Family Life Science

Moql's mother is Folk, one of those tiny fairies who live hidden from mere mortals, and her father is human. Young patrons will empathize as this tiny changeling experiences the fear, sadness, and danger of not belonging. Set against the backdrop of a charming medieval setting, this award-winning audiobook addresses problems that are still, sadly, quite contemporary.

Thirteen years ago, magic was banished and the witches were hunted. Sisters Spel and Egg are the daughters of witches, but they grow up in Miss Mouldheel’s School for Wicked Girls with no idea who they really are. Until the day the message arrives telling them to run. The message sends them to a funeral parlour in a far away village—and their new guardian, the Undertaker, has a secret. Beneath the funeral parlour is a portal to the Other Ways—four worlds that lie parallel to ours. When Egg vanishes through the portal, Spel knows she must try to save her sister.

In this epic, mythical debut novel, a newly-wed couple escapes the busy confusion of their homeland for a distant and almost-uninhabited lakeshore. They plan to live there simply, to fish the lake, to trap the nearby woods, and build a house upon the dirt between where they can raise a family. But as their every pregnancy fails, the child-obsessed husband begins to rage at this new world: the song-spun objects somehow created by his wife’s beautiful singing voice, the giant and sentient bear that rules the beasts of the woods, the second moon weighing down the fabric of their starless sky, and the labyrinth of memory dug into the earth beneath their house.

Amanda Owen loves her traditional life on her hill farm alongside her nine children and husband Clive. And, as listeners of her previous best sellers will know, every day at Ravenseat brings surprises. In Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess Amanda takes us from her family’s desperate race to save a missing calf to finding her bra has been repurposed as a house martin’s nest and from wild swimming to the brutal winter of 2018 that almost brought her to her knees. As busy as she is with her family and flock though, an exciting new project soon catches her eye....

Calla knows how the lottery works. Everyone does. On the day of your first bleed, you report to the station to learn what kind of woman you will be. A white ticket grants you marriage and children. A blue ticket grants you a career and freedom. You are relieved of the terrible burden of choice. And once you've taken your ticket, there is no going back. But what if the life you're given is the wrong one? When Calla, a blue ticket woman, begins to question her fate, she must go on the run.

Katie can’t wait for the holidays. There are so many things to look forward to! Her motorcycle-riding grandma is coming to visit, class 4A is having a Secret Santa grab bag, and it’s almost time for Cherrydale’s annual holiday lights display contest. But even the busy holiday season doesn’t stop the magic wind!

As fossil fuel prices rise, oil insecurity deepens, and concerns about climate change cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new energy economy is emerging. Wind, solar, and geothermal energy are replacing oil, coal, and natural gas, at a pace and on a scale we could not have imagined even a year ago. For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, we have begun investing in energy sources that can last forever. Plan B 4.0 explores both the nature of this transition to a new energy economy and how it will affect our daily lives.

Tenacity in Children examines how multiple generations of parents and caregivers raised children to become successful adults. Until relatively recent times in human history, there were no schools or organized institutions, nor were there parenting books. Rather, caregivers depended on the seven important instincts that evolved across tens of thousands of years in the human species.

Shelby is struggling with parenthood, marriage, a passive-aggressive mother, and unemployment. But she also has a sweet escape in her beloved Hallmark movies. When a secret admirer promises to sweep her away into a world of those same romantic tropes, the temptation is so heady, Shelby can already smell the pumpkin spice. But this rom-com dream has a whiff of conspiracy....

The thrilling finale to the much-loved Polly and Buster trilogy, written by award-winning and best-selling author Sally Rippin. Is being best friends enough to save a whole town? Polly and Buster have always believed that witches and monsters can be friends, but it seems no-one else agrees. With the witches furious and the monsters in uproar, their whole town is heading for a war...and yet no-one realises that a much greater menace lurks nearby. Can Polly and Buster bring everyone together in time to save their town from the biggest danger of all?

You probably don't realise this, but every working day you replay and re-enact conflicts, dynamics and relationships from your past. Whether it's confusing an authority figure with a parent; avoiding conflict because of past squabbles with siblings; or suffering from imposter syndrome because of the way your family responded to success, when it comes to work we are all trapped in our own upbringings and the patterns of behaviour we learned while growing up.

Return with Portia and her younger brother, Foster, as they rediscover an abandoned summer resort, consisting of deserted crumbling Victorian summer homes surrounding a vanished lake, which is now a swamp.

When Olivia Abbott moves to town, she's excited to join the cheerleading team and make new friends. Then she meets Ivy Vega. At first, Ivy, pale and dressed all in black, looks like Olivia's opposite. Then the girls look beyond the glittery pink blush and thick black eyeliner to discover they're identical - identical twins! Olivia and Ivy are brimming with plans to switch places and pull every twin trick in the book. But Olivia soon discovers that she and Ivy aren't exactly the same. Ivy's a vampire. And she's not the only one in town.

Miri is the non-twin child in a family with two sets of them...The family has just moved to an old farmhouse in a new town, where the only good thing seems to be Miri's ten-sided attic bedroom. But when Miri gets sent to her room after accidentally bashing her big brother on the head with a shovel, she finds herself in the same room...only not quite. Without meaning to, she has found a way to travel back in time to 1935 where she discovers Molly, a girl her own age very much in need of a loving family

Long ago and far away...There was a castle. But not just any castle. This was a castle that glittered and sparkled and rose majestically above the banks of the winding Winono River: the Castle Corona.

Onyeka and her superhero friends are on the run. Having exposed head teacher Dr. Dòyìnbó’s hidden agenda behind the Academy of the Sun, they’re living as fugitives, laying low as they try to figure out their next move. Despite their best efforts, Onyeka’s parents are still missing, and students at the Academy are still in danger. But when their safe house is discovered, Onyeka must turn to the only allies they have left: a group of rebels called the rogues. Joining forces, will the groups defeat their shared nemesis, or is there a new danger on the horizon?

A witch, an evil orphanage caretaker, and an enchanted house. But in this contemporary retelling of the classic tale Hansel and Gretel, twins Hansen and Gracie are not like other children. They have a connection that no one else can understand. But will it be enough to save them from the evil they encounter?

When Chantella's mother died, she thought it couldn't get much worse. But now she is bullied by her stepfamily, and her dad has done nothing about it! Her one chance out is a singing competition. Chantella has a beautiful singing voice, but her stepsiblings are jealous.

Ever since Spencer Plain's parents disappeared, he's been staying in Bearhaven - a secret city where bears talk, go to school, develop secret technology, and plan missions to rescue others who need help. Spencer's been planning, too. He's in training as an operative with the Bear Guard so that he's ready to go help rescue his parents. They've been captured by Pam, who runs an illegal ring of rare animal trading and has been training an army of bears under his control.

This powerful collection of short stories traces an emotional arc inspired by Madeleine L'Engle's early life and career, from her lonely childhood in New York to her life as a mother in small-town Connecticut. In a selection of 18 stories discovered by one of L'Engle's granddaughters, we see how L'Engle's personal experiences and abiding faith informed the creation of her many cherished works.