A new collection from David Sedaris is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris has inspired hilarious pieces, including Me Talk Pretty One Day, about his attempts to learn French. His family is another inspiration. You Cant Kill the Rooster is a portrait of his brother who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers...

Ray Atlee, a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, is forty-three and newly single. His father, a very sick old man who lives the life of a recluse in the ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi, was once a beloved and powerful official who towered over local law and politics for many years. With the end in sight, Judge Atlee issues a summons to Ray to return home to Clanton, to discuss the details of the family estate. Ray reluctantly heads...

In 1970, one of Mississippi's more colorful weekly newspapers went bankrupt. To the surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by a 23 year-old college dropout, named Willie Traynor. The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Willie Traynor reported all the gruesome details and the paper began to prosper. The murderer, Danny Padgitt was tried before...

It's been twenty years and judith's life has definitely changed. Now a history professor and a widow, she hasn't seen Nelson Sharpe of the Nassau County Police Department in all that time. But she still can't get her one time lover out of her head. Her life takes an unexpected turn, however, when former investment banker turned suburban mommy extraordinaire Courtney Logan vanishes from Long Island into thin air.

Frog and Toad spend their days together, but find sometimes it's nice to be alone.

Twelve-year-old Meggie learns that her father Mo, a bookbinder, can "read" fictional characters to life when an evil ruler named Capricorn, freed from the novel "Inkheart" years earlier, tries to force Mo to release an immortal monster from the story.

First there were roses and the notes in her mailbox signed simply, "Admirer." Then, the accident. One minute Chris Callaway was one of Hollywood's brightest rising stars, starting a new picture that could send her career skyrocketing; the next, she was falling from the unfinished deck of her beautiful new Malibu beach house...waking up blind, uncertain whether she would ever see again.

An optimist and a fighter, Chris is determined not to let

...

A presentation of an old counting rhyme about meadow animals and their activities. A page of music is included.

"'Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say.' From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her...

The entire Bear family becomes involved in an attempt to clean and organize the cubs' messy room.