What would YOU wish for? When Milly, Michael, Jason and Jess move to a town in the middle of nowhere, the last thing they expect to find is a magic book - with its own talking bookworm called Skribble! The grumpy worm promises that The Genie Handbook can make them into genies in six easy steps. Soon they are diving into a world of weirdness and wonder, trouble and trickery, trying to make each other's wishes come true. But when the wishes start to go wrong the magic seems scarier. What is the secret of the mysterious couple watching from the shadows? Why is Skribble so afraid of them? And if the children's greatest wish of all is finally granted, will their world change for better or for worse?

The struggle to get into a top-tier college consumes sixteen-year-old Genie’s every waking thought. But when she discovers she’s a celestial spirit who’s powerful enough to bash through the gates of heaven with her fists, her perfectionist existence is shattered. Enter Quentin, a transfer student from China whose tone-deaf assertiveness beguiles Genie to the brink of madness. Quentin nurtures Genie’s outrageous transformation—sometimes gently, sometimes aggressively—as her sleepy suburb in the Bay Area comes under siege from hell-spawn. This epic YA debut draws from Chinese folklore, features a larger-than-life heroine, and perfectly balances the realities of Genie’s grounded high school life with the absurd supernatural world she finds herself commanding.

At a time when scientific and technological breakthroughs keep our eyes focused on the latest software upgrades or the newest cell-phone wizardry, a group of today's most innovative thinkers are looking beyond the horizon to explore both the promise and the peril of our technological future. Human ingenuity has granted us a world of unprecedented personal power -- enabling us to communicate instantaneously with anyone anywhere on the globe, to transport ourselves in both real and virtual worlds to distant places with ease, to fill our bellies with engineered commodities once available to only a privileged elite. Through our technologies, we have sought to free ourselves from the shackles of nature and become its master. Yet science and technology continually transform our experience and society in ways that often seem to be beyond our control. Today, different areas of research and innovation are advancing synergistically, multiplying the rate and magnitude of technological and societal change, with consequences that no one can predict. Living with the Genie explores the origins, nature, and meaning of such change, and our capacity to govern it. As the power of technology continues to accelerate, who, this book asks, will be the master of whom? In Living with the Genie, leading writers and thinkers come together to confront this question from many perspectives, including: Richard Powers's whimsical investigation of the limits of artificial intelligence; Philip Kitcher's confrontation of the moral implications of science; Richard Rhodes's exploration of the role of technology in reducing violence; Shiv Visvanathan's analysis of technology's genocidal potential; Lori Andrews's insights into the quest for human genetic enhancement; Alan Lightman's reflections on how technology changes the experience of our humanness. These and ten other provocative essays open the door to a new dialogue on how, in the quest for human mastery, technology may be changing what it means to be human, in ways we scarcely comprehend.

Genie and Paul is an utterly original love story: the story of a sister's love for a lost brother, and the story of his love for an island that has never really existed. One morning in May 2003, on the cyclone-ravaged island of Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean, the body of a man washes up on the beach. Six weeks previously, the night Tropical Cyclone Kalunde first gathered force, destruction of another kind hit 26-year-old Genie Lallan and her life in London: after a night out with her brother she wakes up in hospital to discover that he's disappeared. Where has Paul gone, and why did he abandon her at the club where she collapsed? Genie's search for him leads her to Rodrigues, sister island to Mauritius—their island of origin, and for Paul, the only place he has ever felt at home. Will Genie track Paul down? And what will she find if she does?

Behind the Pixie Dust Curtain Every Disney attraction comes with a story, and every story involves a few tricks of the trade that only Imagineers know. Here's your chance to peek behind the curtain and learn some of the secrets about thirty of the most popular Disney theme park rides. David Mumpower takes you behind-the-scenes at Disneyland and Walt Disney World to reveal the inner workings of your favorite attractions. He'll explain why Walt Disney chose many of these rides, and he'll describe the challenges that Imagineers faced in doing the impossible by bringing them to life. Mumpower begins with the story of how a Russian monarch's love of sledding indirectly led to the invention of the modern roller coaster. Then, he details the physical and thematic obstacles that Imagineers overcame to build iconic attractions like Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain, and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Of course, some of the best Disney rides are more recent. Mumpower also examines the difficulties in developing cutting-edge attractions like Avatar Flight of Passage, Radiator Springs Racers, and Slinky Dog Dash. Mumpower covers opening day rides still in operation today as well as some of the most recent additions to the vaunted Disney theme park lineup. He discusses all of these ride experiences plus the tricks that make them possible--and magical. If you've ever gotten off a Disney ride and wondered how they did it, or if you're the type of fan who'd rather examine an attraction than experience it, or maybe you'd like to be an Imagineer yourself someday, this is the book you've been waiting for.

The fate of the heavens is at stake in this hilarious and highly-anticipated sequel to the The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, from the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Rise of Kyoshi Genie Lo thought she was busy last year, juggling her academic career with protecting the Bay Area from demons. But now, as the Heaven-appointed Guardian of California, she’s responsible for the well-being of all yaoguai and spirits on Earth. Even the ones who interrupt her long-weekend visit to a prestigious college, bearing terrible news about a cosmos-threatening force of destruction in a nearby alternate dimension. The goddess Guanyin and Genie’s boyfriend, Quentin Sun Wukong, do their best to help, but it’s really the Jade Emperor who’s supposed to handle crises of this magnitude. Unfortunately for Genie and the rest of existence, he’s gone AWOL. Fed up with the Jade Emperor’s negligence, Genie spots an opportunity to change the system for the better by undertaking a quest that spans multiple planes of reality along with an adventuring party of quarrelsome Chinese gods. But when faced with true danger, Genie and her friends realize that what will save the universe this time isn’t strength, but sacrifice.

When Jean finds a wish-granting genie in the lamp she receives for her birthday, she discovers that having all her wishes come true isn't as wonderful as she thinks it will be.