Nothing Much Happens

Soothing stories to help you fall and stay asleep, based on the popular podcast Busy minds need a place to rest. Whether you find yourself struggling to sleep, awake in the middle of the night, or even just anxious as you move through the day, in Nothing Much Happens, Kathryn Nicolai offers a healthy way to ease the mind before bed: through the timeless appeal of classic bedtime stories. Already beloved by millions of podcast listeners, the stories in Nothing Much Happens explore and expose small sweet moments of joy and relaxation: Sneaking lilacs from an abandoned farm in the spring. Watching fireflies from the deck in the summer. Visiting the local cider mill in the autumn. Watching the tree lighting in the park with friends in the winter. You'll also find sixteen new stories never before featured on the podcast, along with whimsical illustrations, recipes, and meditations. Using her decades of experience as a meditation and yoga teacher, Kathryn Nicolai creates a world for you to slip into, one rich in sensory experience that quietly teaches mindfulness and self-compassion, soothes frayed nerves, and builds solid habits for nurturing sleep. A PENGUIN LIFE TITLE

PICKED FOR WORLD BOOK NIGHT 2020 THE PERFECT READ TO CALM YOUR MIND IN TIMES OF STRESS **** As recommended by RED magazine **** 'Dreamy' STYLIST 'Calm and restore an anxious mind before sleep... the most beautiful book that will, without a doubt, put you in the mood for some zzzzzs.' the SUN 'Hurrah for a book that draws us away from the cold blue light of the smart phone and into the soothing glow of poems, short stories and extracts' THE SIMPLE THINGS Introduced by Lucy Mangan * * * Tales to soothe tired souls. A night time companion for frazzled adults, including calming stories and poems for a good night's sleep. * * * This cheering book of best loved short tales, extracts and poems will calm and restore an anxious mind before sleep. A good night's sleep is essential for our well being and our health, but in our busy lives sleep is often poor and overlooked. Now is the time to stop a while and find consolation and wonder in other worlds where all is well and sleep just a page or two away. From classic stories by Oscar Wilde, Guy de Maupassant and Katherine Mansfield, to friendly tales of our childhoods, to poetry that reminds us of the simple joys of life, this lovingly curated book will soothe a tired mind and gently carry you to the peaceful land of sleep. So switch off, snuggle down and allow yourself to escape into new worlds and old; magical, mysterious and tender realms that will accompany you to your own sweet dreams.

This isn’t a romance of easy solutions. It’s a love story between two men who should never have come together. In Andrew’s world, nothing much happens. His days with his wife and son are content, if not passionate. The new neighbors are about to change all that Nathan is looking forward to the arrival of his new baby and his first teaching job. Then he meets Andrew, and his world turns upside down. Tension morphs into passion and it’s obvious to everyone, however hard they try to hide it. Even from each other. But Andrew and Nathan love their families too. Making decisions is never easy and in a small cul-de-sac, the two men have hard choices to make. Do they follow their hearts or their responsibilities? CW: Cheating

Lauren Shippen's The Infinite Noise is a stunning, original debut novel based on her wildly popular and award-winning podcast The Bright Sessions. Caleb Michaels is a sixteen-year-old champion running back. Other than that his life is pretty normal. But when Caleb starts experiencing mood swings that are out of the ordinary for even a teenager, his life moves beyond “typical.” Caleb is an Atypical, an individual with enhanced abilities. Which sounds pretty cool except Caleb's ability is extreme empathy—he feels the emotions of everyone around him. Being an empath in high school would be hard enough, but Caleb's life becomes even more complicated when he keeps getting pulled into the emotional orbit of one of his classmates, Adam. Adam's feelings are big and all-consuming, but they fit together with Caleb's feelings in a way that he can't quite understand. Caleb's therapist, Dr. Bright, encourages Caleb to explore this connection by befriending Adam. As he and Adam grow closer, Caleb learns more about his ability, himself, his therapist—who seems to know a lot more than she lets on—and just how dangerous being an Atypical can be. “What if the X-Men, instead of becoming superheroes, decided to spend some time in therapy?” (Vox on The Bright Sessions) At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Guardian cartoonist relates the daily deadpan adventures of the last policeman living on the moon "Living on the moon...Whatever were we thinking? ...It seems so silly now.” The lunar colony is slowly winding down, like a small town circumvented by a new super highway. As our hero, the Mooncop, makes his daily rounds, his beat grows ever smaller, the population dwindles. A young girl runs away, a dog breaks off his leash, an automaton wanders off from the Museum of the Moon. Each day that the Mooncop goes to work, life gets a little quieter and a little lonelier. As in Goliath, Tom Gauld’s retelling of the Bible story, the focus in Gauld's science fiction is personal—no big explosions or grand reveals, just the incremental dissolution of an abandoned project and a person’s slow awakening to his own uselessness. Depicted in the distinctive, matter-of-fact style of his beloved Guardian strips, Mooncop is equal parts funny and melancholy. Gauld captures essential truths about humanity, making this a story of the past, present, and future, all in one.

There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road. A calico cat, about to have kittens, hears the lonely howl of a chained-up hound deep in the backwaters of the bayou. She dares to find him in the forest, and the hound dares to befriend this cat, this feline, this creature he is supposed to hate. They are an unlikely pair, about to become an unlikely family. Ranger urges the cat to hide underneath the porch, to raise her kittens there because Gar-Face, the man living inside the house, will surely use them as alligator bait should he find them. But they are safe in the Underneath...as long as they stay in the Underneath. Kittens, however, are notoriously curious creatures. And one kitten’s one moment of curiosity sets off a chain of events that is astonishing, remarkable, and enormous in its meaning. For everyone who loves Sounder, Shiloh, and The Yearling, for everyone who loves the haunting beauty of writers such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Flannery O’Connor, and Carson McCullers, Kathi Appelt spins a harrowing yet keenly sweet tale about the power of love—and its opposite, hate—the fragility of happiness and the importance of making good on your promises.

Reader, don’t waste your time with this book. You might as well stick this book back on the shelf. Or toss it under your bed. You don’t need to read it because nothing happens. Or, wait, is that something? It’s a trumpet without a trumpeter. And there’s a tiny car without a driver. And a baton without a twirler. Maybe if you keep turning the pages, you’ll find out who is missing these items. Maybe they are all together, about to do something surprising. Maybe something does happen after all — something amazing! Kids will be hooked as they embark on a quest to find this (seemingly) missing story!