Previously published as The Hanging Hill. From the New York Times bestselling author of Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library and coauthor of I Funny and Treasure Hunters, comes a series of spine-tingling mysteries to keep you up long after the lights go out. Every theater has its demons. At this one? They’re real. Zack is staying at the Hanging Hill summer theater, a place where he and his family hope to recover from the fiery fallout of Zack’s last ghostly encounter. The theater is all set to stage Zack’s stepmother’s play . . . or so they think. What Zack doesn’t know is that the director has another show in mind, and that production requires a child born under a full moon. A child who will not survive opening night. And Zack? He was born under a full moon. Zack has battled evil spirits before, but this time he’ll learn that just because it’s a playhouse doesn’t mean that the ghosts are playing. Read all of Chris Grabenstein's Haunted Mysteries! The Crossroads The Demons' Door The Zombie Awakening The Black Heart Crypt
Perfect for Halloween! From the New York Times bestselling author of Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library and coauthor of I Funny and Treasure Hunters, comes a series of spine-tingling mysteries to keep you up long after the lights go out. How serious is stage fright? At the Hanging Hill Playhouse, it can kill you. After narrowly escaping a malevolent spirit in The Crossroads, Zack and Judy are hoping to relax during the rehearsals for a show based on Judy’s bestselling children’s books. Little do they know that the director is planning to raise a horde of evil specters from the dead, and to accomplish this, he needs a human sacrifice . . . and Zack fits the bill perfectly. This second book featuring the intrepid Zack and his stepmother, Judy, is full of the same humorous and spine-tingling storytelling that has made Chris Grabenstein a fast favorite with young and old alike.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Kids will be inspired to embrace their inner weirdness and persevere through obstacles after reading this empowering collection of true stories from teenage Scripps National Spelling Bee champ and Guinness World Record holder Zaila Avant-garde! Includes 8 pages of never-before-seen photos. After Zaila Avant-garde became the first African American student to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 2021, she turned into an overnight sensation. People wanted to know who she was and how she'd achieved so much while so young. In this nonfiction book, Zaila shares the personal anecdotes that have shaped her life and extends advice to readers on living authentically. While Zaila is an exceptional and inspiring young woman, she has fears and anxieties just like everyone else; what makes her remarkable is the way she chooses to move through the obstacles in front of her. Zaila shares about her family, her accomplishments, her experience of being homeschooled, and so much more in order to motivate and uplift other kids who have small-, medium-, and even big-sized dreams.
A dream vacation on a luxurious yacht turns deadly in this pulse-pounding beach read, perfect for fans of Lauren Weisberger and Ruth Ware. Belle likes to think herself immune to the dizzying effects of wealth. But when her best friend, Summer, invites her on a glamorous getaway to the Mediterranean aboard her billionaire boyfriend's yacht, the only sensible answer is yes. Once she's aboard the luxurious Lion's Den, it soon becomes clear that this jet-setting holiday is not as advertised. Belle's dream vacation quickly devolves into a nightmare as she and the other girls Summer invited are treated more like prisoners than guests by their vicious host. Belle is going to have to keep her wits about her—and her own big secret closely hidden—if she wants to make it off this yacht alive. Includes a Reading Group Guide, exclusive epilogue, and sneak peak of Katherine St. John's next book, The Siren.
Modern art is a mass phenomenon. Conceptual artists like Damien Hirst enjoy celebrity status. Works by 20th century abstract artists like Mark Rothko are selling for record breaking sums, while the millions commanded by works by Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon make headline news. However, while the general public has no trouble embracing avant garde and experimental art, there is, by contrast, mass resistance to avant garde and experimental music, although both were born at the same time under similar circumstances - and despite the fact that from Schoenberg and Kandinsky onwards, musicians and artists have made repeated efforts to establish a "synaesthesia" between their two media. Fear of Music examines the parallel histories of modern art and modern music and examines why one is embraced and understood and the other ignored, derided or regarded with bewilderment, as noisy, random nonsense perpetrated by, and listened to by the inexplicably crazed. It draws on interviews and often highly amusing anecdotal evidence in order to find answers to the question: Why do people get Rothko and not Stockhausen?
Students often struggle to understand linguistic concepts through examples of language data provided in class or in texts. Presented with ambiguous information, students frequently respond that they do not 'get it'. The solution is to find an example of humour that relies on the targeted ambiguity. Once they laugh at the joke, they have tacitly understood the concept, and then it is only a matter of explaining why they found it funny. Utilizing cartoons and jokes illustrating linguistic concepts, this book makes it easy to understand these concepts, while keeping the reader's attention and interest. Organized like a course textbook in linguistics, it covers all the major topics in a typical linguistics survey course, including communication systems, phonetics and phonology, morphemes, words, phrases, sentences, language use, discourses, child language acquisition and language variation, while avoiding technical terminology.
The first complete English-language collection of Simone Weil's letters to her loved ones, A Life in Letters deepens appreciation of one of the twentieth century's great thinkers by offering insight into her relationships, spiritual and occupational experiments, political commitments, restless mobility, and wide-ranging interests.
n Amber's Summer, a young teen girl had hoped to escape her divorcing parents by spending the summer of 08 at her best friends Angel's beach house, but instead struggles through a greater tragedy and is both betrayed and helped by two boys. In M. the V. or Mortimer the Vampire, popular and pretty Lizzy's life and dreams are interupted when mysterious forign exchange students from England show up at her high school, thrusting her in the midst of a centuries old drama involving a vampire, dragon, and fairy.
"Stop feeding me bullshit. Tell me the truth." -- Lady Gaga, 2009 "I hate the truth. I hate the truth so much I prefer a giant dose of bullshit any day over the truth." -- Lady Gaga, 2010 In little over a year, Stefani Germanotta, a struggling performer in New York's Lower East Side burlesque scene, has become the global demographic-smashing pop icon known as Lady Gaga. She is a once-in-a-decade artist, a gifted singer, composer, designer, and performance artist who mixes high and low culture, the avant-garde with the accessible, authenticity with artifice. Who is Lady Gaga? She is a twenty-four-year-old woman whose stage mantra -- "I'm a free bitch!" -- is the polar opposite of who she is offstage: isolated, insecure, and unable to be alone. She is an outree artist who wanted to be a sensitive singer-songwriter, whose musical heroes include Britney Spears, Billy Joel, and Bruce Springsteen. She is a woman who says no man can ever compete with her career, but who still isn't over the ex-boyfriend who said she was too ambitious. She claims not to care what people think, but spends her downtime online, reading what people have to say about her. She claims to be a con artist and utterly authentic. She is never less than compelling. Based on over fifty original interviews with friends, employees, rivals, and music industry veterans, Poker Face is the first in-depth biography of the extraordinary cultural phenomenon that is Lady Gaga. Quotes from Poker Face: "It's a privilege to be here tonight to open for Lady Gaga. I've made it." -- President Barack Obama, October 2009 "I remember thinking, 'That could be her. But I hope it's not.'" -- Producer Rob Fusari "Her 'crazy' outfit was putting suspenders on her jeans." -- former classmate "She is perfectly, almost genetically engineered to be a twenty-first-century pop star." -- Eric Garland, CEO, BigChampagne.com "If you looked at her, you'd think she was a jam band chick. She had a heady, grimy vibe." -- former NYU classmate Jon Sheldrick "She's not progressive, but she's a good mimic. She sounds more like me than I f---ing do!" -- Singer/rapper M.I.A. "You won't be able to order a cup of coffee at the f---ing deli without hearing or seeing me." -- Lady Gaga to an ex-boyfriend, 2008
