April had always felt like an outsider. Her older sister Brenda was tall, athletic, competitive and sure of herself. April Taylor, on the other hand, was short, sensitive and overweight - and she couldn't bounce back from their father's cutting criticisms the way Brenda did. April didn't know why their once-loving dad had become a coldhearted monster, but she was sure it had something to do with her. And she could see how his cruel behaviour was tearing away at his gentle mother. But a glimmer of happiness returns when Brenda brings home her college roommate: beautiful, bewitching Celia. And April wonders if she might not be so different from Brenda after all . . .
Two friends find that shadows are all around them. "My friend catches my shadow's hand. Hand in shadow we walk the sand." Dragonflies zip by with their shadows behind them. Toe shadows wiggle along the bottom of a creek. In the shadow of a tree lurks delicious cool shade. On a long sunny day, two friends search for shadows and discover the hidden delights of the everyday world. Lush, sun-soaked illustrations and poetic text capture the childhood delights of a summer day.
An unhappy and overweight adolescent, April Taylor struggles to cope with the desertion and death of her father, the suicide of her mother, her new life with her lesbian sister, and her doubts about her own sexual orientation.
Can you ever escape your fate? Three shadows stand outside the house - and Louis and Lise know why the spectral figures are there. The shadows have come for Louis and Lise's son, and nothing anyone can do will stop them. Louis cannot let his son die without trying to prevent it, so the family embarks on a journey to the ends of the earth, fleeing death. Poignant and suspenseful, Three Shadows is a haunting story of love and grief, told in moving text and sweeping black and white artwork by Cyril Pedrosa.
For fans of Percy Jackson comes a high-adventure retelling of the classic Robin Hood tale featuring a diverse cast of characters and a kick-butt heroine . . . Robyn Hoodlum.
Once a righteous missionary man, Jonah Walker now endures immortality with nothing but a body built for battle and a heart set on retribution. But his last devastating fight left him wounded beyond healing-and his only chance for redemption lies with a fallen woman whose passion burns through the shadows...
When the gods are stripped of their powers, Elminster must carry the weight of Mystra’s magic upon his mortal shoulders It was the eve of the Time of Troubles. The chaos of spilled blood, lawless strife, monsters unleashed, and avatars roaming Faerûn was still to come. Unbeknownst to mortals, the gods had been summoned together—and among them was Mystra, grown proud and willful in the passing eons. With the others, she was about to be stripped of her godhood. The secret of her power gave her an idea. She made certain preparations, looking always for one who would be her successor . . . But until that person's ascension, her power must be preserved. A lone mortal must carry the greater share of her divine energy until the power could be reclaimed, and it was the fate of this mortal to risk being destroyed or driven wild, involuntarily and without warning. This was the occasion of Elminster's Doom.
Barcelona 1945: young Daniel Sempere is taken to a fabulous secret library called the Cemetery of Forgotten Books where he is told he must 'adopt' a single book, promising to care for it always. Entranced by his chosen book, The Shadow of the Wind, Daniel begins a quest to find the truth about the life and death of its mysterious author.
An expert explains how the conventional wisdom about decision making can get us into trouble—and why experience can’t be replaced by rules, procedures, or analytical methods In making decisions, when should we go with our gut and when should we try to analyze every option? When should we use our intuition and when should we rely on logic and statistics? Most of us would probably agree that for important decisions, we should follow certain guidelines—gather as much information as possible, compare the options, pin down the goals before getting started. But in practice we make some of our best decisions by adapting to circumstances rather than blindly following procedures. In Streetlights and Shadows, Gary Klein debunks the conventional wisdom about how to make decisions. He takes ten commonly accepted claims about decision making and shows that they are better suited for the laboratory than for life. The standard advice works well when everything is clear, but the tough decisions involve shadowy conditions of complexity and ambiguity. Gathering masses of information, for example, works if the information is accurate and complete—but that doesn't often happen in the real world. (Think about the careful risk calculations that led to the downfall of the Wall Street investment houses.) Klein offers more realistic ideas about how to make decisions in real-life settings. He provides many examples—ranging from airline pilots and weather forecasters to sports announcers and Captain Jack Aubrey in Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander novels—to make his point. All these decision makers saw things that others didn’t. They used their expertise to pick up cues and to discern patterns and trends. We can make better decisions, Klein tells us, if we are prepared for complexity and ambiguity and if we will stop expecting the data to tell us everything. “I know of no one who combines theory and observation—intellectual rigor and painstaking observation of the real world—so brilliantly and gracefully as Gary Klein.” —Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and Blink
