Over The Hedge

A guide to the DreamWorks movie in which forest animals wake from their winter hibernation to find that suburbia has arrived in their little part of the forest.

A scheming raccoon tricks a family of forest creatures into helping him repay a debt of food by invading the new suburban sprawl that arrived while they were hibernating.

When Verne the turtle and his woodland friends wake up from their hibernation, they find a suburban neighborhood encroaching on their forest home, Verne's first instinct is to retreat into his shell and leave, but then he meets R.J., a con-artist racoon. R.J. views suburbia as a treasure trove of goodies waiting to be discovered. And since he owes a very angry bear a lot of food, the opportunity is to good to pass up -- especially if he can convince his new friends to help him!

When Verne the turtle and his woodland friends wake up from their hibernation, they find a suburban neighborhood encroaching on their forest home, Verne's first instinct is to retreat into his shell and leave, but then he meets R.J., a con-artist racoon. R.J. views suburbia as a treasure trove of goodies waiting to be discovered. And since he owes a very angry bear a lot of food, the opportunity is to good to pass up -- especially if he can convince his new friends to help him!

From ensorcelled princesses to a frog that speaks, an enchanting collection of fairy tales from the Newbery Medal–winning author. The last mortal kingdom before the unmeasured sweep of Faerieland begins has at best held an uneasy truce with its unpredictable neighbor. There is nothing to show a boundary, at least on the mortal side of it; and if any ordinary human creature ever saw a faerie—or at any rate recognized one—it was never mentioned; but the existence of the boundary and of faeries beyond it is never in doubt either. So begins “The Stolen Princess,” the first story of this collection, about the meeting between the human princess Linadel and the faerie prince Donathor. “The Princess and the Frog” concerns Rana and her unexpected alliance with a small, green, flipper-footed denizen of a pond in the palace gardens. “The Hunting of the Hind” tells of a princess who has bewitched her beloved brother, hoping to beg some magic of cure, for her brother is dying, and the last tale is a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses in which an old soldier discovers, with a little help from a lavender-eyed witch, the surprising truth about where the princesses dance their shoes to tatters every night.

"Like good reporters, Mike Fry and T Lewis have revealed to us at last what lies just beyond those well-groomed hedges."--Jim Cox, producer of the upcoming Over the Hedge movie RJ, the mischievous raccoon, and Verne, his philosophical turtle pal, don't have time to be inconvenienced by the suburban sprawl that's washed up against their woodland home. They're in too big a hurry to embrace it and make it their own. They fly-fish for hot dogs, set up bleachers to watch big-screen TV, and sip virgin Banana Boomerangs while soaking in a Jell-O-filled hot tub. And if the joie de pirating isn't enough fun for these two bon vivants, there's always the local homeowner's association on which to inflict a coup d'etat. In Knights of the Picnic Table, their next Over the Hedge anthology, RJ and Verne are not just spectators to suburbanity, but also to the pregnancy of Noreen, whose home also happens to be their favorite fast-food franchise. When Noreen's husband, Nate, has to deliver their baby at home, RJ and Verne, personifying noblesse oblige, lead him through the harrowing birth. Then, as newborn Baby Clara's self-appointed au pairs, they take up the crusade of teaching her the finer points of their world while squiring her about in a Harley Davidson motorized stroller. It may not be Camelot, but there's not a more congenial spot than Over the Hedge.

The dismal truth about hedge funds and how investors can get a greater share of the profits Shocking but true: if all the money that's ever been invested in hedge funds had been in treasury bills, the results would have been twice as good. Although hedge fund managers have earned some great fortunes, investors as a group have done quite poorly, particularly in recent years. Plagued by high fees, complex legal structures, poor disclosure, and return chasing, investors confront surprisingly meager results. Drawing on an insider's view of industry growth during the 1990s, a time when hedge fund investors did well in part because there were relatively few of them, The Hedge Fund Mirage chronicles the early days of hedge fund investing before institutions got into the game and goes on to describe the seeding business, a specialized area in which investors provide venture capital-type funding to promising but undiscovered hedge funds. Today's investors need to do better, and this book highlights the many subtle and not-so-subtle ways that the returns and risks are biased in favor of the hedge fund manager, and how investors and allocators can redress the imbalance. The surprising frequency of fraud, highlighted with several examples that the author was able to avoid through solid due diligence, industry contacts, and some luck Why new and emerging hedge fund managers are where generally better returns are to be found, because most capital invested is steered towards apparently safer but less profitable large, established funds rather than smaller managers that evoke the more profitable 1990s Hedge fund investors have had it hard in recent years, but The Hedge Fund Mirage is here to change that, by turning the tables on conventional wisdom and putting the hedge fund investor back on top.