The Secret Society of the Pink Crystal Ball


Book Description

In a world where nothing is certain, a little magic couldn't hurt...right? When Erin Channing's favorite aunt dies, Erin is bequeathed a pink crystal ball and a set of weird instructions. Granted, Aunt Kiki (aka Aunt Kooky) always lived "outside the box." But now Erin and her two best friends are convinced that the pink crystal ball holds the key to their future—or at least the key to getting dates... Consider Your Fate to Be Sealed . . . Absolute knowledge is not unlimited; let the planets be your guide to the number. There are sixteen ways to die, but four of them you will never see. The future belongs to you alone. Other voices will be disappointed. One rotation is as far as you can see. Only uncertainty lies beyond.




Read On...Speculative Fiction for Teens


Book Description

This guide offers exciting new reading paths for students who enjoy fantasy, science fiction, and paranormal themes. With over 350 titles organized into their primary appeal characteristics and scores of thematic lists, librarians and educators will benefit from lists of contemporary selections specifically written for teens. Interest in teen fiction has grown in popularity in the last decade, especially within the fantasy and paranormal genres. This timely guide is one of the few books on the subject that lists titles that are written specifically for teens. Read On...Speculative Fiction for Teens features popular, contemporary themes ranging from vampire love and ghost stories to epic fantasy and out-of-this-world science fiction. Each of the five chapters caters to a specific area of interest—story, character, setting, mood, and language—and within the chapter, numerous lists of novels are organized by topic, with the best titles highlighted. Each of the more than 350 listed titles includes bibliographic information and a brief, punchy description.




The Mothers of Reinvention


Book Description

A fun and passionate work of non-fiction exploring the modern mother’s path to reinvention, both in the home and in the workplace.




School Library Journal


Book Description




Notes From The Underbelly


Book Description

As a guidance counselor at an elite, Bel Air high school, Lara Stone works with spoiled, bratty kids every day, and she is definitely not ready to have any spoiled, bratty kids of her own. At least, not now. Not when her life is going so well, and certainly not since she has finally managed to kick-box and low-carb herself down to a perfect size four. But Lara’s husband has different ideas, and they include fatherhood. Now. Suddenly, Lara finds herself deep within the underbelly of pregnancy. A far cry from the blissful, glowing mother-to-be, Lara is instead a cranky, reluctant participant in all things baby. And her mood doesn’t improve when she’s given the task of getting one of her students—the punk, outcast daughter of a famous movie director—into a highly competitive college. But as Lara struggles with uncontrollable crying, inexplicable weight gain, and scary hemorrhoids, she finds that she has maternal instincts she never thought she had, and discovers that expecting is nothing like she ever expected.




Sophie's World


Book Description

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.




The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches


Book Description

A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family—and a new love—changes the course of her life. As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don’t mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she’s used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos "pretending" to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously. But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and…Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he’s concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat. As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when peril comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn’t know she was looking for....




A Wrinkle in Time


Book Description

NEWBERY MEDAL WINNER • TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM DISNEY Read the ground-breaking science fiction and fantasy classic that has delighted children for over 60 years! "A Wrinkle in Time is one of my favorite books of all time. I've read it so often, I know it by heart." —Meg Cabot Late one night, three otherworldly creatures appear and sweep Meg Murry, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe away on a mission to save Mr. Murray, who has gone missing while doing top-secret work for the government. They travel via tesseract--a wrinkle that transports one across space and time--to the planet Camazotz, where Mr. Murray is being held captive. There they discover a dark force that threatens not only Mr. Murray but the safety of the whole universe. A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet.




The Way of the Rose


Book Description

What happens when a former Zen Buddhist monk and his feminist wife experience an apparition of the Virgin Mary? “This book could not have come at a more auspicious time, and the message is mystical perfection, not to mention a courageous one. I adore this book.”—Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit Before a vision of a mysterious “Lady” invited Clark Strand and Perdita Finn to pray the rosary, they were not only uninterested in becoming Catholic but finished with institutional religion altogether. Their main spiritual concerns were the fate of the planet and the future of their children and grandchildren in an age of ecological collapse. But this Lady barely even referred to the Church and its proscriptions. Instead, she spoke of the miraculous power of the rosary to transform lives and heal the planet, and revealed the secrets she had hidden within the rosary’s prayers and mysteries—secrets of a past age when forests were the only cathedrals and people wove rose garlands for a Mother whose loving presence was as close as the ground beneath their feet. She told Strand and Finn: The rosary is My body, and My body is the body of the world. Your body is one with that body. What cause could there be for fear? Weaving together their own remarkable story of how they came to the rosary, their discoveries about the eco-feminist wisdom at the heart of this ancient devotion, and the life-changing revelations of the Lady herself, the authors reveal an ancestral path—available to everyone, religious or not—that returns us to the powerful healing rhythms of the natural world.




Matched


Book Description

Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate . . . until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow. Look for CROSSED, the sequel to MATCHED, in Fall 2011! Watch a Video