Shane rides into the valley where Bob Starrett's family lives, and Bob, 15, tells about Shane's winning ways.

At once original, strange, funny, and unnerving, Shane Book’s Congotronic takes the reader into unstable territory, where multiple layers of voice, diction, and music collide. Some of these poems have the sparse directness of a kind of bleak prayer; others mingle the earthbound rhythms of hip-hop with the will-to-transcendence of high Romanticism. Harnessing techniques of the cinematic and audio arts, Book’s poems splice, sample, collage, and jump-cut language from an array of sources, including slave narratives, Western philosophy, hip hop lyrics, and the diaries of plantation owners. In fusing disparate texts, each poem in this collection attempts to create a community in language. Thus, at its core, the project is utopic—or more precisely, to borrow from Duke Ellington—the project is “blutopic.” The book’s anchoring series contains an apocryphal narrative grounded in the journey of the Middle Passage and an older mythic history from the West African epic of Sundiata. Here elements of Afrofuturism coagulate with an R&B grin as social forces challenge a sense of personhood, prompting free-jazz inflected conversations between the pieces of a shattered, polyvocal self. Here is a world poet of the Sonic Global South sheathed in a Northern Hemispheric glow suit, high “on Coltrane, on Zeus” but also on the old and new schools of Descartes, M.I.A., Cecil Taylor, Gilbert Ryle, Freud, and Jay Z, among others—or as one poem puts it, the “aural truths.”

Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, Shane Book?s collection, Ceiling of Sticks, is a powerful and unflinching sort of documentary poetics. It bears elegiac witness to the effects of global politics on individual lives. Book?s poems carry us to Uganda, Ghana, Mali, Trinidad, and Canada?s west coast; from a religious sacrifice in Tarahumara, Mexico, to Book?s ailing grandfather?s bedside. They bring an intimate vision of humanity to scenes of inhuman atrocity and suffering; a moment of clarity and empathy to individuals overwhelmed by war or other man-made catastrophes. The attentiveness of the poems and meditative lyrics reveal a careful allegiance to their subjects and a fearless refusal to turn away. Filled with experiences of Africa and Latin America, California and the Caribbean, family and lost love, these poems resonate with the intensity of truth as it is lived and written.

"Shane Dawson, dubbed 'YouTube's comic for the under-30 set' by the New York Times, reveals some of his most embarrassing moments in 20 original, personal essays that are at once hilarious and heartwarming, self-deprecating, and ultimately inspiring to his audience of more than 12 million channel subscribers"--

A story of life, parenting challenges, finding yourself, knowing Gods love that gets us through all things.

James Kelly is a natural athlete who lives to play Little League baseball. His new friend Shane loves animals and the ocean, but is not a "cool" kid, and doesn't fit into James' social group. Together, the two boys learn about the importance of character, the difficulties of peer acceptance and confronting their innermost fears. When tragedy strikes, James makes a promise to his friend Shane - a promise that takes all of his skills as a player and strength he never knew he possessed. Along the way, James finds the lessons he learned from his friend help in his efforts to deliver on his promise, and to get on with his life in the face of a tragic loss. Inspired by actual events, the story captures a young boy's love of the national pastime and the enduring power of friendship in an unforgettable championship game with an electrifying outcome.

The Lost Springs Ranch for troubled boys is at stake, and it's a man's duty to give back… Dinah Hoyt was chosen by the good citizens of Bushwack, Colorado, to "buy'' former Bushwack resident Shane Daniels at auction…and then talk him into using his celebrity as a bull rider to save the Old Pioneer Days festival. Everyone knew that she and Shane had once been close. But no one knew exactly how close, or what had come of that teenage love affair…not even Shane. And if Dinah had anything to say about it, he wasn't going to find out!