Memorial Day Closing

The Library will be closed on Monday, May 27th for Memorial Day.  We will reopen on Tuesday, May 28th at 9:00 a.m. 

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Invasive Plants of the Upper Midwest

Elizabeth J. Czarapata

Invasive Plants of the Upper Midwest is an informative, colorful, comprehensive guide to invasive species that are currently endangering native habitats in the region. It will be an essential resource for land managers, nature lovers, property owners, farmers, landscapers, educators, botanists, foresters, and gardeners.
Invasive plants are a growing threat to ecosystems everywhere. Often originating in distant climes, they spread to woodlands, wetlands, prairies, roadsides, and backyards that lack the biological controls which kept these plant populations in check in their homelands.
Invasive Plants of the Upper Midwest includes more than 250 color photos that will help anyone identify problem trees, shrubs, vines, grasses, sedges, and herbaceous plants (including aquatic invaders). The text offers further details of plant identification; manual, mechanical, biological, and chemical control techniques; information and advice about herbicides; and suggestions for related ecological restoration and community education efforts. Also included are literature references, a glossary, a matrix of existing and potential invasive species in the Upper Midwest, an index with both scientific and common plant names, advice on state agencies to contact with invasive plant questions, and other helpful resources.
The information in this book has been carefully reviewed by staffs of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Bureau of Endangered Resources and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum and other invasive plant experts.

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Call Me Iggy

Jorge Aguirre

Ignacio "Iggy" Garcia is an Ohio-born Colombian American teen living his best life. After bumping into Marisol (and her coffee) at school, Iggy's world is spun around. But Marisol has too much going on to be bothered with the likes of Iggy. She has school, work, family, and the uphill battle of getting her legal papers. As Iggy stresses over how to get Marisol to like him, his grandfather comes to the rescue. The thing is, not only is his abuelito dead, but he also gives terrible love advice. The worst. And so, with his ghost abuelito's meddling, Iggy's life begins to unravel as he sets off on a journey of self-discovery.

Call me Iggy tells the story of Iggy searching for his place in his family, his school, his community, and ultimately—as the political climate in America changes during the 2016 election—his country. Focusing on familial ties and budding love, Call me Iggy challenges our assumptions about Latino-American identity while reaffirming our belief in the hope that all young people represent. Perfect for lovers of multigenerational stories like Displacement and The Magic Fish.

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The Fox Maidens

Robin Ha

From the bestselling, award-winning creator of Almost American Girl comes an epic new graphic novel fantasy--a queer, feminist reimagining of the Fox Maiden legend from Korean mythology. Perfect for fans of Nimona, Squire, and The Prince and the Dressmaker.

Kai Song dreams of being a warrior. She wants to follow in the footsteps of her beloved father, the commander of the Royal Legion. But while her father believes in Kai and trains her in martial arts, their society isn't ready for a girl warrior.

Still, Kai is determined. But she is plagued by rumors that she is the granddaughter of Gumiho, the infamous nine-tailed fox demon who was killed by her father years before.

Everything comes crashing down the day Kai learns the deadly secret about her mother's past. Now she must come to terms with the truth about her identity and take her destiny into her own hands. As Kai desperately searches for a way to escape her fate, she comes to find compassion, and even love, in the most unexpected places.

Set in sixteenth-century Korea and richly infused with Korean folklore, The Fox Maidens is a timeless and powerful story about fighting for your place in the world, even when it seems impossible.

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Freshman Year (a Graphic Novel)

Sarah Mai

A stylish graphic novel about the unique angst, humor, and self-doubt that comes with going away to college--perfect for fans of Heartstopper.



Everyone gets a fresh start. Who do you want to be? Sarah is leaving suburban Wisconsin for college n Minnesota. She has high hopes for the future: impress her professors, meet interesting new people, stay close to her best friends and boyfriend back home, flourish as an artist, and shed her lingering high school anxieties. What seems manageable at first quickly unravels into a tailspin and she is overwhelmed by the freedom, the isolation, and all the possibilities that await in this new environment. Based on the author's personal college journal and comics, Freshman Year navigates the inner workings of an 18-year-old girl in witty and heartfelt detail.



This graduation gift pairs perfectly with OH, THE PLACES YOU'LL GO!. Dr. Seuss's sentimental graduation picture book is beloved, but the one teens really need is Freshman Year. This graphic novel debut shows the places students actually do go--the home goods aisle at Target; lavish libraries; grungy parties off campus; cereal-for-dinner at the dining hall.
 

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Bunt!

Ngozi Ukazu

Molly Bauer's first year of college is not the picture-perfect piece of art she'd always envisioned. On day one at PICA, Molly discovers that—through some horrible twist of fate—her full-ride scholarship has vanished! But the ancient texts (PICA's dusty financial aid documents) reveal a loophole. If Molly and 9 other art students win a single game of softball, they'll receive a massive athletic scholarship. Can Molly's crew of ragtag artists succeed in softball without dropping the ball?

The author of the New York Times best-selling Check, Please series, Ngozi Ukazu, returns with debut artist Madeline Rupert to bring an energetic young adult story about authenticity, old vs. new, and college failure. It also poses the question: “Is art school worth it?”

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A Tempest of Tea

Hafsah Faizal

From the New York Times–bestselling author of We Hunt the Flame comes the first book in a hotly-anticipated fantasy duology teeming with romance and revenge, led by an orphan girl willing to do whatever it takes to save her self-made kingdom.

On the streets of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and collector of secrets. Her prestigious tearoom transforms into an illegal bloodhouse by night, catering to the vampires feared by society. But when her establishment is threatened, Arthie is forced to strike an unlikely deal with an alluring adversary to save it—she can’t do the job alone.

Calling on some of the city’s most skilled outcasts, Arthie hatches a plan to infiltrate the sinister, glittering vampire society known as the Athereum. But not everyone in her ragtag crew is on her side, and as the truth behind the heist unfolds, Arthie finds herself in the midst of a conspiracy that will threaten the world as she knows it. Dark, action-packed, and swoonworthy, this is Hafsah Faizal better than ever.

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My Big, Fat Desi Wedding

Prerna Pickett

Desi Wedding Must-Haves: Drama. Food. Fashion. More Drama. More food. And, of course, nosy aunties and uncles

A family curse that turns spoken prophecy into truth.

A world where your soulmate’s feelings appear as words on your skin.

A boy who has to decide whether or not to attend his brother’s wedding even though their parents have forbidden it.

A girl who encounters the boy she loved and lost and realizes where her heart truly lies.

These genre-bending stories focus on the magic (and tension) of the biggest family gathering. Both award-winning and debut authors share stories of broken hearts, rekindled flames, unlikely romances, and one particular auntie who loves to meddle.

From jewel-toned kurtas, music and dancing, to the aromas of cardamom and sugar, one thing is for certain: It’s going to be an incredible season.

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Infinity Alchemist

Kacen Callender

Infinity Alchemist is a spellbinding fantasy novel about a quest that leads three young alchemists toward dangerous truth, legendary love, and extraordinary power.

With their signature "prowess" (FIYAH) and "unbridled creativity" (New York Times Book Review), acclaimed author Kacen Callender turns their formidable skill to young adult fantasy for the first time.

The hardcover edition features a beautiful jacket with gold foil and a foil case stamp, an in-world map, and special illustrated endpaper.

For Ash Woods, practicing alchemy is a crime.

Only an elite few are legally permitted to study the science of magic—so when Ash is rejected by Lancaster College of Alchemic Science, he takes a job as the school’s groundskeeper instead, forced to learn alchemy in secret.

When he’s discovered by the condescending and brilliant apprentice Ramsay Thorne, Ash is sure he's about to be arrested—but instead of calling the reds, Ramsay surprises Ash by making him an offer: Ramsay will keep Ash's secret if he helps her find the legendary Book of Source, a sacred text that gives its reader extraordinary power.

As Ash and Ramsay work together and their feelings for each other grow, Ash discovers their mission is more dangerous than he imagined, pitting them against influential and powerful alchemists—Ash’s estranged father included. Ash’s journey takes him through the cities and wilds across New Anglia, forcing him to discover his own definition of true power and how far he and other alchemists will go to seize it.

Featuring trans, queer, and polyamorous characters of color, Infinity Alchemist is the hugely anticipated young adult fantasy debut from the extraordinary author of Felix Ever After, King and the Dragonflies, Queen of the Conquered and more.

"Spellbinding." —AIDEN THOMAS • "Thrilling." —ELANA K. ARNOLD • "A blast of heart-racing magic." —ANDREW JOSEPH WHITE • "Expands the possibilities of YA fantasy." —A. R. CAPETTA

Most Anticiptated from Goodreads, Publishers Weekly, Book Riot, Bookpage, The Nerd Daily, and more!

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The Bad Ones

Melissa Albert

Bestselling author Melissa Albert returns with The Bad Ones, a supernatural horror novel about four mysterious disappearances in a town haunted by a sinister magical history

Goddess, goddess, count to five
In the morning, who’s alive?

In the course of a single winter’s night, four people vanish without a trace across a small town.

Nora’s estranged best friend, Becca, is one of the lost. As Nora tries to untangle the truth of Becca’s disappearance, she discovers a darkness in her town’s past, as well as a string of coded messages Becca left for her to unravel. These clues lead Nora to a piece of local lore: a legendary goddess of forgotten origins who played a role in Nora and Becca’s own childhood games. . . .

An arresting, crossover horror fantasy threaded with dark magic, The Bad Ones is a poison-pen love letter to semi-toxic best friendship, the occult power of childhood play and artistic creation, and the razor-thin line between make-believe and belief.

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If Only I Had Told Her

Laura Nowlin

An intensely emotional and gripping companion novel to Laura Nowlin's USA Today and New York Times Bestselling novel If He Had Been With Me about the love that both breaks and heals us. Perfect for fans of Colleen Hoover and Jenny Han.

If only I'd told her that I loved her years ago, then I wouldn't be here now.

Finn has always loved Autumn. She's not just the girl next door or his mother's best friend's daughter, she is his everything. But she's not his girlfriend. That's Sylvie, and Finn would never hurt her, so there's no way Autumn could know how he truly feels.

Jack, Finn's best friend, isn't so sure. He's seen Finn and Autumn together. How could she not know? And how is he supposed to support and protect Finn when heartache seems inevitable?

Autumn surrounds herself with books and wants to write her own destiny--but one doesn't always get a new chapter and fate can be cruel to those in love.

Told through three different perspectives, If Only I Had Told Her is a love story brimming with truth, tragedy, and the unexpected bonds that heal us.

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The Liars Society

Alyson Gerber

The Inheritance Games and One of Us is Lying for middle grade -- beloved author Alyson Gerber's new series is an unforgettable mystery featuring a secret society, a mysterious island, and dangerous family secrets.

 

 

Weatherby is a fish out of water. When she lands a scholarship to the prestigious Boston School, she's excited to be in the same world as her dad, whom she's never met, and make real friends. But Weatherby has a secret she'll risk everything to protect, one that could destroy her new life.

 

Every member of Jack's wealthy and privileged family has made their mark at the Boston School. Everyone, that is, except for Jack, who is entirely mediocre. He's desperate to prove his worth to his influential father. But Jack has a secret of his own . . . one with the power to ruin everything.

 

When the money for their school trip to a private island--exclusive to Boston students--is stolen, Jack and Weatherby are invited to play a high-stakes game and solve the mystery of the missing money. If they win, they'll be selected to join the oldest, most powerful secret society in the world--and they'll be Boston royalty forever. If they lose . . . well, they better not lose.

 

Beloved author Alyson Gerber crafts an unforgettable mystery that asks--are some secrets and lies impossible to overcome?

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Compass and Blade

Rachel Greenlaw

For fans of Fable by Adrienne Young or To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo, this romantasy debut is filled with sirens and mysterious magic, swoony romance and cutthroat betrayal.



This world of sea and storm runs deep with bargains and blood.



On the remote isle of Rosevear, Mira, like her mother before her, is a wrecker, one of the seven on the rope who swim out to shipwrecks to plunder them. Mira's job is to rescue survivors, if there are any. After all, she never feels the cold of the frigid ocean waters and the waves seem to sing to her soul. But the people of Rosevear never admit the truth: that they set the beacons themselves to lure ships into the rocks.



When the Council watch lays a trap to put an end to the wrecking, they arrest Mira's father. Desperate to save him from the noose, Mira strikes a deal with an enigmatic wreck survivor guarding layers of secrets behind his captivating eyes, and sets off to find something her mother has left her, a family secret buried deep in the sea.



With just nine days to find what she needs to rescue her father, all Mira knows for certain is this: The sea gives. The sea takes. And it's up to her to do what she must to save the ones she loves.

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The Wildlife-Friendly Vegetable Gardener

Tammi Hartung

This one-of-a-kind book shows you how to create a peaceful co-existence between your vegetable garden and the wildlife who consider it part of their habitat. By understanding and working with the surrounding environment Ð instead of continually fighting it Ð you'll reap a larger harvest with much less stress and effort. Tammi Hartung explains how to start with a hardy and healthy garden, create beneficial relationships through smart planting, attract helpful insects and pollinators, intentionally create habitats for wildlife, and much more.

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Nature's Best Hope

Douglas W. Tallamy

“Tallamy lays out all you need to know to participate in one of the great conservation projects of our time. Read it and get started!” —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction

Douglas W. Tallamy’s first book, Bringing Nature Home, awakened thousands of readers to an urgent situation: wildlife populations are in decline because the native plants they depend on are fast disappearing. His solution? Plant more natives. In this new book, Tallamy takes the next step and outlines his vision for a grassroots approach to conservation. Nature’s Best Hope shows how homeowners everywhere can turn their yards into conservation corridors that provide wildlife habitats. Because this approach relies on the initiatives of private individuals, it is immune from the whims of government policy. Even more important, it’s practical, effective, and easy—you will walk away with specific suggestions you can incorporate into your own yard.

If you’re concerned about doing something good for the environment, Nature’s Best Hope is the blueprint you need. By acting now, you can help preserve our precious wildlife—and the planet—for future generations.

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Identifying and Feeding Birds

Bill Thompson III

This readable, friendly guide is intended for bird watchers and non–bird watchers alike—for anyone who wants to enjoy nature right in his or her own backyard. The longtime editor of Bird Watcher's Digest and author of numerous books on birds, Bill Thompson III has been feeding and watching birds for forty years. He has tried everything, and here he shares what he's learned so that readers can avoid mistakes and skip right to successful bird feeding. He also debunks common myths about bird feeding: Does feeding birds stop them from migrating? Will birds starve if you leave your feeders empty after the birds have come to rely on them? In an easygoing and lighthearted style, seven chapters cover all the elements needed to attract birds to a backyard (food, water, shelter) and address special cases and problems (keeping bees out of the hummingbird feeder, preventing birds from flying into windows, and much more). The final chapter profiles the 130 species that are most common at backyard feeders. No separate field guide is needed; it's all right here—everything a beginner needs to know to attract birds and then figure out what kind they are.

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The Humane Gardener

Nancy Lawson

In this eloquent plea for compassion and respect for all species, journalist and gardener Nancy Lawson describes why and how to welcome wildlife to our backyards. Through engaging anecdotes and inspired advice, profiles of home gardeners throughout the country, and interviews with scientists and horticulturalists, Lawson applies the broader lessons of ecology to our own outdoor spaces.

Detailed chapters address planting for wildlife by choosing native species; providing habitats that shelter baby animals, as well as birds, bees, and butterflies; creating safe zones in the garden; cohabiting with creatures often regarded as pests; letting nature be your garden designer; and encouraging natural processes and evolution in the garden. The Humane Gardener fills a unique niche in describing simple principles for both attracting wildlife and peacefully resolving conflicts with all the creatures that share our world.

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How to Create a Wildlife Garden

Christine Lavelle

Most gardeners view themselves as nature lovers, with one of the most enjoyable aspects of creating and maintaining a garden lying in the feeling of closeness to nature. It often comes as a surprise to many, however, that their garden is an essential home.

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How to Attract Wildlife to Your Garden

Dan Rouse

Transform your garden into a haven for all kinds of wildlife.

In a world with too much concrete and not enough greenery, every wildlife-friendly garden can make a huge difference. But what if we told you that you can make a difference to your local wildlife from the comfort of your own home? You can help to reverse the decline in bird numbers and much more by creating a haven in which they will thrive! 

Let author, presenter, and wildlife conservationist Dan Rouse show you how you can make your outdoor space more welcoming for a wide variety of visitors, from planting pollinator-friendly perennials to digging a pond. Learn the best ways to provide shelter, food, and water, discover the best planting choices and how they can help, then sit back and watch as your garden becomes a much-needed refuge for a huge range of species.

Dive straight in to discover:

- A beautiful mixture of full-color illustrations and photos of different species.
- Practical advice on supporting local wildlife, with ideas suitable for all budgets and abilities.
- Suggestions for beneficial plant choices for a range of climate and soil types.
- Step-by-step projects tailored to both attracting wildlife and to observe the wildlife that visits the garden.
- Ideas for small gardens and outdoor spaces, as well as practical considerations such as pets and children sharing a garden with wildlife.
- Final chapter on ‘Observing garden wildlife’ that showcases low- and high-tech methods of watching for wildlife, and how to connect with the wider wildlife community. 

The book features plenty of projects to help you attract and observe your new garden visitors, as well as galleries of common species you can expect to see. Following in the footsteps of its sister title How to Attract Birds to Your Garden, everything in the book is clear, accessible, and engaging, with plenty of budget-friendly tips and ideas suitable for gardeners and non-gardeners alike. 

Packed with equal parts expertise and passion, How to Attract Wildlife to Your Garden proves that, by giving nature opportunities to thrive, we all benefit: ourselves, our planet, and the wildlife that may call our garden home.

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Garden Allies

Frederique Lavoipierre

"Explains how your garden can be a thriving, balanced community that gives more to your landscape than it takes." —Douglas W. Tallamy, author of The Nature of Oaks and Nature’s Best Hope

The birds, mammals, reptiles, and insects that inhabit our yards and gardens are overwhelmingly on our side—they are not our enemies, but instead our allies. They pollinate our flowers and vegetable crops, and they keep pests in check. In Garden Allies, Frédérique Lavoipierre shares fascinating portraits of these creatures, describing their life cycles and showing how they keep the garden’s ecology in balance. Also included is helpful information on how to nurture and welcome these valuable creatures into your garden. With beautiful pen-and-ink drawings by Craig Latker, Garden Allies invites you to make friends with the creatures that fill your garden—the reward is a renewed sense of nature’s beauty and a garden humming with life.

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Butterfly Gardening

Jane Hurwitz

An indispensable and lavishly illustrated guide to creating a garden that attracts and sustains butterflies

Butterfly gardening creates habitats that support butterflies, connecting us with some of the most beautiful creatures in the natural world and bringing new levels of excitement and joy to gardening. In this engaging and accessible guide, lavishly illustrated with more than two hundred color photographs and maps, accomplished butterfly gardener Jane Hurwitz presents essential information on how to choose and cultivate plants that will attract a range of butterflies to your garden and help sustain all the stages of their life cycles.

An indispensable resource for aspiring and experienced butterfly gardeners alike, Butterfly Gardening is the most gardener-friendly source on the subject, covering all the practical details needed to create a vibrant garden habitat that fosters butterflies. It tells you which plants support which butterflies, depending on where you live; it describes what different butterflies require in the garden over the course of their lives; and it shows you how to become a butterfly watcher as well as a butterfly gardener.

While predominantly recommending regionally native plants, the book includes information on non-native plants. It also features informative interviews with experienced butterfly gardeners from across the United States. These gardeners share a wealth of information on plants and practices to draw butterflies to all kinds of gardens--from small suburban gardens to community plots and larger expanses.

Whether you are a gardener who wants to see more butterflies in your garden, a butterfly enthusiast who wants to bring that passion to the garden, or someone who simply wants to make their garden or yard friendlier to Monarchs or other butterflies, this is a must-have guide.

  • An essential guide for aspiring and experienced butterfly gardeners
  • Encourages readers to rethink gardening choices to support butterflies and other pollinators in their gardens and communities
  • Introduces gardeners to butterfly watching
  • Includes regional lists of plant species that are time-proven to help sustain butterflies and their caterpillars
  • Features informative interviews with expert butterfly gardeners from across the United States
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Bringing Nature Home

Douglas W. Tallamy

“A fascinating study of the trees, shrubs, and vines that feed the insects, birds, and other animals in the suburban garden.” —The New York Times
 
As development and habitat destruction accelerate, there are increasing pressures on wildlife populations. In Bringing Nature Home, Douglas W. Tallamy reveals the unbreakable link between native plant species and native wildlife—native insects cannot, or will not, eat alien plants. When native plants disappear, the insects disappear, impoverishing the food source for birds and other animals.
 
But there is an important and simple step we can all take to help reverse this alarming trend: everyone with access to a patch of earth can make a significant contribution toward sustaining biodiversity by simply choosing native plants. By acting on Douglas Tallamy's practical and achievable recommendations, we can all make a difference.
 

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Bird Homes and Habitats

Bill Thompson (III)

Two of the best-known names in birding--Peterson and Bird Watcher's Digest--team up to provide reliable, expert advice on how to attract the birds you want into your yard.

Which birds use nest boxes? What's required to maintain a birdhouse? What kind of habitat will attract which birds? What does it take to be a bluebird trail operator? What does it mean if baby birds or eggs disappear from their nest?

Bill Thompson III answers all of these questions and more, helping readers to create yards and gardens where birds will make their homes and raise their young.

It's easy enough to hang a birdfeeder. But there are plenty of other things that can attract birds to a landscape--and, in fact, birds need four essentials: food, water, shelter, and a place to nest. The more of these elements a yard has, the more attractive it is to birds.

A lavishly illustrated chapter provides ideas and inspiration for creating bird havens by profiling "Birdy Backyard All-Stars," fifteen homeowners from around the country who have actively worked to create bird-friendly habitats.
 

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Bird, Bee & Bug Houses

Derek Jones

Transform your garden into a wildlife haven bursting with life by learning how to provide supplementary nesting sites to a host of creatures. Bird, Bee & Bug Houses explains all you need to know about how to create the perfect nesting place for a wide variety of species including birds, bats, butterflies, lacewings, ladybugs, and rare solitary bees. Essential pollinators, predators and seed-spreaders, many of these species are threatened from intensive farming and the spraying of harmful chemicals. But, we can help them by building these safe havens in our gardens.

These unique and quirky houses can be created with only a few basic woodworking skills. A range of materials (some recycled or scavenged) and finishes are used in order to make sure they are as attractive as they are practical. All the basic techniques, tools, and materials needed to create your bird, bee, or bug house are explained and each project has a detailed exploded diagram with cutlist. Each section of the book has detailed information on choosing locations, maintenance, species' habits, and nesting requirements.

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Backyard Birding

Julie Zickefoose

A Practical Illustrated Bird-Oriented Gardening Book with Great Reference Charts

Bird-watchers everywhere dream of a landscape dotted with fruiting shrubs, nests tucked into twining vines, and birds flocking to feeding stations. Let Natural Gardening for Birds show you how to lay out the welcome mat for birds by considering all of their needs, including year-round food, water, and shelter. Whether you're looking to create a hummingbird garden, install a water feature, create alluring perches, or simply designate a corner of your property as a natural area, you'll find all the inspiration and information you need in Natural Gardening for Birds, including:

The best plants for nectar, fruit, and seeds
The most attractive foods to offer birds
Housing for cavity-nesting birds
Simple habitat enhancements like snags and perches
Region-specific planting ideas and charts

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The Backyard Bird Sanctuary

Alan Baczkiewicz

Identify beautiful birds right in the comfort of your backyard with this illustrated, easy-to-use introductory guide to birding.

Ever wonder how to attract beautiful birds right to your backyard? Now you can create a bird-watching paradise with this accessible guidebook that teaches you everything you need to know about welcoming your new feathered friends and how to care for them while they’re visiting.

Backyard Bird Sanctuary helps you attract fifty of the most common and sought-after birds in the United States. With beautiful, full-color illustrations of both the male and female of each species, you’ll have no trouble identifying your new companions. Inside you’ll find everything you need to know about welcoming these birds into your yard including:
-Preferred types of food and feeder
-Nesting and brooding habits
-Range and migratory patterns
-Effective techniques for attracting birds
-Ways to provide shelter
-And so much more!

With tips and advice for any sized yard—even a small patio or balcony—you can enjoy the beauty of wild birds wherever you live. Now you can surround your home with cheerful bird songs and beautiful plumage all year long!

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Audubon North American Birdfeeder Guide

Robert Burton

Produced in association with the National Audubon Society, the North American Birdfeeder Guide covers the best ways to attract, observe and feed birds in your own backyard. From profiles of individual species to understanding bird behavior, this is the only book you'll need to master the art of bird watching.

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Attracting Birds and Butterflies

Barbara Ellis

A quick-reference guide to attracting birds and butterflies for gardeners with little experience and time.

In the eye of a bird or butterfly, the typical suburban landscape resembles an unfriendly desert. Closely mowed lawns, tightly clipped shrubs, raked-up borders, and deadheaded flowers mean no place to nest, no food to eat, and nowhere to hide. To the humans who live there, this means no bird songs, no colorful butterflies, no dazzling hummingbirds, no night-sparkling fireflies.

Creating a garden that welcomes these creatures may seem like a confusing and complicated task, but the principles involved are relatively simple. Essentially, wildlife needs food, water, and shelter, just like we do, and this lavishly illustrated guide shows which plants attract which creatures, and how to plant and care for them.
 

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Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden

Jessica Walliser

Winner of the American Horticultural Society Book Award

Insects are indeed valuable garden companions, especially the assassin bugs, damsel bugs, stink bugs, and other predatory carnivores that eat the insects that dine on your garden. Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden is a book about bugs and plants, and how to create a garden that benefits from both. In addition to information on companion planting and commercial options for purchasing bugs, there are 19 detailed bug profiles and 39 plant profiles. These profiles include a description, a photograph for identification, an explanation of what they can do to support pest control. Design plans show how to create a border specifically for the natural, sustainable inclusion of beneficial bugs in your garden. 

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100 Plants to Feed the Birds

Laura Erickson

The growing group of bird enthusiasts who enjoy feeding and watching their feathered friends  will learn how they can expand their activity and help address the pressing issue of habitat loss with 100 Plants to Feed the Birds. In-depth profiles offer planting and care guidance for 100 native plant species that provide food and shelter for birds throughout the year, from winter all the way through breeding and migrating periods. Readers will learn about plants they can add to their gardens and cultivate, such as early-season pussy willow and late-season asters, as well as wild plants to refrain from weeding out, like jewelweed and goldenrod. Others, including 29 tree species, may already be present in the landscape and readers will learn how these plants support the birds who feed and nest in them. Introductory text explains how to create a healthy year-round landscape for birds. Plant photographs and range maps provide needed visual guidance to selecting the right plants for any location in North America.

This publication conforms to the EPUB Accessibility specification at WCAG 2.0 Level AA.

 

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Touch a Butterfly

April Pulley Sayre

Turn your garden into a hummingbird hotspot, a haven for butterflies, and a thriving ecosystem that will delight and inspire the young and young-at-heart.

Gardening with children is a pleasure in itself, but when you learn to include wildlife in your plans, gardening becomes an even more joyful family experience. Creating a garden that invites wildlife opens up a wider world of nature for investigation, inspiration, and delight. Begin to see your yard from an animal’s perspective; discover plants that attract colorful birds and bugs; embrace sensory experiences that native plants and creatures bring; and understand how your yard fits into the surrounding landscape. Along the way you will discover simple ways you can actively support wildlife in your immediate environment, no matter where you live. This family-friendly guide to wildlife gardening leads you on a path to discovery, where trees are transformed into bird and animal habitats, where sunny spots are revered for dragonfly viewing, and where your entire garden becomes an animal-welcoming kingdom.

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Rain Gardens

Lynn M. Steiner

 

Rain gardens are at the forefront of the green revolution. This environmentally friendly landscaping captures rainwater runoff rather than redirecting it into storm drains. The result is less erosion, less water pollution, and a beautiful, low-maintenance, sustainable garden. This is the first rain garden handbook for the backyard home gardener. Co-authors Robert Domm and Lynn Steiner draw on hands-on experience to help homeowners build beautiful rain gardens in their own yards. Illustrated with color photography, this instructive book offers specific advice about planning, building, planting, and maintaining your garden. Learn about city grants, how to calculate runoff, rain barrels, attracting wildlife, gray water recycling, and much more.

 

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Prairie Up

Benjamin Vogt

Connecting to nature with native plants

Landscaping with native plants has encouraged gardeners from the Midwest and beyond to embark on a profound scientific, ecological, and emotional partnership with nature. Benjamin Vogt shares his expertise with prairie plants in a richly photographed guide aimed at gardeners and homeowners, making big ideas about design approachable and actionable. Step-by-step blueprints point readers to plant communities that not only support wildlife and please the eye but that rethink traditional planting and maintenance. Additionally, Vogt provides insider information on plant sourcing, garden tools, and working with city ordinances. This book will be an invaluable reference in sustainable garden design for those wanting both beautiful and functional landscapes.

Easy to use and illustrated with over 150 color photos, Prairie Up is a practical guide to artfully reviving diversity and wildness in our communities.

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Prairie-style Gardens

Lynn M. Steiner

With its unique blend of grasses and sturdy perennials, the North American prairie is one of the world's richest and most beautiful biotopes. It's also one of the most endangered--only a tiny fraction remains of the millions of pristine acres that once stretched from horizon to horizon. Fortunately, you can re-create some of this diversity at home and enjoy these fascinating plant communities up close. You don't need to have endless acres at your disposal--you can have an authentic prairie garden on a city or suburban lot.

And you don't even have to live on the Great Plains: prairie plants are practical choices for any landscape situation that has good drainage and full sun, whether in New England or the desert Southwest. Moreover, with their modest water needs, prairie plants make a great substitute for water-hungry lawns. And at a time when wildlife habitats are under increasing pressure from development, their flowers and foliage provide food and shelter for birds and beneficial insects.

Eminently practical, Prairie-Style Gardens shows you how to use prairie plants in a wide variety of situations, from including a few prairie plants in an existing landscape to creating a full-fledged habitat garden. Especially useful is the author's advice on how to make prairie plants work in a typical urban or suburban setting, where it isn't easy to deviate from the local norm. A comprehensive plant profiles section helps you choose which plants will look best and thrive in your particular situation. Each plant entry includes detailed information on size, native habitats, site requirements, hardiness, appropriate landscape uses, care, companion plants, and available cultivars.

Anyone can have a prairie--this book tells you how to do it.

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Planting the Natural Garden

Piet Oudolf

“If the world of gardening has rock stars, Piet Oudolf qualifies as Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and Prince rolled into one.” —Gardenista

The original publication of Planting the Natural Garden ushered in a revolution in landscape design: the New Perennial Movement. Spearheaded by internationally renowned designer Piet Oudolf, and incisively articulated by the late plantsman and designer Henk Gerritsen, it transformed private and public spaces with its emotionally resonant, naturalistic use of hardy perennials and grasses.

Now this classic has been expanded and updated to include scores of new plants and combinations. Packed with practical information and visual inspiration, Planting the Natural Garden zeroes in on the New Perennial Movement’s power to move us, making its distinctive plant palette available to all. For enthusiasts of these vibrant landscapes, it is an essential text; for gardeners who love the dreamy moods and colors that Oudolf and Gerritsen celebrate, it’s the key to a magic kingdom of garden beauty.

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Natural Gardening in Small Spaces

Noel Kingsbury

With the growing recognition that a wisely and sensitively planted garden has a lot to offer to wildlife and the food web, more and more people are looking for ways to make their gardens environmentally friendly. However, gardeners have tended to assume that they need a lot of space to create habitats for wildlife and to evoke wild and natural places. In Natural Gardening in Small Spaces, renowned plantsman Noël Kingsbury refutes that presumption, showing how even in a small garden you can create a sustainable ecosystem that looks great — and, once established, largely looks after itself. More than 150 glorious photographs of small natural gardens provide visual confirmation of Noël Kingsbury's contention that even the smallest garden can provide a natural haven.

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Native Plants of the Midwest

Alan Branhagen

Native Plants of the Midwest, by regional plant expert Alan Branhagan, features the best native plants in the heartland and offers clear and concise guidance on how to use them in the garden. Plant profiles for more than 500 species of trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, ground covers, bulbs, and annuals contain the common and botanical names, growing information, tips on using the plant in a landscape, and advice on related plants. You’ll learn how to select the right plant and how to design with native plants. Helpful lists of plants for specific purposes are shared throughout. This comprehensive book is for native plant enthusiasts and home gardeners in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, northern Arkansas, and eastern Kansas.
 

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The Midwestern Native Garden

Charlotte Adelman

Midwestern gardeners and landscapers are becoming increasingly attracted to noninvasive regional native wildflowers and plants over popular nonnative species. The Midwestern Native Garden offers viable alternatives to both amateurs and professionals, whether they are considering adding a few native plants or intending to go native all the way. Native plants improve air and water quality, reduce use of pesticides, and provide vital food and reproductive sites to birds and butterflies, that nonnative plants cannot offer, helping bring back a healthy ecosystem.

The authors provide a comprehensive selection of native alternatives that look similar or even identical to a range of nonnative ornamentals. These are native plants that are suitable for all garden styles, bloom during the same season, and have the same cultivation requirements as their nonnative counterparts. Plant entries are accompanied by nature notes setting out the specific birds and butterflies the native plants attract.

The Midwestern Native Garden will be a welcome guide to gardeners whose styles range from formal to naturalistic but who want to create an authentic sense of place, with regional natives. The beauty, hardiness, and easy maintenance of native Midwestern plants will soon make them the new favorites.

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How to Create a Wildlife Garden

Christine Lavelle

This inspiring and accessible hands-on book shows how simple gardening techniques can provide a dazzling plant display while helping the native wildlife. This new updated edition of the award-winning book (Garden Media Guild Practical Book of the Year) gives easy-to-follow instructions backed up with advice on planning and design, showing how we can share our outdoor space with nature. The authors show how to encourage beneficial garden species and discourage the more problematic ones. With its wealth of practical advice and detailed photography, this is the ideal sourcebook for gardeners and wildlife enthusiasts.

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Cultivating Chaos

Jonas Reif

Self-seeding plants can create naturalistic gardens of great charm, but left to their own devices quickly spiral out of control. Maintaining the balance of plants so that a small number of robust species do not evict the others and developing the structure of the garden are important techniques to acquire. Taking inspiration from the gardens of Christopher Lloyd, Derek Jarman and Henk Gerritsen, Cultivating Chaos teaches how to prepare your soil for improved germination, guide your planting as it evolves, and create different ecological niches from which will emerge beautiful, species-rich gardens. 

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The Blonde Identity

Ally Carter

USA TODAY BESTSELLER

"A unique, delightful, hilarious, unputdownable romance... I'm wonderstruck by The Blonde Identity!" -- Ali Hazelwood, New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis

The New York Times bestselling YA author of the beloved Gallagher Girls series bursts onto the adult scene with a fast-paced, hilarious road trip rom-com about a woman with amnesia who discovers she's the identical twin sister of a rogue spy... and must team up with a rugged, grumpy operative to stay alive.

It's the middle of the night in the middle of Paris and a woman just woke up with no memory.

She only knows three things for certain:

1. She has a splitting headache.

2. The hottest guy she has (probably) ever seen is standing over her, telling her to run.

And oh yeah...

3. People keep trying to kill her.

She doesn't know who. Or why. But when she sees footage of herself fighting off a dozen men there's only one explanation: obviously. . . she's a spy!

Except, according to Mr. Hot Guy, she's not. She's a spy's identical twin sister.

Too bad the only person who knows she's not the woman they're looking for is this very grouchy, very sexy, very secret agent who (reluctantly) agrees to help her disappear. Which is easier said than done when a criminal organization wants you dead and every intelligence service in the world wants you caught.

Luckily, no one is looking for a pair of lovesick newlyweds on their honeymoon. And soon they're lying their way across Europe--dodging bullets and faking kisses as they race to unravel a deadly conspiracy and clear her sister's name.

But with every secret they uncover, the truth shifts, until she no longer knows who to trust: the twin she can't remember or the mysterious man she can't let herself forget...

"Spies! Amnesia! And banter that'll make you chant "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!" No one writes an action rom-com quite like Ally Carter." - Rachel Hawkins, New York Times bestselling author of The Wife Upstairs

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Butterfly Gardening

Jane Hurwitz

An indispensable and lavishly illustrated guide to creating a garden that attracts and sustains butterflies

Butterfly gardening creates habitats that support butterflies, connecting us with some of the most beautiful creatures in the natural world and bringing new levels of excitement and joy to gardening. In this engaging and accessible guide, lavishly illustrated with more than two hundred color photographs and maps, accomplished butterfly gardener Jane Hurwitz presents essential information on how to choose and cultivate plants that will attract a range of butterflies to your garden and help sustain all the stages of their life cycles.

An indispensable resource for aspiring and experienced butterfly gardeners alike, Butterfly Gardening is the most gardener-friendly source on the subject, covering all the practical details needed to create a vibrant garden habitat that fosters butterflies. It tells you which plants support which butterflies, depending on where you live; it describes what different butterflies require in the garden over the course of their lives; and it shows you how to become a butterfly watcher as well as a butterfly gardener.

While predominantly recommending regionally native plants, the book includes information on non-native plants. It also features informative interviews with experienced butterfly gardeners from across the United States. These gardeners share a wealth of information on plants and practices to draw butterflies to all kinds of gardens--from small suburban gardens to community plots and larger expanses.

Whether you are a gardener who wants to see more butterflies in your garden, a butterfly enthusiast who wants to bring that passion to the garden, or someone who simply wants to make their garden or yard friendlier to Monarchs or other butterflies, this is a must-have guide.

  • An essential guide for aspiring and experienced butterfly gardeners
  • Encourages readers to rethink gardening choices to support butterflies and other pollinators in their gardens and communities
  • Introduces gardeners to butterfly watching
  • Includes regional lists of plant species that are time-proven to help sustain butterflies and their caterpillars
  • Features informative interviews with expert butterfly gardeners from across the United States
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Beautiful No-Mow Yards

Evelyn Hadden

With Beautiful No-Mow Yards, you can transform your lawn into a livable garden and bring nature's beauty into your life!

What has your perfect green lawn done for you lately? Is it really worth the time, effort, and resources you lavish on it? Armed with encouragement, inspiration, and cutting-edge advice from award-winning author Evelyn Hadden, you can liberate yourself at last!

In this ultimate guide to rethinking your yard, Hadden showcases dozens of inspiring, eco-friendly alternatives to that demanding (and dare we say boring?) green turf. Trade your lawn for a lively prairie or replace it with a runoff-reducing rain garden. Swap it for an interactive adventure garden or convert it to a low-maintenance living carpet.

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Backyard Birding

Randi Minetor

How to bring birds to your home and keep them there—including 250 full-color photos

 

They're out there every day, flashing through your yard, perching in a tree, collecting on utility wires, or congregating around puddles. They already share your backyard and neighborhood with you, but you—even if you are already one of America's more than 68 million birders—haven't formally invited them over for dinner. This book shows you how.

 

Backyard Birding helps you maximize your home birding experiences and attract a wider variety of birds. With 250 full-color photos and concise, informative text, it provides indispensable details on what foods, plants, trees, water sources, and nesting materials will attract particular species. It helps you make the right choices the first time—and avoid costly mistakes. As an identification guide, it goes further than any previous resource in clarifying such matters as male/female plumage variations and breeding vs. nonbreeding plumage. Randi and Nic Minetor traveled from Florida to Alaska to photograph the hundreds of species in these pages. The result is a compendium from America's backyards to your fingertips, with information useful in whatever climate or habitat your own backyard may provide.

 

* 250 vibrant full-color photos capturing birds in stunning detail

* Focus on top 24 birds found nationally as well as in Eastern and Western locations

* Picture index of all the birds found throughout the book for easy reference

* Seasonal bird feeding checklists

 

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The American Meadow Garden

John Greenlee

If there's one lesson every homeowner must learn, it's this: The traditional lawn is a huge, time consuming, synthetic-chemical sucking mistake. The time has come to look for new ways to create friendly, livable spaces around our homes.

In The American Meadow Garden, ornamental grass expert John Greenlee creates a new model for homeowners and gardeners. For Greenlee, a meadow isn't a random assortment of messy, anonymous grasses. Rather, it is a shimmering mini-ecosystem, in which regionally appropriate grasses combine with colorful perennials to form a rich tapestry that is friendly to all life — with minimal input of water, time, and other scarce resources. Kids and pets can play in complete safety, and birds and butterflies flock there. A prairie style planting is a place you want to be.

With decades of experience as a nurseryman and designer, John Greenlee is the perfect guide. He details all the practicalities of site preparation, plant selection, and maintenance; particularly valuable are his explanations of how ornamental grasses perform in different climates and areas. Gorgeous photography by Saxon Holt visually illustrates the message with stunning examples of meadow gardens from across the country.

We've reached a stage where we can no longer follow past practices unthinkingly, particularly when those practices are wasteful and harmful to the environment. It's time to get rid of the old-fashioned lawn and embrace a sane and healthy future: the American meadow garden.

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The Smell of a Rainbow

Dawn Goldworm

A scented and shaped board book with seven exclusive scents by one of the world's most sought-after fragrance designers

Did you know that almost everyone associates the same colors and feelings with certain smells? Dawn Goldworm has spent her career studying just that. She is one of the world's best designers of fragrance, and now she is bringing her expert nose to this scented board book. Just rub your finger along each page, and enjoy the smell of color! Dawn has created seven exclusive fragrances to evoke the stripes of the rainbow--a new, fun, and surprising way to learn about the colors.

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Baby Shark: Baby Shark Feels Happy

Pinkfong

From the underwater world of Baby Shark comes this adorable board book about managing emotions, complete with a shiny mirror on the last page!

Designed to spark curiosity, this sturdy, colorful board book will encourage little ones everywhere to explore their emotions. With sweet, rhyming text and bold illustrations, this book will show kids how Baby Shark manages his feelings whether he's happy, proud, silly, sad, or sleepy. Plus, a mirror on the final page allows kids to see themselves directly in the book!
 

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Guinea Pigs Go Painting

Kate Sheehy

Discover your favorite colors with guinea pigs Bob and Ginger as they paint a mural on their bedroom wall.

Introduce first colors to young children, featuring beautiful illustrations and two fun-loving guinea pigs, Bob and Ginger, that kids will love.

Guinea pigs Bob and Ginger feel their bedroom needs a makeover, so they set about painting a colorful underwater mural featuring yellow fish, green turtles, gray sharks, and many more marine animals. Spot all your favorite sea creatures—and your favorite colors—in this sturdy board book, perfect for little hands.

Colors are introduced page by page, and all come together in the final mural. Simple text helps build a child’s vocabulary and encourages recognition of key early-learning words. The fun-loving characters of Bob and Ginger will encourage children to return to the book again and again, both as a bedtime read and a learning tool.

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When I Feel Angry

Sharie Coombes

When I feel really, really, really angry, I want to be big and I want to be loud!

Developed in close consultation with expert child psychotherapist Dr. Sharie Coombes, When I Feel Angry makes an ideal tool to help children recognize, understand, and talk about their feelings more easily.

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My First Brain Quest Colors

Workman Publishing

Your kids love Brain Quest®, now it's baby's turn! Imbued with the core value “It's Fun to Be Smart!®”, the My First Brain Quest board book program is Brain Quest at its best: not only making learning fun, but encouraging the kind of interaction between children and caregivers that makes early learning meaningful.
         
Color identification is an important pre-math skill, and My First Brain Quest: Colors introduces children to ten basic colors through lively illustrations and a catchy, rhyming text. Smart, colorful, grounded in educational principles, reviewed by a panel of early learning experts, and defined by the signature question-and-answer format, each spread includes bright images and engaging questions to help the youngest readers discuss their observations and build on their prior knowledge.

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Mindfulness Moments for Kids: Bunny Breaths

Kira Willey

Part of the Mindfulness Moments for Kids series, this mindful meditation moment teaches kids to think like a bunny and find their own focused energy!

With Bunny Breaths, kids learn to how to replenish their energy with quick, focused breaths...no matter how blah they feel. Best of all, it can be performed anywhere: in the backseat of a car, at home, or even at a child's desk at school.

Mindfulness Moments for Kids offer easy-to-follow exercises that kids can use to manage their bodies, breathing, and emotions.

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My First Learn-To-Talk Book

Stephanie Cohen

Created by an early speech expert, this interactive first words book filled with fun-to-read rhymes helps little ones learn to talk!

Each page features:
- Simple, exciting sounds that are easy for little ones to imitate, and can be used to build bigger words
- Rhythm and rhyme to encourage repetition and help keep babies engaged, even before they can understand the text
- Real photographs that model correct mouth positions and support social emotional learning

Written by a speech-language pathologist, My First Learn-to-Talk Book is designed to help babies and toddlers master the skills they need as they learn to talk. Reading the book aloud helps caregivers easily model important aspects of communication for little ones-not only through sounds and words, but also with gestures, facial expressions and more!

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Disney It's A Small World: Hello, World!

Disney Books

Read along with Disney! This charming book takes children on a world tour by teaching them to say "Hello" in 10 different languages. The book includes all-new artwork that's colorful, modern, and inspired by Mary Blair's designs for the famous Disney theme parks attraction, "It's a Small World"!

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Disney It's A Small World: Hello, World!

Disney Books

Read along with Disney! This charming book takes children on a world tour by teaching them to say "Hello" in 10 different languages. The book includes all-new artwork that's colorful, modern, and inspired by Mary Blair's designs for the famous Disney theme parks attraction, "It's a Small World"!

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This Is Not a Unicorn!

Barry Timms

Get ready for a magical and hilarious adventure about the most fantastic unicorn EVER!
This book is NOT about a unicorn! Well . . . OK, maybe it is! But THIS unicorn has a horn that can turn into the most incredible things - a magic wand, a helicopter, even a space rocket! Join the hilarious adventure and prepare to be amazed by your brilliant new friend.

With wonderful wordplay and a funny and sweet friendship at its heart, this is NOT a unicorn book to be missed!

This fabulously funny story has tons of appeal for all children -- watch out for rockets, rainbows, helicopters, massive fish, ice cream sundaes, and magical adventures.

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How to Catch a Garden Fairy

Alice Walstead

From the New York Times and USA Today bestselling series comes a new springtime adventure perfect for Easter—do YOU have the magic touch needed to catch a Garden Fairy?

When the How to Catch Kids stumble upon a trail of glitter and the entrance to an enchanted garden, they decide that they have to explore! Hoping to find the resident Garden Fairy to learn about her magical realm, our heroes set off on a whirlwind adventure through this larger-than-life garden. Young readers, parents, and educators alike will laugh along as the Garden Fairy dodges ridiculous STEAM traps and hilarious plans, and even interacts with some surprise How to Catch friends!

Perfect for kids ages 4-10, this funny picture book makes a delightful Easter basket stuffer, classroom, summertime, or bedtime read-aloud, and graduation or birthday gift!

In the garden lives a legend filled with magic, wit, and fun,

So grab your friends and set your traps, and catch this fairy before the day's done!

Also in the How to Catch Series:

  • How to Catch a Mermaid
  • How to Catch a Unicorn
  • How to Catch the Tooth Fairy
  • How to Catch the Easter Bunny
  • How to Catch a Dinosaur
  • and more!
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Sprout Branches Out

Jessika von Innerebner

Discover the unbe-leaf-ably adorable story of a young plant with mulch to learn in this feel-good tale perfect for fans of The Bad Seed and Grumpy Monkey.

Sprout the plant lives on a small porch, in a little town. She’s only been able to grow two leaves and knows exactly why. Home is just not enough for her – she needs to venture out to the wild woods, the wise forest, and the lush jungle to find what she needs to thrive.

But once she’s out in the world, Sprout quickly learns that what she really needs may not be what she thought at all . . .

Meet a budding new picture book character with roots in this hilarious and heartfelt adventure about growing up, taking risks, and finding home again.

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Spring Crafts Across Cultures

Megan Borgert-Spaniol

Spring is a season of celebration! Join the fun with twelve festive crafts that celebrate holidays from around the world. Create a colorful wall hanging for the Hindu holiday Holi. Plant a garden to commemorate Earth Day. It's always the season for crafting!

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Abracadabra, It's Spring!

Anne Sibley O'Brien

Sun shines on a patch of snow.
Hocus pocus!
Where did it go?
Winter turns to spring in this lyrical book that celebrates the magic of nature and the changing seasons. Eleven gatefolds open to re-create the excitement and surprise of spring’s arrival, revealing what happens when snow melts, trees bud, flowers bloom, birds arrive, and eggs and cocoons hatch. Finally, it’s warm enough to pack away winter clothes and go out and play!

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In Pieces

Sally Field

In this intimate, haunting literary memoir and New York Times Notable Book of the year, an American icon tells her own story for the first time -- about a challenging and lonely childhood, the craft that helped her find her voice, and a powerful emotional legacy that shaped her journey as a daughter and a mother.
One of the most celebrated, beloved, and enduring actors of our time, Sally Field has an infectious charm that has captivated the nation for more than five decades, beginning with her first TV role at the age of seventeen. From Gidget's sweet-faced "girl next door" to the dazzling complexity of Sybil to the Academy Award-worthy ferocity and depth of Norma Rae and Mary Todd Lincoln, Field has stunned audiences time and time again with her artistic range and emotional acuity. Yet there is one character who always remained hidden: the shy and anxious little girl within.
With raw honesty and the fresh, pitch-perfect prose of a natural-born writer, and with all the humility and authenticity her fans have come to expect, Field brings readers behind-the-scenes for not only the highs and lows of her star-studded early career in Hollywood, but deep into the truth of her lifelong relationships--including her complicated love for her own mother. Powerful and unforgettable, In Pieces is an inspiring and important account of life as a woman in the second half of the twentieth century.

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At Sea

Emma Fedor

What happens when the man you love most in the world unexpectedly disappears and takes your small child with him? Emma Fedor’s “wonderful, haunting, and original” (Katherine Faulkner, author of Greenwich Park) debut explores the fierceness of first love and how far one woman will go to learn the truth about her family.

When Cara and Brendan first meet, she’s fresh out of college, recovering from the recent death of her mother, and spending time on Martha’s Vineyard while trying to figure out her next steps. She’s swept away by Brendan’s humor and charm, and intoxicated by his thrilling, dangerous secret: he can breathe underwater. Able to stay beneath the waves for longer than should be possible, Brendan reveals that he is part of a secret experimental unit of the US Special Forces. And Cara, struck by the power of his conviction, by his unstoppable charisma, and by the evidence before her, believes him.

Their summer romance turns serious. Then Cara gets pregnant. When their son, Micah, is born, she’s sure their happy ending is underway. Still, she’s thrown by Brendan’s dramatic moods, his unexplained disappearances, and the weight of his secrets. Cara is determined to stay strong for her young family—until he and baby Micah vanish, leaving her desolate and alone and questioning everything she once thought was true.

Five years later, Cara is still struggling to move forward, married to another man and trying to rebuild her life, when a local fisherman announces he’s spotted two people—one of them a small child—treading water in Nantucket Sound, far from any vessels and miles from shore. The news rekindles Cara’s never-abandoned hope that her little boy may still be alive. As she fights to untangle delusion from reality, and revisits a past she’s worked hard to reconcile, Cara is determined to learn the truth about her lost love and finally find her son in this “book you won’t be able to put down” (Jessica Anya Blau, author of Mary Jane).

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To Sleep with the Angels

David Cowan

On a grey winter day in December 1958, one of the deadliest fires in American history took the lives of ninety-two children and three nuns at a Catholic elementary school on Chicago's West Side. The blaze at Our Lady of the Angels School shocked the nation. It left many families physically and psychologically scarred for life, destroyed a close-knit working-class neighborhood, and sowed popular suspicion of the church hierarchy and city fathers. No one was ever prosecuted for setting the fire; to this day it remains an officially unsolved mystery. In To Sleep with the Angels, two veteran journalists tell the moving story of the fire and its consequences. David Cowan and John Kuenster have worked for years, talking with hundreds of sources and ferreting our documents to reconstruct a minute-by-minute narrative of the tragedy and the sorrows of its aftermath. It is a story of ordinary people caught up in a mind-numbing disaster. In gripping detail, the authors describe the fear, desperation, and panic that prevailed among children, teachers, firefighters, and parents in and around the stricken school building on that cold Monday afternoon. Beyond the flames, the story of the fire at Our Lady of the Angels became an enigma whose mystery has deepened with time: its cause was never officially explained despite evidence that it had been intentionally set by a troubled student at the school. The authors reveal for the first time this youngster's "confession" and the decision by a local judge not to pursue the case against him. The Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago also refused to press an investigation, preferring to label the fire a terrible "accident".

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To Catch a Leaf

Kate Collins

Flower shop owner Abby Knight is aglow with happiness now that she's officially engaged to her longtime beau, Marco Salvare. Nothing can possibly dampen her joy-until wealthy dowager Virginia Newport is killed, and Abby's assistant Grace Bingham is the prime suspect. The plot thickens when they stumble upon mysterious stolen art and a missing cat, all part of an elaborate heist. Before Abby can throw her bouquet, she'll have to save her friend and throw a killer and a thief in jail...

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On a Night of a Thousand Stars

Andrea Yaryura Clark

In this moving, emotional narrative of love and resilience, a young couple confronts the start of Argentina's "Dirty War" in the 1970s, and a daughter searches for truth twenty years later.



New York, 1998. Santiago Larrea, a wealthy Argentine diplomat, is holding court alongside his wife, Lila, and their daughter, Paloma, a college student and budding jewelry designer, at their annual summer polo match and soiree. All seems perfect in the Larreas' world--until an unexpected party guest from Santiago's university days shakes his usually unflappable demeanor. The woman's cryptic comments spark Paloma's curiosity about her father's past, of which she knows little.



When the family travels to Buenos Aires for Santiago's UN ambassadorial appointment, Paloma is determined to learn more about his life in the years leading up to the military dictatorship of 1976. With the help of a local university student, Franco Bonetti, an activist member of H.I.J.O.S.--a group whose members are the children of the desaparecidos, or the "disappeared," men and women who were forcibly disappeared by the state during Argentina's "Dirty War"--Paloma unleashes a chain of events that not only leads her to question her family and her identity, but also puts her life in danger.



In compelling fashion, On a Night of a Thousand Stars speaks to relationships, morality, and identity during a brutal period in Argentinian history, and the understanding--and redemption--people crave in the face of tragedy.

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In the Unlikely Event

Judy Blume

In her highly anticipated new novel, Judy Blume, the New York Times # 1 best-selling author of Summer Sisters and of young adult classics such as Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, creates a richly textured and moving story of three generations of families, friends and strangers, whose lives are profoundly changed by unexpected events.

In 1987, Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life. Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling. Against this backdrop of actual events that Blume experienced in the early 1950s, when airline travel was new and exciting and everyone dreamed of going somewhere, she paints a vivid portrait of a particular time and place--Nat King Cole singing "Unforgettable," Elizabeth Taylor haircuts, young (and not-so-young) love, explosive friendships, A-bomb hysteria, rumors of Communist threat. And a young journalist who makes his name reporting tragedy. Through it all, one generation reminds another that life goes on.

In the Unlikely Event is vintage Judy Blume, with all the hallmarks of Judy Blume's unparalleled storytelling, and full of memorable characters who cope with loss, remember the good times and, finally, wonder at the joy that keeps them going.

Early reviewers have already weighed in: "Like many family stories, this one is not without its life-changing secrets and surprises. There is no surprise that the book is smoothly written, and its story compelling. The setting--the early 1950s--is especially well realized through period references and incidents." --Booklist (starred review) and "In Blume's latest adult novel . . . young and old alike must learn to come to terms with technological disaster and social change. Her novel is characteristically accessible, frequently charming and always deeply human." --Publishers Weekly

 

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The Grace Year

Kim Liggett

The Instant New York Times Bestseller! Kim Liggett's The Grace Year is a speculative thriller in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Power.

Survive the year.

No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.

In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.

Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it’s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It’s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other.

With sharp prose and gritty realism, The Grace Year examines the complex and sometimes twisted relationships between girls, the women they eventually become, and the difficult decisions they make in-between.

“A visceral, darkly haunting fever dream of a novel and an absolute page-turner.” – Libba Bray, New York Times bestselling author

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The Violin Conspiracy

Brendan Slocumb

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK! • Ray McMillian is a Black classical musician on the rise—undeterred by the pressure and prejudice of the classical music worldwhen a shocking theft sends him on a desperate quest to recover his great-great-grandfather’s heirloom violin on the eve of the most prestigious musical competition in the world.

“I loved The Violin Conspiracy for exactly the same reasons I loved The Queen’s Gambit: a surprising, beautifully rendered underdog hero I cared about deeply and a fascinating, cutthroat world I knew nothing about—in this case, classical music.” —Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant and Hour of the Witch

Growing up Black in rural North Carolina, Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. But Ray has a gift and a dream—he’s determined to become a world-class professional violinist, and nothing will stand in his way. Not his mother, who wants him to stop making such a racket; not the fact that he can’t afford a violin suitable to his talents; not even the racism inherent in the world of classical music. 
 
When he discovers that his beat-up, family fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, all his dreams suddenly seem within reach, and together, Ray and his violin take the world by storm. But on the eve of the renowned and cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition—the Olympics of classical music—the violin is stolen, a ransom note for five million dollars left in its place. Without it, Ray feels like he's lost a piece of himself. As the competition approaches, Ray must not only reclaim his precious violin, but prove to himself—and the world—that no matter the outcome, there has always been a truly great musician within him.

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Red Harvest

Michael Cherkas

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin waged a brutal war against the Soviet peasantry leading to the Holodomor, the terror-famine that killed at least 4 million Ukrainians during the fall and winter of 1932-33. Red Harvest is based on the tragic events that took place in Soviet Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1933. Stalin and the ruling Communist Party began their program of forced large-scale collectivization of individual farms and farmers, including the seizure of livestock, farm implements, crops, seed stock, and other property. Red Harvest is the fictional story, based on true stories as related to the Ukranian-Canadian author, of Mykola Kovalenko, a Ukrainian immigrant to Canada, who was the only member of his family to have survived the famine. Through his memories, we witness the horrors of what happened to his family and fellow villagers in the "breadbasket of Europe" as they struggled--not only to make sense of the war that was being waged against them--but, ultimately, to survive.

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Stranger Things: Tales from Hawkins (Graphic Novel)

Jody Houser

An anthology of vibrant new stories woven into the larger tapestry of the hit Netflix series! Discover the hidden stories from Hawkins, Indiana.

On the surface, Hawkins, Indiana seems like the kind of town where nothing too out of the ordinary ever happens, but in the fall of ’83 two hunters head out into the woods with their rifles and a six-pack, and find themselves the prey of a nightmarish beast. When Barb Holland goes missing, Murray Bauman is on the case if only he can look past his own suspicious mind to solve the case. Robin Buckley’s school film project gives her a chance to work with her secret crush, but does it only make it harder to come to terms with her feelings? And when pumpkins start inexplicably rotting, the feud between two farm families reaches a boiling point.

Joining Houser on her visit to Hawkins are artist Caio Filipe (Stranger Things: Summer Special, Nightwing), Sunando C (End After End), Giorgia Gio Esposito (Lunar Room, Dr. Who) colorist Dan Jackson (The Strain, Hellboy: Weird Tales), and letterer Nate Piekos (The Umbrella Academy, Black Hammer).

Collects Stranger Things: Tales from Hawkins issues #1–#4.

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Static: Shadows of Dakota

Vita Ayala

The breakout creative team of Vita Ayala and Nikolas Draper-Ivey have returned to make Static's life, and Dakota City, very complicated indeed--you've never felt shocks like these!

Though Virgil and his friends might have been able to stop the government's off-the-books prison operations in Dakota, a powerful new threat lurks in the shadows. The mysterious Ebon is cutting a bloody swath through the underworld on a single-minded quest to find his brother. Against this backdrop of exploding violence, innocent people are finding themselves in the crossfire.

Collecting Static: Season Two #1-6!

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Anita de Monte Laughs Last

Xochitl Gonzalez

New York Times bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez delivers a mesmerizing novel about a first-generation Ivy League student who uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her suspicious death

A Most Anticipated Book of 2024: TIME, The Washington Post, Refinery 29, Real Simple, Entertainment Weekly, LA Daily News, LitHub, The Millions, TODAY.com, HipLatina, Book Riot, Kirkus, and more!

"Incandescent." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten—certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret.

But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita’s story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist.

Moving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love, and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite.

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This Could Be Us

Kennedy Ryan

"Heart-searing, sensual, and life affirming." ―EMILY HENRY, #1 New York Times bestselling author



Soledad Barnes has her life all planned out. Because, of course, she does. She plans everything. She designs everything. She fixes everything. She's a domestic goddess who's never met a party she couldn't host or a charge she couldn't lead. The one with all the answers and the perfect vinaigrette for that summer salad. But none of her varied talents can save her when catastrophe strikes, and the life she built with the man who was supposed to be her forever, goes poof in a cloud of betrayal and disillusion.



But there is no time to pout or sulk, or even grieve the life she lost. She's too busy keeping a roof over her daughters' heads and food on the table. And in the process of saving them all, Soledad rediscovers herself. From the ashes of a life burned to the ground, something bold and new can rise.



But then an unlikely man enters the picture--the forbidden one, the one she shouldn't want but can't seem to resist. She's lost it all before and refuses to repeat her mistakes. Can she trust him? Can she trust herself?



After all she's lost . . .and found . . .can she be brave enough to make room for what could be?



For fans of Tia Williams and Colleen Hoover comes a deeply moving and personal novel about sacrifice, self-reliance, and finding true happiness from "one of the finest romance writers of our age." ―Entertainment Weekly

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The Morningside

Téa Obreht

From the critically beloved, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife and Inland, a sweeping novel of mothers and daughters, displacement and belonging, and wondrous tales of a world both fallen and new

“A multifaceted gift of a novel that only Téa Obreht could conjure onto paper.”—Karen Russell, author of Orange World and Other Stories

There’s the world you can see. And then there’s the one you can’t. Welcome to the Morningside.

After being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-so-distant future, Silvia and her mother finally settle at the Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower in a place called Island City where Silvia’s aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family’s past, and because the once-vibrant city where she lives is now half-underwater. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born and spent her early years, nor does she fully understand why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an opening: a person willing to give the young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia’s lonely and impoverished reality.

Enchanted by Ena’s stories, Silvia begins seeing the world with magical possibilities and becomes obsessed with the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside. Bezi Duras is an enigma to everyone in the building: She has her own elevator entrance and leaves only to go out at night and walk her three massive hounds, often not returning until the early morning. Silvia’s mission to unravel the truth about this woman’s life, and her own haunted past, may end up costing her everything.

Startling, inventive, and profoundly moving, The Morningside is a novel about the stories we tell—and the stories we refuse to tell—to make sense of where we came from and who we hope we might become.

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The Underground Library

Jennifer Ryan

When the Blitz imperils the heart of a London neighborhood, three young women must use their fighting spirit to save the community’s beloved library in this novel based on true events from the author of The Chilbury Ladies Choir.

When the new deputy librarian, Juliet Lansdown, finds that Bethnal Green Library isn’t the bustling hub she is expecting, she becomes determined to breathe life back into it. But can she show the men in charge that a woman is up to the task of running the library, especially when a confrontation with her past threatens to derail her?

Katie Upwood is thrilled to be working at the library, although she is only there until she heads off to university in the fall. But after the death of her beau on the front line and amid tumultuous family strife, she finds herself harboring a life-changing secret with no one to turn to for help.

Sofie Baumann, a young Jewish refugee, came to London on a domestic service visa only to find herself working as a maid for a man who treats her abominably. She escapes to the library every chance she can, finding friendship in the literary community and aid in finding her sister, who is still trying to flee occupied Europe.

When a slew of bombs destroys the library, Juliet relocates the stacks to the local Underground station where the city’s residents shelter nightly, determined to lend out stories that will keep spirits up. But tragedy after tragedy threatens to unmoor the women and sever the ties of their community. Will Juliet, Kate, and Sofie be able to overcome their own troubles to save the library? Or will the beating heart of their neighborhood be lost forever?

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Expiration Dates

Rebecca Serle

Being single is like playing the lottery. There’s always the chance that with one piece of paper you could win it all.

From the New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years and One Italian Summer comes the romance that will define a generation.

Daphne Bell believes the universe has a plan for her. Every time she meets a new man, she receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it—the exact amount of time they will be together. The papers told her she’d spend three days with Martin in Paris; five weeks with Noah in San Francisco; and three months with Hugo, her ex-boyfriend turned best friend. Daphne has been receiving the numbered papers for over twenty years, always wondering when there might be one without an expiration. Finally, the night of a blind date at her favorite Los Angeles restaurant, there’s only a name: Jake.

But as Jake and Daphne’s story unfolds, Daphne finds herself doubting the paper’s prediction, and wrestling with what it means to be both committed and truthful. Because Daphne knows things Jake doesn’t, information that—if he found out—would break his heart.

Told with her signature warmth and insight into matters of the heart, Rebecca Serle has finally set her sights on romantic love. The result is a gripping, emotional, passionate, and (yes) heartbreaking novel about what it means to be single, what it means to find love, and ultimately how we define each of them for ourselves. Expiration Dates is the one fans have been waiting for.

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Listen for the Lie

Amy Tintera

"A world-class whodunit."
—Stephen King

“An extremely successful high-wire act, balancing between dark comedy and darker thrills.”
—Alex Michaelides, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Laugh-out-loud funny, thrilling and twisty...”
Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling author

What if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn't matter?

After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all, and if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life.

But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast "Listen for the Lie," and its too-good looking host Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one that did it.

The truth is out there, if we just listen.

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Happily Never After

Lynn Painter

Their name? The objectors.
Their job? To break off weddings as hired.
Their dilemma? They might just be in love with each other.
 
When Sophie Steinbeck finds out just before her nuptials that her fiancé has cheated yet again, she desperately wants to call it off. But because her future father-in-law is her dad’s cutthroat boss, she doesn’t want to be the one to do it. Her savior comes in the form of a professional objector, whose purpose is to show up at weddings and proclaim the words no couple (usually) wants to hear at their ceremony: “I object!”
 
During anti-wedding festivities that night, Sophie learns more about Max the Objector’s job. It makes perfect sense to her: he saves people from wasting their lives, from hurting each other. He’s a modern-day hero. And Sophie wants in.
 
The two love cynics start working together, going from wedding to wedding, and Sophie’s having more fun than she’s had in ages. She looks forward to every nerve-racking ceremony saving the lovesick souls of the betrothed masses. As Sophie and Max spend more time together, however, they realize that their physical chemistry is off the charts, leading them to dabble in a little hookup session or two—but it’s totally fine, because they definitely do not have feelings for each other. Love doesn’t exist, after all.
 
And then everything changes. A groom-to-be hires Sophie to object, but his fiancée is the woman who broke Max’s heart. As Max wrestles with whether he can be a party to his ex’s getting hurt, Sophie grapples with the sudden realization that she may have fallen hard for her partner in crime.

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Bye, Baby

Carola Lovering

A March 2024 Indie Next Pick

"Powerful, relatable and crazily addictive, Bye, Baby takes an unflinching look at the battling forces of toxicity and love which define so many female friendships. I couldn't put it down." ––Rosie Walsh, New York Times bestselling author of Ghosted and The Love of My Life

Every friendship has its shadow...

On a brisk fall night in a New York apartment, 35-year-old Billie West hears terrified screams. It's her lifelong best friend Cassie Barnwell, one floor above, and she's just realized her infant daughter has gone missing. Billie is shaken as she looks down into her own arms to see the baby, remembering—with a jolt of fear—that she is responsible for the kidnapping that has instantly shattered Cassie’s world.

Once fiercely bonded by their secrets, Cassie and Billie have drifted apart in adulthood, no longer the inseparable pair they used to be in their small Hudson Valley hometown. Cassie is married to a wealthy man, has recently become a mother, and is building a following as a lifestyle influencer. She is desperate to leave her past behind—including Billie, who is single and childless, and no longer fits into her world. But Billie knows the worst thing Cassie has ever done, and she will do whatever it takes to restore their friendship...

Told in alternating perspectives in Lovering’s signature suspenseful style, Bye, Baby confronts the myriad ways friendships change and evolve over time, the lingering echoes of childhood trauma, and the impact of women’s choices on their lifelong relationships.

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The Great Divide

Cristina Henriquez

A powerful novel about the construction of the Panama Canal, casting light on the unsung people who lived, loved, and labored there

It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection.

Ada Bunting is a bold sixteen-year-old from Barbados who arrives in Panama as a stowaway alongside thousands of other West Indians seeking work. Alone and with no resources, she is determined to find a job that will earn enough money for her ailing sister's surgery. When she sees a young man--Omar--who has collapsed after a grueling shift, she is the only one who rushes to his aid.

John Oswald has dedicated his life to scientific research and has journeyed to Panama in single-minded pursuit of one goal: eliminating malaria. But now, his wife, Marian, has fallen ill herself, and when he witnesses Ada's bravery and compassion, he hires her on the spot as a caregiver. This fateful decision sets in motion a sweeping tale of ambition, loyalty, and sacrifice.

Searing and empathetic,The Great Divide explores the intersecting lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers--those rarely acknowledged by history even as they carved out its course.

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Everyone Is Watching

Heather Gudenkauf

"Big Brother meets Clue in this utterly original and incredibly tense locked-room mystery." --May Cobb, author of A Likeable Woman



A mysterious high-stakes game proves life-threatening in this twisty thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of The Overnight Guest



The Best Friend. The Confidant. The Senator. The Boyfriend. The Executive.



Five contestants have been chosen to compete for ten million dollars on the game show One Lucky Winner. The catch? None of them knows what (or who) to expect, and it will be live streamed all over the world. Completely secluded in an estate in Northern California, with strict instructions not to leave the property and zero contact with the outside world, the competitors start to feel a little too isolated.



When long-kept secrets begin to rise to the surface, the contestants realize this is no longer just a reality show--someone is out for blood. And the game can't end until the world knows who the contestants really are...



And don't miss these other enthralling thrillers by Heather Gudenkauf:
 

  • The Weight of Silence
  • These Things Hidden
  • Little Mercies
  • Missing Pieces
  • Not a Sound
  • Before She Was Found
  • This is How I Lied
  • The Overnight Guest

 

 

 

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The Mystery Writer

Sulari Gentill

"Gentill nimbly balances the plausible with the outlandish in this sly thriller set in the publishing world." --Publishers Weekly

From 2023 Edgar Award nominee and bestselling author Sulari Gentill comes a literary thriller about an aspiring writer who meets and falls in love with her literary idol--only to find him murdered the day after she gave him her manuscript to read.

There's nothing easier to dismiss than a conspiracy theory--until it turns out to be true

When Theodosia Benton abandons her career path as an attorney and shows up on her brother's doorstep with two suitcases and an unfinished novel, she expects to face a few challenges. Will her brother support her ambition or send her back to finish her degree? What will her parents say when they learn of her decision? Does she even have what it takes to be a successful writer?

What Theo never expects is to be drawn into a hidden literary world in which identity is something that can be lost and remade for the sake of an audience. When her mentor, a highly successful author, is brutally murdered, Theo wants the killer to be found and justice to be served. Then the police begin looking at her brother, Gus, as their prime suspect, and Theo does the unthinkable in order to protect him. But the writer has left a trail, a thread out of the labyrinth in the form of a story. Gus finds that thread and follows it, and in his attempt to save his sister he inadvertently threatens the foundations of the labyrinth itself. To protect the carefully constructed narrative, Theo Benton, and everyone looking for her, will have to die.

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James

Percival Everett

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, NPR, THE SEATTLE TIMES, ELLE, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, AND OPRAH DAILY

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view - From the "literary icon" (Oprah Daily) and Pulitzer Prize Finalist whose novel Erasure is the basis for Cord Jefferson's critically acclaimed film American Fiction

"If you liked Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver, read James, by Percival Everett" --The Washington Post

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river's banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin...), Jim's agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a "literary icon" (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

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The Other Side of Disappearing

Kate Clayborn

From the acclaimed author of Georgie, All Along and Love Lettering, a pitch-perfect, radiantly transporting love story about an unexpected road trip, true crime obsessions, and hard won vulnerability…

“Poignant, observant, tender, and deeply romantic. Clayborn takes what she does best and goes deeper, deftly braiding mystery and family drama with an absorbing romance in her trademark lyrical voice. This book is everything.”—CHRISTINA LAUREN, New York Times bestselling authors of The True Love Experiment


Hairstylist Jess Greene has spent the last decade raising her younger half-sister, Tegan—and keeping a shocking secret. Ever since their reckless mother ran off with a boyfriend she’d known only a few months, Jess has been aware that he’s the same accomplished con man who was the subject of a wildly popular podcast, The Last Con of Lynton Baltimore.

Now thirty-one, Jess didn’t bargain on Tegan eventually piecing together the connection for herself. But Tegan plans to do exactly what Jess has always feared—leave their safe, stable home to search for their mother—and she’ll be accompanied by the prying podcast host and her watchful, handsome producer, Adam Hawkins. Unwilling to let the sister she’s spent so much of her life protecting go it alone, Jess reluctantly joins them.

Together, the four make their way across the country, unraveling the mystery of where the couple disappeared to and why. But soon Jess is discovering other things too. Like a renewed sense of vulnerability and curiosity, and a willingness to expand beyond the walls she’s so carefully built. And in Adam, she finds an unexpected connection she didn’t even know was missing, if only she can let go and let him in . . .

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How to Solve Your Own Murder

Kristen Perrin

 

Named most aniticpated by: Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, BookRiot, The Nerd Daily, Shelf Reflection, Novel Suspects, Borrow Read Repeat, The Everygirl, The Scout Guide, The Real Book Spy

The Top LibraryReads pick for March 2024

A Publishers Marketplace 2024 BuzzBook

For fans of Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club, an enormously fun mystery about a woman who spends her entire life trying to prevent her foretold murder only to be proven right sixty years later, when she is found dead in her sprawling country estate.... Now it's up to her great-niece to catch the killer.

It’s 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends. But Frances’s night takes a hairpin turn when a fortune-teller makes a bone-chilling prediction: One day, Frances will be murdered. Frances spends a lifetime trying to solve a crime that hasn’t happened yet, compiling dirt on every person who crosses her path in an effort to prevent her own demise. For decades, no one takes Frances seriously, until nearly sixty years later, when Frances is found murdered, like she always said she would be.
 
In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to a meeting at the sprawling country estate of her wealthy and reclusive great-aunt Frances. But by the time Annie arrives in the quaint English village of Castle Knoll, Frances is already dead. Annie is determined to catch the killer, but thanks to Frances’s lifelong habit of digging up secrets and lies, it seems every endearing and eccentric villager might just have a motive for her murder. Can Annie safely unravel the dark mystery at the heart of Castle Knoll, or will dredging up the past throw her into the path of a killer?
 
As Annie gets closer to the truth, and closer to the danger, she starts to fear she might inherit her aunt’s fate instead of her fortune.

 

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This Little Kitty in the Garden

Karen Obuhanych

Spring is blooming, and what better way for rascally kittens to celebrate than by causing mischief in the garden in this charming picture book!

Spring has sprung on Sakura Way.
The five little kittles will garden today!

Read along as these frisky felines plant seeds, pounce and play, claw and climb, and splish, splash and swirluntil they end their day asleep in the garden bed. Filled with bright and playful illustrations, here is an adorable picture book that introduces kids to the wonders of spring as they spend time in the garden with these delightful catsall brimming with cattitude. Here is a picture book sure to charm cat lovers and kids alike.

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Fluffy McWhiskers Cuteness Explosion

Stephen W. Martin

Friendship is hard for Fluffy, a kitten so precious that anyone who looks at her explodes!

Meet Fluffy—an adorable kitten. So adorable, in fact, that anyone who sees her will spontaneously explode into balls of sparkles and fireworks. KABOOM! Poof.

Poor Fluffy doesn’t want anyone to get hurt, but everything she tries, even a bad haircut, just makes her cuter! So Fluffy runs away someplace no one can find her. Find out if there’s any hope for Fluffy in this funny and subversive story about self-acceptance and finding friendship in unlikely places.

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In Shock

Rana Awdish

Now a Los Angeles Times Bestseller

The New York Times Book Review: "Awdish's book is the one I wished we were given as assigned reading our first year of medical school, alongside our white coats and stethoscopes...dramatic, engaging and instructive."

A riveting first-hand account of a physician who's suddenly a dying patient and her revelation of the horribly misguided standard of care in the medical world

Dr. Rana Awdish never imagined that an emergency trip to the hospital would result in hemorrhaging nearly all of her blood volume and losing her unborn first child. But after her first visit, Dr. Awdish spent months fighting for her life, enduring consecutive major surgeries and experiencing multiple overlapping organ failures. At each step of the recovery process, Awdish was faced with something even more unexpected: repeated cavalier behavior from her fellow physicians—indifference following human loss, disregard for anguish and suffering, and an exacting emotional distance.

Hauntingly perceptive and beautifully written, In Shock allows the reader to transform alongside Awidsh and watch what she discovers in our carefully-cultivated, yet often misguided, standard of care. Awdish comes to understand the fatal flaws in her profession and in her own past actions as a physician while achieving, through unflinching presence, a crystalline vision of a new and better possibility for us all.

As Dr. Awdish finds herself up against the same self-protective partitions she was trained to construct as a medical student and physician, she artfully illuminates the dysfunction of disconnection. Shatteringly personal, and yet wholly universal, she offers a brave road map for anyone navigating illness while presenting physicians with a new paradigm and rationale for embracing the emotional bond between doctor and patient.

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In the Time of the Butterflies

Julia Alvarez

It is November 25, 1960, and the bodies of three beautiful, convent-educated sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. El Caribe, the official newspaper, reports their deaths as an accident. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Raphael Leonidas Trujillo's dictatorship. It doesn't have to. Everyone knows of Las Mariposas - "The Butterflies." Now, three decades later, Julia Alvarez, also a daughter of the Dominican Republic and long haunted by these sisters, immerses us in a tangled and dangerous moment in Hispanic Caribbean history to tell their story in the only way it can truly be understood - through fiction. In this brilliantly characterized novel, the voices of all four sisters - Minerva, Patria, Maria Teresa, and Dede - speak across the decades, to tell their own stories - from hair ribbons to gunrunning to prison torture - and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo's rule. The Butterflies were extraordinary women. Minerva, once the object of the dictator's desire, had dared to publicly slap his face. Devout Patria found her calling to the uprising through the church. Alluring - and vain - Maria Teresa joined in pursuit of romance. Only Dede, the practical one, the most diligent in her duty to family and tradition, kept apart. And only she survived to see that their names were remembered. Now, through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez's imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again. And Dede joins them as a heroine of equal courage.

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In the Midst of Winter

Isabel Allende

New York Times Bestseller

Worldwide bestselling “dazzling storyteller” (Associated Press) Isabel Allende returns with a sweeping novel about three very different people who are brought together in a mesmerizing story that journeys from present-day Brooklyn to Guatemala in the recent past to 1970s Chile and Brazil.

In the Midst of Winter begins with a minor traffic accident—which becomes the catalyst for an unexpected and moving love story between two people who thought they were deep into the winter of their lives. Richard Bowmaster—a 60-year-old human rights scholar—hits the car of Evelyn Ortega—a young, undocumented immigrant from Guatemala—in the middle of a snowstorm in Brooklyn. What at first seems just a small inconvenience takes an unforeseen and far more serious turn when Evelyn turns up at the professor’s house seeking help. At a loss, the professor asks his tenant Lucia Maraz—a 62-year-old lecturer from Chile—for her advice. These three very different people are brought together in a mesmerizing story that moves from present-day Brooklyn to Guatemala in the recent past to 1970s Chile and Brazil, sparking the beginning of a long overdue love story between Richard and Lucia.

Exploring the timely issues of human rights and the plight of immigrants and refugees, the book recalls Allende’s landmark novel The House of the Spirits in the way it embraces the cause of “humanity, and it does so with passion, humor, and wisdom that transcend politics” (Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post). In the Midst of Winter will stay with you long after you turn the final page.

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At Midnight

Dahlia Adler

A dazzling collection of original and retold fairy tales from fifteen acclaimed and bestselling YA writers

Fairy tales have been spun for thousands of years and remain among our most treasured stories. Weaving fresh tales with unexpected reimaginings, At Midnight brings together a diverse group of celebrated YA writers to breathe new life into a storied tradition. You’ll discover . . .

Dahlia Adler reimagining "Rumpelstiltskin,"
Tracy Deonn, “The Nightingale,”
H. E. Edgmon, “Snow White,”
Hafsah Faizal, “Little Red Riding Hood,”
Stacey Lee, “The Little Matchstick Girl,”
Roselle Lim, "Hansel and Gretel,"
Darcie Little Badger, "Puss in Boots,"
Malinda Lo, “Frau Trude,”
Alex London, "Cinderella."
Anna-Marie McLemore, “The Nutcracker,"
Rebecca Podos, “The Robber Bridegroom,”
Rory Power, “Sleeping Beauty,”
Meredith Russo, “The Little Mermaid,”
Gita Trelease, “Fitcher’s Bird,”
and an all-new fairy tale by Melissa Albert.

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At First Sight

Nicholas Sparks

In this #1 New York Times bestselling follow-up to True Believer, a young couple's love faces the ultimate test when the past disrupts the life and family they've built together.
There are a few things Jeremy Marsh was sure he'd never do: he'd never leave New York City; never give his heart away again after barely surviving one failed marriage; and, most of all, never become a parent. Now, Jeremy is living in the tiny town of Boone Creek, North Carolina, married to Lexie Darnell, the love of his life, and anticipating the birth of their daughter. But just as his life seems to be settling into a blissful pattern, an unsettling and mysterious message re-opens old wounds and sets off a chain of events that will forever change the course of this young couple's marriage.

Dramatic, heartbreaking and surprising, this is a story about the love between a man and a woman and between a parent and a child. More than that, it is a story that beautifully portrays how the same emotion that can break your heart is also the one that will ultimately heal it.

While the novel picks up the tale of Lexie Darnell and Jeremy Marsh that started in True Believer and will delight fans of that novel, it stands on its own as one of Nicholas Sparks's most deeply moving love stories.

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At Bertram's Hotel

Agatha Christie

Staff, guests and furnishings retain an elite Edwardian atmosphere "dignified, unostentatious, and quietly expensive" in 1955. But guest Miss Jane Marple overhears fast platinum beauty Lady Bess Sedgewick threaten to shoot doorman Irish decorated soldier Michael Gorman if he publicly remembers their wild past in Ballygowlan, and uneasily observes more than average identities mistaken in the lobby. Inspector benevolent-mannered "Father" Davy investigates major robberies, too many coincidental nearby witnesses of well-known Bertram visitors alibied elsewhere, searches for a mastermind criminal organization.

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Marina's Turf

Dela Costa

In the seventh Isla of Adventure chapter book, Isla helps a lost baby dolphin!

When a lost baby dolphin washes ashore calling for help, Isla prepares to use her animal-speaking ability to assist in any way she can. What she doesn’t expect is for a boy her age to beat her to the job! Not only that, but Isla can’t understand a single thing the dolphin says. Could it be that Isla’s out of her depth?

With easy-to-read language and illustrations on almost every page, the Isla of Adventure chapter books are perfect for beginning readers.

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Henry Heckelbeck Makes Super Slime

Wanda Coven

In this fourteenth Henry Heckelbeck adventure, Henry’s homemade slime gets out of control!

Henry is determined to make the gooiest, stickiest, slimiest slime. It’s going to have glitter and cool colors…just as soon as he can stop it from swallowing everything in its path! Henry’s slime might have gotten a little bit out of hand. Can he find a way to tame it, or will his super slime become a super disaster?

With easy-to-read language and illustrations on almost every page, the Henry Heckelbeck chapter books are perfect for beginning readers.

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Drag and Rex: Forever Friends

Susan Lubner

Meet Drag and Rex, the sweet, silly best friends who find joy and adventure in the simplest places in this charming and cheery modern Frog and Toad.

Drag is a dreamy, literal, impulsive, (and sometimes a little bit scatter-brained) dragon. Rex is a dapper, practical, methodical (and sometimes a little bit stuffy) T.rex. The two may have their differences, but they are both gentle and caring, and the best friends. Forever friends.

Whether it’s deciding what to have for breakfast, working through those tricky zippers, buckles, and buttons to bundle up tight, how to make the best of a snowy day, or how to face down something scary, through patience, cooperation, and a good dose of silliness and humor, these buddies always figure out how to push through their challenges. Together.


Forever Friends features three stories told in short chapters, accompanied by bright, joy-filled full color illustrations, allowing developing readers to gain confidence and a sense of accomplishment as they follow the adventures of their new forever friends.

A Kirkus Reviews' Best Beginning Reader of the Year

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First Day, Worst Day

Andy Nonamus

A very unlucky kid navigates the many challenges of the first day of school in the first book in The Very Worst Ever chapter book series!

[REDACTED] keeps his name and school secret—even hiding his appearance behind stickers. Why? Because his bad luck is super embarrassing!

It’s the first day at a new school, and this fresh new start means absolutely no one knows just how unlucky he is. But after missing his school bus, getting lost looking for his classroom, and getting smacked in the face with a basketball, he quickly realizes he is doomed forever. Luckily, some new friends might just help him make it through the worst first day ever!

With easy-to-read language and illustrations on almost every page, The Very Worst Ever chapter books are perfect for emerging readers.

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Emma and the Love Spell

Meredith Ireland

Witchlings meets The Parent Trap in this contemporary fantasy about a girl who tries to use her fickle witchy powers to keep her best friend (and secret crush!) from moving away.

Twelve-year-old, Korean American adoptee Emma Davidson has a problem. Two problems. Okay, three:

1. She has a crush on her best friend, Avangeline, that she hasn't been able to share
2. Avangeline now has to move out of their town because her parents are getting a divorce
3. Oh, and Emma is a secret witch who can't really control her powers

It's a complicated summer between sixth and seventh grade. Emma's parents made her promise that she'd keep her powers a secret and never, ever use them. But if Avangeline's parents fell back in love, it would fix everything. And how hard could one little love spell be?

This fast-paced, heartfelt story is a powerful exploration of learning to embrace who you are, even when your true self is different from everyone around you.

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The World-Famous Nine

Ben Guterson

In this thrilling mystery from an award-winning author, Zander is determined to do whatever it takes to save his grandmother's nineteen-story out-of-this-world department store--perfect for fans of The Swifts and The Mysterious Benedict Society.



Zander Olinga's grandmother is the owner of the fabled Number Nine Plaza, the spectacular nineteen-story skyscraper. The Nine, as it's called, has everything imaginable, including a massive Ferris wheel on its rooftop, monorail tracks suspended from its ceiling, and twenty-five glass elevators. But there's something evil looming in the shadows, and strange accidents start befalling the guests. When Zander and his friend Natasha come across a series of inscriptions hidden throughout the walls of The Nine, they discover that the clues will lead them to a magical object which protects the store's very existence. With the future of The Nine on the line, the pair are determined to recover the mysterious object before the luxury plaza and its many guests are destroyed.



Featuring an unforgettable setting and a larger-than-life cast of characters, here's a spellbinding mystery involving puzzles, art, and high-stakes adventure.

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The Thirteenth Circle

MarcyKate Connolly

The X-Files meets Scooby-Doo in THE THIRTEENTH CIRCLE, a middle-grade mystery from MarcyKate Connolly and Kathryn Holmes, featuring two unexpected friends, crop circles, science fairs, and Men in Black, perfect for both the highly scientific and cryptid enthusiasts alike.

Cat knows aliens are real, and she’s determined to prove it. By studying the Weston Farm Circles, her town’s legendary crop circle phenomenon, she’ll not only demonstrate the existence of extraterrestrial life, but also win the grand prize in the McMurray Youth Science Competition—a feat she’s sure will impress her distant NASA scientist father.

Dani most certainly does not believe in aliens. How can she, when they go against every scientific principle she’s been taught? So when Dani is paired with Cat to enter the McMurray Youth Science Competition—which she has to win to avoid going to her parents’ artsy summer camp—she knows she’s at a disadvantage. Her solution? Disprove Cat’s theory, of course . . . without telling her partner her true intentions.

But as the girls bond over science, it becomes clear that there is something strange about the Weston Farm Circles. And when Dani and Cat’s project is threatened by suspicious forces, they’ll have to work together to expose the truth, once and for all.

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Haunted Holiday

Kiersten White

Giant battle robots! Cotton candy betrayal! Blasts from the past! And the ultimate challenge to stay true to themselves and each other await Theo and Alexander in the final book in the tragic series about the Sinister-Winterbottom twins, who must solve one wretched mystery after the next, brought to you by #1 NYT bestselling author Kiersten White.

Trapped in Aunt Saffronia’s spectral house, Theo and Alexander must work together to escape, stop their newfound nemesis Essa and her henchman Edgaren’t, save Wil and their friends, find their parents, and maybe, just maybe, get things back to normal.

Following the clues left behind, the twins find themselves at Siren’s Song Seaside Amusement Park. Old faces and new surprises await them in a park that was built to lure in visitors…and their secrets.

As they get closer to answers, the twins are left with the biggest question of all: Who is Essa really, and why is she so determined to find their parents?

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Waffles

Ellen Miles

Welcome to the Puppy Place! Where every puppy finds a home.

 

Charles and Lizzie Peterson love puppies. Their family fosters these young dogs, giving them love and proper care, until they can find the perfect forever home.Waffles is exuberant, playful, and smart - maybe too smart! She's quite the escape artist and Lizzie has her hands full trying to keep tabs on her.

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