Punctuation marks come alive in this clever picture book featuring fourteen playful poems. Periods stop sentences in a baker's shop, commas help a train slow down, quotation marks tell people what to do, and colons stubbornly introduce lists. This appealing primer is a surefire way to make punctuation both accessible and fun for kids.

Eleanor is the new girl in town, and she's never felt more alone. All mismatched clothes, mad red hair and chaotic home life, she couldn't stick out more if she tried. Then she takes the seat on the bus next to Park. Quiet, careful and — in Eleanor's eyes — impossibly cool, Park's worked out that flying under the radar is the best way to get by. Slowly, steadily, through late-night conversations and an ever-growing stack of mixed tapes, Eleanor and Park fall in love. They fall in love the way you do the first time, when you're 16, and you have nothing and everything to lose. Set over the course of one school year in 1986, Eleanor and Park is funny, sad, shocking and true — an exquisite nostalgia trip for anyone who has never forgotten their first love.

Embassytown: a city of contradictions on the outskirts of the universe. Avice is an immerser, a traveller on the immer, the sea of space and time below the everyday, now returned to her birth planet. Here on Arieka, humans are not the only intelligent life, and Avice has a rare bond with the natives, the enigmatic Hosts — who cannot lie. Only a tiny cadre of unique human Ambassadors can speak Language, and connect the two communities. But an unimaginable new arrival has come to Embassytown. And when this Ambassador speaks, everything changes. Catastrophe looms. Avice knows the only hope is for her to speak directly to the alien Hosts. And that is impossible.

This is a book about counting with adorable pet characters, which helps make learning fun! The bright, bold illustrations are full of humour, and little ones will love pulling the chunky tabs and helping the creatures 'talk'. The speech bubbles will help them to join in and the mirror ending will encourage them to make some noise themselves.

This is a book about noise with adorable farm animal characters, which helps make learning fun! The bright, bold illustrations are full of humour, and little ones will love pulling the chunky tabs and helping the creatures 'talk'. The speech bubbles will help them to join in and the mirror ending will encourage them to make some noise themselves.

This is a book about opposites with adorable jungle characters, which helps make learning fun! The bright, bold illustrations are full of humour, and little ones will love pulling the chunky tabs and helping the creatures 'talk'. The speech bubbles will help them to join in and the mirror ending will encourage them to make some noise themselves.

This is an utterly compelling and often unbelievable adventure into the world of madness. Jon Ronson meets everybody from a Broadmoor inmate who swears he faked a mental disorder to get a lighter sentence but is now stuck there to the influential psychologist who developed the industry standard Psychopath Test and who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are in fact psychopaths. Combining Jon's trademark humour, charm and investigative incision, The Psychopath Test is a deeply honest book unearthing dangerous truths and asking serious questions about how we define normality in a world where we are increasingly judged by our maddest edges. 'Ronson's new book is provocative and interesting, and you will, I guarantee, zip merrily through it' Observer 'Both screamingly funny and deeply disturbing' Tatler 'Ronson is such a chirpy, inquisitive and funny writer' Mail on Sunday.

‘It was the first murder case I ever investigated on my own.’ Wexford said angrily. ‘There’s no mystery. Herbert Arthur Painter killed his ninety-year-old employer by hitting her over the head with an axe. He did it for two hundred pounds.’ Chief Inspector Wexford was sure that the murder of an old lady had been carried out by her employee, Herbert Painter, and the courts agreed with him. But then Henry Archery, whose son is engaged to marry Painter’s daughter, starts questioning the case …

From the author of the internationally bestselling Sophie Kinsella novels, Madeleine Wickham's newest novel features a house whose asking price includes a stunning renovation of dreams and hearts... Liz and Jonathan Chambers were stuck with two mortgages, mounting debts and a miserable adolescent daughter. Then Marcus Witherstone came into their lives — and it seemed he would solve all their problems. He knew the perfect tenants from London who would rent their old house: a glamorous PR girl, Ginny, and her almost-famous husband, Piers. But soon Liz is lost in blissful dreams of Marcus, Jonathan is left to run their tutorial college, and neither of them has time to notice that their teenage daughter is developing a passion for the tenants, Piers and Ginny. Everyone is entangled with everyone else, in the most awkward possible way. And as events close in, they all begin to realize that some deceptions are just a bit too close to home.

Hazel Bannock is heir to the Bannock Oil Corporation, one of the major global oil producers. While cruising the Indian Ocean, her yacht is hijacked by Somalian pirates and her nineteen-year-old daughter, Cayla, kidnapped. The pirates demand a crippling twenty-billion-dollar ransom for her release, and complicated political and diplomatic sensitivities render the major powers incapable of intervening. With growing evidence of the horrific torture to which Cayla is being subjected, Hazel calls on Hector Cross to help her rescue her daughter. Hector is the man behind Cross Bow Security, the company contracted to Bannock Oil Corporation to provide all their protection. He is a formidable fighting man. Between them, Hazel and Hector are determined to take the law into their own hands. For nearly fifty years, internationally bestselling author Wilbur Smith has thrilled readers with novels set during the Egyptian era all the way up through the present day. Now, Those in Peril brings his matchless storytelling to bear on the violent, ruthless world of twenty-first-century piracy.

Jackie Collins's fierce heroine Lucky Santangelo is back — with a vengeance — and the stakes are higher than ever. Love. Beauty. Success. Lucky has everything her name implies. And as the force behind a high-profile casino and hotel complex, The Keys in Vegas, Lucky has exactly what billionaire businessman Armand Jordan is determined to take from her — and he's not afraid to play dirty.

A brilliant, funny, and heartbreaking novel about the glories and vicissitudes of young love. His many awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, a Whiting Writers' Award, and the Harold D. Vursell Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Author of Middlesex (bestselling winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize, with more than 3 million copies sold) and the now classic The Virgin Suicides (made into a haunting film by Sofia Coppola).

Back in print after a decade, expanded with new original material, this is the first volume of George R. R. Martin's Wild cards shared-world series. There is a secret history of the world — a history in which an alien virus struck the Earth in the aftermath of World War II, endowing a handful of survivors with extraordinary powers. Some were called Aces — those with superhuman mental and physical abilities. Others were termed Jokers — cursed with bizarre mental or physical disabilities. Some turned their talents to the service of humanity. Others used their powers for evil. Wild Cards is their story. Originally published in 1987, Wild Cards I includes powerful tales by Roger Zelazny, Walter Jon Williams, Howard Waldrop, Lewis Shiner, and George R. R. Martin himself. And this new, expanded edition contains further original tales set at the beginning of the Wild Cards universe, by eminent new writers like Hugo-winner David Levine, noted screenwriter and novelist Michael Cassutt, and New York Times bestseller Carrie Vaughn.

The real events behind the highly-anticipated film starring Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling — A secret police force wages an all-out street war to drive gangs from Los Angeles after WWII Award-winning journalist Paul Lieberman's 7-part 2008 Los Angeles Times newspaper series on the Squad was optioned by Warner Bros. for feature film. The $60 million production is scheduled for US release on Oct. 19, 2012, backed by $50 Million in marketing, and it has already been scheduled for release in 7 foreign countries. An Executive Producer of the film, Lieberman worked for 24 years as an editor and writer for the L.A. Times and before that with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. For the L.A. Times series, he spent more than a decade tracking down surviving members of the secretive LAPD squad that battled Mickey Cohen and other hoodlums in 1950s L.A. He interviewed 150 people in all, including Cohen's associates, and assembled thousands of pages of documents, including grand jury transcripts, voluminous crime reports, old family letters and photos, and an LAPD study of every mob killing in the city from 1900 to 1951. Lieberman's book tells the story of two cops, O'Mara and Wooters, both of whom became obsessed with the Squad's priority target, the showboating Mickey Cohen. One set a trap for Mickey using his own guns, while the other formed an alliance with Mickey's fearless rival, Jack The Enforcer Whalen. Both of their crusades then came to a head on the same night in the last days of the 1950s. The film is already generating buzz, but more importantly, there is a huge audience of true crime as well as noir-era L.A. fans who are already excited to read the true, in-depth story of the Squad--after the newspaper series ran, Lieberman heard from thousands of readers asking When can I get the book? With the Warner Brothers PR machine generating tremendous anticipation for the movie, this audience will create tremendous demand for this harrowing, edge-of-your-seat narrative of murder and secrets, revenge and heroism in the City of Angels.

Millions of people around the world communicate better thanks to Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, whose top-rated weekly grammar podcast has been downloaded more than 40 million times. Now she's turning her attention to improving our vocabulary — one troublesome word at a time. Do you run a gauntlet or gantlet? Do you choose between or among more than two things? How many way are there to spell Chanukah, and which is correct? Grammar Girl to the rescue! This handy reference guide contains 101 troublesome words defined and decoded so they'll never trouble you again. Full of clear, straightforward definitions and fun quotations from historic luminaries such as Benjamin Franklin and Louisa May Alcott, as well as contemporary notables such as David Sedaris and JK Rowling, this highly-useable guidebook gives you the tools to speak and write correctly at any occasion, setting you up for a lifetime of success.

Everyone wins this game of literary tennis, a comedy of manners about envy in which Wickham skewers the nouveau riche. At their country estate, Patrick Chance and his wife host a weekend tennis party. As four couples gather on the sunny terrace, it seems obvious who among them is succeeding, and who is falling behind. But by the end of the party, nothing will be quite as certain. While the couples' children amuse themselves with pony rides and rehearsals for a play, the adults suffer a series of personal revelations and crises. Wickham's nonstop action reveals at every turn that matters may not be as they seem, and in the end one thing is crystal clear: the weekend is about anything but tennis.

From the pen of master storyteller Anthony Horowitz comes a new series of myths and legends from around the world, retold in a contemporary voice, and illustrated with bold, graphic artwork. Packed with Horowitz's signature action, humor, and suspense these collections feel fresh, modern, and perfect for today's fast-moving audience. When life is over, and the conflicted souls of the dead wend their weary way down to the underworld, what do they see? A three-headed dog with slavering jaws, a bubbling swamp and a hangman's noose, or simply darkness? From familiar stories like the Greek myth of Orpheus, to lesser known tales like the Viking legend of the poet Nornagest and his precious candle, or the story of the Indian Princess Savitri who cheated death with nothing but her smarts, this collection is full of characters who are brave enough (or foolish enough) to cheat death and tell the tale.

Fresh from the success of The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson, best known for completing Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time(R), takes a break to return to the world of the bestselling Mistborn series. Three hundred years after the events of the Mistborn trilogy, Scadrial is now on the verge of modernity, with railroads to supplement the canals, electric lighting in the streets and the homes of the wealthy, and the first steel-framed skyscrapers racing for the clouds. Kelsier, Vin, Elend, Sazed, Spook, and the rest are now part of history — or religion. Yet even as science and technology are reaching new heights, the old magics of Allomancy and Feruchemy continue to play a role in this reborn world. Out in the frontier lands known as the Roughs, they are crucial tools for the brave men and women attempting to establish order and justice. One such is Waxillium Ladrian, a rare Twinborn, who can Push on metals with his Allomancy and use Feruchemy to become lighter or heavier at will. After twenty years in the Roughs, Wax has been forced by family tragedy to return to the metropolis of Elendel. Now he must reluctantly put away his guns and assume the duties and dignity incumbent upon the head of a noble house. Or so he thinks, until he learns the hard way that the mansions and elegant tree-lined streets of the city can be even more dangerous than the dusty plains of the Roughs.

From the pen of master storyteller Anthony Horowitz comes a new series of myths and legends from around the world, retold in a contemporary voice, and illustrated with bold, graphic artwork. Packed with Horowitz's signature action, humor, and suspense these collections feel fresh, modern, and perfect for today's fast-moving audience. The battle between good and evil has raged throughout time, in every corner of this world and the next. Some have fought using their superior strength, and some their wit and cunning. This collection features some epic favorites on both sides like Hercules, Theseus, and Polyphemus the Cyclops, and other less-familiar but equally fierce opponents like Polynesian trickster Maui, and Grendel of Beowolf. No matter if they fight with speed, skill, or sheer determination, they all have one thing in common: they will fight each other to the death.

This sweeping saga recreates the extraordinary opulence and violence of Tsarist Russia as the shadow of revolution fell over the land, and destroyed a way of life for these Imperial women. The early 1850s until the late 1920s marked a turbulent and significant era for Russia. During that time the country underwent a massive transformation, taking it from days of grandeur under the tsars to the chaos of revolution and the beginnings of the Soviet Union. At the center of all this tumult were four women of the Romanov dynasty. Marie Alexandrovna and Olga Constantinovna were born into the family, Russian Grand Duchesses at birth. Marie Feodorovna and Marie Pavlovna married into the dynasty, the former born a Princess of Denmark, the latter a Duchess of the German duchy of Mecklendburg-Schwerin. In From Splendor to Revolution, we watch these pampered aristocratic women fight for their lives as the cataclysm of war engulfs them. In a matter of a few short years, they fell from the pinnacle of wealth and power to the depths of danger, poverty, and exile. It is an unforgettable epic story.