Entertainment Science

In many ways, fashion has always been the constantly changing face of the times. However, never has it been subject to such a radical and permanent transformation as in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic, a global crisis without recent precedent, didn’t just upend everyday life; it also changed how we think about, think in terms of, and think about in terms of fashion. This book explores how the pandemic has transformed the fashion industry and the wider cultural norms around clothing, style and consumption.

Sakamori Kagami was one of the top players in the VRMMO Ark Earth Online as Danblf, a veteran summoner with the gravitas to match his elite status. When he falls asleep playing one day, he's transported to a world where the game is reality—but instead of his all-powerful avatar, he's stuck in the body of a cute young girl! He can't let anyone know that this little cutie is really Danblf, so he takes the name "Mira" and claims to be Danblf's disciple. If this gets out, he'll never live it down!

What comes after boarding school for an evil lord? The military academy, of course! Liam's subordinates arrange the perfect overpowered patrol fleet for his post-academy training period, but the Guide is hungry for revenge against the young evil lord and takes this as an opportunity to strike! Will the Guide succeed? And will Liam ever notice that the Guide isn't actually trying to help?

The Queer Art of Failure is about finding alternatives - to conventional understandings of success in a heteronormative, capitalist society; to academic disciplines that confirm what is already known according to approved methods of knowing; and to cultural criticism that claims to break new ground but cleaves to conventional archives.

Leon heads off to study abroad in the Alzer Republic, accompanied by Marie and the idiot brigade (a.k.a., her love interests). Leon's just praying that Marie keeps her hands to herself--if she meddles in the plot of the sequel, she may force him to save the world. Again. Unfortunately, the original story has already flown off the rails. The new protagonist has a twin sister who wasn't in the game! On top of that, some high and mighty noble's son, backed by the power of Alzer's Holy Tree, is baring his fangs at Leon.

Earth has been warned! But when the Council Navy shows up on their doorstep, they are woefully unprepared. Jinny Ambrosa and Tyrus Tyne have reached Earth and the Four Worlds to warn them of the impending Council invasion. But they soon learn that the Council’s shadowy agents are already there! Spies, traitors, scheming politicians, and deadly assassins will do anything to keep them from accomplishing their mission. Now, on the run from even those they considered allies, can they save humanity from the darkness?

How do master storytellers compel us? There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story, but few have used a scientific approach. In The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr applies dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to our myths and archetypes to show how we can tell better stories, revealing, among other things, how storytellers - and also our brains - create worlds by being attuned to moments of unexpected change.

Being tortured isn’t fun at all…especially when it’s your ex-flame attaching the battery cables to you. For Captain Brad Mendoza, his month has gone from bad to worse, and now all anyone seems interested in is the galaxy-changing secret that’s rattling around in his brain. Whoever breaks Brad can build an empire that will rival anything else in the Fringe!

Ever since the tragic death of his parents, Porsche's life has been a balancing act between attending college and bartending to support his younger brother and pay off his deadbeat uncle's gambling debt. When he witnesses a gang of thugs attacking a handsome young man in the alley behind his bar, he's reluctant to intervene--until he's offered fifty thousand baht to help the stranger escape. The stranger is known as Kinn, the second son of a notorious crime family.

Heather Kilgore is the deadliest assassin in the Fringe, a fearsome agent for her King and star nation. But when a high-profile defector is found dead outside the embassy on a contested world, Heather is pulled back into a past she'd tried to forget. Her orders are simple: find out why her name was in the dead man's pocket. But nothing is simple in a galaxy of shifting loyalties and buried truths.

Tossed to monsters to be feasted upon for her master's entertainment, Flum makes the desperate choice to reach for a cursed weapon...and something new awakens within her. A grimdark tale about one woman's blood-soaked quest to reclaim her life!

When Brad Mendoza and Jessica Lin discover a traitor among their closest friends, they’re devastated. But they’re also on a mission to rescue a duke’s little sister, so they don’t have time to deal with it right now. Until that mission proves to be anything but what they expected, and they find themselves caught between royalty, their sworn enemy, and a particularly annoying 17-year-old with visions of revolution. Now, the traitor in their midst might prove to be their only hope to get out this alive!

Fate Graphite is one of the forsaken. Cursed with the skill "Gluttony," he is ever starving, never sated...until the day he kills a dying thief and devours the man's strength--and his soul. The true hunger of Fate's Gluttony has awakened, and if he can learn to control his power, he will at last be the master of his own destiny.

Laurel Canyon was the neighborhood perched above the clubs and record companies of Sunset Strip where Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, Graham Nash, Cass Elliot, Carole King, Don Henley, and Peter Tork, just to name a few, lived and collaborated to make an indelible mark on our music and our culture.

When Kanbara Kanata is whisked away from his mundane life to a world of adventure, he inadvertently offends the all-powerful being who brought him there. As punishment, he is sent to the bottom of the most dangerous dungeon without a single special power or ability! He is sure that he's a goner until he meets a lich girl named Lunaere--an undead powerhouse who hates humans, but grudgingly decides to assist him all the same. With Lunaere's help, Kanata may just grow into someone truly incredible!

Liam begrudgingly travels to another lord's domain to receive a noble education, and the Guide makes sure to muck up his reputation. When Liam attempts to bribe the reigning lord in exchange for a cushy life on the planet, he's deemed destitute and given the cold shoulder! Thinking the man is just far too upstanding for his "incentives", Liam decides that other nobles who got the same treatment must be just as wicked as he is! Will his pretty boy roommates, Kurt, and the gorgeous yet surprisingly friendly girl, Eila, become his new evil besties?

Noblewoman Giselle's world is turned upside down when she's summoned to serve as the king's prized concubine. Her heart already belongs to her manservant, Wallace, a soldier who worships the ground she walks on. Just as Giselle accepts that their blissful days are numbered, Wallace steals into her room in the palace with a desperate, hungry gaze. Spending the night with him is tantamount to treason...but their love is not one so easily denied.

When a battleship and its escorts mysteriously disappear near a contested area of space, they leave no clues behind, and their own Navy is preparing for war and can’t spare the resources to find them. Which wouldn’t really matter to ex-Navy Captain Brad Mendoza. He finally has all he ever wanted: a ship, a crew, and the most beautiful woman in the galaxy as his girlfriend. Seriously, can life get any better? But that’s when Carla Mendoza, his ex-wife, appears, begging Brad for help to find the missing task force and its flag captain, the man she left Brad for.

In the 1950s, Confidential magazine, America's first celebrity scandal magazine, revealed Hollywood stars' secrets, misdeeds, and transgressions in gritty, unvarnished detail. Deploying a vast network of tipsters to root out stars' sexual affairs, drug use, and sexuality, publisher Robert Harrison destroyed celebrities' carefully constructed images and built a media empire. Confidential became the best-selling magazine on American newsstands in the 1950s, surpassing Time, Life, and the Saturday Evening Post. Confidential's spectacular rise was followed by an equally spectacular fall.

When one girl is reincarnated into an otome game, she's ready to clean house—literally! The light novel that inspired the manga, also available from Seven Seas. "I will become the world's most wonderful maid!" With her skirt fluttering in black and white, the girl shouted. Her name is Melody. A reincarnated former Japanese girl, she now pursues her dream in her new life, working as an all-purpose maid for a poor count's family in the kingdom of Theolas. When she makes it, even cheap tea turns into a luxury brew, and a dilapidated mansion is quickly restored to new!