A young girl who loves fancy things helps her family to be fancy for one special night.

It is time for her baby sister's naming ceremony, and Amira has a name picked out, but as friends and family pronounce the names they have brought, Amira starts to wonder if her chosen name is really the blessing she thought it was. Includes a note about West African tradition of the naming ceremony.

"From the New York Times bestselling author of To Sir, With Love and the Central Park Pact series comes a reverse My Fair Lady tale about a pampered Manhattan socialite who must teach an unpolished drifter from the Louisiana Bayou how to fit in with New York City's upper crust. Somewhere between antagonistic dinner parties and tortured tux fittings, this pair of polar opposites slowly find a begrudging respect for one another--and perhaps even something...

"When etiquette coach Ms. Picklepop teeters off her stool and spills a bucket of paint, a creature emerges. Not a scary one, or an evil one, or anything of the sort. Instead, what comes alive is... BLURP! She'll have to carry on with her lesson, despite Blurp's many, messy distractions. But paint splotches and burps aren't all that disrupt Ms. Picklepop's decorous class. Perhaps through an unlikely friendship, Ms. Picklepop will learn a thing or two...

First published in 1938, this volume of stories collected with the encouragement of his longtime editor Pascal Covici serves as a wonderful introduction to the work of Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. Set in the beautiful Salinas Valley of California, where simple people farm the land and struggle to find a place for themselves in the world, these stories reflect Steinbecks characteristic interests: the tensions between town and country, laborers...

"Can Lady Philippa Ware forgive the man who once shattered all her youthful dreams? Discover the passionate and heartwarming new novel on the redemptive power of love from New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh. Philippa, elder daughter of the Earl of Stratton, grew up eagerly anticipating a glittering debut and a brilliant marriage. Then her brother caught their father out in a clandestine affair and denounced him publicly. The whole family...

"The days are getting shorter as summer's end approaches, which means it's time for the Harvest Festival, the last big event of the season, held by Mamie Fish, wife of millionaire railroad tycoon Stuyvesant Fish, at their grand "cottage," Crossways. The neocolonial mansion is decked out in artificial autumn splendor, and an extravagant scavenger hunt will be held. But the crowning jewel of the evening will be the guest of honor, Prince Otto of Austria....

The 21 stories in Complete Stories 1892-1898 represent James at the peak of his storytelling powers. Among them are "The Turn of the Screw," one of his most popular works, a terrifying exercise in psychological horror centering on the corruption of childhood innocence; "The Real Thing," a playful consideration of the illusions of art and the paradoxes of authenticity; "The Figure in the Carpet," "The Death of the Lion," and "The Middle Years," three...