Thirteen-year-old Talia Shumacher is the only child of a wealthy orthodox couple, known for their hospitality. As Talia becomes a teenager, her parents' open-door policy begins to irritate her. When Gabrielle Markus, an eccentric twenty-three-year old ballet dancer shows up one day, Talia's life is turned upside down. Convinced that Gabrielle is harboring a secret, Talia and her friends set out to uncover it. Along the way, Talia must deal with the loneliness she feels as an only child living in a religious community that celebrates large families. In discovering Gabrielle's secret, Talia discovers secrets about herself and her parents. Talia's gift for math and her unusual way of thinking about numbers is woven into the story along with themes of friendship, individuality, and acceptance.
In this new adventure, a fellow student makes life miserable for the rest of the Net Force by sabotaging a virtual simulation program. But when a Force exiles him from the group, the brilliant outcast creates a virtual playroom that will blow them all away. Based on the major mini-series from ABC-TV.
Our entire lives are online, but what if the boy you love actually lives there? For fans of Adam Silvera comes a story about the future of relationships. Eden has always had two loves: her best friend, Lacey, and her crush, Will. And then, almost simultaneously, she loses them both. Will to a car accident and Lacey to the inevitable growing up and growing apart. Devastated by the holes they have left in her life, Eden finds solace in an unlikely place. Before he died, Will set up an account with In Good Company, a service that uploads voices and emails and creates a digital companion that can be called anytime, day or night. It couldn't come at a better time because, after losing Lacey--the hardest thing Eden has had to deal with--who else can she confide all her secrets to? Who is Eden without Lacey? As Eden falls deeper into her relationship with "Will," she hardly notices as her real life blooms around her. There is a new job, new friends. Then there is Oliver. He's Lacey's twin, so has always been off-limits to her, until now. He may be real, but to have him, will Eden be able to say goodbye to Will? Sarah Everett deftly captures the heartbreak of losing your best friend and discovering love in the unlikeliest of places.
Why do men talk and women gossip, and which is better for you? Why is monogamy a drain on the brain? And why should you be suspicious of someone who has more than 150 friends on Facebook? We are the product of our evolutionary history, and this history colors our everyday lives—from why we joke to the depth of our religious beliefs. In How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Robin Dunbar uses groundbreaking experiments that have forever changed the way evolutionary biologists explain how the distant past underpins our current behavior. We know so much more now than Darwin ever did, but the core of modern evolutionary theory lies firmly in Darwin’s elegantly simple idea: organisms behave in ways that enhance the frequency with which genes are passed on to future generations. This idea is at the heart of Dunbar’s book, which seeks to explain why humans behave as they do. Stimulating, provocative, and immensely enjoyable, his book invites you to explore the number of friends you have, whether you have your father’s brain or your mother’s, whether morning sickness might actually be good for you, why Barack Obama’s 2008 victory was a foregone conclusion, what Gaelic has to do with frankincense, and why we laugh. In the process, Dunbar examines the role of religion in human evolution, the fact that most of us have unexpectedly famous ancestors, and why men and women never seem able to see eye to eye on color.
Fans of Chris Ferrie's ABCs of Physics, Quantum Physics for Babies, and General Relativity for Babies will love this introduction to mathematics for babies and toddlers! It only takes a small spark to ignite a child's mind. This alphabetical installment of the Baby University baby board book series is the perfect introduction to mathematics for infants and toddlers. It makes a wonderful math baby gift for even the youngest mathematician. Give the gift of learning to your little one at birthdays, baby showers, holidays, and beyond! A is for Addition B is for Base C is for Chord From addition to zero, ABCs of Mathematics is a colorfully simple introduction for babies—and grownups—to a new math concept for every letter of the alphabet. Written by an expert, each page in this mathematical primer features multiple levels of text so the book grows along with your little mathematician. If you're looking for the perfect STEAM book for teachers, calculus books for babies, or more Baby University books for your little one, look no further! ABCs of Mathematics offers fun early learning for your little mathematician!
"Think of the heart-racing chase of The Hunger Games, but a giant mall is your arena."--Seventeen.com A suspenseful survival story and modern day Lord of the Flies set in a mall that looks just like yours. A biological bomb has just been discovered in the air ducts of a busy suburban mall. At first nobody knows if it's even life threatening, but then the entire complex is quarantined, people start getting sick, supplies start running low, and there's no way out. Among the hundreds of trapped shoppers are four teens. These four different narrators, each with their own stories, must cope in unique, surprising manners, changing in ways they wouldn't have predicted, trying to find solace, safety, and escape at a time when the adults are behaving badly. This is a gripping look at people and how they can—and must—change under the most dire of circumstances. And not always for the better.
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
A house never forgets. And for Maureen Boyd, neither does a vengeful ghost lurking within what she hopes to be a dream home for her with her new husband and children. After her son’s house-flipping company loses out on a deal, Maureen’s husband buys the house, and Maureen hopes that living closer to her son will help salvage their distant relationship. But living in a haunted house brings up dark family secrets her husband would rather keep buried, plus opening an old wound that Maureen’s long-distant relative could never forgive.
From zero to infinity, The Book of Numbers is a handy-sized volume which opens up a new realm of knowledge. Where else in one place could you find out how the illegal numbers racket worked, what makes some people see numbers as colours, why the standard US rail gauge exactly matches the axle width of an ancient Roman chariot, and the numerological connection between Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden?
