When young Sagandran Sacks learns from Grandpa Melwin of a portal that leads from an abandoned forest well to the magical world of Sagaria, he does not know whether to believe it or simply dismiss it as another of his grandfather's tall tales. But when Grandpa Melwin is suddenly seized during the night, all clues point to that well in the forest.

A senior citizens’ center and a daycare collide with hilarious results in the new ensemble comedy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Authenticity Project When Lydia takes a job running a Senior Citizen’s Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards. The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia’s expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign—but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide. When the city council threatens to sell the doomed community center building, the Social Club joins forces with their tiny friends in the daycare next door—as well as the teenaged father of one of the toddlers and a geriatric dog—to save the building. Together, this group’s unorthodox methods may actually work, as long as the police don’t catch up with them first.

All her life, Deborah has known she and her older sister have extraordinary psi powers. When their mother dies suddenly, Deborah learns she's meant to use her gift against the forces of darkness in some special way. How, she doesn't have a clue, but she wants no part of this alleged fate. Yet with evil forces stalking her, can she avoid the battle ahead? All his life, Victor has known he and his twin sister have a unique destiny. Bred to serve inhuman entities from another dimensional plane, he's instructed to either seduce a strange young woman who poses a grave threat to the cult he belongs to...or destroy her. Unexpectedly, he finds Deborah not only attractive and intelligent but his equal in psychic power. Although his cult views religion with contempt--and she's an unabashed Christian--he's helplessly drawn to her. For her part, Deborah finds in Victor a kindred spirit. For the first time, someone other than her sister can empathize with her differences from "normal" people. Is prophetic destiny written in stone, even for two potential foes falling in love? A paranormal romance inspired by C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength and the cosmic horror of H. P. Lovecraft.

Aggie is different from her classmates.she has telkinetic powers that she has difficulty controlling. She is befriended by a teacher with unique insights into Aggie and her powers and has been linked to the disappearance of children with similar powers. Who can she trust?

The science fiction epic of our time has arrived. Three years ago, an object one hundred miles across was spotted on a trajectory for Earth's sun. Now, its journey is almost over. As it approaches, two competing manned vehicles race through almost half a million kilometers of space to reach it first. But when they both arrive on the entity, they learn that it has been sent toward Earth for a reason. An intelligent race is desperately attempting to communicate with our primitive species. And the message is: Help us.

“If you love fantasy, funny humor, flatulence, and friends, then Aaron Reynolds has written the perfect book for you!” —DAN SANTAT, author of The Aquanut, Sidekicks, and The Adventures of Beekle Fart and his friends take on a new belly-quaking quest in the hilarious sequel Fart Quest: The Barf of the Bedazzler written by #1 New York Times bestselling author Aaron Reynolds and illustrated by Cam Kendell. After crushing their very first quest, young adventurers Pan, Moxie, and Fart are hungry for their next challenge. Luckily, the Great and Powerful Kevin has cooked up something for the trio: Locate a bedazzler—a rare and monstrous creature of truly horrific power—and bring back . . . its barf. But the danger in tracking down a bedazzler is hard to swallow. Rumor tells of a ruthless pirate captain who may be the only living soul that knows where to find a bedazzler. Our heroes must head to the high seas for a mission so deadly, they might lose their lives—or their lunch. Bestselling author Aaron Reynolds and Cam Kendell bring even more laughs, adventure, and silliness in The Barf of the Bedazzler, book two in the Fart Quest series.

Critics shudder at mixed metaphors like 'that wet blanket is a loose cannon', but admire 'Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player', and all the metaphors packed into Macbeth's 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow' speech. How is it that metaphors are sometimes mixed so badly and other times put together so well? In Mixed Metaphors: Their Use and Abuse, Karen Sullivan employs findings from linguistics and cognitive science to explore how metaphors are combined and why they sometimes mix. Once we understand the ways that metaphoric ideas are put together, we can appreciate why metaphor combinations have such a wide range of effects. Mixed Metaphors: Their Use and Abuse includes analyses of over a hundred metaphors from politicians, sportspeople, writers and other public figures, and identifies the characteristics that make these metaphors annoying, amusing or astounding.

This volume focuses on realisations of wordplay in different cultures and social and historical contexts, and brings together various research traditions of approaching wordplay. Together with the volume DWP 7, it assembles selected papers presented at the interdisciplinary conference The Dynamics of Wordplay / La dynamique du jeu de mots (Trier, 2016) and stresses the inherent dynamicity of wordplay and wordplay research.

Rick Borsten’s extraordinary first novel tells the story of Benny Horowitz, a young man who, terrified of the prospects of life after commencement, drops out of college just two weeks before graduation and finds a temporary job working at a halfway house for eight mentally challenged adults whose “deviant” and “inappropriate” behavior he is charged with reshaping. It isn’t long, however, before Benny begins to appreciate the uniqueness of each of the resident’s personalities and the richness of their worlds, and discovers that it is he, not they, who is being reshaped; and reshaped by one resident in particular—Nadia Christov, a mysterious 26 year old artist. It is Nadia’s rare ability to see the world with fresh eyes—to appreciate the natural wonders surrounding her “everywhere and all the time”—that finally convinces Benny it is she who holds the keys to the greatest of his post-commencement fears. While Benny’s story is unfolding, a series of flashbacks traces his unusual family history, beginning with his grandfather, Joseph, who comes to America from Poland in the early 1900s and whose pessimistic vision of death as life’s “great equalizer” is transformed over three generations into one of hope, renewal and wonder. Like Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, The Great Equalizer is a book to cherish, for it nourishes the spirit by reminding us of the transformational power of love.