Sweet Oddball, exhaustively researched and illustrated with 225 rare photos, chronicles the public and private lives of a lady much beloved by her fellow actors and fans.

Sweet Oddball, exhaustively researched and illustrated with 225 rare photos, chronicles the public and private lives of a lady much beloved by her fellow actors and fans.

Today Verna Felton is most remembered for the voice characterizations she created for six Walt Disney features, but this biography reveals a varied career spanning sixty-five years. Twice nominated for an Emmy, Verna endeared herself to TV audiences of the 1950s as Hilda Crocker on Desilu's December Bride. Before that, she was in constant demand as a radio voice artist, supporting the likes of Jack Benny, Judy Canova, and Red Skelton. Fredrick Tucker chronicles her rise to fame, from phenomenal child actress to her final quarter century as one of Hollywood's most beloved character actresses. The book also features an abundance of rare photographs and several appendices, including a never-before-published episode guide for December Bride.

The instant New York Times bestseller from the author of the Newbery Medal winner When You Reach Me: a story about spies, games, and friendship. The first day Georges (the S is silent) moves into a new Brooklyn apartment, he sees a sign taped to a door in the basement: SPY CLUB MEETING—TODAY! That’s how he meets his twelve-year-old neigh­bor Safer. He and Georges quickly become allies—and fellow spies. Their assignment? Tracking the mysterious Mr. X, who lives in the apartment upstairs. But as Safer’s requests become more and more demanding, Georges starts to wonder: how far is too far to go for your only friend? “Will touch the hearts of kids and adults alike.” —NPR Winner of the Guardian Prize for Children’s Fiction Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and more!

Eleven-year-old Polly Peabody knows her family?s world-famous rhubarb farm is magical. The plants taste like chocolate, jewels appear in the soil, bugs talk to her, and her best friend is a rhubarb plant named Harry. But the most magical thing is that every single Monday, at exactly 1:00, it rains. Until the Monday when the rain just stops. Now it?s up to Polly to figure out why?and whether her brother?s mysterious illness and her glamorous aunt Edith?s sudden desire to sell the farm have anything to do with it. Most of all, Polly has to make it start raining again before it?s too late. Her brother?s life, the plants? survival, and her family?s future all depend on it. Kathleen Van Cleve has woven an unforgettable comingof- age tale with all the heart and wonder of a Roald Dahl novel.

Cookbook author and naturalist Peter Kaminsky shares his quest for the perfect pigs and pork recipes, sharing his love for pork dishes and his efforts to find the perfect grilling techniques.

Once London's top thief, Barclay Pearce has turned his back on his life of crime and now uses his skills for a nation at war. But not until he rescues a clockmaker's daughter from a mugging does he begin to wonder what his future might hold. Evelina Manning has constantly fought for independence, but she certainly never meant for it to inspire her fiancé to end the engagement and enlist in the army. When the intriguing man who saved her returns to the Manning residence to study clockwork repair with her father, she can't help being interested. But she soon learns that nothing with Barclay Pearce is as simple as it seems. As 1915 England plunges ever deeper into war, the work of an ingenious clockmaker may give England an unbeatable military edge--and Germany realizes it as well. Evelina's father soon finds his whole family in danger--and it may just take a reformed thief to steal the time they need to escape.