From the bestselling author of Matchmaking for Beginners comes a novel about love, loss, and the beautiful mess of family. Marnie MacGraw and Patrick Delaney have been in love for a few years now, enough to realize that they are imperfectly perfect together. Still, there are some things that maybe need a little attention. Marnie's ebullient; he's brooding. She thrives on change; he prefers stability. She sees marriage and parenthood in their future, but he can't see beyond the shadow of an earlier tragedy.
"Marnie MacGraw wants an ordinary life- a husband, kids, and a minivan in the suburbs. Now that she's marrying the man of her dreams, she's sure this is the life she'll get. Then Marnie meets Blix Holliday, her fiancé's irascible matchmaking great-aunt who's dying, and everything changes- just as Blix told her it would. When her marriage ends after two miserable weeks, Marnie is understandably shocked. Marnie doesn't believe she's anything special, but Blix somehow knew she was the perfect person to follow in her matchmaker footsteps. And Blix was also right about some things Marnie must learn the hard way: love is hard to recognize, and the ones who push love away often are the ones who need it most."--book jacket
Nate and his friends think the new Arcadeland, where tickets can earn jets, tanks, subs, and race cars, is totally cool, until they learn that the arcade owner is hiding a secret.
Rising star Shauna J. Grant makes her Graphix Chapters debut with this humorous and wholesome series. Get drawn into reading with Graphix Chapters! Graphix Chapters are ideal books for beginning and newly independent readers aged 6-8. With approachable page counts, easy-to-follow paneling, and artwork that supports text comprehension, these engaging stories with unforgettable characters help children become lifelong readers. Meet Mimi. She's charming! She's cheerful! She's cute! But that's not all! She's also a loyal friend and fun playmate, who has the best adventures with Penelope, her magical toy dog. But when Mimi notices people treating her like she's too cute, can she show them that she's much more than meets the eye? Or will she be stuck in this cute-astrophe?
Can Wednesday and her service dog, Woof, sniff out Mrs. Winter’s missing cat before her big trip? This is the first book of a fun full-color early chapter book series about the best detectives in the Midwest! Detective Tip #1 Try not to jump to conclusions. Wednesday and her service dog, Woof, are the best detectives in the whole world—or at least their neighborhood. But can they find Mrs. Winters’s missing cat before her big trip? Or will the case of the cat-napped kitty be their first unsolved mystery? HarperChapters build confident readers one chapter at a time! With short, fast-paced books, art on every page, and milestone markers at the end of every chapter, they're the perfect next step for fans of I Can Read!
Nine kittens go on an exciting boating adventure that's a (funny) CATastrophe in this playful picture book that demonstrates the key math concept of patterns. A crew of hungry kittens and their captain head to the lake to catch some dinner, but the fish have surprises in store for them. Physics is at work too. What happens when confused kitties paddle every which way? Or when they all lean in the same direction? A pattern is needed to avoid a catastrophe! Patterns are the foundation on which math is built. Using strong rhythm, clever wordplay, and countable characters, CATastrophe! is a fun read-aloud that also shows what patterns can do. Helpful backmatter will deepen readers' understanding and challenge them to find more patterns in this book and in our world.
Claire HardingI live in Idaho. (Yes, potatoes. *eye roll* Can we talk about something else?) And I love it here. Small town values galore and it's right where I want to raise my girls after my jerk ex traded me in for a "younger, newer model" (his words, not mine).My mom's the volunteer fire chief in our town and I'm pretty happy hanging out with the auxiliary at the fire hall and doing her grunt work - NOT fighting fires, because, please, I read, love science and my idea of a lot of exercise is having to walk up the stairs twice in the morning before I send my girls off to school and leave for my job as a home nurse.I guess it's kind of weird that I also coach basketball. Long story.I was pretty happy with my life until the hot shot, all-state baller from my teen years moved back in next door. (I babysat him, yes, but I never changed his diapers. Just wanted to be clear about that.)Guess who's now the assistant b-ball coach? Logic would say me - especially since I coached my entire first year holding the play book upside down (it turned out to be an old football playbook from the '80s, so it's not like it mattered which way I held it) but the accurate answer is Trey Haywood, my all-star neighbor, and I'm honestly not sure which of us is more upset about it.Anyway, the team was trying to set us up (girls, they're such romantics) and I don't think they would have succeeded, but in celebration of breaking our 37 game losing streak, they locked Trey and me in the septic system control room. That changed everything. Not in a good way.TreyYeah. What she said.And...when I first saw her again, I thought she was a catastrophe. New thought post septic control: she's a cute catastrophe. (And, holy man, can she kiss.)
Winner, 2023 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction Finalist, 2023 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award A compassionate and funny novel about defining yourself, the communities that support us, and the journeys that secrets propel. Charlie Minkoff, a thirteen-year-old boy born with intersex traits, would be happy to be left alone. Living with his artist mother in a derelict loft in downtown Winnipeg, perpetually wondering about the father who abandoned him, and tormented in school because of his differences, Charlie navigates the assorted catastrophes of his life. He’s helped along by the love of his beloved grandfather, Oscar, and the makeshift family who surround him: his mother’s best friend; a couple of elderly shut-in neighbours; a mysterious girl in his class who has secrets of her own; and his desperately needy and perpetually hungry dog, Gellman. When a school project leads him to discover that Oscar never had a bar mitzvah, Charlie decides to right the historical wrong and arrange a belated ceremony. But this quest will be more than he bargained for, and meanwhile everyone from his doctor to his Ancestry Studies teacher keeps insisting that Charlie needs to learn to tell his own story. Margaret Laurence Award winner Méira Cook’s The Full Catastrophe is a story of psychological complexity, tenderness, and humour.
A heartfelt and exceptionally human novel about the best mistakes a person can make Jonathan and Rosie have been together so long they finish each other’s sentences—so when he (finally) proposes and asks her to move across the country with him, everyone is happily surprised. But when things suddenly unravel, Rosie sends Jonathan packing and moves back home with Soapie, the irascible, opinionated grandmother who raised her. Now she has to figure out how to fire Soapie’s very unsuitable caregiver, a gardener named Tony who lets her drink martinis, smoke, and cheat at Scrabble. It’s meant to be a temporary break, of course—until Rosie realizes she’s accidentally pregnant at 44, completely unequipped for motherhood, and worse, may be falling in love with Tony, whose life is even more muddled than hers. When Soapie reveals a long-hidden secret, Rosie wonders if she has to let go of her fears, and trust that the big-hearted, messy life that awaits her just may be the one she was meant to live. Praise for The Opposite of Maybe “Dawson’s charmingly eccentric cast of characters is at turns lovable and infuriating, ensuring a quick read helmed by a memorable, complex heroine.”—Publishers Weekly “Delightfully witty . . . A messy, funny, surprising story of second chances.”—Kirkus Reviews “Dawson keeps readers turning the pages to find out who Rosie will choose in the end.”—Booklist
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY People ∙ O: The Oprah Magazine ∙ Financial Times ∙ Kansas City Star ∙ BookPage ∙ Kirkus Reviews ∙ Publishers Weekly ∙ Booklist NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A stunner.”—Justin Cronin “It’s never the disasters you see coming that finally come to pass—it’s the ones you don’t expect at all,” says Julia, in this spellbinding novel of catastrophe and survival by a superb new writer. Luminous, suspenseful, unforgettable, The Age of Miracles tells the haunting and beautiful story of Julia and her family as they struggle to live in a time of extraordinary change. On an ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia awakes to discover that something has happened to the rotation of the earth. The days and nights are growing longer and longer; gravity is affected; the birds, the tides, human behavior, and cosmic rhythms are thrown into disarray. In a world that seems filled with danger and loss, Julia also must face surprising developments in herself, and in her personal world—divisions widening between her parents, strange behavior by her friends, the pain and vulnerability of first love, a growing sense of isolation, and a surprising, rebellious new strength. With crystalline prose and the indelible magic of a born storyteller, Karen Thompson Walker gives us a breathtaking portrait of people finding ways to go on in an ever-evolving world. “Gripping drama . . . flawlessly written; it could be the most assured debut by an American writer since Jennifer Egan’s Emerald City.”—The Denver Post “Pure magnificence.”—Nathan Englander “Provides solace with its wisdom, compassion, and elegance.”—Curtis Sittenfeld “Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.
