THE DIARY OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, GENT is part comedy, part love story, the threads of Shakespeare's life drawn from his plays. Could the world's greatest writer truly put down his pen forever to become a gentleman? He was a boy who escaped small town life to be the most acclaimed playwright of the land. A lover whose sonnets still sing 400 years later; a glover's apprentice who became a gentleman. But was he happy with his new riches? Who was the woman he truly loved? The world knows the name of William Shakespeare. This book reveals the man - lover, son and poet. Based on new documentary evidence, as well as textual examination of his plays, this fascinating book gives a tantalising glimpse at what might have been: the other hands that helped craft those plays, the secrets that must ever be hidden but - just possibly - may now be told. Ages 12+

Roar! It's not bad enough that Mom and Dad are heading to California, leaving Judy and Stink with Aunt Awful (er, Opal), but now Judy's two best friends are going Splitsville, too. Just when it looks like her summer is going to be BOR-ing - eureka! - Judy comes up with the most thrill-a-delic plan ever. Get ready for a race involving tightrope walking, Scream Monster riding, and way more! Add in a treasure hunt for Judy's teacher, a midnight stakeout, a runaway ice-cream truck, and a dash of Bigfoot, and what have you got? The Judy Moodiest summer ever! Based on the screenplay by Kathy Waugh and Megan McDonald.

I had big thoughts to match the big wind. I wondered if we find the people we need when we need them. I wondered if we attract our future by some sort of invisible force, or if we are drawn to it by a similar force. I felt I was turning a corner and that change was afoot. In the little town of Blackbird Tree live two orphan girls: one Naomi Deane, brimming with curiosity, and her best friend, Lizzie Scatterding, who could talk the ears off a cornfield. Naomi has a knack for being around when trouble happens. For she knows all the peculiar people in town—like Crazy Cora and Witch Wiggins and Mr. Farley. But then, one day, a boy drops out of a tree. The strangely charming Finn boy. Then the Dingle Dangle man appears, asking all kinds of questions. Curious surprises are revealed—three locked trunks, a pair of rooks, a crooked bridge, and that boy. Soon Naomi and Lizzie find themselves zooming toward a future neither could ever have imagined. Meanwhile, on a grand estate across the ocean, an old lady whose heart has been deceived concocts a plan. . . . As two very different worlds are woven together, Newbery Medal winner Sharon Creech celebrates the gossamer thread that connects us all, and the great and unexpected gifts of love, friendship, and forgiveness. From School Library JournalGr 5-7-After an epigraph, prologue, and first chapter that increasingly pull readers in deeper and deeper, The Great Unexpected-part realistic fiction, part mystery, and part ghost story-disappoints. In the small, probably Southern town of Blackbird Tree, orphaned 12-year-old Naomi Deane receives a whack on the head as an inert boy tumbles down from a tree. Joined by her motormouth friend, Lizzie Scatterding, she pronounces the boy "dead," but he soon sits up and starts asking questions in a strange accent-clearly, he's not from around there. Naomi Deane's narration constitutes the bulk of the story, but every third or fourth chapter takes place "Across the Ocean" in a grand Irish estate, where readers follow the antics of elderly companions Mrs. Kavanagh and Miss Pilpenny. Creech gradually reveals the connections between the two story lines; clues appear in appropriately small doses that will appeal to young detectives. But a confusing narrative style makes the book hard to follow. Instead of consistently using a progressive or episodic structure for either plotline, Creech alternates between the two, which places readers in an uncomfortably disorienting position upon beginning each chapter: Does this start where we left off, or have several weeks passed? Overuse of quirky and alliterative names such as "the dapper Dingle Dangle man," the "dim Dimmenses," "Crazy Cora," and "Witch Wiggins" distracts from the story. For better-told small-town adventures and rich language, try Richard Peck's A Long Way from Chicago (Dial, 1998) or Susan Patron's The Higher Power of Lucky (S & S, 2006).-Allison Bruce, The Berkeley Carrol School, Brooklyn, NYα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. About the AuthorSharon Creech is the author of the Newbery Medal winner Walk Two Moons and the Newbery Honor Book The Wanderer. Her other work includes the novels The Unfinished Angel, Hate That Cat, The Castle Corona, Replay, Heartbeat, Granny Torrelli Makes Soup, Ruby Holler, Love That Dog, Bloomability, Absolutely Normal Chaos, Chasing Redbird, and Pleasing the Ghost, as well as three picture books: A Fine, Fine School; Fishing in the Air; and Who's That Baby? Ms. Creech and her husband live in upstate New York.

In this lively book, award-winning author-artist Bob Barner takes readers on a ride through outer space to visit distant planets and dazzling stars. The simple rhyming text and colorful torn-paper collage illustrations make this book perfect for the very youngest readers, and the Meet the Planets and Meet the Galaxy sections, both bursting with facts, will engage older readers as well. Stars! Stars! Stars! will rocket aspiring stargazers right out of this world!

The telegram from Singapore was a coded message from Chahda, their friend from Bombay. (What he as doing in Singapore, none of them could imagine.) It was a big pile of numbers that looked like gokum until the island's brain trust had been over it. But they did go over it, and found a message -- Come both. Bad troubles. Am in danger. My boss, Carl Bradley, disappeared. Government will ask scientific father do special work. Must take. Get jobs, meet me Hong Kong Golden Mouse. Watch Chinese with glass eye, he dangerous. And beware long shadow. . . . The message was an adventure getting ready to happen, was what if was. But what's to expect? This is a book called The Caves of Fear. It's a Rick Brant science-adventure story! Of course there are improbable puzzles and peculiar circumstances!  

Filled with pulse-pounding action and cryptic codes, The Golden Vendetta is the third engrossing book in bestselling author Tony Abbott's cloak-and-dagger series for young readers.It's been two months since the Kaplan family hunted down the Serpens relic, but when the evil Galina Krause suddenly and violently reappears, Wade, Darrell, Lily, and Becca have no choice but to face her again. Now they must race to find an artifact said to be crafted by Leonardo da Vinci himself—perhaps the strangest Guardian of all. Along the way, they uncover another layer to Galina's sinister endgame . . . and there might not be enough time to stop it.Fans of Rick Riordan and Ridley Pearson will love this adventurous series.Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts

Celebrate the holidays in style — mouse-style, that is! Join Geronimo for his first-ever special edition.It was Christmastime on Mouse Island, and I couldn't wait to celebrate with my friends and family. But then I discovered that they were all traveling out of town for the holidays, and I'd be spending Christmas alone! I was starting to feel like a real grinch. Would this be my loneliest Christmas ever?

"Artificial intelligence may be our biggest existential threat." –Elon Musk, inventor. "Robert Stanek is one of our most featured and respected Kids & Young Adults authors." –The Audio Book Store. "Anyone who enjoyed The Hunger Games, World War Z, or The Maze Runner is going to enjoy this." –Lisa Gardner, author.Cedes thought she knew what we were to the machines, but she was wrong, and the ragged band of human survivors must now learn to stay alive in a city under siege. But it's not just the machines they must contend with—it's human against human and machines against all. As Cedes and Luke struggle to survive, new and surprising leaders emerge. Leaders who want to tear each other and the broken city apart to find the hidden secrets that will reveal the story of the human race. The story of us. Will this path lead to redemption, the destruction of everything they hold dear, or will it lead to mankind's final days on Earth?

A poignant and very personal childhood memoir of growing up in Cumbria during the Second World War and into the 1950s, from columnist Hunter Davies Despite the struggle to make ends meet during the tough years of warfare in the 1940s and rationing persisting until the early 1950s, life could still be sweet. Especially if you were a young boy, playing football with your pals, saving up to go to the movies at the weekend, and being captivated by the latest escapade of Dick Barton on the radio. Chocolate might be scarce, and bananas would be a pipe dream, but you could still have fun. In an excellent social memoir from one of the UK's premier columnists over the past five decades, Hunter Davies captures this period beautifully. His memoir of growing up in post-war North of England from 1945 onwards, amid the immense damage wrought by the Second World War, and the dreariness of life on...

A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERYThe Second World War has just finished and amateur detective and poet Nigel Strangeways is working at the Ministry of Morale in London, in the Visual Propaganda Division.With war over, life seems to be calm again, that is until the Director's beautiful secretary is poisoned in full view of seven members of the division, including Nigel himself. Who could have killed her? And how?A Nigel Strangeways murder mystery - the perfect introduction to the most charming and erudite detective in Golden Age crime fiction.;MORE VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERIES MARGERY ALLINGHAMMystery Mile Police at the Funeral Sweet Danger Flowers for the Judge The Case of the Late Pig The Fashion in Shrouds Traitor's PurseCoroner's Pidgin More Work for the Undertaker The Tiger in...