Former MLB umpire Dave Phillips was at the center of some of baseball's most unforgettable moments—Comiskey's infamous Disco Demolition Night, Gaylord Perry's spitball ejection, Albert Belle's confiscated corked bat and George Brett's pine tar bat debacle—and he shares with baseball fans the untold stories behind those incidents and many others, giving baseball fans a complete perspective on the life of an umpire.

Pirates! Magic! Treasure! A gargoyle?!Caroline Carlson's funny tween novel The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates #1: Magic Marks the Spot is perfect for fans of Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events and Trenton Lee Stewart's Mysterious Benedict Society.Hilary Westfield has always dreamed of being a pirate. She can tread water for thirty-seven minutes. She can tie a knot faster than a fleet of sailors, and she already owns a rather pointy sword.There's ...

The familiars Aldwyn the cat, Skyler the blue jay, and Gilbert the tree frog are off on an all-new adventure in the series that Michael Buckley, bestselling author of The Sisters Grimm and NERDS series, says "combines the magic of Harry Potter and the adventure of Warriors." With inventive magic, laugh-out-loud humor, and a mysterious conspiracy that will take all the familiars' wits to unravel, Palace of Dreams is the familiars' most extraordinary adventure yet.Peace has returned ...

More pirates, more magic, and more adventure in the second book of the Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates series!Caroline Carlson brings the unceasing wit, humor, and fun of the first book in the series to this epic sequel. Fans of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events and Trenton Lee Stewart’s Mysterious Benedict Society will love this quirky tween series and hope to join the league just like Hilary!Hilary Westfield is now a bona fide pirate, ...

Josh Hanes commits an inexcusable transgression against his dads generation and society in general. An apology cannot wholly undo it. Jail time or a citation would have been an easier debt to repay. One small blunder sends nineteen year old Josh to the edge of isolation, rejection, heart ache, and loss.Stuck in a vacuum between being a high school football hero, painful career choices, and whether its too late for college sends Josh on an unforgettable journey of self-discovery. Wo...

What happens if your great grandfather was Evan Roberts, one of the main four preachers God used in the Welsh revival of 1904 to 1905, a man who saw miracle after miracle? And what if your grandfather prayed in the open air with Spurgeon? And your parents were Bible believing Christians who took you to church twice on Sunday, plus Sunday school? And then you suddenly decide that you "don't do church"? This is a short account told by Dave Phillips, the boy and then the man who didn't do chu...

Humor, magic, and adventure abound in the third—and final—book of Caroline Carlson’s tween fantasy series, The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates.Hilary Westfield is now a freelance pirate. After trying to prove herself to the VNHLP, she realized many members of the league weren’t all that honorable—not even very nearly. With Captain Blacktooth in cahoots with the Mutineers, the kingdom of Augusta—and all of its magic—is at risk.What the League needs i...

For fans of Warriors and Wings of Fire comes a magical adventure story about a street cat who's mistaken for a wizard’s familiar.“Whether furry, flippered or feathered you’ll be taking a closer look at your family pet.” —Michael Buckley, author of The Sisters Grimm and NERDSWhen Aldwyn, a young alley cat on the run, ducks into a mysterious pet shop, he doesn’t expect his life to change. But that’s exactly what happens when Jack, a young wiz...

Aldwyn, a street-smart alley cat, pretended he had telekinetic powers so young wizard Jack would chose him as a familiar. Aldwyn then learned that he and two other familiars—Skylar the blue jay and Gilbert the tree frog—were destined to undertake a perilous quest to defeat Paksahara, an evil hare who’d been familiar to the queen.In Circle of Heroes, the third book of The Familiars series for middle-grade readers, Paksahara and her undead animal army control the Shifting Fortress. A...

Winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, The Game of Silence is the second novel in the critically acclaimed Birchbark House series by New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich.Her name is Omakayas, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop, and she lives on an island in Lake Superior. One day in 1850, Omakayas’s island is visited by a group of mysterious people. From them, she learns that the chimookomanag, or white ...

"A spare elegant memoir. . . . The immediacy of the child's viewpoint . . . depicts both conflict and daily life without exploitation or sentimentality." — Booklist, starred review"When a war ends it does not go away," my mother says. "It hides inside us . . . Just forget!"But I do not want to do what Mother says . . . I want to remember.In this groundbreaking memoir set in Ramallah during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day Wa...