"A dazzling collection of eleven interconnected stories from the bestselling, award-winning author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life, with everything that readers love about her novels-the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations on human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop. In this brilliant volume, nothing is quite as it seems. We meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over...

"The evil Shadow Lord has become aware that Lief, Barda, and Jasmaine are searching for the seven lost gems of the magic Belt of Deltora. He knows that the Belt's power will threaten his terrifying rule if the gems can be returned to it."

Lief, Barda and Jasmine are on an important mission to save the land of Deltora from the evil Shadow Lord. They must find all seven stones from the magic belt of Deltora. The have already found the golden topaz, but now they mus travel through the region ruled by the monster-soceress Thaegan to find the second stone.

Bored with their work, three Milanese editors cook up "the Plan," a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. This produces a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled-a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault's Pendulum. But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real, and when occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the...

A guide to overcoming the worries of the world, written specifically for teen readers--Provided by the publisher

"This creatively wacky and interactive exploration of the abstract concepts of the human experience, such as feelings and thoughts, encourages readers to look past the visible and connect with the things that are not seen"--

"A delightful compendium of the kind of facts you immediately want to share with anyone you encounter . . . . Simon Winchester has firmly earned his place in history . . . as a promulgator of knowledge of every variety, perhaps the last of the famous explorers who crisscrossed the now-vanished British Empire and reported what they found to an astonished world." — New York Times

From the creation of the first

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