Urban City

Simmie Johnson was born the son of a slave. He was also a genius. After earning a PhD in physics from Tuskegee Institute, he wrote a paper outlining a theory for time travel, including plans for a time machine - called a chronocar - which was published in a scientific journal in the early 1900s. Since the technology required to build the chronocar did not yet exist, the paper and its brilliant writer faded into obscurity.

With wit and sharp insight, former Traffic Commissioner of New York City, Sam Schwartz a.k.a. "Gridlock Sam", one of the most respected transportation engineers in the world and consummate insider in NYC political circles, uncovers how American cities became so beholden to cars and why the current shift away from that trend will forever alter America's urban landscapes, marking nothing short of a revolution in how we get from place to place.

Jesus told us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We love the idea of it, but many of us are so busy it can be hard to live out. The past few years our culture has become more polarized with division and disrespect. As tragedies and social issues fill the headlines, the church seems to be nearly absent in the conversation. Love Our City presents our problem, how we can overcome it, and solid ways to fulfill our God-given mission.

Trixie Gardens is one average witch, thank you very much. A down-on-her-luck taxi driver in the paranormal section of New York, Trixie has spent a lifetime repressing her magic. Until one night, she meets a grumpy, devilishly handsome vampire in a dark alley, and she accidentally activates her powers by shooting the cork from a cheap cabernet bottle at his face. It turns out the vampire is none other than Dominic Kent—the stormy, rough-around-the-edges billionaire who owns Trixie’s apartment building.

Abigail, a wealthy homeowner, decides to throw a lavish birthday in a hillside mansion to raise money for the city’s newest affordable housing project—and prove to her family that she’s made something worthwhile of her life. Sunny, a construction worker who sleeps in a van along the bay’s shore, is in the running for an apartment—but only if enough funds are raised at the party.

It's been a long time since Tobias spread his wings. The exiled dragon prince has worked hard to blend into the human world and practice his love for healing as a pediatric cardiologist. She awakens the dragon within. As a vampire-human hybrid, Sabrina is used to being different from the rest of her community. But all vampires need to feed. The night she chooses Tobias as her next meal, everything changes. He's far more than he seems, and if she doesn't protect his secret, it could cost him his life.

Clean water, paved roads, public transit, electricity and gas, sewers, waste processing, telecommunication, even the Internet—all this infrastructure is what makes cities work and powers our lives, often seamlessly and silently. Virtually everything we do and consume depends on infrastructure. Yet, most people have no idea how these systems work. How is water treated? How do cities manage rainwater? Why do traffic jams exist? How is electricity generated and distributed? What happens to trash after it is picked up? How does the Internet work?

When legends live, dragons die. Steven Drokharis is on an impossible quest to find the Holy Grail. The Dragonknights came close, but then their ranks were decimated by the mysterious Dragon Slayer, a legend that still fills Primes with terror. Standing in Steven’s way are ancient forces that have been waiting for the Lost Son and Merlin’s Daughter to continue the hunt. And yet, war has come to Steven’s doorstep, and he must balance defending what he’s earned with his greater ambition of bringing revolution to Dragonsouls everywhere.

Nya Yorke isn't strong enough to take them down alone, but she can't let the men who raided her nightclub away with murder. It turns out that the man who rescues her from the same fate is capable of committing horrors, and Nya recognizes that he is the key to completing a mission of her own. Archer wants Tag, her oldest friend, and if she can broker a deal to get him what he wants then she might be able to punish the men who attacked her colleague. Nya needs an ally, but quickly learns that wearing Archer's mark means more than deferring to him, it could change the course of her life.

In Tokyo—one of the world's largest megacities—a stray cat is wending her way through the back alleys. And, with each detour, she brushes up against the seemingly disparate lives of the city-dwellers, connecting them in unexpected ways. But the city is changing. As it does, it pushes her to the margins where she chances upon a series of apparent strangers—from a homeless man squatting in an abandoned hotel, to a shut-in hermit afraid to leave his house, to a convenience store worker searching for love. The cat orbits Tokyo's denizens, drawing them ever closer.

London. A city apart. Inimitable. Or so it once seemed. Spiralling from the outer limits of the Overground to the pinnacle of the Shard, Iain Sinclair encounters a metropolis stretched beyond recognition. The vestiges of secret tunnels, the ghosts of saints and lost poets lie buried by developments, the cycling revolution and Brexit. An electrifying final odyssey, The Last London is an unforgettable vision of the Big Smoke before it disappears into the air of memory.

As human activity and environmental change come to be increasingly recognized as intertwined phenomena on a rapidly urbanizing planet, the field of urban ecology has risen to offer useful ways of thinking about coupled human and natural systems. On the forefront of this discipline is Marina Alberti, whose innovative work offers a conceptual framework for uncovering fundamental laws that govern the complexity and resilience of cities, which she sees as key to understanding and responding to planetary change and the evolution of Earth.

In a near future where climate change has severely affected weather and agriculture, the North End of an unnamed city has long been abandoned in favor of the neighboring South End. Aside from the scavengers steadily stripping the empty city to its bones, only a few thousand people remain, content to live quietly among the crumbling metropolis. Many, like the narrator, are there to try to escape the demons of their past. He spends his time observing and recording the decay around him, attempting to bury memories of what he has lost.

Found wandering the Witch Woods as a child, everything about Sophia is a mystery. With no memories and no family, she’s raised in secret by the professors of Nighthelm Academy...all of whom know far more about her than they’re letting on. But Sophia does know one thing: she’s a contritum, a magical being with a broken soul. Her very existence is illegal, and until she finds the other piece of her soul, her uncontrollable magic will only grow more deadly and untamed. Then she discovers three men who hold a mysterious sway over not just her soul, but also her heart.

Contains Books 1-3 of the exhilarating series that proves that the best heroes come in small packages! Dead Rat Walking, Rat City, and Year of the Rat.

Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stories they tell about places, peoples, and nations are selective. They are never the whole story. Exploring seven old towns, from Frankfurt and Prague to Vilnius in Lithuania, Marek Kohn examines how they have been used since the Second World War to conceal political tensions and reinforce certain versions of history.

During the Roaring Twenties, two of the most revered and influential men in American business proposed to transform one of the country’s poorest regions into a dream technological metropolis, a shining paradise of small farms, giant factories, and sparkling laboratories. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison’s “Detroit of the South” would be 10 times the size of Manhattan, powered by renewable energy, and free of air pollution. And it would reshape American society.

A riveting, groundbreaking account of how the war on crime has torn apart inner-city communities. Forty years in, the tough-on-crime turn in American politics has spurred a prison boom of historic proportions that disproportionately affects Black communities. It has also torn at the lives of those on the outside. As arrest quotas and high-tech surveillance criminalize entire blocks, a climate of fear and suspicion pervades daily life, not only for young men entangled in the legal system but for their family members and working neighbors.

Like all great metropolises before it, when a city gets big enough, old enough, it must be born; but there are ancient enemies who cannot tolerate new life. Thus New York will live or die by the efforts of a reluctant midwife...and how well he can learn to sing the city's mighty song.

In part two of Homies, Lovers And Friends, Michelle is left with the fact that her life with Tasheem just might have caused her cousin to be murdered. When taking four steps forward, she feels as if she's pushed back fifteen. Just when she thought she had gotten rid of Tasheem and his evil ways, he came back and decided to cause harm to not just her, but Miracle.