Bücher veröffentlicht von Houghton Mifflin

In this addictive and highly original debut novel a fifteen-year-old boy dies mysteriously, leaving behind a secret ledger filled with his darkly comic confessions. Whether fantasizing about being a minority, breaking into his neighbors' homes, or gunning down an exotic bird, Henry Every's wayward quest for betterment sometimes bordered on the criminal. Alone now in their suburban house, his father pores over the ledger in a final attempt to connect with the boy he never really knew-and, more urgently, to figure out how he died. As Harlan Every learns the truth about his son's many misadventures and transgressions, he also discovers the part he unwittingly played in Henry's tragic death and the real reason his wife walked out years ago. The story grows into two parallel love stories-one past, one present-with drastically different outcomes. Witty and wise, The Every Boy is a page-turning mystery, a love story, an exploration of what it means to be a family, and a one-of-a kind celebration of human individuality.

Did you know that school originally meant ?free time?? Or that a gymnasium was originally a ?nude practice area?? Or that nachos are named after Ignacio ?Nacho? Anaya, who created them? The fascinating stories of these words and over three hundred more are told in More Word Histories and Mysteries: From Aardvark to Zombie.In this companion to the popular Word Histories and Mysteries: From Abracadabra to Zeus, the most surprising stories in the history of English vocabulary are told as a series of brief notes written in a lively and entertaining style. Conveniently arranged in alphabetical order, the notes explore all corners of the dictionary, from everyday words like flak and sideburns to scientific terms like nitrogen to regionalisms like lagniappe.The history of many words is traced back to Egypt, India, and other ancient cultures.A short introduction sketches the history of the English language and American regional dialects. A handy glossary defines special terms for readers who wish to learn more about linguistics and also gives information about the exotic languages that have enriched our vocabulary.Photographs and drawings enliven the pages and illuminate the understanding of word histories.

"While a single short story may have a difficult time raising enough noise on its own to be heard over the din of civilization, short stories in bulk can have the effect of swarming bees, blocking out sound and sun and becoming the only thing you can think about,” writes Ann Patchett in her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2006. This vibrant, varied sampler of the American literary scene revels in life's little absurdities, captures timely personal and cultural challenges, and ultimately shares subtle insight and compassion. In "The View from Castle Rock,” the short story master Alice Munro imagines a fictional account of her Scottish ancestors' emigration to Canada in 1818. Nathan Englander's cast of young characters in "How We Avenged the Blums” confronts a bully dubbed "The Anti-Semite” to both comic and tragic ends. In "Refresh, Refresh,” Benjamin Percy gives a forceful, heart-wrenching look at a young man's choices when his father -- along with most of the men in his small town -- is deployed to Iraq. Yiyun Li's "After a Life” reveals secrets, hidden shame, and cultural change in modern China. And in "Tatooizm,” Kevin Moffett weaves a story full of humor and humanity about a young couple's relationship that has run its course.Ann Patchett "brought unprecedented enthusiasm and judiciousness [to The Best American Short Stories 2006],” writes Katrina Kenison in her foreword, "and she is, surely, every story writer's ideal reader, eager to love, slow to fault, exquisitely attentive to the text and all that lies beneath it.”

In this affecting, perceptive novel, Rachel Kadish reflects on the ghosts of the past, the tensions of war, and the difficult bonds of family. When Maya enrolls at Hebrew University in Jerusalem shortly after the Gulf War, she hopes to leave New York and a fraught relationship with her mother behind her. In Israel, she gets to know her older cousin Tami, a housewife whose home has a room sealed against the war's Scud missile attacks. Like Maya, Tami feels distanced from the people closest to her -- her mother, her husband, her only son. But it will ultimately be Maya's visits with Shifra, an elderly recluse and Holocaust survivor who lives in the apartment below her, that give Maya the courage to confront her problems and break free of the burdens of her past.

The exciting world of professional soccer comes to life in this compelling sequel to GOAL! The Dream Begins. Young soccer player Santiago Munez has come a long way from the barrios of Los Angeles. He has become one of Newcastle United's most outstanding players. He is so good, in fact, that he is recruited for one of the world's best teams, Real Madrid. So Santiago leaves dreary northern England for the sunny shores of Spain. As part of Real Madrid, he is no longer just a soccer player--he's also a celebrity. He can now afford fast cars, a fancy house, and practically anything else he's ever dreamed of. But these luxuries come with a price: He is constantly swarmed by paparazzi. And while Santiago travels the world with the team, his fiancée, Roz, is left behind most of the time, uneasy about his fast-paced new lifestyle. Santiago struggles to keep his balance, but when someone from his past unexpectedly resurfaces in Madrid, his charmed life begins to crumble. Will Santiago be able to keep playing great soccer while dealing with the pressures--and temptations--of fame?

In this sequel to Gibbons's beloved classic Ellen Foster, Ellen, now fifteen, is settled into a permanent home with a new mother. Strengthened by adversity and blessed with enough intelligence to design a salvation for herself, she still feels ill at ease. But while she holds fast to the shreds of her child­hood?humoring her best friend, Stuart, who is determined to marry her; and protecting her old neighbor, slow-witted Starletta?she begins to negotiate her way into a larger world. With a singular mix of perspicacity, naïveté, and compas­sion, Ellen draws us into her life and makes us fall in love with her all over again.

It was 1994: post?Liz Phair, mid?Courtney Love, just shy of Alanis Morissette. After seven years of slogging it out in the Boston music scene, Jen Trynin took a hard look at herself and gave ?making it? one last shot. It worked. Suddenly Trynin became the spark that set off one of the most heated bidding wars of the year. Major labels vied for her, to the tune of millions of dollars in deals. Lawyers, managers, and booking agents clamored for her attention. Billboard put her on the cover. Everyone knew she was the Next Big Thing. But then she wasn't. In a series of dizzying, hilarious, heartbreaking snap­shots, Trynin captures what it's like to be catapulted to the edge of rock stardom, only to plummet back down to earth. Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be is the story of a girl who got what she wished for?and lived happily ever after anyway.

Every year around the globe, people cross paths with avalanches?some massive, some no deeper than a pizza box?with deadly results. Avalanche expert Jill Fredston stalks these so-called freaks of nature, forecasting where and when they will strike, deliberately triggering them with explosives, teaching potential victims how to stay alive, and leading rescue efforts when tragedy strikes. In Snowstruck, Fredston draws on decades of personal experience to take ?avalanches out of the statistical realm and into the human one? (Skiing Magazine): a skier making what may prove his final decision, a victim buried so tightly that he can't move a finger, rescuers racing both time and weather, forecasters treading the line between reasonable risk and danger. Fredston brings to life the awesome forces of nature that can turn the mountains deadly?and the equally inexo­rable forces of human nature that lure us time and again into treacherous terrain.

Tonsillectomies should not be performed at home, cucumbers do not make good stand-ins, and golf clubs are not for hitting your mother.Angela Pneuman renders these unsettling truths, small and large, with blazing insight in Home Remedies. It is a startling collection of stories peopled by Christian fundamentalists traversing various stages and crises of belief, grappling with intimacies that feel like an anxious mix of longing and repulsion, relating to one another in an uneasy balance of eagerness and wariness.

Fourteen-year-old Trisha Driscoll is a gender-blurring, self-described loner whose family expects nothing of her. While her mother lies on the couch in a hypochondriac haze and her sister aspires to be on The Real World, Trisha struggles to find her own place among the neon signs, theme restau­rants, and cookie-cutter chain stores of her hometown. After being hired and abruptly fired from the most popular clothing shop at the local mall, Trisha befriends a chain-smoking misfit named Rose, and her life shifts into manic overdrive. A ?postmillennial, class-adjusted My So-Called Life? (Publishers Weekly), Rose of No Man's Land is brim­ming with snarky observations and soulful musings on contemporary teenage America.

In poems marked by tenderness and mischief, humanity and humor, Yehuda Amichai breaks open the grand diction of revered Jewish verses and casts the light of his own experi­ence upon them. Here he tells of history, a nation, the self, love, and resurrection. Amichai's last volume is one of medi­tation and hope, and stands as a testament to one of Israel's greatest poets. Open closed open. Before we are born, everything is openin the universe without us. For as long as we live, everything is closedwithin us. And when we die, everything is open again.Open closed open. That's all we are.?from ?I WASN'T ONE OF THE SIX MILLION: AND WHAT IS MY LIFE SPAN? OPEN CLOSED OPEN?

Bright and ambitious, young Jim Stringer moves from the English countryside to London deter- mined to become a railway man. It is 1903, the dawn of the Edwardian age, when steam runs the nation and the railways drive progress. Jim can't believe his luck to have gotten his foot in the door at South East Railway, run out of Waterloo Station. He finds, however, that his duties involve a graveyard shift, literally-a railway line that takes coffins from London morgues to the gigantic new cemeteries being dug in the city's outskirts. He also learns that his predecessor had disappeared and that his coworkers seem to have formed an instant loathing for him. Forced to live by his wits and to arrive at his own deductions-assisted by his landlady, for whom he falls- he tries to figure out what is going on before he is issued a one-way ticket on the Necropolis Railway.

A brilliantly observed modern morality tale, Talitha Stevenson's Exposure explores the terrible effects of deceit, obsession, and shame on a dangerously complacent family. Alistair Langford, a respected and powerful barrister, has been hiding his past since he left his hometown of Dover to study at Oxford in the late 1950s. Embarrassed by his working-class upbringing in a guesthouse run by his single mother, with whom he has not had any contact for forty years, he has lied about himself to everyone in his life since Oxford, including his wife, Rosalind, and his two children, Luke and Sophie. But after the death of his mother and a one-night stand with a devious defense witness, his tightly woven tapestry of lies begins to unravel. Exposure is a deftly plotted, psychologically suspenseful, and compulsively readable novel from one of the most exciting young fiction writers today.

In this compelling continuation of the Jefferson family story, thirteen-year-old Emily Rose visits her extended family in Texas for the first time ever. Emily Rose, who grew up in a biracial family in the northeast, is surprised that racial attitudes are so different in the South. But as she grows closer to her great-grandmother, Rose Lee, and learns more about her African American heritage, Emily Rose discovers a new dimension of herself. Includes a reader's guide.

Boris is a big gray cat who loves sleeping and playing and exploring and hunting. And his owner loves him for all of his simple cat ways.But Boris, typical as he may be, is part of a much larger story in this moving exploration of love, longing, compassion, and most of all, the continuous give-and-take of companionship.Newbery medalist Cynthia Rylant's powerful collection of poems is sure to find its place in the hearts of readers of all ages, especially those who have been lucky enough to experience the many joys and hardships that come with true friendship.

In the depths of his Cornish hideaway, retired Detective Inspector Frank Elder's solitary life is disturbed by a call from his ex-wife, telling him his seventeen-year-old daughter, Katherine, is running wild, unbalanced by the abduction and rape he feels he should have prevented. Meanwhile, in the heart of London, the takedown of a violent criminal goes badly, and Detective Sergeant Maddy Birch is uneasy about the reasons why, an uneasiness that is compounded when she starts to believe she is being stalked. Maddy and Frank had a brief and clumsy encounter years before. In Ash & Bone their lives connect again when a second phone call persuades Elder out of retirement, only to find that a cold case has a devastating present-day impact.

A young wife is home alone when the phone rings in ?So Help Me God.? Is the strange voice flirting with her from the other end of the line her jealous husband laying a trap, or a stranger who knows entirely too much about her? In ?Madison at Guignol? an unhappy fashionista discovers a secret door inside her favorite clothing store and insists the staff let her enter. But even her fevered imagination cannot anticipate the horror they have been hiding from her. In these and other gripping and disturbing tales, women are confronted by the evil around them and surprised by the evil they find within themselves.With wicked insight, Joyce Carol Oates demonstrates why the females of the species?be they six-year-old girls, seemingly devoted wives, or aging mothers?are by nature more deadly than the males.

Paul Bunyan was never "stumped," and no job was ever too big for him and his blue ox to handle. From Michigan to Minnesota, from North Dakota to the Pacific Northwest, wherever Paul went, he liked to do things in a big way. In Esther Shepard's classic collection, originally published in 1924 and now available in this handsome new edition, the Paul Bunyan stories are superbly told in folksy narrative and robustly illustrated with Rockwell Kent's line drawings. These twenty-one tales about the super lumberjack are a unique American contribution to the world's folklore. Includes an introduction by the author.

Living in the Bloggins School boiler room isn't glamorous, but that's life for Martha Snapdragon, daughter of the beleaguered janitor. Life only gets weirder when Martha realizes bizarre events are afoot at the school. There's the dastardly dealings of evil principal Dr. Klunk and school bully Rufus. There's the dozen dancing eggs and the misbehaving dragons, property of the mysterious science teacher. And then there's the strangest thing of all: a giant golden spoon that simply appears one day, stuck in the wall of the school bathroom. Although everyone tries, only Martha is able to extract the spoon from the wall--an act that leads her to a destiny far beyond her meager life in the boiler room. Tony Johnston's funny, magical story spoofs the legend of The Sword in the Stone?and conveys some poignant truths about teaching, leadership, and the responsibilities we have to one another.

William H. "Billy the Kid" Bonney Jr. loves to take risks. But Billy's luck runs out when, during a train heist, a passenger recognizes the nineteen-year-old outlaw. Fed up with his bad ways, Sheriff Willis Monroe, Billy's own cousin, decides to track him down. The Kid's two-timing partners are hunting him, too--and a posse wants Billy (and the sheriff) dead. This gripping fictional tale imagines William Bonney's fate had his life of crime taken a very different turn. Fans of adventure will be riveted by Theodore Taylor's fresh take on a legendary character. Includes an author's note about the real Billy the Kid.