For fans of quests, swords, schools of magic, and awkward crushes.17 year-old Boston high schooler, Ryan DuLac just found out the guy she's been crushing on, hot biker Matt, is a little older than he was letting on. By a few eons... In fact, he is really Merlin--the Merlin, King Arthur's Merlin, the greatest wizard who ever lived. Frozen in a cave for over fifteen hundred years, he's woken for a purpose. But Ryan's not impressed. Tired of being a relationship loser, she'd rather kick his legendary behind.Sure, the world has been crazy ever since the sword and the stone fell out of the sky like a meteor. But despite gruesome gargoyles, a deadly new world of magic, and the guy driving her crazy, Ryan knows that family is everything. Will Merlin sacrifice hers to save the world? Will she be able to stop him?

    Finally, a simplified explanation of Schrödinger's cat paradox for quantum mechanics enthusiasts!Have you been lying awake at night pondering quantum superposition? Have you fretted about how to explain its flawed interpretation? Are you a fan of Schrödinger's cat? Or do you know someone who is? This is the book for you!Award-winning physicist, quantum enthusiast and bestselling author of the Baby University series Chris Ferrie, has transformed Schrödinger's paradox into a whimsical poem perfect for science fans or anyone who enjoys using cats and boxes to explain science experiments.

    More than a third of all adults report experiencing it, with the figure climbing steeply among those over sixty-five. Marina Benjamin takes on her personal experience of the condition--her struggles with it, her insomniac highs, and her dawning awareness that states of sleeplessness grant us valuable insights into the workings of our unconscious minds. Although insomnia is rarely entirely welcome, Benjamin treats it less as an affliction than as an encounter that she engages with and plumbs. She adds new dimensions to both our understanding of sleep (and going without it) and of night, of how we perceive darkness.Along the way, Insomnia trips through illuminating material from literature, art, philosophy, psychology, pop culture, and more. Benjamin pays particular attention to the relationship between women and sleep--Penelope up all night, unraveling her day's weaving for Odysseus; the Pre-Raphaelite artists' depictions of deeply sleeping women; and the worries that keep contemporary females awake.Insomnia is an intense, lyrical, witty, and humane exploration of a state we too often consider only superficially. "This is the song of insomnia, and I shall sing it," Marina Benjamin declares.

    The tales collected here represent the essence of the storyteller’s art, with its ancient roots in fantastical legends and tales told around a fire. In Bedtime Stories, great writers of the past two centuries explore the boundaries between the real and the unreal, between waking and dreaming. From the surreal night visions of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” to the unspeakable horror that haunts two little girls in A. S. Byatt’s “The Thing in the Forest,” from Washington Irving’s comical “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” to Ursula K. LeGuin’s sly perspective on Sleeping Beauty in “The Poacher,” these spellbinding stories transform the stuff of fables and fairy tales into high art. Isak Dinesen, Vladimir Nabokov, Angela Carter, Julio Cortázar, Steven Millhauser, Neil Gaiman, Haruki Murakami, and many more mingle their voices in this one-volume gateway to dreams--the perfect bedside companion for fiction lovers everywhere.

    I mean staggeringly beautiful, men falling at your feet with hopeless adoration as they gaze upon you dumbfounded. That beautiful. I could become that beautiful if I chose, but only with a steep price. Would you pay the price? Does that call to your heart? It doesn’t call to mine. Yes, when I look at the girl in the mirror, I see a young woman of average height and slight build. I see her lovely emerald green eyes and I see her coarse, orange hair poking out in all directions like some unnatural haystack. I see the forty-seven warts that line her face, which accompany one large lump and two small boils. You’d probably think that I would be more than eager to trade for the great gift of beauty because I know some, if not all of you, would call me hideous. But I don’t think of myself as ugly. I think of myself as powerful, strong and fierce – for I have magical powers – powers that amaze and terrify me at times. And today is the most important day of my life, because today my mother will say the words over me and seal my fate. For I, Olive, am the last of the Winnowwood and this is my story. Based on the award winning screenplay of the same name, The Ugly Princess will take you on an amazing adventure filled with twists, turns and an ending that will take your breath away because it is also a love story of the most unusual, magical kind. “In the tradition of The Princess Bride (with somewhat less whimsy) and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Smith’s debut is a fairy tale in a new world…. The twists along this charming road make for an enchanting journey.” -- Kirkus Reviews --