Against a rising tide of commuter mayhem, three women struggle in to work. Caught up in the chaos on the streets - and in the equally savage battle surrounding their boss's extortion racket - Annette, Joan and Helly are forced to ditch everything for an offensive of their own, only to find the cruellest circumstances can make heroines of us all. Like most offices, theirs is full of intrigue, sexual desire and blackmail - and everybody thinks it is somebody else's turn to make the coffee.

The bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed goes back undercover to do for America's ailing middle class what she did for the working poorBarbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with a plausible résumé of a professional "in transition," she attempts to land a middle-class job—undergoing career coaching and personality testing, then trawling a series of EST-like boot camps, job fairs, networking events, and evangelical job-search ministries. She gets an image makeover, works to project a winning attitude, yet is proselytized, scammed, lectured, and—again and again—rejected.Bait and Switch highlights the people who've done everything right—gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive...

As the Japanese sweep across the Pacific, the Allies make a last-ditch effort to defend Java. Captain Nick Everard, commanding the cruiser Defiant, joins a mixed group of Allied ships to engage a superior Japanese invasion force. Nick is badly wounded and his ship is caught alone in the tightening noose of Japanese dominance. To escape, the battered Defiant must play a cat-and-mouse game with the hunting Japanese among the islands of the Java Sea.

Lady Kynthia Ancaeus was the unwilling bride of a man she had never met. She jumps at the chance to possess powers that will ensure she will never be a helpless victim again. Leksi Helios tried his best to outrun the pack of women warriors, but a narcotic-tipped arrow brought him to ground. Staring up into greedy eyes, he was horrified to realize his manhood would soon be in their grasping hands. Kynthia discovers Helios bound to her bed. Infuriated that another unwanted mate has been foisted upon her, she sets the warrior free, wanting him out of her life. Learning that this lovely woman is a being more powerful than any warrior he has ever encountered, Leksi falls hard for the curvaceous beauty. The flames of Kynthia's love are ignited when the handsome warrior is willing to take her as she really is. Against the backdrop of a world on the brink of a hellish war, the first female Reaper is born-a being who Transitions into a wolf-life creature that needs to drink blood in order to thrive. Her powers are forged in the cauldron of a lonely man's need to set right an evil done decades before. Note: This story contains some graphic violence. Not for the faint of heart.

Adam Canfield has to be the most overprogrammed middle-school student in America. So when super-organized Jennifer coaxes him to be coeditor of their school newspaper, THE SLASH, he wonders if he's made a big mistake. But when a third-grader's article leads to a big scoop, Adam and his fellow junior journalists rise to the challenge of receiving their principal's wrath to uncover some scandalous secrets. From a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and NEW YORK TIMES columnist comes a funny, inspiring debut that sneaks in some lessons on personal integrity — and captures the rush that's connected to the breaking of a really great story.

Adrienne Speck is the biggest loser in her high school, so she can hardly believe it when a magical boy falls from the heavens to grant her three wishes. He is cool, confident, and definitely popular crowd material—everything Adrienne's not. With his help, she has a chance to get everything she's ever wanted: get kissed, get popular, and get a date for the upcoming dance. But Adrienne discovers magic isn't all it's cracked up to be, and the road to popularity is paved with humiliation. To make her dreams come true, not only will she have to get the lead in the school play, ask out the most popular guy in school, and stand up to the current queen of popularity, but also keep her personal genie from trashing her room, dressing like a nerd, and revealing to her mom that he's living in their attic. For someone who's supposed to be helping her, he couldn't be making her life any worse. That is, until she starts to fall for him.

In one corner, a godless young warrior, Voltaire's heralded 'philosopher-king', the It Boy of the Enlightenment. In the other, a devout if bad-tempered old composer of 'outdated' music, a scorned genius in his last years. The sparks from their brief conflict illuminate a turbulent age. Behind the pomp and flash, Prussia's Frederick the Great was a tormented man, son of an abusive king who forced him to watch as his best friend (probably his lover) was beheaded. In what may have been one of history's crueler practical jokes, Frederick challenged 'old Bach' to a musical duel, asking him to improvise a six-part fugue based on an impossibly intricate theme (possibly devised for him by Bach's own son). Bach left the court fuming, but in a fever of composition, he used the coded, alchemical language of counterpoint to write 'A Musical Offering' in response. A stirring declaration of faith, it represented 'as stark a rebuke of his beliefs and world view as an absolute monarch has ever...

The wind and snow blow so hard, you can't see your hand in front of your face. Your heating fuel is nearly gone, and so is your food. How do you survive?Five fourteen-year-olds face this desperate situation on a deadly journey in Antarctica. It is 2083. They are contestants on a reality TV show, Antarctic Survivor, which is set up to re-create Robert F. Scott's 1912 doomed attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole.But in 2083 reality TV is not just an act. Contestants literally relive–or die during–the simulations of events. Robert Scott and his team were experienced explorers and scientists, but their attempt to reach the Pole proved fatal. What chance does the Antarctic Survivor team have?This action-packed, riveting adventure–full of fascinating direct quotes from Scott's journals and other accounts of the expedition–is both a heart-wrenching drama from the past and a disquieting glimpse into the future.Ages 12+