The Coffey siblings are having a rough year. Claire has broken up with her fiancé and is hiding from her debts. Martha’s in a career crisis and even her therapist is losing patience with her. And Max, the baby of the family in his final year of college, is keeping a life-altering secret. Before long, all three of them have moved back home. But things aren’t so easy the second time around. Martha and Claire regress to fighting over the shared bathroom while their mother continues to plan Claire’s thwarted wedding (unbeknownst to Claire). But it’s only a matter of time before Max’s secret comes out and changes all of their lives...
In this "witty and stylish" novel, two sisters take on modern relationships -- and find a suitor in a jokingly arranged marriage (Holly Peterson, bestselling author of The Manny). When Ava Nickerson was a child, her mother jokingly betrothed her to a friend's son, and the contract the parents made has stayed safely buried for years. Now that still-single Ava is closing in on thirty, no one even remembers she was once "engaged" to the Markowitz boy. But when their mother is diagnosed with cancer, Ava's prodigal little sister Lauren comes home to Los Angeles where she stumbles across the decades-old document. Frustrated and embarrassed by Ava's constant lectures about financial responsibility (all because she's in a little debt. Okay, a lot of debt), Lauren decides to do some sisterly interfering of her own and tracks down her sister's childhood fiance. When she finds him, the highly inappropriate, twice-divorced, but incredibly charming Russell Markowitz is all too happy to re-enter the Nickerson sisters' lives, and always-accountable Ava is forced to consider just how binding a contract really is . . .
Bev is the Smart One, who finally leaves her artistic ambitions in chalk dust (and her humor-impaired husband in the arms—and legs—of his nubile protégée) to become a schoolteacher. Clare is the Pretty One, who married well and seems to be living a designer version of the suburban dream. Joey is the Wild One, struggling to stay clean and sober now that she's used up her fifteen minutes of fame as a one-hit-wonder rock star. They love each other but mix like oil, water, and hundred-proof gin . . . a combination that threatens to combust over family tensions, suspected infidelities, a devastating accident, a stunning confession, and the sudden reappearance of their handsome, now all-grown-up former neighbor, Kenny Waxman, who's back in town making his mark as a TV comedy writer. It seems they'll never understand where their differences begin and their own destructive tendencies end. Then it happens: the sisters discover a decades-old body stuffed inside an industrial drum and begin a bold, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious journey that will either bring them together . . . or tear them apart for good.
It takes one smart sheep to escape from a piano movers' van and find his way home in this humorous friendship story for emerging and newly independent readers by beloved, award-winning author Gary D. Schmidt and coauthor Elizabeth Stickney. Wilson is a curious sheep, and after he foolishly climbs into the back of a piano movers' truck, he ends up alone in the big city, far from the farm. But Wilson is also one smart sheep, and soon enough he's finding his way home to his worried owner by recognizing the sounds that he heard while he was trapped in the truck--a jackhammer, a calliope, a hotdog man. And could that be the excited barking of his friend Tippy, the border collie? This lighthearted story about loyalty, problem solving, friendship, and independence is divided into short, action-packed chapters and has the cozy feel of a modern classic.
From the bestselling author of Girls in White Dresses, this funny and tender novel is “an engaging exploration of a thoroughly modern family dynamic” (People) and the ways in which we never really grow up, and the people we turn to when things go drastically wrong. The Coffey siblings are having a rough year. Martha is thirty and working at J. Crew after a spectacular career flameout; Claire has broken up with her fiancé and locked herself in her New York apartment until her bank account looks as grim as her mood; and the baby of the family, Max, is dating a knockout classmate named Cleo and keeping a very big, very life-altering secret. The only solution—for all of them—is to move back home. But things aren’t so easy the second time around, for them or for their mother, Weezy. Martha and Claire have regressed to fighting over the shared bathroom, Weezy can’t quite bring herself to stop planning Claire’s thwarted wedding, and Max and Cleo are exchanging secretive whispers in the basement.
2007 Best Children's Books of the Year, Bank Street College Cookie the dog is the best reader in the Baxter family--he's even learning to write! When Pet's Day arrives at Nash and Duffy's school, they bring in Cookie to show the other students. The other kids are amazed by the dog's reading.
It's: a) 3:00 in the morning b) the night before you start a new job c) the day the absolutely best thing ever happened to you d) the day the absolutely worst thing ever happened to you e) all of the above Who are you going to call? Your sister, of course! Ask any woman who has a sister and she'll tell you that neither girlfriends nor husband--much as she adores them--can take the place of her sister. Who else has the same family history from the female perspective? Who else shares the same values and expectations, shaped since babyhood? Who else knows what's racing around in her head almost before she herself does? No one but her sister. In I'm the Pretty One, You're the Smart One, author Lorraine Bodger captures the many nuances of this unique and irreplaceable relationship. From the greatest delights (wardrobe sharing!) to the pettiest annoyances (will she ever get out of that bathroom?), this book captures the sisters experience in all its variety, and celebrates All Things Sisters in a way that honors, supports, and enriches this important bond. I'm the Pretty One, You're the Smart One explores the sisterly ins and outs of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood with wit, insight, humor, and loving attention. It rejoices in the intimacy shared by sisters--and that's what makes it the perfect gift from sister to sister. With beautiful original watercolor artwork, this deliciously touching hardcover gift book hits all the emotional (and often hilarious) highs and lows of sisterhood.
One Smart Cookie offers a fresh batch of words that encompasses everything you might say to a child, whether it's the first day of preschool or the last day of high school. Cookie-centric definitions range from wanting to know everything about cookies (curious) to thinking carefully about what kind of cookies to make for your friend (ponder). This book mixes Amy Krouse Rosenthal's morsels of wisdom with the delicious illustrations of mother-daughter duo Jane Dyer and Brooke Dyer. This is one vocabulary list that will resonate well beyond the school years.
“Andrew Smart deftly shows why it’s time for us to think deeply about thinking machines before they begin thinking deeply about us.” —Douglas Rushkoff, author, Escaping the Growth Trap,Present Shock, and Program or Be Programmed “Provocative and cool.” —Cory Doctorow “Forget the Turing test—will the supersmart AIs that we hear so much about these days pass the acid test? In this playful, informative, and prescient book, Andrew Smart brings psychedelics into dialogue with neuroscience in order to challenge the whiz-bang computational views of human and machine sentience that dominate the headlines. Giving robots LSD sounds like a joke, but Smart is dead serious in his critique of the hidden and sometimes dangerous biases that underlie both popular and scientific fantasies of digital minds.” —Erik Davis, host of “Expanding Mind” and author, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information “Philosophy, psychedelics, robots, and the future; consciousness and intelligence, what else do you desire? Here you will see why those machines that reach singularity will be smarter than us and take over the world—and shall need to be conscious…and maybe they can only be conscious if they are human enough. The thesis of the book, and the path shown us by Smart, leads to a great trip, of imagination and philosophy, of maths and neuroscience.” —Dr. Tristan Bekinschtein, Lecturer, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge Can we build a robot that trips on acid? This is not a frivolous question, according to neuroscientist Andrew Smart. If we can’t, he argues, we haven’t really created artificial intelligence. In an exposition reminiscent of crossover works such as Gödel, Escher, Bach and Fermat’s Last Theorem, Andrew Smart weaves together Mangarevan binary numbers, the discovery of LSD, Leibniz, computer programming, and much more to connect the vast but largely forgotten world of psychedelic research with the resurgent field of AI and the attempt to build conscious robots. A book that draws on the history of mathematics, philosophy, and digital technology, Beyond Zero and One challenges fundamental assumptions underlying artificial intelligence. Is the human brain based on computation? Can information alone explain human consciousness and intelligence? Smart convincingly makes the case that true intelligence, and artificial intelligence, requires an appreciation of what is beyond the computational.
