Bernard the Brave by Margery Sharp, 108 pages

 While Miss Bianca is away, Bernard faces the most daring prisoner rescuing mission yet. Miss Thomasina, orphan heiress to the Three Rivers Estate, has been kidnapped by her wicked guardian. With only one clue to follow, Bernard stamps off into the night. And what dangers he faces! But with obstinate determination and the help of a most unusual ally, Bernard does not falter from his purpose.

The Something Girl by Jodi Taylor, 275 pages

 The Nothing Girl has grown up…

It’s life as usual at Frogmorton Farm – which is to say that events have passed the merely eccentric and are now galloping headlong towards the completely bizarre.

Once again Jenny struggles to stay afloat in the stormy seas of matrimony with her husband, Russell Checkland, together with an unlikely mix of Patagonian Attack Chickens, Jack the Sad Donkey, and Mrs Crisp’s mysterious boyfriend. The old favourites are still around, of course. There’s Marilyn the Omnivorous Donkey, Russell’s ex-girlfriend Don’t Call Me Franny, and the neurotic Boxer, currently failing to deal with butterfly trauma.

So nothing much is new … except for the mysterious figure dogging Jenny’s steps and who, if she didn’t know better, she would swear was her sinister cousin Christopher, last seen being hurled from the house by her wayward husband. He couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to come back and try again … Could he?

Laughter in Appalachia by Loyal Jones and Billy Edd Wheeler, 155 pages

 As you chuckle through these tales you find the thread of self-effacing, good-natured warmth that characterizes Appalachia. -Southern Living From the people of the Appalachian Mountains comes a special brand of dry, colorful and earthy, aimed sometimes at the hillbilly's own foibles, but often at the outside world's pretenses, too. As longtime fans of and contributors to Appalachian lore, Jones and Wheeler collected the material for this popular and timeless volume at the Festival of Appalachian Humor sponsored by the Appalachian Center at Berea College. Includes jokes and yarns on such topics as hunting, lawyers and doctors, alcohol, and religion, along with essays on the nature and origins of humor. This hilarious collection based in Appalachia America will teach readers the importance of resourcefulness, trustworthiness and respect.

Hetty, The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon by Charles Slack,

 A full century before Martha Stewart, Oprah, and Madonna became icons, generations before women swept through Wall Street, and decades before they even had the right to vote, there was Hetty Green, America's richest woman, who stood alone among the roguish giants of the Gilded Age as the first lady of capitalism and is remembered as the Witch of Wall Street. At the time of her death in 1916, Hetty Green's personal fortune was estimated at $100 million ($1.6 billion today), and the financial empire she built on real estate and railroads rivaled that of Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and some of the nation's biggest banks. Today, Hetty Green ranks near the top of America's list of greatest financiers, in company with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and billionaire-investor Warren Buffett. But in history books she has remained merely a footnote, a miser and an eccentric, whose character flaws and personal choices unjustly overshadowed her remarkable accomplishments on the fierce battlefield of American industry and commerce. In Hetty, Charles Slack reexamines the life, work, and conflicted legacy of the exceptionally resourceful, ruthless, and inimitable woman who turned a comfortable inheritance into a fortune through instinct, courage, cunning, greed, and determination to succeed at a man's game on her own from her childhood in the Quaker community of New Bedford, Massachusetts, where she learned about business by reading financial papers to her father, to the battle over her inheritance that was one of the most controversial legal cases of her time; from her collisions with railroad magnate Collis Huntington to her rescue of New York City from financial ruin. Looking well beyond the lore and historical prejudices, Charles Slack presents a full portrait of a true American original, a female Citizen Kane who, having turned away from the conventions of her time, as a woman, a wife, a mother, and a mogul, led a life of a different sort, with occasionally tragic results, becoming both a hero and a victim of her era. Above all, it is a story of an uncompromising, larger-than-life, flawed woman who ruled a vast financial empire but was known, simply, as Hetty.

The Best of Archie Comics, 75 Years, 75 Stories, 640 pages

 Archie Comics has always been representative of teenage life. And I should know a thing or two about being a teenager—after all, I’ve been one for 75 years! THE BEST OF 75 YEARS, 75 STORIES gives fans the opportunity to take a look at some of my favorite stories from the past 75 years, one picked from every year since 1941. Along the way you’ll meet some of my friends (both off panel and on!), learn some behind-the-scenes info about the people who brought me to life, and get to learn about what was going on at the time the stories were made.

Celebrate 75 years of entertainment, humor and fun with me, Archie Andrews!

Wild Bird by Diane Zahler, 308 pages

 Get lost in a middle grade adventure following Rype, an abandoned girl in fourteenth-century Europe, as she walks from Norway to England looking for safety from the plague.

Her name was Rype. That wasn’t really her name. It was what the strangers called her. She didn’t remember her real name. She didn’t remember anything at all.

Rype was hiding in the hollow of a tree trunk when they found her. She was hungry, small, cold, alone. She did not speak their language, or understand their mannerisms. But she knew this: To survive, she would have to go with them.

In fourteenth-century Norway, the plague has destroyed the entire village of Skeviga. To stay alive, Rype, the only one left, must embark on an adventure across Europe with the son of an English ship captain and a band of troubadours in search of a brighter future and a new home.

Never Too Old To Save the World edited by Addie King & Alana Joli Abbott, 307 pages

 Once every generation there is a Chosen One, who will stand between humanity and darkness.

But why is the Chosen One so often a teenager? Why do only children get swept through portals to save the fantastic world on the other side? Whose idea was it to put the fate of the world in the hands of someone without a fully developed prefrontal cortex?

In Never Too Old to Save the World, nineteen authors explore what would happen if the Chosen One were called midlife. What would happen if the Chosen One were:

a soccer mom
a cat lady
a nosy grandmother
a social worker
a retiree
an aging swordmaster? 

The Chosen One could be anyone—because when the universe calls, the real question is whether the hero will take up the mantle and answer their midlife calling. Sometimes the world needs a hero who's already been in the thick of chaos and survived. In those cases, age does matter.