A stunning debut about a young teenager on the brink and a parent desperate to find the truth before it's too late. Thirteen year old Callie is accused of bullying at school, but Rebecca knows the gentle girl she's raised must be innocent. After Callie is exonerated, she begins to receive threatening notes from the girl who accused her, and as these notes become desperate, Rebecca feels compelled to intervene. As she tries to save this unbalanced girl, Rebecca remembers her own intense betrayals and best-friendships as a teenager, when her failure to understand those closest to her led to tragedy. She'll do anything to make this story end differently. But Rebecca doesn’t understand what’s happening or who is truly a victim, and now Callie is in terrible danger. This raw and beautiful story about the intensity of adolescent emotions and the complex identity of a teenage girl looks unflinchingly at how cruelty exists in all of us, and how our worst impulses can estrange us from ourselves - or even save us.

Princess Hyacinth is bored and unhappy sitting in her palace every day because, unless she is weighed down by specially-made clothes, she will float away, but her days are made brighter when kite-flying Boy stops to say hello.

"People throw the word 'classic' about a lot, but A Drowned Maiden's Hair genuinely deserves to become one." — Wall Street Journal Maud Flynn is known at the orphanage for her impertinence, so when the charming Miss Hyacinth and her sister choose Maud to take home with them, the girl is as baffled as anyone. It seems the sisters need Maud to help stage elaborate séances for bereaved, wealthy patrons. As Maud is drawn deeper into the deception, playing her role as a "secret child," she is torn between her need to please and her growing conscience -- until a shocking betrayal makes clear just how heartless her so-called guardians are. Filled with tantalizing details of turn-of-the-century spiritualism and page-turning suspense, this lively historical novel features a winning heroine whom readers will not soon forget.

Hyacinth Bucket - pronounced Bouquet - star of the BBC1 comedy series, Keeping Up Appearances, imparts her personal views on protecting one's social standing. There are sections on etiquette in the home, entertaining, social obligations, how to strike up an acquaintance with members of the aristocracy, and improving the mind. They all give an insight into Hyacinth's philosophy of life, developed through years of candle-light suppers and charity sub-committee meetings.

When twelve-year-old Hyacinth Star is struck by lightning, her spirit animal, a great white wolf named Dreamcatcher, pays her a visit. It seems she can communicate with animals, and the lightning has also sparked her inner magical powers-if only she can learn how to use them. When bounty hunters arrive seeking the wolves, Hyacinth flees to join Dreamcatcher's pack. To survive, they must reach the Mystic Forest, where a powerful shaman named Joyful Savannah offers a safe haven. But the journey will take them through the Seven Devils Mountains, where they will face man-eating ogres, a legion of goblins, and other terrors. Even worse, an evil witch named Priscilla rules the territory. Only time will tell whether Hyacinth can control her powers, lead her pack to safety, and become a true shaman. In this fantasy novel, a girl who discovers she has the power to speak with animals, along with other magical gifts, sets out on a quest to become the shaman she is meant to be.

Las Vegas feline sleuth Midnight Louie witnesses the appearance of a corpse in the pools around the Oasis Hotel, a dead man with ties to both boyfriends of his redheaded, high-heeled human companion, Temple Barr.

This luminous story of an alleged 36th Vermeer painting begins in the present day and traces the ownership back to World War II, Amsterdam, and to the work's inspiration.

"The Design of "The Waste Land" offers a detailed, comprehensive explanation of T. S. Eliot's enigmatic poem. It relates The Waste Land to earlier and later poems by Eliot, demonstrating that the major poems describe a continuous spiritual odyssey or quest undertaken by the same individual, initiated by the moment of ecstasy in the Hyacinth garden." "Blistein's analysis of Eliot's sources reveals that the protagonist's glimpse of "the heart of light" is equivalent to drinking from the Grail, or communing with God. The incarnate deity momentarily transforms the Hyacinth garden into the likeness of the Edenic paradise. With the inevitable passing of the moment of communion, the protagonist in effect is expelled from the paradisiacal garden as mankind was from Eden. By contrast, the familiar world appears to him a wasteland. The protagonist seeks to drink again from the divine Source and return again to the garden as it was when transfigured by the divine presence. His is a quest for grail and homeland."--BOOK JACKET.

Relates the misadventures of Marigold, a monkey, as she shops with her mother for a coat, makes a hobby of "bugging" her best friend, Maxine the hippo, and imaginatively copes with finding the right outfit for the first day of school.

In this fascinating and wide-ranging book, Yoko Kawaguchi explores the Western portrayal of Japanese women—and geishas in particular—from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. She argues that in the West, Japanese women have come to embody certain ideas about feminine sexuality, and she analyzes how these ideas have been expressed in diverse art forms, ranging from fiction and opera to the visual arts and music videos. Among the many works Kawaguchi discusses are the art criticism of Baudelaire and Huysmans, the opera Madama Butterfly, the sculptures of Rodin, the Broadway play Teahouse of the August Moon, and the international best seller Memoirs of a Geisha. Butterfly’s Sisters also examines the impact on early twentieth-century theatre, drama, and dance theory of the performance styles of the actresses Madame Hanako and Sadayakko, both formerly geishas.