Is she the only mother who feels so permanently panic-stricken at the terrors of the modern world - or is it normal to sit up in bed all night popping bubble wrap? She worries that too much gluten and dairy may be hindering her children's mental arithmetic. She frets that there are too many cars on the road to let them out of the 4x4. Finally she resolves to take control and tackle her biggest worry of all: her daughter is definitely not going to fail that crucial secondary school entrance exam. Because Alice has decided to take the test in her place...With his trademark comic eye for detail, John O'Farrell has produced a funny and provocative book that will make you laugh, cry and vow never to become that sort of parent. And then you can pass it on to your seven-year-old, because she really ought to be reading grown-up novels by now...

    Which is why her mother, Janine, reluctantly agreed to let her go on the weekend camping trip with her Brownie troop. But when Janine arrives to pick up Sophie after the trip, her daughter is not among the others. Somehow, along the forested route from West Virginia, Sophie has disappeared.Sophie is no ordinary 8 year old. She suffers from a rare disease, and Janine has recently enrolled her in an experimental treatment as a last effort to save her life - despite the vehement objections of her ex-husband, Joe, who believes conventional medicine is the only route to take. The only person to support Janine in her decision is Lucas Trowell, someone familiar with the herbs used in the treatment. Lucas has been encouraging Janine to keep Sophie in the program, and, indeed, the little girl has been showing remarkable improvement. All her mother's instincts tell Janine that Sophie is alive, but time is running out. Without her treatment, it's only a matter of days before Sophie's illness will claim her life. As Janine, Joe and Lucas embark on a desperate search to find Sophie, envy and suspicion grow between the two men, casting doubts on each other's true motives for helping Janine.Deep in the forest, another drama unfolds. Sophie has found refuge in a remote cabin inhabited by a woman who wants nothing to do with the little girl. She's desperate to help her own daughter, who has been wrongly imprisoned for murder and who, after escaping, is on her way to join her mother. Sophie's arrival puts in jeopardy her daughter's future, but the mysterious woman is as determined to save her daughter as Janine is to save Sophie.Only one of them can succeed.

    /ka?/A piece of meat; born to breed; past its sell-by-date; one of the herd.Women don’t have to fall into a stereotype.The Cows is a powerful novel about three women. In all the noise of modern life, each needs to find their own voice.It’s about friendship and being female.It’s bold and brilliant.It’s searingly perceptive.It's about never following the herd.And everyone is going to be talking about it.

    Who like to read. Who take satisfaction in their work. Who are resolutely kind. Leonard and Hungry Paul is the story of two friends trying to find their place in the world. It is about the uncelebrated people of this world. And it asks a surprisingly enthralling question: Can kind people change the world?

    Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it’s too late?

    When Nick’s charmingly erratic behavior finally became too much for Lena, the marriage and the partnership ended. But—like C. K. Dexter Haven and Tracy Lord—it seems that Lena and Nick just can’t quite separate.Lena works out fiercely, keeps her dates with the boring and conventional Preston Winter, and daily battles on against corporate greed. But Nick’s not doing so well.Still brilliant and devilishly clever, he is now also almost crazy. He is prone to fantasy and the big gesture, and he engages frantically in guerrilla activism for the sake of animals wild and domestic. Nick doesn’t make plans; he has visions. And eventually his antics put him back into Lena’s hands. While she tries to navigate the legal waters into which he’s thrown them, Nick veers out of her wake and into the midst of a strange set of companions, including Oscar, his psychiatric attendant and Action Comics collector; Ralph and Alice Wilson, the rebellious managers of the city animal shelter; and an aging Russian hound named Wolfram.Often laugh-out-loud funny, with bright wit and brilliant machine-gun dialogue, The Marriage of True Minds sweetly explores modern love, undying idealism, and one cracked partnership that can’t be sundered—from without or from within.If you like screwball comedies, like Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday, then you’ll love The Marriage of True Minds!

    Once a spirited, independent woman with a rebellious streak, her life has been forever changed by a tragic event twelve years ago. Unable to let go of her grief, she finds solace in the silent company of the souls of her local Victorian cemetery and at the town's lido, where she seeks refuge underwater - safe from the noise and the pain. But a chance encounter with two extraordinary women - the fabulous and wise Kitty Muriel, a convent girl-turned-magician's wife-turned-seventy-something-roller-disco-fanatic, and the mysterious Sally Red Shoes, a bag lady with a prodigious voice - opens up a new world of possibilities, and the chance to start living again.Until the fateful day when the past comes roaring back...

    They shared an incredible, brief, fleeting moment of deep possibility, somewhere halfway down Charlotte Street.And then, just like that, she was gone - accidentally leaving him holding her old-fashioned, disposable camera, chock full of undeveloped photos...And now Jason - ex-teacher, ex-boyfriend, part-time writer and reluctant hero - faces a dilemma. Should he try and track The Girl down? What if she's The One? But that would mean using the only clues he has, which lie untouched in this tatty disposable...It's funny how things can develop...

    In the aftermath, she pieces her life back together and tries to find meaning in her existence as a human rights worker in the worst areas around the globe.   Then, on the anniversary of the fateful accident—and wrestling with the lure of death herself—she meets a boy who will cause her life to change forever yet again. Thirteen-year-old Blue Williams has been living on the streets, abandoned by his family, rarely attending school, and utterly alone. Following her instincts, Ginny reaches out to him. Leery of everyone, he runs from her again and again. But he always returns, and each time, their friendship grows.   Blue glows with outsized spirit and an irresistible mix of innocence and wisdom beyond his years. Ginny offers him respect as they form an unusual bond and become the family they each lost. But just as Blue is truly beginning to trust her, she learns of a shocking betrayal that he has been hiding. Is it a wound too deep to heal, or will she be able to fight the battle that will make them both whole again? Blue is #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel at her finest, a probing and emotionally gripping story of dark secrets revealed, second chances, and the power of love and courage to overcome life’s greatest challenges.From the Hardcover edition.

    Doxey, Jerome Klinkowitz, Richard Giannone, John L. Simons, James Lundquist, and other scholars.- After the bomb, Dad came up with ice / Terry Southern- Vonnegut's Cat's cradle / William S. Doxey- The private person as public figure / Jerome Klinkowitz- Cat's cradle / Richard Giannone- Tangled up in you : a playful reading of Cat's cradle / John L. Simons- From formula toward experiment : Cat's cradle and God bless you, Mr. Rosewater / Jerome Klinkowitz- Playful genesis and dark revelation in Cat's cradle / Leonard Mustazza- Bokononism as a structure of ironies / Zoltan Ab di-Nagy- Mother night, Cat's cradle, and The crimes of our time / Jerome Klinkowitz- Vonnegut's invented religions as sense-making systems / Peter Freese- Icy solitude : magic and violence in Macondo and San Lorenzo / Wendy B. Faris- Vonnegut's cosmos / David H. Goldsmith- Cosmic irony / James Lundquist- Cat's cradle : Jonah and the whale / Lawrence R. Broer- Hurting 'til it laughs : the painful-comic science fiction stories of Kurt Vonnegut / Peter J. Reed- The paradox of "awareness" and language in Vonnegut's fiction / Loree Rackstraw.

    A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not at quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood, or manly bonhomie. He does not understand the modern obsession with talking about everything. “The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.” Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored.At 61, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels and listening to a bit of light jazz. Then his tempestuous daughter, Katie, announces that she is getting re-married, to the deeply inappropriate Ray. Her family is not pleased – as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has “strangler’s hands.” Katie can’t decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husband’s ex-colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials. Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind. The way these damaged people fall apart – and come together – as a family is the true subject of Haddon’s disturbing yet amusing portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely.A SPOT OF BOTHER is Mark Haddon’s unforgettable follow-up to the internationally beloved bestseller THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. Here the madness – literally – of family life proves rich comic fodder for Haddon’s crackling prose and bittersweet insights into misdirected love.

    Though Geneva and her sister, Ann, are as different as night and day (“I being night, of course, dark and dramatic”), Geneva remembers she had a family before she had a star on her door. But so accustomed is she to playing the lead, finding herself a supporting actress in someone else’s life is strange and unexplored territory. Then the discovery of an old scrapbook that she and her sister created long ago starts her thinking of things beyond fame. For The Great Mysterious is a collection of thoughts and feelings dedicated to answering life’s big questions—far outside the spotlight’s glow. . . .

    But when Jax dies, Norman decides the only fitting tribute is to perform at the festival himself. The problem is, Norman’s not the funny one. Jax was.There’s also another, far more colossal objective on Norman’s new plan that his single mom, Sadie, wasn’t ready for: he wants to find the father he’s never known. Determined to put a smile back on her boy’s face, Sadie resolves to face up to her own messy past, get Norman to the Fringe and help track down a man whose identity is a mystery, even to her. Julietta Henderson’s delightfully charming, tender and uplifting debut takes us on a road trip with a mother and son who will live in the reader’s heart for a long time to come, and teaches us that—no matter the odds—we must always reach for the stars.

    His girlfriend wants to marry someone just like him—only richer and with a different sense of humor. He doesn’t remember life being this confusing, back before everyone expected him to act like a grown-up.   When his brother asks him to look after his dogs, Jonathan's world view begins to shift. Could a border collie and a cocker spaniel hold the key to life, the universe, and everything? Their sly maneuvering on daily walks and visits to the alluring vet suggest that human emotional intelligence may not be top dog after all.   A funny, wise romantic comedy set in Manhattan, Jonathan Unleashed is a story of tangled relationships, friendships, and dogs. Rosoff’s novel is for anyone wondering what to be when they grow up, and how on earth to get there.

    As his family splinters, worlds collide, and the police block all routes out of town, Nick must cope with economic deprivation, homelessness, the gulag of the public schools, a competitive Type-A father, murderous canines (in triplicate), and an inconvenient hair trigger on his erectile response—all while vying ardently for the affections of the beauteous Sheeni Saunders, teenage goddess and ultimate intellectual goad.