Twelve-year-old Lennie Mercado's grandfather Poppop, the Prime Wizard de Pomporromp, is retiring and his grandchildren are to compete in Wizardmatch. The winner inherits his title, his castle, and his unlimited magical powers. Lennie is desperate to win, and her thoughts turn to sabotaging the match--even if it means betraying her family. 5/16.

STORIES THAT DIG DEEP! Stop your mum picking her nose ... read the secret diary of a dog ... catch a bus and then let it go ... discover how one slice of toast can make you the most popular person in school ... start wearing a crown and give up eating pig-nostril gruel ... use a wrecking ball to defeat a bully ... show your big sister the very scary secret in your wardrobe ... unleash the awesome power of chips ... and live in a house that gets wiped clean more often than a bottom! ------------------ PRAISE FOR MORRIS GLEITZMAN ‘Readers can't get enough of him.’ The Independent ‘A brilliantly funny writer’ Sunday Telegraph ‘A virtuoso demonstration of how you can make comedy out of the most unlikely subject’ Sunday Times ‘He is one of the finest examples of a writer who can make humour stem from the things that really matter in life.’ The Guardian

Revolution sweeps Louis Zander, a charismatic philosopher of art and politics known as L, into power as dictator of England. This skillfully composed story could be a fictional realization of the Cloward-Piven strategy or Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. It is a page-turner that traces the process by which one evil man seduces, perverts and destroys an entire nation. L could be Hitler, Stalin, or even the next Prime Minister or President. Jillian Becker was inspired to write this novel while researching her internationally best-selling book, Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. * L: A Novel History deserves to take its place among the great dystopias - The Trial, 1984, Atlas Shrugged - alas the most salient literary genre of the last hundred years. - Theodore Dalrymple, author of Life at the Bottom; Our Culture, What's Left Of It; contributing editor City Journal; contributor Wall Street Journal. Penetrating as L is as a study of an artist-dictator's mind, it is also very witty. There are situations reminiscent of the British TV series Yes Prime Minister combined with the cruelty of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. - Dr. Josef Zaruba-Pfefferman, Institute of Art History, Charles University, Prague Superbly engrossing - Kirkus Reviews

The title says it all. This is the funniest Bathroom Reader EVER. It might even be the funniest book in the history of books, but Uncle John is much too modest to state that outright (even though it is). Over the past 25 years, the Bathroom Readers’ Institute has published more than 40,000 pages of bathroom reading. In this book you will find the funniest 288 of them (with a few all-new funny pages squeezed in just because we couldn’t help ourselves). That’s page after page after page of laugh-out-loud dumb jokes, dumb jocks, toasts, pranks, kings, kittens, caboodles, and, of course, poorly translated kung-fu movie subtitles--such as. “It took my seven digestive pills to dissolve your hairy crab!” So whether you like your humor witty or witless, light or dark, or silly or sublime, you’ll laugh until your head explodes. Chortle at… * Dumb crooks: The robber who ran face-first into a wall because he forgot to poke eye holes in his pillow case. * Witty wordplay: If Snoop Doggy Dogg were to marry Winnie the Pooh, his name would become Snoop Doggy Dogg Pooh. * Flubbed headlines: “British Left Waffles On House Floor” * Quirky stars: Billy Idol’s concert rider demands he have one large tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter in his dressing room. * Job Lingo: If you hear an E.R. doc mention a “VIP,” be on the lookout for a “Very Intoxicated Patient.” * Comedian quips: “I wonder if deaf people have a sign for ‘Talk to the hand.’” --Zach Galifianakis * Sputtering sportscasters: “If only faces could talk.” --Pat Summerall And much, much more!

Sequel to 'Killer Boots'.

Over 70% of North Americans are (water) closet readers. The Uncle John's Bathroom Readers series is still the best selling book of its kind anywhere in the world. Millions of people have discovered it over the past 25 years, making it one of the publishing industry's longest-running humor series. It's our 16th year running (so to speak) I mean, we're still going (uhh) strong. A light-hearted, easy-to-read collection of facts, quotes, history, science, word-origins, pop culture, gossip, humor . . . and more! Organized by length-"Short" (a quick read), "Medium" (1-3 pages), "Long" (for those visits when something a little more involved is required), and to satisfy every demand, our popular "Extended Sitting Section" (for a leg-numbing experience.) Running feet on every page provide a "book within a book" of weird facts. Partial Table of Contents included.

Racial Castration, the first book to bring together the fields of Asian American studies and psychoanalytic theory, explores the role of sexuality in racial formation and the place of race in sexual identity. David L. Eng examines images—literary, visual, and filmic—that configure past as well as contemporary perceptions of Asian American men as emasculated, homosexualized, or queer. Eng juxtaposes theortical discussions of Freud, Lacan, and Fanon with critical readings of works by Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Lonny Kaneko, David Henry Hwang, Louie Chu, David Wong Louie, Ang Lee, and R. Zamora Linmark. While situating these literary and cultural productions in relation to both psychoanalytic theory and historical events of particular significance for Asian Americans, Eng presents a sustained analysis of dreamwork and photography, the mirror stage and the primal scene, and fetishism and hysteria. In the process, he offers startlingly new interpretations of Asian American masculinity in its connections to immigration exclusion, the building of the transcontinental railroad, the wartime internment of Japanese Americans, multiculturalism, and the model minority myth. After demonstrating the many ways in which Asian American males are haunted and constrained by enduring domestic norms of sexuality and race, Eng analyzes the relationship between Asian American male subjectivity and the larger transnational Asian diaspora. Challenging more conventional understandings of diaspora as organized by race, he instead reconceptualizes it in terms of sexuality and queerness.

In Deep Space, Nobody Wants to be Left Behind. In the last few days of a two-year assignment, a survey team, isolated on a beautiful but toxic planet, finds out that mistakes and accidents can extract a brutal price. Now, things are coming apart at every turn as their equipment and shelter begins to break down all around them, despite the efforts of Ms. Betty, their habitat's self-aware, artificial intelligence. Lindsey, the team's biology tech, begins to wonder about the causes of the accidents. Are they simply because of worn-out equipment, or are the hostile conditions of the planet to blame? Now the clock is ticking. Will she survive long enough to learn the truth?

Roald Dahl meets Eva Ibbotson in this hilarious middle grade debut * "Fifth-grader Rupert Campbell lives in a world that combines Roald Dahl’s Witches and Louis Sachar’s Wayside School. Readers will banish themselves from the ordinary world to finish this book in a flash." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review Rupert Campbell is fascinated by the witches who live nearby. He dreams of broomstick tours and souvenir potions, but the closest he can get to a witchy experience is sitting in class with his awful teacher Mrs. Frabbleknacker, who smells like bellybutton lint and forbids Rupert’s classmates from talking to each other before, during, and after class. So when he sees an ad to become a witch’s apprentice, Rupert simply can’t resist applying. But Witchling Two isn’t exactly what Rupert expected. With a hankering for lollipops and the magical aptitude of a toad, she needs all the help she can get to pass her exams and become a full-fledged witch. She’s determined to help Rupert stand up to dreadful Mrs. Frabbleknacker too, but the witchling's magic will be as useful as a clump of seaweed unless Rupert can figure out a way to help her improve her spellcasting—and fast!

Parody of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.