Getting ready for a new baby is a lot of work. While Mom and Dad have to do most of it, big brothers and big sisters have to get ready for their lives to change, too. Author Katrina C. Chin Loys A Panda Baby on the Way chronicles the adventures of a growing panda family. When Pandababy learns she is going to be a big sister, her life changesas do the lives of her parents. Follow the family as they go through its daily routine and discover how it will change when the new baby arrives. Along the way, Pandababy realizes she will be an awesome big sister! Beautifully illustrated by Tiffany del Fierro, A Panda Baby on the Way is an entertaining way to explain to children how a new baby will change their lives and routines. Potential fears and concerns can be discussed and dealt with in an enjoyable setting.

When two lines appear on the pregnancy test kit, Humphreys’ world is turned upside down. He is excited but clueless and urgently needs some directions. After all, his biggest responsibility to this point had been a pet hamster and he lost that twice. From the moment his doctor tells him to book an obstetrician’s appointment, he knows he is out of his depth — he doesn’t know what an obstetrician is. Humphreys deals with parents who mock his sex drive, midwives who question his usefulness, friends who share only horrific birth stories, strangers who rub his wife’s belly and folks who seem to know everything there is to know about pregnancy (but often don’t have kids of their own). And there’s that troubling dream about her giving birth to a plastic toy lizard made in China. How will he deal with his parental insecurities? What’s the secret to being a decent dad? Will he drop his baby at the birth? Both funny and poignant, Be My Baby is a frank account of Humphreys’ quest to be a good father. Every parent will identify with his journey and perhaps begin to realise what they themselves put their mummy and daddy through, even in the womb.

Baby On The Way by Dallas Schulze\Linda Turner\Cait London released on Jun 24, 1994 is available now for purchase.

Here is the astonishing true story of Ruth Harkness, the Manhattan bohemian socialite who, against all but impossible odds, trekked to Tibet in 1936 to capture the most mysterious animal of the day: a bear that had for countless centuries lived in secret in the labyrinth of lonely cold mountains. In The Lady and the Panda, Vicki Constantine Croke gives us the remarkable account of Ruth Harkness and her extraordinary journey, and restores Harkness to her rightful place along with Sacajawea, Nellie Bly, and Amelia Earhart as one of the great woman adventurers of all time. Ruth was the toast of 1930s New York, a dress designer newly married to a wealthy adventurer, Bill Harkness. Just weeks after their wedding, however, Bill decamped for China in hopes of becoming the first Westerner to capture a giant panda–an expedition on which many had embarked and failed miserably. Bill was also to fail in his quest, dying horribly alone in China and leaving his widow heartbroken and adrift. And so Ruth made the fateful decision to adopt her husband’s dream as her own and set off on the adventure of a lifetime. It was not easy. Indeed, everything was against Ruth Harkness. In decadent Shanghai, the exclusive fraternity of white male explorers patronized her, scorned her, and joked about her softness, her lack of experience and money. But Ruth ignored them, organizing, outfitting, and leading a bare-bones campaign into the majestic but treacherous hinterlands where China borders Tibet. As her partner she chose Quentin Young, a twenty-two-year-old Chinese explorer as unconventional as she was, who would join her in a romance as torrid as it was taboo. Traveling across some of the toughest terrain in the world–nearly impenetrable bamboo forests, slick and perilous mountain slopes, and boulder-strewn passages–the team raced against a traitorous rival, and was constantly threatened by hordes of bandits and hostile natives. The voyage took months to complete and cost Ruth everything she had. But when, almost miraculously, she returned from her journey with a baby panda named Su Lin in her arms, the story became an international sensation and made the front pages of newspapers around the world. No animal in history had gotten such attention. And Ruth Harkness became a hero. Drawing extensively on American and Chinese sources, including diaries, scores of interviews, and previously unseen intimate letters from Ruth Harkness, Vicki Constantine Croke has fashioned a captivating and richly textured narrative about a woman ahead of her time. Part Myrna Loy, part Jane Goodall, by turns wisecracking and poetic, practical and spiritual, Ruth Harkness is a trailblazing figure. And her story makes for an unforgettable, deeply moving adventure.

The story of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki's life and work, including his significant impact on Japan and the world--"an essential work in anime scholarship." (Angelica Frey, Hyperallergic) A thirtieth-century toxic jungle, a bathhouse for tired gods, a red-haired fish girl, and a furry woodland spirit--what do these have in common? They all spring from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki, one of the greatest living animators, known worldwide for films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises. Japanese culture and animation scholar Susan Napier explores the life and art of this extraordinary Japanese filmmaker to provide a definitive account of his oeuvre. Napier insightfully illuminates the multiple themes crisscrossing his work, from empowered women to environmental nightmares to utopian dreams, creating an unforgettable portrait of a man whose art challenged Hollywood dominance and ushered in a new chapter of global popular culture.

It’s time to get your witch on…. More than one million words of witchy goodness! Get ready to be transported with this magical boxed set of stories from NY Times, USA Today, and national bestselling authors! In this collection, you’ll find witches, wizards, and warlocks, along with vampires, shifters, and other creatures of the night. The Witch Ways boxed set includes these first-in-series paranormal romance and urban fantasy stories: STORM BORN - Christine Pope STICKS AND STONES - Meredith Medina DEUS EX MAGICAL - Kat Parrish THE COVEN PRINCESS - Lily Luchesi SHADES OF MAGICK - Julia Crane CALLED - J.A. Belfield GRAVE MISTAKE - Christine Pope DEATH’S HAND - SM Reine A QUESTION OF FAITH - Nicole Zoltack BEWARE THE VIOLET - Maria Vermisoglou BURIED MAGIC - TJ Green LUNA - Stella Fitzsimons GHOST OF A CHANCE - Cherie Claire HOW TO SNAG A SHIFTER - Karin de Havin THE PERFECT BREW - Jo-Ann Carson PROPHECY OF THREE - Ashley McLeo VANILLA BEAN VAMPIRE - Selina J. Eckert A WITCHY MISTAKE - Rhonda Hopkins WHAT THE CAT KNEW - P.D. Workman ELEMENTAL ARCANE - Phaedra Weldon FOUND OBJECTS - Christine Pope

From one of world literature’s most courageous voices, a novel about the human cost of China’s one-child policy through the lens of one rural family on the run from its reach Far away from the Chinese economic miracle, from the bright lights of Beijing and Shanghai, is a vast rural hinterland, where life goes on much as it has for generations, with one extraordinary difference: “normal” parents are permitted by the state to have only a single child. The Dark Road is the story of one such “normal” family—Meili, a young peasant woman; her husband, Kongzi, a village schoolteacher; and their daughter, Nannan. Kongzi is, according to family myth, a direct lineal descendant of Confucius, and he is haunted by the imperative to carry on the family name by having a son. And so Meili becomes pregnant again without state permission, and when local family planning officials launch a new wave of crackdowns, the family makes the radical decision to leave its village and set out on a small, rickety houseboat down the Yangtze River. Theirs is a dark road, and tragedy awaits them, and horror, but also the fierce beauty born of courageous resistance to injustice and inhumanity. The Dark Road is a haunting and indelible portrait of the tragedies befalling women and families at the hands of China’s one-child policy and of the human spirit’s capacity to endure even the most brutal cruelty. While Ma Jian wrote The Dark Road, he traveled through the rural backwaters of southwestern China to see how the state enforced the one-child policy far from the outside world’s prying eyes. He met local women who had been seized from their homes and forced to undergo abortions or sterilization in the policy’s name; and on the Yangtze River, he lived among fugitive couples who had gone on the run so they could have more children, that most fundamental of human rights. Like all of Ma Jian’s novels, The Dark Road is also a celebration of the life force, of the often comically stubborn resilience of man’s most basic instincts.