No Screaming Jelly Beans

In her late thirties, Denise Minor lived in a spacious apartment in San Francisco with her husband Alex and their small sons Nathan and Max. Two evenings a week she taught Spanish at a local university. She was happy with her life in many ways but could not release a dream that had been simmering for a decade: earn a PhD in Spanish and become a professor. She was accepted into the University of California, Davis. Less than a year after moving there with her family, Max received a diagnosis of autism. Over the following eighteen years she chronicled the journey of dropping out of and returning to the PhD program, of dedicating herself to various therapies for Max and of trying to give her son Nathan a fair share of her attention. Alex lived an exhausting life driving between two cities to support the family and helping Denise navigate the labyrinth of services and treatments for Max. Autism, she learned, is not just a diagnosis for one person but rather is a diagnosis for the entire family. In the end, her message to other parents of children with disabilities is, “Raise your children the best you can, but don’t give up your own dreams.”

As she raises a son with autism, Denise Minor struggles to pursue her dream of making it through graduate school and landing a job as a professor. Her poignant essays, written over the course of eighteen years, evoke tears, smiles, and hope. Minor learns to strike a balance between study, work, friendship and her roles as a mother and wife.

In a bowl full of colourful jelly beans, one jelly bean stands out—for all the wrong reasons. He is the mean jelly bean, and he spends his days tormenting and pushing the other jelly beans away. "You are a really mean jelly bean!" the other jelly beans say. But he just keeps on bullying. One day, the mean jelly bean looks around and finds no one left to push around. He's all alone in the candy bowl. What's a mean jelly bean to do? Can the kindness of the other jelly beans rub off on him? Sharon Curtain, mother of two, wrote The Really Mean Jelly Bean for her sons when they first attended school to help explain bullying, friendship, and learning to be happy.

Contains nine original scenes for two, three and four young players.

From Kim Heacox, the acclaimed author of The Only Kayak and John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire, comes Rhythm of the Wild, an Alaska memoir focused on Denali National Park. Music runs through every page of this book, as do stories, rivers and wolves. At its heart, Rhythm of the Wild is a love story. It begins in 1981 and ends in 2014, yet reaches beyond the arc of time. Author and mountaineer Jonathan Waterman has called Heacox “our northern Edward Abbey.” In this book we find out why. We hitchhike with Kim through Idaho, camp on the Colorado Plateau, and fly off the sand cliffs of Hangman Creek with a little terrier named Super Max, the Wonder Dog. We meet Zed, the Aborigine; Nine Fingers, the blues guitarist; and Adolph Murie, the legendary wildlife biologist, who dared to say that wolves should be protected, not persecuted. Kim also reprises in this book his friend Richard Steele, a beloved character from The Only Kayak. Some books are larger than their actual subject—this is one. Part memoir, part exploration of Denali’s inspiring natural and human history, and part conservation polemic, Rhythm of the Wild ranges from funny to provocative. It’s a celebration of—and a plea to restore and defend—the vibrant earth and our rightful place in it.

"About as close you can get to the perfect cerebral thriller: searingly smart, ridiculously funny, and fast as hell. Lexicon reads like Elmore Leonard high out of his mind on Snow Crash." —Lev Grossman, New York Times bestselling author of The Magicians and The Magician King “Best thing I've read in a long time . . . a masterpiece.” —Hugh Howey, New York Times bestselling author of Wool Stick and stones break bones. Words kill. They recruited Emily Ruff from the streets. They said it was because she's good with words. They'll live to regret it. They said Wil Parke survived something he shouldn't have. But he doesn't remember. Now they're after him and he doesn't know why. There's a word, they say. A word that kills. And they want it back . . .

What if the start to your day was falling into the toilet, that caused you to miss your carpool, that in turn caused you to get to school late, that ultimately caused you to miss getting one of the decent parts in the upcoming Thanksgiving play? That is exactly what happens to fourth-grader Jelly Bean on the day we first meet her. Things only go downhill from there and no one at home seems to have much time for her. Except Roger-Over, her beloved dog.

Laiel Brockade is back. A little less pretty, a little unsteady on his feet. But despite all of that, he's gone to war. To defeat the opponents arrayed against him demands every last ounce of the power, ingenuity, and evil that he's known for. But nothing ever works out quite to order for the most wayward son of the Devil, now does it? A conflict of many sides, where every hand holds a dagger, and every dagger hovers at someone's back. At last his plans come to fruition, but the fruit borne thereof is sour indeed, because by the end he's achieved everything that he set out to do. Much to his dismay...