The more things change, the more Ami wishes they’d stay exactly the same Ami and her best friend, Mia, share almost everything—even the letters in their names! But when Ami’s mom and dad separate and her mom moves out, even all of the traditions she and Mia share can’t put her family back together. Ami wants everything to go back to the way it was—for her mother not to live in an apartment and have a life of her own, and for her dad not to go to dinner with the new science teacher, Ms. Linsley. At least her friendship with Mia will always be the same . . . won’t it?

Emily just wants everything to be perfect—is that too much to ask? When Emily’s parents got divorced two years ago, her dad still made time to see her and the twins as much as possible. But since he moved to Chicago with Marcia, his phone calls have started getting less and less frequent and it feels like he might as well live at the North Pole. And if that weren’t bad enough, her mom seems ready to start a new family, too! Emily knows that it’s impossible to get her parents back together, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready for her mom to start dating—and she’s ready to put a stop to it. So, in effort to sabotage her mom’s new relationship, Emily pretends to go out with a boy at school who she’s not even sure she likes. Now, she’s going to have to deal with two unwanted relationships!

How is it possible to feel more at home with your friends than with your own family? Sometimes Calvin Miller really hates that he and his mother, Nina, don’t have a home of their own. Instead, they live in Garo’s house—well, more precisely, Alan’s house. A pilot who is always away, Alan is also Nina’s boss. As his live-in housekeeper, Nina raises Alan’s son, Garo, right alongside Cal. Luckily, the boys are good friends despite their differences. Though Cal is better at school, Garo is better with people—his outgoing personality makes everyone like him. But sometimes Cal thinks even his mother is closer to Garo than she is to her own son. Cal figures he must take after his dad, but how can he be sure when the only contact he’s had with his father is in the form of three postcards over a course of nine years? As Cal navigates his teenage years, he may be in store for more changes than he realizes.

Bunny is funny, but that doesn’t mean she’s totally clueless when it comes to more serious matters With her quick wit and lighthearted personality, Bunny Larrabee can make people laugh about almost anything. She collects knock-knock jokes, riddles, and all kinds of comedy routines to try out on her best friend, Emily. The only thing Bunny doesn’t find humor in is her unusual name—she’s heard jokes about it her whole life, and none of them are funny. So when an impossibly gorgeous guy starts talking to her at a concert, Bunny opens her mouth and says two fateful words: “I’m Emily.” It’s just one tiny lie, but it will drive a wedge between the two best friends. And with what looks like more serious misfortune on the horizon, Bunny will need Emily’s friendship and advice more than ever.

Danita knows that nobody’s perfect, but it’s never easy to admit that might include your own parents Danita’s parents love to remind their daughter that she weighed less than a loaf of bread when she was born, but now that she’s almost fourteen and perfectly healthy, Danita really wishes they’d give her some space. Obviously still in love and completely devoted to their family, even Danita’s best friend, Laredo, thinks Mr. and Mrs. Merritt are the ideal parents, but Danita can’t help wanting them to focus on anything—or anyone—else. Danita’s wish is about to come true, but is it more than she bargained for?

All eyes were on Suzy. She was wavering between making a dash to their safe room (a cement bunker located behind a hidden door in their downstairs guest bathroom that she had insisted on constructing when they fi rst moved in, after all, everyone knows that the suburbs are rife with crime) with Guido clutched to her breast or trying to beat Guido to the front door so that she could be the fi rst to see what I had in store for my next trick. She leaned over and softly whispered in my ear Just so you know; if you hurt him I personally will hunt you down! There will be no police, no FBI, no lawyers, no jury, no arrest, no appeal, just me! The Bible says that vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. I say that if it is good enough for God then it is good enough for me.

Edgy, provocative, and wonderfully imaginative, My Life: The Last Photo tells a story of armored blades and trickled swords, bullies and heroes, the strong and the weak, friends and enemies, and the incredible power of good over evil. Friends Ami Naming and Hyki Momoshe band together to create an unstoppable force and recruit others to their cause. They fight metal robots and ominous shadows, create waves of energy, harness their powers, and prepare for continuous battle with dark forces. Their pet Meowshe assists them, guards them, and protects them from harm. But at the heart of these warriors story is the Legend of the Destined One and the quest he must undertake. Full of action, adventure, love, friendship, life, and death, My Life offers action and adventure, where you imagine your next move and roll with it. Hate the feeling of hate, and slap yourself on the back and say, you know nothing of me! We go, we go on together, or, as your own cloud abyss, tear it and grab the light!

Some families you’re born into, some you have to find for yourself Sarabeth Silver knows that her mom is different. Jane Silver is younger, prettier, harder working, and poorer—making just enough money cleaning houses for her and Sarabeth to live in a little trailer. It’s always been just the two of them, but when tragedy suddenly strikes, Sarabeth will have to figure things out on her own. Sarabeth has never known either of her parents’ families, who refused to help when Jane got pregnant at sixteen. Is it worth trying to find them after they rejected her parents so long ago? She knows her friends would be willing to help, but how can she lean on them when what she really wants is the open hearts of relatives she’s not even sure exist? And if they are out there, how will they feel about Sarabeth after all these years?

Nina always thought that if just one person would love her perfectly and completely, she’d never be alone again Nina’s the first person in her family to leave home and go to college. Maybe that’s why she feels so isolated once she gets there, especially compared to some of the other students—like her roommates, who have been friends for so long they can finish one another’s sentences. But it seems like her narrow, small-town past hasn’t prepared her for this life in which everyone else knows things about the world that she doesn’t. Afraid of falling behind in her classes, all Nina does is study and wonder if she’ll always be this lonely. But then she meets Mitch. He introduces himself from the top of some scaffolding, taking a break from painting the house next door to hers. Their growing relationship frees Nina from her self-doubt—finally, someone to love who loves her back! Their togetherness is perfect . . . but can it stay that way forever?

In the transmission we encounter various transformations of biblical proper names. The basic phonetic relationship between Semitic languages on the one hand and non-Semitic languages, like Greek and Latin, on the other hand, is so complex that it was hardly possible to establish a unified tradition in writing biblical proper names within the Greek and Latin cultures. Since the Greek and Latin alphabets are inadequate for transliteration of Semitic languages, authors of Greek and Latin Bibles were utter grammatical and cultural innovators. In Greek and Latin Bibles we note an almost embarrassing number of phonetic variants of proper names. A survey of ancient Greek and Latin Bible translations allows one to trace the boundary between the phonetic transliterations that are justified within Semitic, Greek, and Latin linguistic rules, and those forms that transgress linguistic rules. The forms of biblical proper names are much more stable and consistent in the Hebrew Bible than in Greek, Latin and other ancient Bible translations. The inexhaustible wealth of variant pronunciations of the same proper names in Greek and Latin translations indicate that Greek and Latin translators and copyists were in general not fluent in Hebrew and did therefore not have sufficient support in a living Hebrew phonetic context. This state affects personal names of rare use to a far greater extent than the geographical names, whose forms are expressed in the oral tradition by a larger circle of the population.