More Vinydians coming to Earth!!!! Dear Reader, One week ago, I awakened in the body of a plush toy on Earth. I am a scientist from the planet Vinydia...not a toy! Luckily, I met two young brothers who have helped me explore and have so far managed to keep me a secret. It hasn’t been easy for them, since my enthusiasm led to a few close calls. Now the boys face the possibility of having some of my Vinydian friends join me on Earth in the bodies of other plush toys. This might complicate things. You see, I have a plan to improve the lives of everyone on my home planet. All I need are diamonds. Sounds complicated, I know, but my plan is fool proof. It involves stowaway air travel to Arkansas, camping, clandestine mining, and, of course, good food. Simple really! What could possibly go wrong? Yours truly, Doctor S.
Dear washer/dryer manufacturers, Among the many cautionary statements placed on your products, I believe you should add an additional one to prevent unintentional consequences of otherworldly proportions. As fantastic as that may sound, this very letter is in fact one of many unintentional consequences of your appliances having been used to wash plush toys. I am unfortunately not able to elaborate any further on the details, but I plead with you to consider adding the following statement on all your manufactured goods: Caution: Plush toys should not be washed using this device. Sincerely yours, Doctor S. Have you ever washed plush toys using your washer and dryer? If so, did you notice strange, unexplainable things happening around your house soon afterward? Perhaps all the chocolate and/or baked goods vanished from your household? Perhaps you got home from work to find everything a mess? Perhaps your alarm clock ring tone changed by itself? After having washed your plush toys, did you ever get the feeling they were staring back at you? If any of this sounds familiar, then Sam and Nathan’s adventures with their plush toy, Doctor S, may shed light on what may be happening at your house. Warning: You may want to hide your diamonds and your chocolate.
Self-reliance is what makes America tick for young Frederick Falloy, a private detective working on his first case in Chicago, 2014. It seems nothing but violence surrounds the stolen Cacaw Diamonds, which he must locate. He finds himself building a working relationship with a mentor--a veteran police officer named Phillip Grable, Homicide Division. Pushing his limits, he outsmarts his demons to find a way to win, no matter how the cards fall.
This is an autobiography of a cancer survivor, a veteran network news journalist. For 38 years since 1971, the author, as Asia video editor for ABC News, chased news stories round the clock, often without sleep. With early retirement in sight, the sudden diagnosis of cancer one day radically changed his lifestyle overnight. By an unusual coincidence, his links to golf were also linked to his discovery of cancer. Here's a man who led an incredible life even before he overcame his battle with cancer. It took more than the conventional means of treatment. His treatment and road to recovery is a revelation. Today, as a cancer survivor and a retiree who now enjoys a healthier and more fulfilling life, the author tells a compelling story of how he entered into the darkest tunnel and emerged, a more vigilant and environmentally aware individual. Eddy Li shares his painful experience, what he has learned about an increasingly hazardous environment and how you can protect yourself from its toxicity.
A Nobel Prize–winning economist tells the remarkable story of how the world has grown healthier, wealthier, but also more unequal over the past two and half centuries The world is a better place than it used to be. People are healthier, wealthier, and live longer. Yet the escapes from destitution by so many has left gaping inequalities between people and nations. In The Great Escape, Nobel Prize–winning economist Angus Deaton—one of the foremost experts on economic development and on poverty—tells the remarkable story of how, beginning 250 years ago, some parts of the world experienced sustained progress, opening up gaps and setting the stage for today's disproportionately unequal world. Deaton takes an in-depth look at the historical and ongoing patterns behind the health and wealth of nations, and addresses what needs to be done to help those left behind. Deaton describes vast innovations and wrenching setbacks: the successes of antibiotics, pest control, vaccinations, and clean water on the one hand, and disastrous famines and the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the other. He examines the United States, a nation that has prospered but is today experiencing slower growth and increasing inequality. He also considers how economic growth in India and China has improved the lives of more than a billion people. Deaton argues that international aid has been ineffective and even harmful. He suggests alternative efforts—including reforming incentives to drug companies and lifting trade restrictions—that will allow the developing world to bring about its own Great Escape. Demonstrating how changes in health and living standards have transformed our lives, The Great Escape is a powerful guide to addressing the well-being of all nations.
*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti* Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).
