Family Life Science

The house seemed to sit apart from the others on Katydid Street, silent and alone, like it didn’t fit among them. For Violet Hart—whose family is about to move into the house on Katydid Street—very little felt like it fit anymore. Like their old home, suddenly too small since her mother remarried and the new baby arrived. Or Violet’s group of friends, which, since they started middle school, isn’t enough for Violet’s best friend, Paige. Everything seemed to be changing at once. But sometimes, Violet tells herself, change is okay.

The year 1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond.

On the island, everything is perfect. The sun rises in a sky filled with dancing shapes; the wind, water, and trees shelter and protect those who live there; when the nine children go to sleep in their cabins, it is with full stomachs and joy in their hearts. And only one thing ever changes, on that day each year when a boat appears from the mist upon the ocean carrying one young child to join them - and taking the eldest one away, never to be seen again.

"Talk about out of the frying pan, into the fire! I was pretty sure that my freaky stepsister and that freaky field guide of hers would ruin my life. But now it looks like they're going to ruin all of Florida, too! Okay, maybe that's not fair. Maybe all these stupid giants would be waking up anyway, but if it wasn't for her and that book, I'd be home playing video games and this would be someone else's giant problem!"

A peaceful summer night is shattered by gunfire as an unseen assailant tries to murder police officer John Busby. Though horribly wounded, Busby survives. But the perpetrator remains at large, meaning neither Busby, nor his wife, nor their three children are safe. In separate chapters John and his daughter, Cylin, who was nine at the time, recount the story of that year. John writes graphically, and movingly, of his wounds, his pain, his multiple surgeries, and his rage.

Tenacity in Children examines how multiple generations of parents and caregivers raised children to become successful adults. Until relatively recent times in human history, there were no schools or organized institutions, nor were there parenting books. Rather, caregivers depended on the seven important instincts that evolved across tens of thousands of years in the human species.

Achim is 11 years old when he moves from the orphanage to the house by the sea. Here everything is strange and new. But one day he discovers an unusual door that leads to a circular room with walls made of rough stone. The light coming through the window is hazy, as if the room is under water. It is a magic room - which he calls “The Adopted Room” - belonging to another world. And on a bed in the room sits a boy who is waiting to take Achim with him into the realm of the powerful Nameless One.

Aria Blue seems like an ordinary 12-year-old. She loves music, and colorful shoelaces, and taste-testing various types of cookies. But there is much more to Aria than meets the eye. She can use her shadow like a door to travel from place to place. She can dream things into existence. And she can see when certain people need help. Because Aria is a guardian angel. Her mission? To find and guide three different girls - Gabby, Caroline, and Mikayla - through their different problems. If she succeeds, Aria will earn her wings.

When first published in 2001, it divided female critics and readers. One famous columnist wrote a piece demanding that Cusk's children were taken into care, that was she was unfit to look after them. Oprah Winfrey invited her on the show to defend herself and the book as protests grew about its honest, gritty account of the misery of those early months. It is a seminal, stand-out book on the complications of being an ambivalent mum in an age of white-washed, Annabel Karmel'd new families.

It's been six months since Kate, Michael, and Emma confronted the Dire Magnus, but the trail to their long-missing parents remains cold. Then Michael and Emma find a man who saw them ten years ago - three days after they disappeared. He knows about a map of a distant land, a place shrouded in mystery that may lead them to their parents. Meanwhile, Kate's connection to the Book of Time is growing stronger and stronger, until a dangerous trick gets her stuck in the past, searching for a friend to help her. Only a perilous quest and a daring risk will help the children to harness the power of the Books of Beginning.

Kate and her younger brother, Tom, lead dull, uninteresting lives. And if their dull, uninteresting parents are anything to go by, they don't have much to look forward to. Why can't Kate have thrilling adventures and save the world the way people do in books? Even her 11th birthday is shaping up to be mundane - that is, until her mysterious and highly irresponsible Uncle Herbert, whom she's never even met before, surprises her with the most unexpected, exhilarating, inappropriate birthday present of all time: a colossal steam locomotive called the Silver Arrow.

A witty retelling of a well-known fairy tale features the adventures of two children who are abandoned in the forest and lured into the clutches of a witch by her confection cottage. By the creator of the George and Martha series.

Joan Boice, a retired school teacher afflicted with dementia, hoped to hang on to her dignity and safety when she checked into Emerald Hills, a facility run by America’s largest assisted living company. What she and her family got was an introduction to what many think is the country’s next great health crisis.

Liz Ianelli, known around the world as Survivor993, spent years at the Family Foundation—labeled an “institution for troubled teens.” The children who went through The Family School like her were good people. They had potential and dreams, but they came out with lifelong trauma: anxious, angry, paranoid, self-hating and in pain. Most of them have suffered lives of hardship, unable to integrate back into society. Hundreds have died, mostly by overdose and suicide. I See You, Survivor is about what really happened at The Family and what continues to happen at thousands of facilities like it.

The adventures of siblings Kate, Michael, and Emma come to a stunning conclusion when they must find the last Book of Beginning - the Book of Death - before the Dire Magnus does, for when all three books are united, their combined power will be unstoppable.

This is the story of a man, a cow, and a question: What am I eating? After realizing he knows more about the television on his wall than the food on his plate, award-winning TV producer and amateur chef Jared Stone buys 420 pounds of beef directly from a rancher and embarks on a hilarious and inspiring culinary adventure. With the help of an incredibly supportive wife and a cadre of highly amused friends, Jared offers a glimpse at one man's family as they try to learn about their food and ask themselves what's really for dinner.

Meet Malice Morbid Malign. She’s from Underland, land of sorcery, spooks and skulduggery. But, she and her family live in Topside, and mischief is their business. And the business of mischief is a very serious matter! The Malign family hate books, they hate bathing and they especially hate helping. But when grandad ghosts mysteriously start disappearing, including her own beloved grandad, Malice has no choice but to help. She partners up with her uncle Vexatious, to solve the case of the missing grandad-ghosts.

A Ranger’s Guide to Glipwood Forest expands the legend and lore of this treacherous land of fatal flora and fanged beasts—and the history of the first adventurers daring enough to brave the forest depths. Through detailed line art, maps, and directions, travelers can safely marvel at the majestic glipwood trees, poke around the (possibly haunted) Anklejelly Cavern, dip their toes into the Mighty River Blapp (if they dare!), and avoid falling off a cliff edge into the Dark Sea of Darkness and being swallowed by a sea dragon.

Generations of twin goddesses have long ruled Aeon - until one sister’s betrayal split their world in two. A Great Abyss now divides two realms: one cloaked in eternal night, the other scorched beneath an ever-burning sun. While one sister rules the frozen fortress of Aranth, her twin rules the sand-locked Golden City - each with a daughter by their side. Now those young goddesses must set out on separate, equally dangerous journeys in hopes of healing their broken world. No matter the sacrifice it demands.

As America collapses in the chaos of war, pollution, and bankruptcy, two sisters pool their resources to survive alone in the hills above San Francisco. Although dwindling food and increasing isolation threaten them, they soon find a more immediate danger standing at their door. When a young man arrives, his friendship offers tantalizing fulfillment, but his love threatens to divide the sisters.