He's as mad as a hatter! Whether it's like a bump on a log or a bat out of hell, these expressions have been around forever, but we've never really known why ... until now! Finally Dr. Funk explains more than 400 droll, colorful, and sometimes pungent expressions of everyday speech. Derived from classical sources, historic events, famous literature, frontier humor, and the frailties of humankind, each of these sayings has an interesting story behind its origin. If you've ever wondered why when you're in a hurry you are told to hold your horses, wonder no more!

Blessed Are the Fabulous. Life would be perfect for Reverend Betsy Blessing if it weren't for parishioners who keel over during her sermons, steal money from the collection box, and set her up with ex-cons. Not to mention the very inconvenient feelings she is suddenly having for her long-time friend, fellow seminarian, and verbal sparring partner, David Swenson. It isn’t until Betsy is thrust into the position of senior minister for her church, however, that she discovers the real cause of her discontent: her fear of failing has become stronger than her faith in herself. Is it really possible to keep a good woman down? Can Betsy reclaim her confidence while reconciling her clerical robe with high heels and the right shade of lipstick? A fun-loving look at a single girl’s life on the other side of the altar, Heavens to Betsy is also a hilarious and joyful celebration of strong, stylish, and faithful womanhood. From the Trade Paperback edition.

From the creator of ARCHIE THE DAREDEVIL PENGUIN comes the unique story of two friends who can't escape all the feels. Camper is happy as a clam and Clam is a happy camper. When you live in The Happy Book, the world is full of daisies and sunshine and friendship cakes . . . until your best friend eats the whole cake and doesn't save you one bite. Moving from happiness to sadness and everything in between, Camper and Clam have a hard time finding their way back to happy. But maybe happy isn't the goal--being a good friend is about supporting each other and feeling all the feels together. At once funny and thoughtful, The Happy Book supports social-emotional learning. It's a book to keep young readers company no matter how they're feeling!

A widely acclaimed young writer's fierce new novel, in which childbirth and new motherhood are as high-stakes a crucible as any combat zone.

“Not only a historical rockument of the revolutionary 90s counterculture Riot Grrrl movement. . . but also a rousing inspiration for a new generation of empowered rebel girls to strap on guitars and stick it to The Man.” — Vanity Fair Girls to the Front is the epic, definitive history of the Riot Grrrl movement—the radical feminist punk uprising that exploded into the public eye in the 1990s, altering America’s gender landscape forever. Author Sara Marcus, a music and politics writer for Time Out New York, Slate.com, Pos, and Heeb magazine, interweaves research, interviews, and her own memories as a Riot Grrrl front-liner. Her passionate, sophisticated narrative brilliantly conveys the story of punk bands like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy—as well as successors like Sleater-Kinney, Partyline, and Kathleen Hanna’s Le Tigre—and their effect on today’s culture.

‘A must-read of the summer!’ Jenny Oliver, bestselling author of The Summer House by the Sea 'Happy, hopeful and joyously life-affirming. Exactly the book we need right now.' Cathy Bramley Life is about to change forever...

“The value of Bad Timing as a cultural portrait, its subversiveness, is not in what it criticizes, but in what it celebrates—the pride of losers, the volatility of deep friendships between women, the tribal bonds between blacks and Jews, and especially love of family. This is a hilarious, venomous first novel.”—Darryl Pinckney The unnamed narrator is an artist, a single woman in her late thirties. The man she meets at a downtown club is a jazz musician, older—and married. Their attraction is instinctive, irrational, and profound—and complicated by the fact that she becomes pregnant after their first night together. Bad Timing is the story of their affair, which unfolds over one steamy summer in the dreamy enclaves of lower Manhattan. Under the erratic tutelage of her black, gay neighbor, her stentorian Jewish mother, and a circle of eccentric friends (who provide fuel as much for neurosis as for comfort), this unconventional woman struggles to reconcile her need for love with the limits and liberties of an undercover affair. Her story is filled with head-on confrontations with issues of race, ethnicity, gender, class, morals, and family—by turns bitingly funny and genuinely heartbreaking. Set in an all-too-small New York universe of artists, musicians, and writers in which the lives of our hapless heroine and her errant lover intersect repeatedly with far fewer than six degrees of separation, Bad Timing memorably depicts a woman seeking to find love and balance in a world where men and women are equally complicit in games of emotional hide-and-seek, and where culture has become little more than merchandise and personalities. With devilish insights into the clubby worlds of art and magazines, Bad Timing is a tart-yet-sweet story of modern love, lost and found.

Three of a Kind Betsy and Tacy are best friends. Then Tib moves into the neighborhood and the three of them start to play together. The grown-ups think they will quarrel, but they don't. Sometimes they quarrel with Betsy's and Tacy's bossy big sisters, but they never quarrel among themselves. They are not as good as they might be. They cook up awful messes in the kitchen, throw mud on each other and pretend to be beggars, and cut off each other's hair. But Betsy, Tacy, and Tib always manage to have a good time. Ever since their first publication in the 1940s, the Betsy-Tacy stories have been loved by each generation of young readers.