As six Californians get together to form a book club to discuss the novels of Jane Austen, their lives are turned upside down by troubled marriages, illicit affairs, changing relationships, and love.

Its the early 1980s-the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels.As Madeleine tries to understand why "it became laughable...

Judy Moody is freaky for Nancy Drew, the famous girl detective from the book series. When Judy bumps into Mighty Fantaskey, she's excited to make a new friend who is also a Nancy Drew fan. Excited, that is, until she visits Mighty's house: it's big and old and creaky and spooky. It even swallows up Judy's mood ring! Can Judy muster up the courage to go back and reclaim it?

Jordan Bingham's first assignment on her new job is to track down a rumored Agatha Christie play, but she soon finds out that her predecessor was killed while looking for it.

A mouse searches everywhere for a friend.

Jane Austen's first novel--published posthumously in 1818--tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion. Though Austen's fallible heroine is repeatedly drawn into scrapes while vacationing at Bath and during her subsequent visit to Northanger Abbey, Catherine eventually triumphs, blossoming into a discerning woman who learns truths about love, life, and the heady power of literature....

This book introduces 13 artists children should know. It shows you their most famous pictures and tells you about where and when they lived, as well as the ideas they tried to put into practice in their paintings. A timeline gives you an idea of important events which took place during each artist's lifetime. And at the back of the book you'll find an explanation of the special terms used in the book.

Wales, 1974. Petra and Sharon, two thirteen-year-old girls, are obsessed with David Cassidy. His fan magazine is their Bible, and some days his letters are the only things that keep them going as they struggle through the humiliating daily rituals of adolescence-confronting their bewildering new bodies, fighting with mothers who don't understand them at all. Together they tackle the Ultimate David Cassidy Quiz, a contest whose winners will be flown...

"From leading Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, a timely and insightful examination of what the world's greatest dramatist can teach us about life in an America riven by conflict. The United States has always been divided, but Americans from all walks of life have also always shared a deep affinity for the plays William Shakespeare, even if their meaning has been fiercely contested. For well over two centuries now, Americans of all stripes--presidents...

In this guide to a romanticized version of the American expansion west, children's book editor and memoirist McClure attempts to recapture her childhood vision of "Laura World" (i.e., the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her Little House books about an 1880s pioneer family).