The Quirks, a magical family living in Normal, Michigan, look forward to Halloween and the arrival of Uncle Cork from Scotland.

It's a big week for the Quirks as twins Molly and Pen prepare for an exciting Halloween-inspired field trip to their local museum. Whichever fourth grade team creates the spookiest design wins an unusually fun prize. Meanwhile at home, everyone is ready for a visit from a certain Scottish guest: their Uncle Cork! He hasn't seen the twins since they were babies. At first, Uncle Cork seems totally normal, and Molly wonders if maybe she's not the only one in her family without a quirk. But then every time invisible Finn almost causes chaos, Uncle Cork is there to stop him. Molly can't believe it. It's like he has special vision or something.... Black-and-white illustrations throughout capture the surprises, spooks, and nonstop laughs in this fourth Quirks book that proves every family is unique.

Molly and her family have moved around for years. Every time they think they've found a home, one of the Quirks slips up and sends them packing. The Quirk family, you see, is a bit, well, quirky. Each family member has a magical power that makes them unique, and highly unusual. Mum can control minds; Grandpa twists time; Molly's twin sister Penelope has an all-too-real imagination; and Finn is the naughty little brother - who also happens to be invisible. Then there's Molly, the most unusual Quirk of all. Molly is completely, and utterly, normal. Molly's greatest desire is to fit in, and she's found the perfect spot: Normal, Michigan. With its chocolate-box houses, welcoming committees and famous town competitions, it seems like just the place for an ordinary new life. But the Quirks aren't known for fitting in - especially in a place like Normal . . .

Just as the Quirk family was settling into Normal, the circus comes to town! At school, Molly, Penelope, and Finn are all learning circus skills in gym class and solving a school-wide scavenger hunt. Meanwhile at home, they are putting similar skills to good use; it takes fancy footwork and stellar detective work to keep their nosy neighbor from snooping around and uncovering the Quirk family secrets. One thing's for sure: Life in Normal is a high-flying adventure!

Twelve-year-old Frankie Joe Huckaby can't find anything good to say about Clearview, Illinois, where he must spend the next ten months living with a father he knows only through birthday cards, a stepmother he didn't know existed, and four half brothers intent on making him the "freak" of the town. When life in Clearview becomes unbearable, Frankie Joe hatches a plan to ride his bike back to the Lone Star Trailer Park in Laredo, Texas. For that he needs money, and so he opens Frankie Joe's Freaky Fast Delivery Service. But Frankie Joe hasn't counted on quirky clients, unpredictable winter weather, and his equally unpredictable new family.

The #1 New York Times bestselling (mostly true) memoir from the hilarious author of Furiously Happy. “Gaspingly funny and wonderfully inappropriate.”—O, The Oprah Magazine When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father and a morbidly eccentric childhood. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame-spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it. In the irreverent Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson’s long-suffering husband and sweet daughter help her uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments—the ones we want to pretend never happened—are the very same moments that make us the people we are today. For every intellectual misfit who thought they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud, this is a poignant and hysterical look at the dark, disturbing, yet wonderful moments of our lives. Readers Guide Inside

Monsters, ghosts, fantastic beings, and supernatural phenomena of all sorts haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan. Broadly labeled yokai, these creatures come in infinite shapes and sizes, from tengu mountain goblins and kappa water spirits to shape-shifting foxes and long-tongued ceiling-lickers. Currently popular in anime, manga, film, and computer games, many yokai originated in local legends, folktales, and regional ghost stories. Drawing on years of research in Japan, Michael Dylan Foster unpacks the history and cultural context of yokai, tracing their roots, interpreting their meanings, and introducing people who have hunted them through the ages. In this delightful and accessible narrative, readers will explore the roles played by these mysterious beings within Japanese culture and will also learn of their abundance and variety through detailed entries, some with original illustrations, on more than fifty individual creatures. The Book of Yokai provides a lively excursion into Japanese folklore and its ever-expanding influence on global popular culture. It also invites readers to examine how people create, transmit, and collect folklore, and how they make sense of the mysteries in the world around them. By exploring yokai as a concept, we can better understand broader processes of tradition, innovation, storytelling, and individual and communal creativity. Ê

From acclaimed middle-grade and chapter-book author, Erin Soderberg Downing, Controlled Burn is a story that blends family, friendship, fire, and the rocky path toward healing our deepest fears. Twelve-year-old Maia’s parents say she’s lucky she noticed something as early as she did. Lucky to have smelled the smoke, lucky to have pulled her sister, Amelia, out of their burning house. But is it really “lucky” when Amelia’s stuck in the hospital, covered in burns? And is it “lucky” when Maia knows it was her candle, left unattended, that started the fire in the first place? When she’s sent to spend the summer with her grandparents in Northern Minnesota while her sister heals, Maia discovers that her anxieties and demons are intent on following her wherever she goes...unless she can figure out how to overcome them. But what if she can’t? Maia barely knows her grandparents, she desperately misses her sister and home, and she’s not thrilled to be spending the summer with Grandpa Howard on his daily motorcycle rides out to the middle of the woods, where he spends all day keeping watch for forest fires. There are no kids her age in Gram and Pop’s small town at “the end of the road”—just the chatty nine-year-old neighbor who is intent on getting his Bear Scout badge at all costs, and a friendly, stray dog who’s been lurking around. But Maia will soon learn that nature is a powerful teacher, and sometimes our greatest strengths show themselves when we have to be there for someone else. As she begins to figure out how to face her guilt and paralyzing fears, she’ll discover there’s a fine line between fear and adventure. And when danger strikes again, Maia must summon all her bravery and overcome her self-doubt if she wants to save those she loves most.

"In a world of rising tensions between Russia and the United States, the Middle East and Europe, Sunnis and Shiites, Islamism and liberalism, Turkey is at the epicentre. And at the heart of Turkey is its right-wing populist president, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an. Since 2002, Erdo?an has consolidated his hold on domestic politics while using military and diplomatic means to solidify Turkey as a regional power. His crackdown has been brutal and consistent - scores of journalists arrested, academics officially banned from leaving the country, university deans fired and many of the highest-ranking military officers arrested. In some senses, the nefarious and failed 2016 coup has given Erdo?an the licence to make good on his repeated promise to bring order and stability under a 'strongman'. Here, leading Turkish expert Soner Cagaptay will look at Erdo?an's roots in Turkish history, what he believes in and how he has cemented his rule, as well as what this means for the world. The book will also unpick the 'threats' Erdogan has worked to combat - from the liberal Turks to the Gulen movement, from coup plotters to Kurdish nationalists - all of which have culminated in the crisis of modern Turkey."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

A memoir in bite-size chunks from the author of the viral Modern Love column “You May Want to Marry My Husband.” “[Rosenthal] shines her generous light of humanity on the seemingly humdrum moments of life and shows how delightfully precious they actually are.” —The Chicago Sun-Times How do you conjure a life? Give the truest account of what you saw, felt, learned, loved, strived for? For Amy Krouse Rosenthal, the surprising answer came in the form of an encyclopedia. In Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life she has ingeniously adapted this centuries-old format for conveying knowledge into a poignant, wise, often funny, fully realized memoir. Using mostly short entries organized from A to Z, many of which are cross-referenced, Rosenthal captures in wonderful and episodic detail the moments, observations, and emotions that comprise a contemporary life. Start anywhere—preferably at the beginning—and see how one young woman’s alphabetized existence can open up and define the world in new and unexpected ways. An ordinary life, perhaps, but an extraordinary book.