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The velvet rope economy : how inequality became big business / by Schwartz, Nelson,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In nearly every realm of daily life--from health care to education, highways to home security--there is an invisible velvet rope rising, separating Americans into two radically different experiences of life. On one side of the velvet rope is a friction-free existence where, for a price, needs are anticipated and catered to. Red tape is cut, lines are jumped, appointments are secured, and doors are opened. On the other side of the rope, friction is practically the defining characteristic, with middle-and working-class Americans facing a Darwinian fight for an empty seat on the plane, a place in line with their kids at the amusement park, a college acceptance, a hospital bed. We are all aware of the gap between the rich and everyone else, but when we weren't looking business innovators stepped in to exploit it, shifting services away from the masses and finding new ways to serve the privileged. New York Times business reporter Nelson Schwartz offers a behind-the-scenes tour of the velvet rope economy and those who created it: the ship-within-a-ship on Norwegian Cruise Lines that saves the best views for the wealthy, a special pager for donors that reaches San Francisco's top cardiologist, a $4,000-a-night maternity suite, firefighters who save one home but not the house next door. And he shows the toll of velvet rope innovation on the rest of us: long waits for an ambulance, packed highways, school athletics that are pay to play. What's more, as decision-makers and corporate leaders increasingly live on the friction-free side of the velvet rope, they are less inclined to change--or even notice--the barriers everyone else must contend with"--
Subjects: Income distribution; Affluent consumers; Classism;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Weird rules to follow / by Spencer, Kim.;
"In this novel for middle readers told in vignettes, Mia and her best friend Lara have very different experiences growing up in a northern fishing community in the 1980s."--Provided by publisher.LSC
Subjects: Nineteen eighties; Best friends; Social classes; Indigenous peoples; Identity (Psychology);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Wolf at the table : a novel / by Rapp, Adam,author.;
"As late summer 1951 descends on Elmira, New York, Myra Larkin, thirteen, the oldest child of a large Catholic family, meets a young man she believes to be Mickey Mantle. He chats her up at a local diner and gives her a ride home. The matter consumes her until later that night, when a triple homicide occurs just down the street, opening a specter of violence that will haunt the Larkins for half a century. As the siblings leave home and fan across the country, each pursues a shard of the American dream. Myra serves as a prison nurse while raising her son, Ronan. Her middle sisters, Lexy and Fiona, find themselves on opposite sides of class and power. Alec, once an altar boy, is banished from the house and drifts into oblivion. As he becomes an increasingly alienated loner, his mother begins to receive postcards full of ominous portent. What they reveal, and what they require, will shatter a family and lead to devastating reckoning"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Conflict of generations; Families; Intergenerational relations; Mental illness; Serial murderers; Siblings;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Twins [yoto card] : Yoto card / by Johnson, Varian.; Wright, Shannon(Illustrator);
Read by Ahnya O'Riordan; Grace Capeless; Mashari Bain; Malcolm Bowen; Antoinette Comer; André Blake; Armand Xavier Rufen-Blanchette.For use with a Yoto Player, the Yoto Player app on a device or NFC touchpoint to stream.Maureen and Francine Carter are twins and best friends. They participate in the same clubs, enjoy the same foods, and are partners on all their school projects. But just before the girls start sixth grade, Francine becomes Fran -- a girl who wants to join the chorus, run for class president, and dress in fashionable outfits that set her apart from Maureen. A girl who seems happy to share only two classes with her sister! Maureen and Francine are growing apart and there's nothing Maureen can do to stop it. Are sisters really forever? Or will middle school change things for good? Ages 8 to 12.System requirements: 1 Yoto Player smart speaker or Yoto Player app on a device or NFC touchpoint to stream.
Subjects: Children's audiobooks.; Sound recordings.; Sisters; Twins; Sibling rivalry; Middle schools; Maturation (Psychology); Preloaded audiobook.; Yoto audio card.;
© 2021., Yoto Inc.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Sunny. by Holm, Jennifer L.; Holm, Matthew.;
Sunny is starting to understand the ins and outs of middle school... but she still feels more out than in. It's about classes or homework, really. No, it's the fact that most kids have a thing they do outside of class. Like football or track or cheerleading. Sunny isn't quarterback material, and her cheer attempts are... not the best. So what can she do? When Sunny's friend Arun says he wants to start a debate club, she's not really sure what he means. Isn't debate just... arguing? Sunny's never had a problem with arguing. Arun and the advisor show her there's more to it than that -- there's also teamwork, and research, and being able to speak up in front of judges. Some of the debates are fun ones -- which is the best candy? Is peanut butter a force for evil or a force for good? But when the debate club starts to be a success, Sunny realizes she won't just be able to talk her way into winning... she'll have to make her case!
Subjects: Graphic novels.; Comics (Graphic works); Debates and debating; Middle schools; Friendship; Cartoons and comics.;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Funeral kings [videorecording] / by Delaney Michael.; Hartigan, Dylan.; Maizus, Alex.; McManus, Kevin.; McManus, Matthew.; Odei, Charles.; Puzzo, Jordan.; 30 Bones Cinema.; Entertainment One (Firm : Canada); Modernciné (Firm);
Dylan Hartigan, Alex Maizus, Jordan Puzzo, Charles Odei, Michael Delaney.It's always a good day for a funeral at St. Mark's Middle School. Andy and Charlie, two altar servers, don't just get to miss class anytime a parishioner kicks the bucket, they cut out early and play hooky as soon as the service is over. Eventually their irreverent personalities will put them in situations that are too big for them to handle. When Bobby, a 16 year-old dropout and former altar boy, hides a padlocked trunk in Andy's bedroom, he explicitly tells Andy not to open it. In spite of the warning, Andy and Charlie do whatever it takes to get inside. They crack it open to find just what they had hoped for--fireworks, cigarettes, even dirty magazines. The most alluring of all the contraband, however, is the piece they didn't expect: gleaming back at them is a small, silver, .38-caliber revolver enticing the boys to get in over their heads.Canadian Home Video Rating: 14A.DVD, widescreen (1.78:1) presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1.
Subjects: Acolytes; Comedy films.; Feature films.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.;
© c2013., Distributed by Entertainment One,
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Anxious people [sound recording] / by Backman, Fredrik,1981-author.; Ireland, Marin,narrator.; Smith, Neil(Neil Andrew),translator.; translation of:Backman, Fredrik,1981-Folk med ångest.[sound recording].; Simon & Schuster Audio (Firm),publisher.;
Read by Marin Ireland."This is a story about a hostage drama. But more than that, it's a story about idiots. That's why, from the very outset, I need to say that it is always very easy to declare people idiots, but only if you forget that it is also almost always idiotically difficult to be human. Anxious People is an unreasonably riotous comedy about a hostage drama during an open house that all begins when a failed bank robber locks himself in with six strangers who have come to view the apartment. In captivity we meet Roger and Anna-Lena, a recently retired couple who are on a manic hunt for fixer-uppers because they don't know how to fix their own marriage. They have the distinction of shopping at every Ikea in Sweden-and those are some of the most romantic moments they ever shared. Then there is Zara, a wealthy director of a bank who has never cared for poor people or their problems (and isn't shy about saying so). But when tragedy strikes in her life, she becomes addicted to visiting real-estate open houses to see how the middle-classes live - and possibly to find a suitable place to commit suicide. Julia and Danijela are a young lesbian couple with a newborn baby who can't agree on anything. Their opposite and idiosyncratic home preferences are making them increasingly anxious about their chances of spending a lifetime together. And Estelle, an eighty year-old woman who has lived long enough to be unimpressed by some bank robber waving a gun in her face. Despite the story she tells them all, Estelle hasn't really come to the apartment to view it for her daughter, and her husband really isn't outside parking the car. As police surround the premises and television channels are broadcasting live, the pressure of an increasingly tense situation mounts, causing each person to reveal more and more about themselves to each other. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people. In the end, the hostages are released, but when the police storm the apartment to capture the robber, it is ... empty. In a series of interviews afterwards, the witnesses all tell their version of what happened that day, whereupon it becomes clear to the police that one person is lying, and that none of the others are telling the whole truth. This is a story about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and a group of very anxious people who experience the same events in wildly different ways."--
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Humorous fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Anxiety; Apartment houses; City and town life; Hostages; Married people; Police; Real estate agents; Theft;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Anxious people / by Backman, Fredrik,1981-author.; Smith, Neil(Neil Andrew),translator.;
"This is a story about a hostage drama. But more than that, it’s a story about idiots. That’s why, from the very outset, I need to say that it is always very easy to declare people idiots, but only if you forget that it is also almost always idiotically difficult to be human. Anxious People is an unreasonably riotous comedy about a hostage drama during an open house that all begins when a failed bank robber locks himself in with six strangers who have come to view the apartment. In captivity we meet Roger and Anna-Lena, a recently retired couple who are on a manic hunt for fixer-uppers because they don’t know how to fix their own marriage. They have the distinction of shopping at every Ikea in Sweden—and those are some of the most romantic moments they ever shared. Then there is Zara, a wealthy director of a bank who has never cared for poor people or their problems (and isn’t shy about saying so). But when tragedy strikes in her life, she becomes addicted to visiting real-estate open houses to see how the middle-classes live – and possibly to find a suitable place to commit suicide. Julia and Danijela are a young lesbian couple with a newborn baby who can’t agree on anything. Their opposite and idiosyncratic home preferences are making them increasingly anxious about their chances of spending a lifetime together. And Estelle, an eighty year-old woman who has lived long enough to be unimpressed by some bank robber waving a gun in her face. Despite the story she tells them all, Estelle hasn’t really come to the apartment to view it for her daughter, and her husband really isn’t outside parking the car. As police surround the premises and television channels are broadcasting live, the pressure of an increasingly tense situation mounts, causing each person to reveal more and more about themselves to each other. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people. In the end, the hostages are released, but when the police storm the apartment to capture the robber, it is...empty. In a series of interviews afterwards, the witnesses all tell their version of what happened that day, whereupon it becomes clear to the police that one person is lying, and that none of the others are telling the whole truth. This is a story about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and a group of very anxious people who experience the same events in wildly different ways."--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Fiction.; Humorous fiction.; Detective and mystery fiction.; Humorous fiction.; Bank robberies; Thieves; Hostage negotiations; Witnesses; Small cities; Bank robberies.; Hostage negotiations.; Small cities.; Thieves.; Witnesses.;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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Raymond Chandler's Trouble is my business [graphic novel] / by David, Arvind Ethan,author.; Esposito, Taylor,letterer.; Kyriazis, Ilias,1978-illustrator.; Peter, Cris,colorist.; Winters, Ben H.,colorist.; graphic novelization of (work):Chandler, Raymond,1888-1959.Trouble is my business.;
"A brilliant graphic adaptation of the classic Raymond Chandler novella featuring detective Philip Marlowe. Los Angeles, 1930s. A rich old man who knows trouble when he sees it hires a detective agency to scare off a young woman who seems to be making his adopted son hemorrhage cash. Fortunately for the detective, a hard drinking man named Philip Marlowe, trouble is his business. The young woman, Harriet, has an agenda all her own and aspirations beyond being a shill for a gambler. She's nobody's fool. Nor is the old man, for his part. He's got serious muscle--a chauffer with a degree from Dartmouth, the only Black student from his class, who knows his way around a gun and isn't afraid to use it. Right in the middle of it all is a big pile of money. And when the bodies begin to drop, only Philip Marlowe can sort out which of these suspects is pulling the trigger"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery comics.; Graphic novel adaptations.; Graphic novels.; Noir comics.; Marlowe, Philip (Fictitious character); Private investigators;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Welcome home, stranger : a novel / by Christensen, Kate,1962-author.;
"'Christensen is a forceful writer whose ... prose is visceral and poetic ... She is a portrait artist, drawing in miniature, capturing the light within.'-San Francisco Chronicle. From the PEN-Faulkner Award-winning author of The Great Man comes a novel about grief, love, growing older, and the complications of family that is the story of a fifty-something woman who goes home-reluctantly-to Maine after the death of her mother. Can you ever truly go home again? An environmental journalist in Washington, DC, Rachel has shunned her New England working-class family for years. Divorced and childless in her middle age, she's a true independent spirit with the pain and experience to prove it. Coping with challenges large and small, she thinks her life is in free fall-until she's summoned home to deal with the aftermath of her mother's death. Then things really fall apart. Surrounded by a cast of sometimes comic, sometimes heartbreakingly serious characters-an arriviste sister, an alcoholic brother-in-law and, most importantly, the love of her life recently married to the sister's best friend-Rachel must come to terms with her past, the sorrow she has long buried, and the ghost of the mother who, for better and worse, made her the woman she is. Lively, witty, and painfully familiar, this sophisticated and emotionally resonant novel from the author of The Great Man holds a mirror up to modern life as it considers the way some of us must carry on now"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Novels.; Families; Homecoming; Interpersonal relations; Mothers; Women journalists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Results 81 to 90 of 120 | « previous |