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The eagerly anticipated sequel to Celia and the Fairies! When nine-year-old Paul explores the hole dug for his backyard swimming pool, he discovers a box containing a ring—a ring that turns out to be magical. Moments later, a mysterious boy shows up demanding the ring; luckily, Paul’s trusty dog Clem scares him away. To keep the ring safe, Paul hides it in his pillow case, where, to his horror, it’s discovered by his mother, who loans it to his Aunt Vicky. Things get even stranger when Vicky, a non-swimmer, falls into the now-finished pool and discovers that her greatest secret wish has been granted—she can swim! As the ring gets passed around and wishes are made, a wild series of talents and circumstances threaten to turn their lives upside down…forever. But Jasmine, a fairy of the woods, has an idea, and if everyone cooperates, she just might be able to put an end to the shenanigans and return their lives to normal. Wildly original and full of vibrant, chaotic imagination, Secrets of the Magic Ring is proof of the old adage, “Be careful what you wish for.” Karen McQuestion Interviews Illustrator Vincent Desjardins Karen McQuestion: True confession--before I knew for sure that you’d be doing the artwork for my book, I secretly stalked your website and blog and was so impressed! The examples of your work show very diverse styles. How did you become so versatile? Vincent Desjardins: I think in order to compete in today’s competitive illustration market, an illustrator needs to be adaptable. But actually I think any versatility that I may have achieved is probably due to my career-long search for a style. I’d heard over and over again how important it is to develop a personal style and worried that my work was too “all over the map.” I’ve been doing my work digitally for over twenty years, where it’s much easier to explore and take risks. If you make a mistake you can “undo” it and you can save multiple versions of the same image. I also have so many different illustrators that have influenced me that I often find myself creating challenges to see if I can do something in their style. Karen McQuestion: When my editor told me you were available to do the illustrations for Secrets of the Magic Ring I was over-the-moon thrilled. How did you prepare for the project? Vincent Desjardins: Well, first off, I read the manuscript straight through. Then I went back over it for a second pass and underlined all of the passages that I felt had visual potential. When your editor forwarded me one of your emails where you said you were a fan of N. M. Bodecker, the illustrator of Edward Eager’s books, I checked out all of his books so I could study the illustrations. Bodecker has a wonderful style. He was especially good at using patterns and stylizing things like trees and plants. Karen McQuestion: With publishers tightening their belts, fewer middle grade books are now illustrated. What are your thoughts on this? Vincent Desjardins: Of course as an illustrator this is something that directly affects my profession so it makes me sad. As an avid reader of children’s middle grade fiction, it also saddens me, especially when I browse the books in our library’s children’s classics section and I see the beautiful pen and ink illustrations that filled so many of the books from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. I know that when I was a child, I would always go for the books that had pictures in them. When starting a book, I would look at all of the pictures first because then I found it fun to search for the accompanying text while I was reading. When I would get to the text that was being illustrated, I would always go back and forth between the picture and the text to see how the artist interpreted the author’s words. I still do that. Karen McQuestion: Do you draw from memory? Vincent Desjardins: Not entirely. I usually do a rough layout sketch of where I want the figures placed and then I use various types of guides to help me flesh things out. For example, I will often search for images of plants and animals to use as drawing aids. Sometimes I will even search for things like women’s hairstyles. For the dog, Clem, in Secrets of the Magic Ring, I looked at photographs of a breed of dog called an Otterhound. For filling in simple background details, for example, the objects you might see in a laundry room, I usually just use my imagination and memory. A Look Inside Secrets of the Magic Ring Click on thumbnails for larger images "Not so fast," Grammy said, entering the clearing. Celia and Paul sat in the shade of the Triple Trees eating a picnic lunch. So this is what it felt like to fly. The fairy girl, Jasmine, watched the party and puzzled over the turn of events.

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Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. We have begun publishing his many works for the first time as blackspine Penguin Classics featuring eye-catching, newly commissioned art. This season we continue with the seven spectacular and influential books East of Eden, Cannery Row, In Dubious Battle, The Long Valley, The Moon Is Down, The Pastures of Heaven, and Tortilla Flat. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers—and to the many who revisit them again and again.

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When librarian Kathleen Paulson moved to Mayville Heights, Minnesota, she had no idea that two strays would nuzzle their way into her life. Owen is a tabby with a catnip addiction and Hercules is a stocky tuxedo cat who shares Kathleen's fondness for Barry Manilow. But beyond all the fur and purrs, there's something more to these felines. When murder interrupts Mayville's Music Festival, Kathleen finds herself the prime suspect. More stunning is her realization that Owen and Hercules are magical-and she's relying on their skills to solve a purr-fect murder.

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In Winter Solstice Rosamunde Pilcher brings her readers into the lives of five very different people....Elfrida Phipps, once of London's stage, moved to the English village of Dibton in hopes of making a new life for herself. Gradually she settled into the comfortable familiarity of village life -- shopkeepers knowing her tastes, neighbors calling her by name -- still she finds herself lonely. Oscar Blundell gave up his life as a musician in order to marry Gloria. They have a beautiful daughter, Francesca, and it is only because of their little girl that Oscar views his sacrificed career as worthwhile. Carrie returns from Australia at the end of an ill-fated affair with a married man to find her mother and aunt sharing a home and squabbling endlessly. With Christmas approaching, Carrie agrees to look after her aunt's awkward and quiet teenage daughter, Lucy, so that her mother might enjoy a romantic fling in America.Sam Howard is trying to pull his life back together after his wife has left him for another. He is without home and without roots, all he has is his job. Business takes him to northern Scotland, where he falls in love with the lush, craggy landscape and set his sights on a house.It is the strange rippling effects of a tragedy that will bring these five characters together in a large, neglected estate house near the Scottish fishing town of Creagan. It is in this house, on the shortest day of the year, that the lives of five people will come together and be forever changed. Rosamunde Pilcher's long-awaited return to the page will warm the hearts of readers both old and new. Winter Solstice is a novel of love, loyalty and rebirth.

Rosamunde Pilcher's novel, despite its chilly setting, will warm the hearts of her growing army of loyal fans. Winter Solstice has all the familiar trademarks of a Pilcher saga, spun in her inimitable, homey, beguiling style. The story is told, chapter by chapter, from the perspectives of an eclectic array of characters. Former actress Elfrida--not very good by her own admission--leaves London for a geriatric bolthole in the country where she meets retired schoolmaster and organist, Oscar. Meanwhile, Carrie (Elfrida's second cousin), returns to London from Austria where she had a brilliant career in the tourist industry, only to find her niece, 14-year-old Lucy, sadly neglected by her selfish mother and equally spoiled grandmother. Finally, handsome Sam is recalled from New York by his company chairman to revive an ailing Scottish textile mill. As one character after another must learn to live with their losses, they find themselves collectively spirited northwards, from Sussex to Scotland, by way of Cornwall. And, as events unfurl, slowly, surely, but inevitably, those in need find solace in unexpected places. While her characterizations are generally carefully crafted and entirely rounded, Pilcher's greatest strengths lie in her natural, easy narratives of everyday life and her thoroughly researched and captivating descriptions of scenery and surroundings. --Carey Green

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The bagpipes are blaring at Moosetookalook's finest hotel, reopened just in time to host an annual celebration of Scotland's most beloved poet. But when the Scottish Heritage Appreciation Society arrives on the scene, they bring more than a hunger for haggis and a passion for plaid. The quarrelsome group harbours their share of long held grudges, and the animosity only grows as the whiskey flows. Then a fierce blizzard hits, trapping everyone - angry Scotsmen, hapless hotel staff, and Liss herself - indoors. It isn't long before a body is discovered face down in a storage room, covered in tartan - and blood. Now Liss will have to work fast to solve this crime before another body goes as cold as the snowstorm keeping her cooped up with a killer.

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This comprehensive volume of all of Twain's shorter works is representative of his vast humor and wit. "The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain" includes the following tales: The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, The Story of the Bad Little Boy, Cannibalism in the Cars, A Day at Niagara, Legend of the Capitoline Venus, Journalism in Tennessee, A Curious Dream, The Facts in the Great Beef Contract, How I Edited an Agricultural Paper, A Medieval Romance, My Watch, Political Economy, Science vs. Luck, The Story of the Good Little Boy, Buck Fanshaw's Funeral, The Story of the Old Ram, Tom Quartz, A Trial, The Trials of Simon Erickson, A True Story, Experience of the McWilliamses with Membranous Croup, Some Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls, The Canvasser's Tale, The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton, Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale, The Man Who Put Up at Gadsby's, Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning, What Stumped the Bluejays, A Curious Experience, The Invalid's Story, The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm, The Stolen White Elephant, A Burning Brand, A Dying Man's Confession, The Professor's Yarn, A Ghost Story, Luck, Playing Courier, The Californian's Tale, The Diary of Adam and Eve, The Esquimau Maiden's Romance, Is He Living or Is He Dead?, The 1,000,000 Bank-Note, Cecil Rhodes and the Shark, The Joke That Made Ed's Fortune, A Story Without an End, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, The Death Disk, Two Little Tales, The Belated Russian Passport, A Double-Barreled Detective Story, The Five Boons of Life, Was It Heaven? Or Hell?, A Dog's Tale, The $30,000 Bequest, A Horse's Tale, Hunting the Deceitful Turkey, Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, A Fable, and The Mysterious Stranger. Nearly 500 pages of classic tales by one of America's most loved authors.

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This third volume in The Library of America's authoritative edition of John Steinbeck's writings shows one of America's most enduring popular writers continuing restlessly to explore new subject matter and new approaches to storytelling. The Moon Is Down (1942), set in an unnamed Scandinavian country under German occupation, dramatizes the transformation of ordinary life under totalitarian rule and the underground struggle against the Nazi invaders. In Cannery Row (1945) Steinbeck paid tribute to his closest friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, in the central character of Doc, proprietor of the Western Biological Laboratory and spiritual and financial mainstay of a cast of philosophical drifters and hangers-on. The comic and bawdy evocation of the main street of Monterey's sardine-canning district has made this one of the most popular of all Steinbeck's novels. Steinbeck's long involvement with Mexican culture is distilled in The Pearl (1947). Expanding on an anecdote he had heard about a boy who found a pearl of unusual size, Steinbeck turned it into an allegory of the corrupting influence of sudden wealth. The Pearl appears here with the original illustrations by José Clemente Orozco. Ambitious in scale and original in structure, East of Eden (1952) recounts the violent and emotionally turbulent history of a Salinas Valley family through several generations. Drawing on Biblical parallels, East of Eden is an epic that explores the writer's deepest and most anguished concerns within a landscape that for him had mythic resonance.

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Color is the most personal element a knitter brings to her work. Vibrant colors combined in exciting patterns can make a project sing; dull colors or jarring combinations can just as easily break the same project. Yet even experienced knitters often feel uncertain about stepping outside safe but predictable color choices. Noted knitwear designer and color connoisseur Kristin Nicholas encourages readers to conquer their color inhibitions, learn a little basic color theory, and create personally satisfying fiber palettes. Once awakened to the glories of color, knitters begin to see new possibilities in nature, at museums, in full-color books and magazines—everywhere that color makes a powerful statement. Any beautiful display can become the inspiration for an upcoming knitting project! The fresh collection of 25 designs for hats, mittens, scarves, socks, and sweaters that Kristin has created for Kristin Knits showcases her extraordinary feel for color. Her distinctive palette, influenced by Indian and French provincial textiles, is recognizable in fi ve exciting designs for each type of garment. Whether using Kristin's favorite colors or applying exciting personal choices, knitters will be thrilled to create these projects. Kristin's innovative stitch combinations are another hallmark of her fearless ways with knitted color. She adds stripes and checks to rib stitches, bobbles and fringe to edgings, and even embellishes entire projects with a few basic embroidery stitches. Welcome to a Technicolor world of knitting!

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Long known as the leader in advanced fire service training materials, Fire Engineering Books & Videos is proud to announce a new way to train the next generation of firefighters: Fire Engineering's Handbook for Firefighter I and II. Glenn Corbett, Fire Engineering magazine's technical editor, has assembled the top names in firefighting to compile what will be the most authoritative, comprehensive, and up-to-date basics book for Firefighter I and II classes. This real-world guide will meet the 2008 NFPA Standards 1001 & 472 and offer innovative ways to train the next generation of firefighters. Fire Engineering's Handbook for Firefighter I and II is a thorough guide that engages the student and satisfies the needs of the instructor by covering basic fire topics and addressing techniques and issues that are relevant to the firefighter candidate. Inside these pages the instructor will find expert advice from the nationally-known leaders from Fire Engineering magazine and FDIC. With full-color throughout, at-a-glance information, color photos, and detailed illustrations, the reader will easily make his way through our book without being overwhelmed or distracted by unnecessary elements. If you're ready for a new approach to training Firefighter I and II, look no further than the leaders in fire service education: Fire Engineering.

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Have some evil fun inside your head!This wickedly inventive guide offers 19 build-it-yourself projects featuring high-tech devices that can map, manipulate, and even improve the greatest computer on earth-the human brain. Every project inside Mind Performance Projects for the Evil Genius is perfectly safe and explores cutting-edge concepts, such as brain wave mapping, lucid dream control, and hypnosis.Using easy-to-find parts and tools, this do-it-yourself book offers a wide variety of brain-bending bio hacks you can accomplish on your own. You'll find detailed guidelines, parameters, schematics, code, and customization tips for each project in the book. The only limit is your imagination!Mind Performance Projects for the Evil Genius:Features step-by-step instructions, complete with helpful illustrationsAllows you to customize each project for your purposesDiscusses the underlying principles behind the projectsRemoves the frustration factor-all required parts are listed, along with sourcesBuild these and other lid-flipping gadgets:Biofeedback deviceReaction speedometerBody temperature monitorHeart rate monitorLie detectorWhite noise generatorWaking reality testerAudio dream directorLucid dream mask Alpha meditation gogglesClairvoyance testerVisual hypnosis aidColor therapy deviceSynchro brain machine