier Valley Rail Road. When C.C. Macdonald took the helm in 1931, rides, entertainment and other attractions came to Idlewild over the next half century, along with the adjacent Story Book Forest. After joining the Kennywood family of amusement parks, Idlewild added a Wild West town, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood of Make-Believe and a water slide complex. Author Jennifer Sopko tells the heartwarming history of a Pennsylvania amusement park that continues to delight generations of families.

In 1912, white land developers founded Idlewild, an African American resort community in western Michigan. Over the following decades, the town became one of the country’s foremost vacation destinations for the black middle class, during its peak drawing tens of thousands of visitors annually and hosting the era’s premier entertainers, such as The Four Tops, Della Reese, Brook Benton, and George Kirby. With the civil rights movement and the resulting expansion of recreation options available to African Americans, Idlewild suffered a sharp social and economic decline, and by the early 1980s the town had become a struggling retirement community in the midst of financial and political crises. Meticulously researched and unearthing never-before-seen historical material, Ronald J. Stephens’s book examines the rapid rise and decline of this pivotal landmark in African American and leisure history, in the process exploring intersections among race, class, tourism, entertainment, and historic preservation in the United States. Featuring a wealth of fieldwork on contemporary Idlewild, the book also takes a candid look at recent revitalization efforts and analyzes the possibilities for a future resurgence of this national treasure.

This unique and delightful e-book from one of New York City’s top language schools will teach you Spanish in the easiest, most effective way possible—by combining illustrations of everyday situations with Spanish text and clickable audio. There are no separate audio files or apps to download. Simply click on the images on each page to hear the captions and dialogue spoken by native speakers and repeat what you hear. The emphasis on conversational Spanish, broken down into common phrases and lexical chunks, will teach you to speak and understand Spanish as it is actually spoken, and you’ll pick up grammar and syntax naturally without even realizing it. This immersive textbook is ideal for self study or the classroom, for beginner to intermediate students, and includes: * More than 1400 illustrated scenarios accompanied by captions and dialogue in colloquial Spanish; * Over 200 essential Spanish verbs, with illustrated examples and simple tables covering 11 tenses and moods; * Special thematic sections on 20 topics including food, family, work and travel; and * Links to 100 grammar and usage notes that explain the concepts demonstrated in each section. (But if you read the illustrated pages on your own a few times, you may not need them!) Idlewild’s method is based on the latest research on language acquisition and more than a decade of experience teaching group classes in New York City and online. Idlewild’s classes have been named “Best of New York” by New York Magazineand have been recommended by The New Yorker, Time Out, Vox and Condé Nast Traveler, among others.