"I wanted to become a scientist. But not just any scientist. A mad scientist."For Betty Sue Collins, being a doctor would never be enough. While her parents dream of their daughter saving for medical school, Betty has a deep desire to join her tortured misfit heroes and turn her intelligence into imperium.A waitress in a wig, Betty's life isn't exciting, but when she saves enough to take the Blessmenthol Scale Mad Scientist Aptitude test, she finds that there's more mad scien...

The water, home to mermaids, selkies, and pirates alike, serves as a vessel for secrets, though it is not always airtight. A secret may sink to the bottom as a treasure long forgotten, or it may breach the surface, wrapping its tendrils around an innocent victim.Secrets in the Water showcases 31 mystical tales of deception, illusion, and enchantment, tales of seafaring witches, a seemingly magical family heirloom, the enticing call of a siren, and other secrets obscured by the wave...

Concurrent enrollment programs offer high-achieving high school students the opportunity to take college credit-bearing courses taught by college-approved high school teachers. This low-cost, scalable model brings accelerated coursework to urban, suburban, and rural students. In this book, scholars explore the function of concurrent enrollment programs in addressing the gap between high school preparation and readiness for the academic and social demands of college. Experts in the educatio...

A collection of short stories by L.E. Henderson ranging from personal prose to fantasy and science fiction.Fictionally addresses questions such as:What if you could write your way into a new life?What if the only way to cure mental illness was math?How would a cat who had just become human react when she runs into a Christian determined to save her soul?How would the human race react if they made first contact with extraterrestrials only to find that the ...

Two years after losing his baby brother, 13-year-old Caleb only wants a home that feels warm and friendly, not cold and vacant, and a mother who will be there for him.But just as he starts to recover from his grief, a strange man tries to kill Caleb too, plunging him into a desperate search for answers.The strangeness, however, just gets deeper.Ethereal lights beckon Caleb down a twisted path, leading—at last— to the most bizarre sight of all: a purple monster from his...

When Mitalla turns three, she learns that her mother has kept a dark secret from her: Mitalla is a slave.Being a member of an intelligent feline species, she has never seen a "pink and furless" human until a cruel overseer takes her and her siblings from their seemingly safe home and into a life of bondage.Even though, as the runt of the litter, Mitalla has struggled to survive, she is unprepared for the harshness of the desert where her enslaved species is forced to mine a p...

The forest is dying. The food supply is going away. And the humans refuse to leave.But a lamb called Apple Bone, a scrawny cross-eyed misfit, may have an answer.When cornered by a ravenous lion, Apple Bone has a sudden, desperate vision. He imagines an elaborate prank, one ingenious enough to make the human invaders leave forever.The lamb struggles to sell his solution to the hungry predator, arguing that his plan will save them both—and in fact the whole forest—from t...

A 12-year-old orphan, Devin has never met another living human—not that he remembers. But he has seen too many of the other kind.The virus is to blame—the outbreak that killed the whole crew of his spaceship when he was practically a baby. Now all he knows of humans is dead ones he has seen, terrifyingly encased in glass.The spaceship is as silent as a tomb. Ghosts seem to pervade its silent corridors. But the ship is the only home he knows.Just like the only friends h...

Writing is hard. Some writers believe they need a magical mindset. Others believe you must force yourself to write.Such pressures cause pointless suffering.A Trail of Crumbs to Creative Freedom proposes a more playful and forgiving approach."Trail" tracks the creative recovery of the author, who—right after a manic episode—becomes creatively numb and plunges into a depression.Desperately blocked, she longs to re-experience the creative rush of writing her first ...

What if you could write your way into a better life? What if the only way to cure your mental illness was by doing math—a whole lot of math? How would a cat-turned-human respond to a Christian determined to save her soul? What would become of human dignity if we finally discovered intelligent extraterrestrials—only to find that the aliens have no interest in us at all?Explore these questions, along with the author, in Becoming the Story, a collection of short stories, ranging from p...

As the creator of the 67-foot-tall “Big Sam” statue of Sam Houston that overlooks Interstate 45 just south of Huntsville, Texas, David Adickes is a pivotal, if sometimes enigmatic, figure in Texas art. Though he made many contributions to the early development of the Houston art scene and to Texas Modernism, which has experienced an upsurge in interest of late, Adickes’s life and work have had no thorough examination.Monumental: The Art of David Adickes tells the story of ...

This collection takes its inspiration from Paul Goodman's Growing Up Absurd, a landmark critique of American culture at the end of the 1950s. Goodman called for a revival of social investment in urban planning, public welfare, workplace democracy, free speech, racial harmony, sexual freedom, popular culture, and education to produce a society that could inspire young people, and an adult society worth joining.In postmodernity, Goodman's enlightenment-era vision of social p...