Family Life Science

Many of us know we're putting too much pressure on our kids - and on ourselves - but how do we get off this crazy train? We want our children to succeed, to be their best, and to do their best, but what if they are not on board? A few years ago, Ned Johnson and Bill Stixrud started noticing the same problem from different angles: even high-performing kids were coming to them acutely stressed and lacking any real motivation. Many complained that they had no real control over their lives.

Based partly on the author's experience, partly on her in-depth interviews, and partly on a questionnaire she developed with psychologist Holly Barrett to which almost 600 women responded, Father Loss provides the clearest portrait yet of a very special group of women. As a group, they express their insecurities ("Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to love a man totally...because that would mean I didn't love my father anymore." - Leslie).

Fair Play is a time- and anxiety-saving system that offers couples a completely new way to divvy up chores and responsibilities. Rodsky interviewed more than 500 men and women from all walks of life to figure out what the invisible work in a family actually entails and how to get it all done efficiently. With four easy-to-follow rules, 100 household tasks, and a series of conversation starters for you and your partner, Fair Play helps you prioritize what's important to your family and who should take the lead on every chore from laundry to homework to dinner.

It's sink or swim for Jack and Annie when Magic Tree House whisks them off to the middle of the ocean. And that's just the beginning....

Internationally best-selling author Amitav Ghosh, winner of the Pushcart Prize and numerous other prestigious accolades, pens a sweeping novel full of romantic adventure. Favorably compared to the masterworks of Joseph Conrad and V.S. Naipaul, The Hungry Tide is an atmospheric tale set in a world of wondrous sights...and terrible danger.

In their sixth adventure, Sabrina and Daphne must defend their friend Mr. Canis (aka the Big Bad Wolf ) when he is put on trial by the Everafters for his past crimes. It'll take all of the sisters' skills to outwit the merciless Queen of Hearts, who is determined to kick Canis and the Grimms out of Ferryport Landing - forever.

Bronte Mettlestone is 10 years old when her parents are killed by pirates. This does not bother her particularly: Her parents ran away to have adventures when she was a baby. She has been raised by her aunt Isabelle, with assistance from the butler, and has spent a pleasant childhood of afternoon teas and riding lessons. Now, however, her parents have left detailed instructions for Bronte in their will. (Instructions that, annoyingly, have been reinforced with faery cross-stitch, which means that if she doesn't complete them, terrible things could happen!)

In Coraline's family's new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close. The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.

In their eighth adventure, sisters Sabrina and Daphne Grimm must face their gravest mission yet. The Everafter War is over, and the sisters find themselves trapped in the Book of Everafter—a place where fairy tale characters can affect their own destinies. While trying to save their baby brother, Sabrina and Daphne begin changing events in the story to suit their needs.

Multiple award-winning author Michael Buckley's New York Times best-selling Sisters Grimm series is phenomenally popular. In their fourth adventure, Sabrina, Daphne, Granny Relda, and Puck hit the streets of New York City to search for Puck's family. They quickly get wrapped up in a murder investigation, however, when a maniacal Everafter is discovered to be on the loose.

In Earwig and the Witch, listeners meet Earwig, who is not your typical orphan by any stretch. Unlike most, she loves it at St. Morwald’s Home for Children, where she knows everyone and usually gets her way. So when Earwig gets adopted by a strange woman named Bella Yaga, she wants no part of it - especially after she finds out Bella is an evil witch. Now Earwig will have to use all of her considerable wit and charm (and the help of a talking cat) to get out of this mess and back home safely.

The Sisters Grimm books are hits with young readers and critics. In their third outing, Sabrina and Daphne confront the menace behind the family's troubles, Little Red Riding Hood. After meeting their recently returned uncle Jake, the girls embark on a harrowing quest to reconstruct the mythical vorpal blade, the only weapon capable of killing Red's pet and bodyguard, the dreaded Jabberwocky.

Two hidden artifacts have been found. Three more remain unrecovered. More preserves face destruction as the Society of the Evening Star relentlessly pursues new talismans. Reading in Patton's Journal of Secrets, Kendra learns the location of the key to a vault housing one of the artifacts. In order to retrieve it, the Knights of the Dawn must enter a death trap - a dragon sanctuary called Wyrmroost. The mission cannot proceed without stealing a sacred object zealously guarded by the centaurs.

Gregory Maguire turns his trademark wit and wisdom to an animal adventure about growing up, moving on, and finding community. When Papa doesn't return from a nocturnal honey-gathering expedition, Cress holds out hope, but her mother assumes the worst. It’s a dangerous world for rabbits, after all. Mama moves what’s left of the Watercress family to the basement unit of the Broken Arms, a run-down apartment oak with a suspect owl landlord, a nosy mouse super, a rowdy family of squirrels, and a pair of songbirds who broadcast everyone’s business.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six comes the story of three siblings who, upon the death of their father, are forced to reckon with their long-festering rivalries, dangerous abilities, and the crushing weight of all their unrealized adolescent potential.

When we love, we can see the Self of all in the faces of those we love. We can remove the limitations of our own egotism. Those who accept this challenge can achieve profound levels of wisdom, serenity, joy, and gratitude. The path of spirituality develops as you learn to love and continually expand that capacity to love from your spouse and family to your community, to your nation, and eventually the entire world. This inspiring book on relationships will help you understand the dynamic interplay between loving relationships and the path of spirituality.

What do you do when you come home one day and discover that your parents have been kidnapped? Well, if you're a brave young guy named Charlie Ashanti, you go off in search of them. And since you happen to know how to speak Cat, your feline friends (the stray cats of the city and the caged lions on a magnificent, astounding floating circus) rally around you, bringing help, advice, and occasional special deliveries. Little do you know that in this search of yours, the fate of the world is at stake.

The Valorim are about to fall to a dark lord when they send a necklace containing their planet across the cosmos, hurtling past a trillion stars...all the way into the lunchbox of Tommy Pepper, sixth grader, of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Mourning his late mother, Tommy doesn't notice much about the chain he found, but soon he is drawing the twin suns and humming the music of a hanorah. As Tommy absorbs the art and language of the Valorim, their enemies target him.

★★★★★ "An interesting take on humanities future!" - Reader Review ___ A fresh take on science fiction and a glimpse at humanity through the eyes of an alien who doesn't know what 'family' is, until he finds one! "Humans are the only known intelligent species to actively create 'Found Families' in the form of parents, children, siblings, and more. If a human starts spending more time with you and initiating physical contact, they have probably adopted you." These were the words that caught my ears when attending the most prestigious university in my quadrant as a minor in alien ...

All Betty Widdershins wants is an adventure - one that takes her far away from Crowstone, the gloomy island where she's always lived. But instead of an adventure, Betty and her sisters, Fliss and Charlie, are given of a set of magical objects, each with its own powers: a scruffy carpet bag, a set of wooden nesting dolls, and a gilt-framed mirror. And these magical objects come with their own terrible secret: The sisters' family is haunted by a generations-long curse that prevents them from ever leaving their island - at the cost of death.