A Crooked Kind of Perfect

A Crooked Kind of Perfect
Author: Linda Urban
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2009-04-06
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0152066691

Ten-year-old Zoe Elias has perfect piano dreams. She can practically feel the keys under her flying fingers; she can hear the audience's applause. All she needs is a baby grand so she can start her lessons, and then she'll be well on her way to Carnegie Hall. But when Dad ventures to the music store and ends up with a wheezy organ instead of a piano, Zoe's dreams hit a sour note. Learning the organ versions of old TV theme songs just isn't the same as mastering Beethoven on the piano. And the organ isn't the only part of Zoe's life in Michigan that's off-kilter, what with Mom constantly at work, Dad afraid to leave the house, and that odd boy, Wheeler Diggs, following her home from school every day. Yet when Zoe enters the annual Perform-O-Rama organ competition, she finds that life is full of surprises—and that perfection may be even better when it's just a little off center. This ebook includes a sample chapter of Hound Dog True.

A Crooked Kind of Perfect

A Crooked Kind of Perfect
Author: Linda Urban
Publisher: Clarion Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9780152066086

Sure that she'll be on her way to Carnegie Hall if only she cold have a baby grand, 10-year-old Zoe Elias's dreams hit a sour note when her dad gives her an organ instead.

Hound Dog True

Hound Dog True
Author: Linda Urban
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2011
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0547558694

The author of the acclaimed "A Crooked Kind of Perfect" comes the story of a fifth-grade girl who begins to see how one small, brave act can lead to a friend who is hound dog true.

The Center of Everything

The Center of Everything
Author: Linda Urban
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0547763832

Spring 2013 Kids' Indie Next List For Ruby Pepperdine, the “center of everything” is on the rooftop of Pepperdine Motors in her donut-obsessed town of Bunning, New Hampshire, stargazing from the circle of her grandmother Gigi’s hug. That’s how everything is supposed to be—until Ruby messes up and things spin out of control. But she has one last hope. It all depends on what happens on Bunning Day, when the entire town will hear Ruby read her winning essay. And it depends on her twelfth birthday wish—unless she messes that up too. Can Ruby’s wish set everything straight in her topsy-turvy world?

Mouse was Mad

Mouse was Mad
Author: Linda Urban
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 43
Release: 2009
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0152053379

Who knows the best way to be mad? Bear stomps. Hare hops. Bobcat screams. Mouse? He just can't get it right. But when he finds the way that works for him--still and quiet--he discovers that his own way might be the best of all. Linda Urban's story about self-expression is both sweet and sly, and Henry Cole's cast of animal friends is simply irresistible.

Straight Down a Crooked Lane

Straight Down a Crooked Lane
Author: Francena H. Arnold
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Total Pages: 281
Release: 1959-06-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0802490883

A love-at-first-sight meeting between Mary Jo and Jack leads to a rash, young marriage. Reality soon hits the excited newlyweds. Yet from their despair and despondency come the desire and ability to learn how to follow God’s path instead of their own.

Into the Crooked Place

Into the Crooked Place
Author: Alexandra Christo
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2019-10-08
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1250318386

Into the Crooked Place begins a gritty two-book YA fantasy series from Alexandra Christo, the author of To Kill a Kingdom. The streets of Creije are for the deadly and the dreamers, and four crooks in particular know just how much magic they need up their sleeve to survive. Tavia, a busker ready to pack up her dark-magic wares and turn her back on Creije for good. She’ll do anything to put her crimes behind her. Wesley, the closest thing Creije has to a gangster. After growing up on streets hungry enough to swallow the weak whole, he won’t stop until he has brought the entire realm to kneel before him. Karam, a warrior who spends her days watching over the city’s worst criminals and her nights in the fighting rings, making a deadly name for herself. And Saxony, a resistance fighter hiding from the very people who destroyed her family, and willing to do whatever it takes to get her revenge. Everything in their lives is going to plan, until Tavia makes a crucial mistake: she delivers a vial of dark magic—a weapon she didn’t know she had—to someone she cares about, sparking the greatest conflict in decades. Now these four magical outsiders must come together to save their home and the world, before it’s too late. But with enemies at all sides, they can trust nobody. Least of all each other.

Finding Perfect

Finding Perfect
Author: Elly Swartz
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2016-10-18
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0374303126

A classic-feeling middle-grade novel with a modern twist about a girl dealing with friendship, family, and OCD.

Creative Types

Creative Types
Author: Tom Bissell
Publisher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-12-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 152474915X

From the best-selling coauthor of The Disaster Artist and “one of America's best and most interesting writers" (Stephen King), a new collection of stories that range from laugh-out-loud funny to disturbingly dark—unflinching portraits of women and men struggling to bridge the gap between art and life A young and ingratiating assistant to a movie star makes a blunder that puts his boss and a major studio at grave risk. A long-married couple hires an escort for a threesome in order to rejuvenate their relationship. An assistant at a prestigious literary journal reconnects with a middle school frenemy and finds that his carefully constructed world of refinement cannot protect him from his past. A Bush administration lawyer wakes up on an abandoned airplane, trapped in a nightmare of his own making. In these and other stories, Tom Bissell vividly renders the complex worlds of characters on the brink of artistic and personal crises—writers, video-game developers, actors, and other creative types who see things slightly differently from the rest of us. With its surreal, poignant, and sometimes squirm-inducing stories, Creative Types is a brilliant new offering from one the most versatile and talented writers working in America today.

Almost There and Almost Not

Almost There and Almost Not
Author: Linda Urban
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2022-04-26
Genre: JUVENILE FICTION
ISBN: 1534478817

When her father goes away, eleven-year-old California "Callie" Poppy winds up with her eccentric Great-Aunt Monica and their ancestor, the once-famous etiquette expert Eleanor Fontaine, now a hypersensitive ghost.