Regal Ruckus

Effarna was only supposed to be in charge for a little while. You know the drill, help lost kids and answer questions. How hard could that be? There wasn’t any mention of “invasion” in the job description. Nor was there any mention of recruiting a squad of new friends, traveling the world together, acquiring new powers, delving into dungeons, fixing the Great Crystals, and battling insane bosses. Whose idea of fun was this? To win, all her party needs is a boat load of ambition and a good plan. Fortunately, they’ve got ambition. The plan? That’s going to need a little work. Anybody got a plan?

The classic crossword series returns with 300 never-before-published puzzles! In 1924, Simon & Schuster published its first title, The Cross Word Puzzle Book. Not only was it the publisher's first release—it was the first collection of crossword puzzles ever printed. Today, more than eighty years later, the legendary Simon & Schuster Crossword Puzzle Book series maintains its status as the standard-bearer for cruciverbal excellence. This series continues to provide the freshest and most original puzzles on the market. Created by the best contemporary constructors—and edited by top puzzle master John M. Samson—these Sunday-sized brain breakers offer hours of stimulation for solvers of every level. With more puzzles than ever before in one volume, the Simon & Schuster Crossword Puzzle Book series will continue to test the knowledge of solvers everywhere. Can you take the challenge? Sharpen your pencils, grit your teeth, and find out!

In Runt and Mumble: A Tale of Love and War, rats and mice take on human characteristics. They end up having the same dilemmas, but with a political undertone. Runt's gentle demeanor and small stature make him an easy target for abuse by other rats in the horde. Mumble, on the other hand, is an overgrown mouse whose slowness and large girth make her the laughingstock of her colony. A chance meeting between the two outcasts creates an unlikely friendship, as well as the chance for a new life of their own. Although rejected by their own societies, Runt and Mumble's relationship sparks a war between rats and mice as they fight for ultimate control over food and territory. With their lives in danger and their freedom slipping away, Runt and Mumble find themselves in a worse situation than when they first met, and it seems that nothing short of a miracle could help them now.

Offers a decade-by-decade history of American singing groups, from the Ames and Mills Brothers, to the Platters and the Beach Boys, to Destiny's Child, the Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, and many others, covering more than 380 artists and furnishing information on each group's career, key members, influences, photos, and discographies. Original.

Adjacent or adjoining? Abuse or misuse? Consist, comprise, constitute, or compose? Guarantee or warranty? Pose, propose, or propound? Stationery or stationary? The Dictionary of Confusable Words aims to clear up the confusion in such cases. In more than 1,100 entries, the meaning of 3,000 individual words are given,the difference between them is explained, and an illustrative example showing the correct usage is provided. The book also includes specific examples to show past and present usage of words, and words occuring as the second or subsequent in a group are cross-referenced to ther head word in the appropriate alphabetical place. Editor Adrian Room has also included some familiar proper names that are sometimes confused, such as Liberia and Libya (countries), Monterey and Monterrey (towns), and Lloyds and Lloyd's (financial institutions). Classic or classical? Discreet or discrete? Continual or Continuous? Principle or Principal? Confused? Be confused no longer, with this handy book as your user-friendly guide.

The definitive biography of Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw, examining the genesis of his brilliance, his epic quest to win the World Series, and his singular place within the evolving baseball landscape—based on exclusive interviews with Kershaw and more than 200 others.​ More than any baseball player of his generation, Clayton Kershaw has embodied the burden of athletic greatness, the prizes and perils that await those who strive for it all. He is a three-time Cy Young award winner, the first pitcher to win National League MVP since Bob Gibson, and a surefire, first-ballot Hall of Famer. Many of his peers consider him the greatest pitcher to ever climb atop a big-league mound. In an age when baseball became more impersonal, a sport altered by adherence to algorithms and actuarial tables, Kershaw personified the game’s lingering humanity, with his joy and suffering on display each October as he chased a championship. He pitched through pain, placing his future at risk on the game’s grandest stages. He endeared himself to teammates and foes alike with his refusal to make excuses, with his willingness to shoulder the blame when he failed. And he only further impressed them when he returned, year after year, even as his body broke down from the strain of his profession. The journey captivated fans in Los Angeles and beyond, so much so that when the Dodgers finally won a title in 2020, the baseball world exulted in his triumph. The Last of His Kind traces Kershaw’s path from a boyhood fractured by divorce to his development as one of the most-heralded pitching prospects in Texas history to his emergence in Los Angeles as the spiritual heir to Sandy Koufax. But the book also charts Kershaw’s place in baseball’s changing landscape, as his own stubbornness butted against the game’s evolution. The story of baseball in the 21st century can be told through Kershaw’s career, from his apprenticeship with icons like Joe Torre and Greg Maddux, to his wary relationship with the implementation of analytics, to his victimhood in the 2017 sign-stealing scandal at the hands of the Houston Astros. The game has changed so much during Kershaw’s illustrious career. To understand how baseball is played today, and how it got that way, you must understand the journey of Clayton Kershaw.