Known for her hilariously acerbic observations on her blog, People I Want to Punch in the Throat, Mann now brings her sharp wit to bear on suburban life, marriage, and motherhood in this laugh-out-loud collection of essays. From the politics of joining a play group, to the thrill of mothers’ night out at the gun range, to the rewards of your most meaningful relationship (the one you have with your cleaning lady), nothing is sacred or off-limits. So the next time you find yourself wearing fuzzy bunny pajamas in the school carpool line or accidentally stuck at a co-worker’s swingers party, just think, What would Jen Mann do? Or better yet, buy her book.

    These stories explore everything from artificial intelligence to parallel universes to video games, and each story is accompanied by an author’s note exploring the background and genesis of each story.   Howey’s incisive mind makes Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories a compulsively readable and thought-provoking selection of short works—from a modern master at the top of his game.

    You've read the Brothers Grimm, you've watched the Disney cartoons, and you cheered as these virtuous women lived happily ever after. But real princesses didn't always get happy endings. Sure, plenty were graceful and benevolent leaders, but just as many were ruthless in their quest for power and all of them had skeletons rattling in their royal closets. Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe was a Nazi spy. Empress Elisabeth of the Austro-Hungarian empire slept wearing a mask of raw veal. Princess Olga of Kiev slaughtered her way to sainthood while Princess Lakshmibai waged war on the battlefield, charging into combat with her toddler son strapped to her back. Princesses Behaving Badly offers true tales of all these princesses and dozens more in a fascinating read that's perfect for history buffs, feminists, and anyone seeking a different kind of bedtime story.

    Screenwriter, director, and star of the acclaimed film Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a startling, sexy, and tender collection.

    Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and re-craft a world of automatons, clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that never were. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, utopian revolutionaries, and intrepid orphans solve crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships.

    In “Girl on Girl,” a high school freshman goes to disturbing lengths to help an old friend. An insatiable temptress pursues the one man she can’t have in “Meteorologist Dave Santana.” And in the title story, a long fraught friendship comes undone when three buddies get impossibly lost on a lake it is impossible to get lost on. In Diane Cook’s perilous worlds, the quotidian surface conceals an unexpected surreality that illuminates different facets of our curious, troubling, and bewildering behavior.Other stories explore situations pulled directly from the wild, imposing on human lives the danger, tension, and precariousness of the natural world: a pack of not-needed boys take refuge in a murky forest and compete against each other for their next meal; an alpha male is pursued through city streets by murderous rivals and desirous women; helpless newborns are snatched by a man who stalks them from their suburban yards. Through these characters Cook asks: What is at the root of our most heartless, selfish impulses? Why are people drawn together in such messy, complicated, needful ways? When the unexpected intrudes upon the routine, what do we discover about ourselves? As entertaining as it is dangerous, this accomplished collection explores the boundary between the wild and the civilized, where nature acts as a catalyst for human drama and lays bare our vulnerabilities, fears, and desires.

    Introducing Ashley Keller, career girl turned stay-at-home mom who's trying to navigate the world of Pinterest-perfect, Facebook-fantastic and Instagram-impressive mommies but failing miserably. When Ashley gets the opportunity to participate in the Motherhood Better boot camp run by the mommy-blog-empire maven she idolizes, she jumps at the chance to become the perfect mom she's always wanted to be. But will she fly high or flop? With her razor-sharp wit and knack for finding the funny in everything, Bunmi Laditan creates a character as flawed and lovable as Bridget Jones or Becky Bloomwood while hilariously lambasting the societal pressures placed upon every new mother. At its heart, Ashley's story reminds moms that there's no way to be perfect, but many ways to be great.

    This rich treasury includes Tolkien's most beloved short fiction plus his essay on fantasy. Publisher's Note Tolkien's Magic Ring, by Peter S. Beagle The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son Tree and Leaf On Fairy-Stories Leaf by Niggle Farmer Giles of Ham The Adventures of Tom Bombadil The Adventures of Tom Bombadil Bombadil Goes Boating Errantry Princess Mee The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon The Stone Troll Perry-the-Winkle The Mewlips Oliphaunt Fastitocalon Cat Shadow-bride The Hoard The Sea-Bell The Last Ship

    "Here’s a partial list of things I don’t believe in: God. The Devil. Heaven. Hell. Bigfoot. Ancient Aliens. Past lives. Life after death. Vampires. Zombies. Reiki. Homeopathy. Rolfing. Reflexology. Note that 'witches' and 'witchcraft' are absent from this list. The thing is, I wouldn’t believe in them, and I would privately ridicule any idiot who did, except for one thing: I am a witch."For as long as Augusten Burroughs could remember, he knew things he shouldn't have known. He manifested things that shouldn't have come to pass. And he told exactly no one about this, save one person: his mother. His mother reassured him that it was all perfectly normal, that he was descended from a long line of witches, going back to the days of the early American colonies. And that this family tree was filled with witches. It was a bond that he and his mother shared--until the day she left him in the care of her psychiatrist to be raised in his family (but that's a whole other story). After that, Augusten was on his own. On his own to navigate the world of this tricky power; on his own to either use or misuse this gift.From the hilarious to the terrifying, Toil & Trouble is a chronicle of one man's journey to understand himself, to reconcile the powers he can wield with things with which he is helpless. There are very few things that are coincidences, as you will learn in Toil & Trouble. Ghosts are real, trees can want to kill you, beavers are the spawn of Satan, houses are alive, and in the end, love is the most powerful magic of all.

    the Purple Hordes / James Kochalka --Sunbird / Neil Gaiman --The Aces phone / Jeanne DuPrau --The sixth borough / Jonathan Safran Foer.Interspersed with charts, graphs, and various crossword puzzles, A Book of Noisy Outlaws, Evil Marauders, and Some Other Things . . . features some of today's best authors spinning new tales ranging from the spooky to the strange. George Saunders tells the story of a father who takes caution to dangerous extremes in "Lars Farf, Excessively Fearful Father and Husband." In "ACES by Phone," a small boy finds a cell phone that lets him listen in on the thoughts of dogs, and in "Small Country," Nick Hornby introduces a country too small for a postal system but, unfortunately for one bookish boy, just big enough for a football team. Each story features full-color illustrations by artists including Barry Blitt, Lane Smith, David Heatley, and Marcel Dzama.The collection includes previously unpublished children's stories from Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated), Nick Hornby (High Fidelity), Neil Gaiman (Sandman), George Saunders (CivilWarLand in Bad Decline), Kelly Link (Stranger Than Fiction), and Jon Scieskza (Stinky Cheese Man). The dust jacket folds into a unique aerogram, which factors into a special contest involving a story written partly by Lemony Snicket, partly by thousands of children.

    Featuring a hilarious new take on iconic characters and scenes—from Kirk in the Captain's chair to Spock offering his Vulcan wisdom—this eye-opening adventure stays true to the tone of the classic TV show. Playful, loving, and from a strange new world, Star Trek Cats is the perfect gift for fans of, well, Star Trek and cats.TM & © 2017 CBS Studios Inc. STAR TREK and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

    Few know this better than the poets who have risen to the top of their trade by sharing their emotion, opinion and art with millions of fans.Combining the poetic forces of some of today’s most popular and confessional poets, this book presents poems and short stories about connection wrapped up in a most unique exercise in creative writing. Follow along as your favorite poets connect with each other; offering their poetry to the next poet who tells a story based on the concept presented to them. With poetry, stories and art, [Dis]Connected is a mixed media presentation of connection and collaboration.

    Every project, from a misshapen hat to the most magnificent sweater, holds a story. Yarn Harlot tells all those stories with humor, insight, and sympathy for the obsessed.Over 50 million people in America knit. The average knitter spends between $500 and $1,700 a year on yarn, patterns, needles, and books. No longer just a fad or a hobby, knitting has advanced to a lifestyle.Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter moves beyond instructions and patterns into the purest elements of knitting: obsession, frustration, reflection, and fun. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's humorous and poignant essays find humor in knitting an enormous afghan that requires a whopping 30 balls of wool, having a husband with size 13 feet who loves to wear hand-knit socks, and earns her "yarn harlot" title with her love of any new yarn--she'll quickly drop an old project for the fresh saucy look of a new interesting yarn.Since the upsurge in knitting began in the early '90s, the number of women under 45 who knit has doubled. Knitting is no longer a hobby for just grandmothers--women and men of all ages are embracing this art. Describing its allure is best left to Stephanie who explains: "It is a well-known fact that knitting is a sparkling form of entertainment, as spiritual as yoga, as relaxing as a massage, and as funny as Erma Bombeck trapped in a PTA meeting."

    This book collects some of the best funny fantasy fiction published in the past decade. Included are works by Hugo and Nebula Award winners, New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors, as well as up-and-coming talented writers.Includes the following stories:“Dave the Mighty Steel-Thewed Avenger” by Laura Resnick“Crumbs” by Esther Friesner“Fellow Traveler” by Donald J. Bingle“A Fish Story” by Sarah Totton“Another End of the Empire” by Tim Pratt“Giantkiller” by G. Scott Huggins“A Mild Case of Death” by David Gerrold“Fairy Debt” by Gail Carriger“A Very Special Girl” by Mike Resnick“The Blue Corpse Corps” by Jim C. Hines“Librarians in the Branch Library of Babel” by Shaenon K. Garrity“The Queens Reason” by Richard Parks“The Best Little Cleaning Robot in All of Faerie” by Susan Jane Bigelow“Suede This Time” by Jean Rabe

    Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance, while others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster, which they must work to rebuild as we once did millennia ago.In “The Cartographers,” the main character works for a company that creates and sells virtual memories, while struggling to maintain a real-world relationship sabotaged by an addiction to his own creations. In “Saying Goodbye to Yang,” the robotic brother of an adopted Chinese child malfunctions, and only in his absence does the family realize how real a son he has become.Children of the New World grapples with our unease in this modern world and how our ever-growing dependence on new technologies has changed the shape of our society. Alexander Weinstein is a visionary new voice in speculative fiction for all of us who are fascinated by and terrified of what we might find on the horizon.