When the relay race teams are chosen in gym class, it's clear that one team doesn't have a chance of winning: Jenny is more interested in eating candy than running around a track; Prairie has a bad leg; Lydia is a complete klutz; and Max is, well, Max. But together, they proudly dub themselves the 'Snob Squad' and vow revenge on their arch enemies, the Neon Nikes, headed by the principal's spoiled daughter, Ashley Krupps. As the Snob Squad members band together to thwart the Neon Nikes, they realize that their greatest weapon might not be as out of reach as they think.

China Bayles is looking forward to the annual chili cook-off in Pecan Springs. And when the event arrives, she takes along her fiance, giving both of them a nice break from China's visiting (i.e., meddling) mother. But then cook-off judge Jerry Jeff Cody dies of an allergic reaction--to a peanut. Everyone knows peanuts don't belong in a bowl of Texas chili ... and China knows something suspicious is afoot. Now, with rumors flying about foul play--and whispered stories about Jerry Jeff's womanizing ways things are heating up all over ...

The RiftWar is done. But a fearsome army of trolls and renegade humans, emboldened by the drug of destruction, has risen in strength from the ashes of defeat. There is one, however, who defies the call to battle... New York Times bestselling fantasist Raymond E. Feist returns to a beleaguered realm of wonders and magic-where war is an enduring legacy; where blood swells the rivers and nourishes the land. Attend to this hitherto untold chapter in the violent history of Midkemia -- a towering saga of great conflicts, brave acts and insidious intrigues. It is the story of a traitor who rejects the brutality of his warlike kind and casts his lot with the human targets of their fierce aggression. It tells of mysterious deaths and sinister machinations -- and signs of a time when the fate of many civilizations rested in the able, unfaltering hands of RiftWar veterans Squire Locklear and cunning their-turned-squire Jimmy the Hand. It chronicles the powerful awakening of Owyn -- apprentice magician of untried strengths -- and celebrates the selfless achievements of Pug, the great sorcerer of two worlds. Welcome now to astonishing new corners of a world you have not yet fully explored-and prepare to experience true excitement, blood chilling terror...and the triumph born from the doom aimed at the beating heart of a kingdom.

Shelley's enduringly popular and rich gothic tale confronts some of the most feared innovations of evolutionism and science--topics such as degeneracy, hereditary disease, and humankind's ability to act as creator of the modern world. This new edition, based on the harder and wittier 1818 version of the text, draws on new research and examines the novel in the context of the controversial radical sciences developing in the years following the Napoleonic Wars, and shows the relationship of Frankenstein's experiment to the contemporary debate between champions of materialistic science and proponents of received religion.

Some people will do anything for power. ANYTHING. U.S. Attorney General Allison Leahy is the nation's top law enforcement officer and the Democrtas' best chance for holding on to the Oval Office. But she has powerful competition in Republican Lincoln Howe, a retired fourstar general and bona finde Africa-American hero. They are running neck and neck, and seemingly nothing can break the deadlock. Then, just days before the election, disaster strikes. Twelve-year-old Kristen Howe, the general's granddaughter, is kidnapped. As attorney general, Allison launched a nationwide manhunt, but her motives come under fire from her opponent. For Allison, though, finding Kristen isn't about politics. Here is a personal crusade that taps into terrifying secrets buried deep within the past--secrets that can shatter all Allison's hopes, twisting them into a nightmare of lies and the ultimate betrayal.

"Spence-Ash has written the novel in eight points of view, but each character is utterly three-dimensional and distinct. This debut novel captivated me from start to finish."—Julia Quinn, author of the Bridgerton Series A sweeping, tenderhearted love story, Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash tells the story of two families living through World War II on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and the shy, irresistible young woman who will call them both her own.As German bombs fall over London in 1940, working-class parents Millie and Reginald Thompson make an impossible choice: they decide to send their eleven-year-old daughter, Beatrix, to America. There, she'll live with another family for the duration of the war, where they hope she'll stay safe.Scared and angry, feeling lonely and displaced, Bea arrives in Boston to meet the Gregorys. Mr. and Mrs. G, and their sons William and Gerald, fold Bea seamlessly into their...

P.C. McPhee is in Australia to help his uncle solve an underwater mystery involving buried treasure. P.C. quickly figures out that they're not the only ones looking for treasure -- an evil geologist is determined to get her hands on it at any cost. P.C., his uncle, and the Aboriginal girl, Maruul; become ensnared in a deadly game of cat and mouse where the winner takes all, including the lives of the losers.

Ava isn't ready to leave her home in Oz — especially not to become a witch. Then the worst thing that could possibly happen occurs — Ava's magic does very wrong and she is banished to a school for wicked witches. Perfect for fans of WICKED, WITCHLINGS, and THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL!In Oz, most girls and boys with magical powers are sent from the north, south, east, and west to renowned witch academies, where they are elevated and taught all the finer ways to be a responsible witch. But if you misbehave? Or are thought to harbor darker magic? You're sent to the equivalent of witch reform school — The School for Wicked Witches. ONLY! Once you get there, you find that the witches running it are so powerful that they've managed to trick the rest of the outside world. Yes, it looks to outside like they are taming the wickedness out of the witches... but in truth, the school is run by wicked witches (who, incidentally, don't see themselves as wicked...

Gifted novelist Fowler ( Sarah Canary and The Sweetheart Season ) delights in the arcane, and as a result, these 15 clever tales are occasionally puzzling but never dull. In the long title story, "Black Glass", temperance activist Carry Nation is resurrected in the 1990s ("We're talking about a very troubled, very big woman," says one shaken barman to reporters) and becomes such a nuisance that the DEA is forced to dispatch her with voodoo. Other plots are only slightly less outrageous in conceit. In "Lieserl," a lovesick madwoman dupes Albert Einstein into believing he has a daughter; in "The Faithful Companion at Forty," Tonto admits to second thoughts about his biggest life choice ("But for every day, for your ordinary life, a mask is only going to make you more obvious. There's an element of exhibitionism in it"). "The Travails" offers a peek at the one-sided correspondence of Mary Gulliver, who wants Lemuel to come home already and help out around the house. The homage to Swift makes sense, for, when Fowler doesn't settle for amusing her readers, she makes a lively satirist. The extraterrestrials who appear in her stories (whether the inscrutably sadistic monsters in "Duplicity" or the members of a seminar studying late-1960s college behavior in "The View from Venus: A Case Study") seem stand-ins for the author herself, who, in elegant and witty prose, cultivates the eye of a curious alien and, along the way, unfolds eccentric plots that keep the pages turning. Contents: Black Glass (1991) Contention (1986) Shimabara (1995) The Elizabeth Complex (1996) Go Back (1998) The Travails (1998) Lieserl (1990) Letters from Home (1987) Duplicity (1989) The Faithful Companion at Forty (1987) The Brew (1995) Lily Red (1988) The Black Fairy's Curse (1997) The View from Venus (1986) Game Night at the Fox and Goose (1989)

One cold winter's morning, Lorimer Black -- insurance adjuster, young, good-looking, on the rise -- goes out on a perfectly ordinary business appointment, finds a hanged man and realizes that his life is about to be turned upside down. The elements at play: a beautiful actress glimpsed in a passing taxi . . . an odd new business associate whose hiring, firing and rehiring make little sense . . . a rock musician who is losing his mind -- and a web of fraud in which virtually everyone Lorimer Black knows has been caught and in which he finds himself increasingly entangled.

In this, the final volume in John Updike’s mock-heroic trilogy about the Jewish American writer Henry Bech, our hero is older but scarcely wiser. Now in his seventies, he remains competitive, lecherous, and self-absorbed, lost in a brave new literary world where his books are hyped by Swiss-owned conglomerates, showcased in chain stores attached to espresso bars, and returned to warehouses just three weeks later. In five chapters more startling and surreal than any that have come before, Bech presides over the American literary scene, enacts bloody revenge on his critics, and wins the world’s most coveted writing prize. It’s not easy being Henry Bech in the post-Gutenbergian world, but somebody has to do it, and he brings to the task his signature mixture of grit, spit, and ennui.

"A deeply beautiful book, with the fierce galloping pace of a great novel."—Liz Rosenberg Boston GlobeInformed by the death of a beloved brother, here are the stories of childhood, its thicket of sex and sorrow and joy, boys and girls growing into men and women, stories of a brother who in his dying could teach how to be most alive. What the Living Do reflects "a new form of confessional poetry, one shared to some degree by other women poets such as Sharon Olds and Jane Kenyon. Unlike the earlier confessional poetry of Plath, Lowell, Sexton et al., Howe's writing is not so much a moan or a shriek as a song. It is a genuinely feminine form . . . a poetry of intimacy, witness, honesty, and relation" (Boston Globe).

There are many kinds of mysterious women, both in life and in fiction. Fiction River Presents: Mysterious Women plucks some of the most intriguing, compelling, and sometimes dangerous female characters from the pages of Fiction River and collects them in one volume.These women fight back against oppression and injustice, help each other when no other help can be found, and undergo transformations from hopelessness into beacons of light for others to follow. They also entertain the reader with their own personal mysteries.What happened to make them break out of the traditional bonds of womanhood? Why do they take such risks? What makes them tick?These eight superb writers tackle those questions and more in this outstanding volume. Includes:"Plan B" by Kate Wilhelm"China Moll" by Cindie Geddes"On the Edge of the Nations" by Dan C. Duval"These Boots Were Made for Murder" by Julie Hyzy"Mercy Find Me" by Diana...