Whether you want to be an astronaut or athlete or artist or are currently trying to deal with the ups and downs of school and making your way, the road can be scary sometimes. Penelope lets you know that there is greatness in the idea of trying, trying, and trying again and that the best parts of ourselves are often found when we "mess up."

What can you uniquely give the world? We often sell ourselves short with self-limiting beliefs, but most of us would be amazed and delighted to know that we do have something special - our distinctive passions and talents - to offer. And what if I told you that what you have to give will also enable you to live a life of true contentment? How is that possible? It happens when you embrace and curate your own simply luxurious life. We tend to not realize the capacity of our full potential and settle for what society has deemed acceptable. However, each of us has a unique journey to travel if only we would find the courage, paired with key skills we can develop, to step forward. This book will help you along the deeper journey to discovering your best self as you begin to trust your intuition and listen to your curiosity. You will learn how to: - Recognize your innate strengths - Acquire the skills needed to nurture your best self - Identify and navigate past societal limitations often placed upon women - Strengthen your brand both personally and professionally - Build a supportive and healthy community - Cultivate effortless style - Enhance your everyday meals with seasonal fare - Live with less, so that you can live more fully - Understand how to make a successful fresh start - Establish and mastermind your financial security - Experience great pleasure and joy in relationships - Always strive for quality over quantity in every arena of your life Living simply luxuriously is a choice: to think critically, to live courageously, and to savor the everydays as much as the grand occasions. As you learn to live well in your everydays, you will elevate your experience and recognize what is working for you and what is not. With this knowledge, you let go of the unnecessary, thus simplifying your life and removing the complexity. Choices become easier, life has more flavor, and you begin to feel deeply satisfying true contentment. The cultivation of a unique simply luxurious life is an extraordinary daily journey that each of us can master, leading us to our fullest potential.

"A perfect combination of adventure, humor, and pure imagination!" —Jessica Day George, New York Times best-selling author of Tuesdays at the Castle "Funny, scary, and endlessly inventive.” —Bruce Coville, author of Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher Sophie loves the hidden shop below her parents' bookstore, where dreams are secretly bought and sold. When the dream shop is robbed and her parents go missing, Sophie must unravel the truth to save them. Together with her best friend—a wisecracking and fanatically loyal monster named Monster—she must decide whom to trust with her family’s carefully guarded secrets. Who will help them, and who will betray them?

Jacqueline Woodson's National Book Award and Newbery Honor winner is a powerful memoir that tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. A President Obama "O" Book Club pick Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become. Includes 7 additional poems, including "Brown Girl Dreaming." Praise for Jacqueline Woodson: "Ms. Woodson writes with a sure understanding of the thoughts of young people, offering a poetic, eloquent narrative that is not simply a story . . . but a mature exploration of grown-up issues and self-discovery.”—The New York Times Book Review

Booklist Editors' Choice! Called One of the Best Mystery Books by NPR, Washington Post, Crime Reads, Library Journal, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and Dublin City Library! "With this tip of the hat to Stephen King's Misery, Dream Girl is funny and suspenseful, with a dread-worthy final twist." —People “My dream novel. I devoured this in three days. The sharpest, clearest-eyed take on our #MeToo reckoning yet. Plus: enthralling." —Megan Abbott, Edgar Award-winning author of Dare Me and The Fever Following up on her acclaimed and wildly successful New York Times bestseller Lady in the Lake, Laura Lippman returns with a dark, complex tale of psychological suspense with echoes of Misery involving a novelist, incapacitated by injury, who is plagued by mysterious phone calls. Aubrey, the title character of Gerry Andersen’s most successful novel, Dream Girl, is so captivating that Gerry’s readers insist she’s real. Gerry knows she exists only in his imagination. So how can Aubrey be calling Gerry, bed-bound since a freak fall? A virtual prisoner in his penthouse, Gerry is dependent on two women he barely knows: his incurious young assistant, and a dull, slow-witted night nurse. Could the cryptic caller be one of his three ex-wives playing a vindictive trick after all these years? Or is she Margot, an ex-girlfriend who keeps trying to insinuate her way back into Gerry’s life? And why does no one believe that the call even happened? Isolated from the world, drowsy from medication, Gerry slips between reality and dreamlike memories: his faithless father, his devoted mother; the women who loved him, the women he loved. Now here is Aubrey, threatening to visit him, suggesting that Gerry owes her something. Is the threat real or a sign of dementia? Which scenario would he prefer? Gerry has never been so alone, so confused – and so terrified. And then he wakes up to another nightmare—a woman’s dead body next to his bed—and the terrifying uncertainty of whether he is responsible.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The beloved Fannie Flagg is at her irresistible and hilarious best in I Still Dream About You, a comic mystery romp through the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, past, present, and future. Meet Maggie Fortenberry, a still beautiful former Miss Alabama. To others, Maggie’s life seems practically perfect—she’s lovely, charming, and a successful agent at Red Mountain Realty. Still, Maggie can’t help but wonder how she wound up living a life so different from the one she dreamed of as a child. But just when things seem completely hopeless, and the secrets of Maggie’s past drive her to a radical plan to solve it all, Maggie discovers, quite by accident, that everybody, it seems, has at least one little secret. I Still Dream About You is a wonderful novel that is equal parts southern charm, murder mystery, and that perfect combination of comedy and old-fashioned wisdom that can be served up only by America’s own remarkable Fannie Flagg. Praise for I Still Dream About You “[Fannie Flagg is] a born storyteller.”—The New York Times Book Review “Undoubtedly [Flagg’s] wisest book, comic and compassionate . . . Born of a tender heart and nurtured by an imaginative mind, it’s certain to touch the reader’s soul.”—Richmond Times Dispatch “A fun and rollicking Nancy Drew mystery for grown-ups.”—The Birmingham News “Classic Fannie . . . What [Flagg] writes about, time and again, are the touching, terrifying, heartbreaking, hysterical, extraordinary, everyday things that make us human.”—Southern Living

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

From the New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah comes a powerful novel of love, loss, and the magic of friendship. . . . now a #1 Netflix series! In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the "coolest girl in the world" moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all—beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer's end they've become TullyandKate. Inseparable. So begins Kristin Hannah's magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives. From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success . . . and loneliness. Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn't know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she'll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she'll envy her famous best friend. . . . For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship—jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they've survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart . . . and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test. Firefly Lane is for anyone who ever drank Boone's Farm apple wine while listening to Abba or Fleetwood Mac. More than a coming-of-age novel, it's the story of a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by choices. It's about promises and secrets and betrayals. And ultimately, about the one person who really, truly knows you—and knows what has the power to hurt you . . . and heal you. Firefly Lane is a story you'll never forget . . . one you'll want to pass on to your best friend.

A collection of affirming thoughts, facts, and poems about girls.

Provides encouragement and advice for facing life's challenges, just for girls, with blank spaces to fill in goals and accomplishments.