Four funny, easy-to-read stories about best friends Winnie (a possum) and Ernst (an otter) are best friends who can weather any predicament together. These charming, screwball stories have the pair looking desperately for the gift Winnie has gotten for Ms. Zora Beaver's birthday party and lost in her own house; making Aunt Sally's Famous Nut Loaf for a bake sale, but forgetting an important ingredient; bringing the outdoors in for a first-day-of-spring garden party nearly ruined by a snowfall; and learning the repercussions of breaking a mirror, not once, but twice. The silliness and the brightly colored pictures will have early readers eager to make the happy acquaintance of these two new characters.
Winnie the possum and Ernst the otter are back with four new antic tales. In the first, an excursion to Backwater Beach is complicated by the contents of a piggy bank. Then Winnie gets a telescope and must ad-lib, as the viewing for her friends is disrupted by cloud cover. When Winnie and Ernst baby-sit for Mrs. H. Penny, they aren't prepared for her eggs to hatch. And finally, what better diversion for a February than to organize a poetry contest - but who knew what chaos such an event could cause? Children ready for a step up from early Beginning Readers will find plenty more to enjoy in these new stories.
**Winner Macavity and Bruce Alexander awards!** It’s 1931 in Berlin, and the world is on the precipice of change—the affluent still dance in their gilded cages but more and more people are living under threat and poverty. Hannah Vogel is a crime reporter forced to write under the male pseudonym Peter Weill. As a widow of the Great War, she’s used to doing what she must to survive. But her careful facade is threatened when she stumbles across a photograph of her brother in the Hall of the Unnamed Dead. Reluctant to make a formal identification until she has all the details, Hannah decides to investigate herself. She must be cautious as Ernst’s life as a cross-dressing cabaret star was ringed in scandal, and his list of lovers included at least one powerful leader in the Nazi party. She’s barely had a chance to begin before an endearing five-year-old orphan shows up on her doorstep holding a forged birth certificate list her dead brother Ernst as his father, and calling Hannah ‘Mother.’ Further complicating matters are her evolving feelings for Boris Krause, a powerful banker whose world is the antithesis of Hannah’s. Boris has built a solid wall against anyone disturbing his, or his daughter Trudi’s, perfectly managed lives—a wall Hannah and Anton are slowly breaking down. As Hannah digs, she discovers political intrigues and scandals touching the top ranks of the rising Nazi party. Fired from her job and on the run from Hitler’s troops, she must protect herself and the little boy who has come to love her, but can she afford to find love for herself? Praise for the novel: "Bold narrator and chilling historical setting...an unusually vivid context, [lets] Hannah report on the decadence of her world without losing her life –or her mind."-- New York Times "Nails both the 'life is a cabaret' atmosphere and the desperation floating inside the champagne bubbles." – Booklist "Evocative and hauntingly crafted...a treasure of suspense, romance, and murder. Her ability to spin history into a visceral reality is done with the artistry of a master storyteller."-- James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of The Seventh Plague "A compelling and human story that captures brilliantly the atmosphere of Berlin during the rise of the Nazis."--Anne Perry, New York Times bestselling author of We Shall Not Sleep
