Grandpa lives on a farm and likes to tell his grandson tall tales. There is no end to Grandpa's hilarious invention -- or to James Flora's comic illustrations.Here are just a few of Grandpa’s whoppers!Grandpa is almost as tall as the trees. So tall, he feeds worms to the birds nesting in his hat.Grandpa's eyebrows are so bushy they fell down his face and turned into his beard.Grandma's hen was such a good layer, she could sit on a doorknob and hatch a door!

When Grandpa was a boy, the most terrible thing happened to him the day before Christmas. While taking a shortcut through the woods, he met three fearsome witches. One, with sharp teeth and hair like an unmowed lawn, pointed her finger at him, squealed, "Sha-zam!" and turned him into a snake. The second witch, who didn't have any feet, turned him into a turkey buzzard. And the third-tall and warty-screamed, "Ta-pooty!" and changed him into a pig. Home he ran, but his parents wouldn't let h...

Leopold, an invisible creature, creates havoc as he devours every crumb in sight.Have you ever seen a See-Through Crumbpicker? Well, neither had Minerva! But, one day, eating yummy cookies and dropping lots of crumbs because her front teeth were missing, Leopold the See-Through Crumbpicker brushed by her and ate up all the crumbs. He sounded nice, and he felt warm and furry—so even though she couldn't see him, they became fast friends. What could go wrong?

The two-volume set LNAI 16617-16618 constitutes the proceedings of the 30th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, PAKDD 2026 Special Session, held in Hong Kong, China, during June 9–12, 2026.The 97 full papers included in this set were carefully reviewed and selected from 728 submissions.These papers were divided into two tracks: the Survey Track, the Main & LLM Track.The Survey Track contains survey papers that are intended to provide a st...

The four-volume set, LNAI 16597-16600 constitutes the proceedings of the 30th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, PAKDD 2026, held in Hong Kong, China, during June 9–12, 2026.The 184 full papers presented in this book were carefully selected and reviewed from 728 submissions.This program featured three tracks, the Main Track, the Survey Track, and the Special Track on LLMs for Data Science.The Main Track continued its tradition of being t...

The four-volume set, LNAI 16597-16600 constitutes the proceedings of the 30th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, PAKDD 2026, held in Hong Kong, China, during June 9–12, 2026.The 184 full papers presented in this book were carefully selected and reviewed from 728 submissions.This program featured three tracks, the Main Track, the Survey Track, and the Special Track on LLMs for Data Science.The Main Track continued its tradition of being t...

The two-volume set LNAI 16617-16618 constitutes the proceedings of the 30th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, PAKDD 2026 Special Session, held in Hong Kong, China, during June 9–12, 2026.The 97 full papers included in this set were carefully reviewed and selected from 728 submissions.These papers were divided into two tracks: the Survey Track, the Main & LLM Track.The Survey Track contains survey papers that are intended to provide a st...

The four-volume set, LNAI 16597-16600 constitutes the proceedings of the 30th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, PAKDD 2026, held in Hong Kong, China, during June 9–12, 2026.The 184 full papers presented in this book were carefully selected and reviewed from 728 submissions.This program featured three tracks, the Main Track, the Survey Track, and the Special Track on LLMs for Data Science.The Main Track continued its tradition of being t...

Who doesn’t like a good mystery? Here are 25 great noir crime and mystery stories by some of the top fictioneers of the 20th century, ripped from the pages of such magazines as The Black Mask Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Secret Agent X, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine -- and many more! Hours of great reading await...if you dare proceed!LET HER KILL HERSELF, by Rufus KingTHE SPENT DAYS, by Fletcher FloraCONSOLATION PRIZE, by Stephen Wasylyk

The four-volume set, LNAI 16597-16600 constitutes the proceedings of the 30th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, PAKDD 2026, held in Hong Kong, China, during June 9–12, 2026.The 184 full papers presented in this book were carefully selected and reviewed from 728 submissions.This program featured three tracks, the Main Track, the Survey Track, and the Special Track on LLMs for Data Science.The Main Track continued its tradition of being t...

Crisis in rural America is by now an all too familiar complaint, yet the problems presented by changing demographics, economic decline, and increasing poverty persist. They have not vanished with a new administration. However, with a new farm bill in the offing, now is the time for a fresh initiative to assess the difficulties facing nonurban America and to offer positive solutions. Rural Policies for the 1990s, written by some of the foremost experts on rural America, focuses on ...

"It’s a new year, which means (at least in the United States) that a lot of new novels and stories have entered the public domain—everything published in 1930, in fact. Since we draw on the public domain for some of our classic reprints, we’ll be going through 1930s publications in coming weeks and presenting some of the greats from that year. This issue, for example, we have Robert E. Howard’s “The Moon of Skulls,” featuring his other great hero, Solomon Kane.In t...