A secret tore best friends Evelyn “Button” Peters and Winnalee Malone apart. Now, nearly a decade later, a secret brings them back together. Nine years ago Button and Winnalee began recording observations in their Book of Bright Ideas, a tome they believed would solve the mystery of how to live a mistake-free life. Now it’s 1970, a time of peace, love, war, and personal heartbreak. Button’s mother is dead and her grieving father has all but abandoned his children. Quiet, thoughtful Button has traded college for a sewing job in her mother’s bridal shop to help her Aunt Verdella raise her whirlwind six-year-old brother. In Button’s free time, she writes letters to the boy she loved from afar through high school, hoping he will come to love her as more than a friend. Then, like that magical Wisconsin summer of ’61, Button is greeted with the wild, gusty arrival of Winnalee. Now a beautiful flower child, Winnalee is everything Button is not. She’s been to Woodstock and enjoys “free love,” but their steadfast bond of friendship is tested as Button begins to notice the cracks in Winnalee’s carefree façade. And then Winnalee’s mother arrives with a surprise that Button never sees coming, and the fiery determination to put things right in both families once and for all.

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Sandra Kring's A Life of Bright Ideas. Wisconsin, 1961. Evelyn “Button” Peters is nine the summer Winnalee and her fiery-spirited older sister, Freeda, blow into her small town–and from the moment she sees them, Button knows this will be a summer unlike any other. Much to her mother’s dismay, Button is fascinated by the Malone sisters, especially Winnalee, a feisty scrap of a thing who carries around a shiny silver urn containing her mother’s ashes and a tome she calls “The Book of Bright Ideas.” It is here, Winnalee tells Button, that she records everything she learns: her answers to the mysteries of life. But sometimes those mysteries conceal a truth better left buried. And when a devastating secret is suddenly revealed, dividing loyalties and uprooting lives, no one–from Winnalee and her sister to Button and her family–will ever be the same.

'Not for the faint-hearted.' Scotsman What do you do when the life you’ve carefully built for yourself comes apart? Lydia Smith lives a quiet life, spent in the company of her colleagues and customers at the bookstore where she works. But when Joey Molina, a young and mysterious regular, hangs himself in the bookstore and leaves Lydia secret messages hidden in the pages of his books, her world starts to unravel. Why did Joey do it? What did he know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?

Benjamin Bear, accompanied by his faithful rabbit friend, continues to share his observations and questions about the world around him.

THE STORY: How far would you go for your child? For Genevra and Joshua Bradley, the question is no longer hypothetical. Their three-year-old son, Mac, is next on the waiting list to get into the Bright Ideas Early Childhood Development Academy--and

Ruby is determined to win the gold with her fifth-grade science fair project, a Rube Goldberg machine to help her grandfather, but the real prize turns out to be something completely unexpected.

Retells, in tall-tale fashion, how Levi Strauss went to California during the Gold Rush, saw the need for a sturdier kind of trouser, and invented jeans.

Do you believe that there is something more for you and your creativity but you're not sure how to access it? Are you burned out trying to live as a creative person or artist? Or do you wish you could dream about having a creative business or passion? Whether you are a student, parent, professional, artist, wannabe creative, or anyone in between, we believe that everyone is creative and that every life can benefit from creativity! We also believe that your unique creative expression has the power to change the world. Not one other person can see the world in the exact same way that you can! This book is an invitation to discover your unique creativity. From working through past experiences, to interpersonal relationships, and finally living a lifestyle of creativity, we empower you to unlock and express all of your creativity. Using practical tools and exercises, you can develop positive habits and begin to express your creativity in a way that is authentic to you. Together we can silence the naysayers with gratitude and creative confidence. We can tame comparison and perfectionism in order to free you to work with wholehearted excellence in your craft. You can learn to build and maintain creative momentum to carry you through a long, happy creative life. If you are already a working artist, we believe that there is more creativity available for you too! If you're feeling burned out trying to keep up with your creative pursuits, or caught in a comparison trap, we are here to help! You may find ideas here for starting your next creative business venture or entrepreneurial endeavor. Our goal is not to make you a professional artist, although that's great too, we want to see you freely expressing your creativity as a natural part of your lifestyle. We believe that your unique creative expression has the power to change the world and we want to help you learn how to be more creative, and see you be free to express your creativity! If you are in a book club or want to form a creative community, this book is a great way to start! Originally designed as a twelve-week course, each chapter has practical actions at the end, as well as group exercises and group leader notes in the appendices. The actions provide a platform for vulnerability and wholehearted communication. You don't have to be an expert to lead a group through this powerful book! Bright Ideas Collective exists to help you discover your own creativity and to empower you to express your creativity in authentic, balanced, and active ways. You can read more about us and our work at http: //brightideascollective.com.

Just because you're born with a “Y” chromosome doesn't excuse you from cleaning the bathroom, especially in this day and age when time's at a premium and partners have to be, well, partners. To help men step up to the plate (and wash it) is DAD'S OWN HOUSEKEEPING BOOK, the book of everything your mother never taught you about taking care of a house. Written by a real guy, in a real guy's voice and with a direct guy-to-guy point of view, DAD'S OWN HOUSEKEEPING BOOK—in the spirit of Dad's Own Cookbook, with 270,000 copies in print—takes even the most Swiffer-challenged dad and shows him that housekeeping is no different from yard work, that if you can organize your shop you can organize a kitchen, and if you can load a trunk you can load a dishwasher. From laundry room to attic storage, from the “Five- Minute Attack Plan: Bathroom” to the all-out assault of spring cleaning (it really does make a big difference), from mold to stains to picking-up-after-the-kids-without-driving-yourself-crazy, this is the comprehensive crash course. Here's how to do the laundry without dulling colors. Stock the pantry to make weekday meals infinitely easier. How to get mildew off the shower tiles. How to make a bed—in one minute. How to be best friends with baking soda—just one of the many tips the author gives for saving money. And what you can do in thirty minutes to make your house completely presentable for your mother-in-law. Sorry, no more excuses.

America's most original and controversial literary critic writes trenchantly about forty-eight masterworks spanning the Western tradition—from Don Quixote to Wuthering Heights to Invisible Man—in his first book devoted exclusively to narrative fiction. In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom—who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic—gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on forty-eight essential works spanning the Western canon, from Don Quixote to Book of Numbers; from Wuthering Heights to Absalom, Absalom!; from Les Misérables to Blood Meridian; from Vanity Fair to Invisible Man. Here are trenchant appreciations of fiction by, among many others, Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, James, Conrad, Lawrence, Le Guin, and Sebald. Whether you have already read these books, plan to, or simply care about the importance and power of fiction, Harold Bloom is your unparalleled guide to understanding literature with new intimacy.